Thank you, thank you, thank you

There's a lot of fluffy wisdom on the internet telling us how to attract a partner/mate, how to be at peace with ourselves all the time, how to deal with difficult people, and so on. Much of it comes to me in the form of precious jpegs on pinterest and facebook. It's not that the suggestions of how to be better are off base, it is that I am annoyed by the implication that my problems and solution are a function of my outlook, bad attitude, or gluten intake. Some of them might be, but that's something else. Complaining aside, there is one positive meme that resonates with me and that shows up well beyond the scope of pithy life-coaching pics: cultivating gratitude.

I'm full of it. Gratitude that is. Still in the honeymoon phase of a great new job with wonderful colleagues and a supportive environment I find myself stopping more often to think a version of one of Anne Lammott's main prayers, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." I'd like to think I practice gratitude for small things when the big things aren't lining up, but it feels easier now that I've found full-time employment in my field. I feel fortunate to go to work teaching art and design at a college committed to educational excellence. I am fortunate. A colleague corrected me saying that I wasn't lucky and that I'd earned this job, but I look out at the academic job market and at the rate of pay for excellent qualified adjunct teachers, and think: Holy shit. I'm a lucky woman.

And then I think: Don't screw this up, woman. I aim not to. But I hope to maintain a spirit of gratitude when the honeymoon ends, my luck runs dry, or I find myself back on the dispiriting job hunt.