It's Certainly Been a Long Trip! (Day 1 of Gratitude)

So I started this blog more than 10 years ago, which is sort of unbelievable. And in that time, so much has changed. I've read in the past – I think in an Oliver Sacks column (incidentally when I went back to find this I was wrong – the Oliver Sacks was a different, but related column) – that when they ask people whether they think they've learned more in their past decade of life or will learn more in the next decade, people nearly universally say they've learned more in the previous decade. Or maybe it's not learn but experience. Anyway, people always think the previous decade has been more substantive or definitive. But maybe they're not right. Maybe we're not right. Maybe if we do it well, each subsequent decade is better.

So we embark on a new decade of the blog – and (soon) the final year of my own personal next decade. And as I do so, I am trying to figure out what comes next. When I started this blog, I was writing about restaurants and new discoveries in my urban dwelling. And now I am the suburbanite I so disdainfully referred to, with a life that, for a variety of reasons, makes it impossible to be trying every new restaurant and bar. I'm always surprised to find that someplace I finally make it to has actually been around for years. Yesterday we drove past a Pret a Manger that had opened on the corner of 17th and K Streets, and I said, "Oh look, a new Pret!" Mark said it had been there for 6 years. (Turns out it has been there for 3 – but still!)

But I wanted to start today a practice of posting about gratitude. A guy I went to college with who is a Facebook friend has been doing it this year, and I felt really moved by the idea. If you are truly thinking each day about something you are grateful for, it has to have a larger impact – it has to make you grateful, right? Let's try it.

Today I am grateful for an innate ability to write. Perhaps it was cultivated at an early age, or perhaps it is truly an innate gift bestowed upon me by those ancestors who passed on their genes. I'm not sure where it came from, but it has gotten me far. I don't have nearly the same gift of speaking or expressing myself aurally as I do when writing, and thankfully that has not been as much of a detriment as it may have been. And it's even better when I have time to reflect on my writing, and edit it, and think through the logic flow so that it can be tighter and more persuasive. But it's a gift – no other word for it – to be able to document the thoughts in your brain so thoroughly as to share them with others.

Or just to share them with yourself. I've discovered over the years that writing helps me analyze what is in my head. It's as if by documenting them, I can see them for the first time. This is true even when it comes to making lists so I remember what I want or need to accomplish in a day. By writing it out, it becomes more real. Likewise, by writing how I feel, I become more attuned to those feelings. I wish I had the discipline to find more time to write and to explore that giant melee of thought swirling around in my head. Perhaps this is the start of that.