My heart is bursting with gratitude

Sunday Blog 146 - 28th July 2024

After last weekend’s high, the writing workshop in Quairading, it was inevitable this week was going to feel a little meh. Since quitting my day job in 2022, I have slowly but steadily taken on more work, gathering momentum and bulk like a runaway snowball, despite all my attempts to quarantine writing time. Luckily I had my newly formed commitment from Quairading to spend at least 15 minutes a day on the memoir. It helped to quell the despair of just how much I let myself take on projects and work until I’m swamped.

I fortified myself this week with not one but two writing workshops on Flash Fiction, and weaved those in and between endless meetings and deadlines. Saturday morning was heaven - blue skies, coffee, a flash writing workshop and a beautiful walk afterwards, stopping to admire the stunning flowering trees on the way.

But now onto today’s Sunday blog which about a(nother) newly formed commitment - I always seem to have at least two on the go.

Sunday Blog

Literally. You know how it goes. Or is it just me? I start a new practice and I throw everything at it. My latest one is a Gratitude Practice. Being thankful for all the things. I’ve been at it for three weeks now.

Get a Magic Rock, she says. Make it part of your practice and hold it at night and say thanks before going to sleep.

So I do. I’ve had the perfect blue gem, polished to a heart shape. It’s been knocking around my shelves for years—I don’t even know where it came from. But when called on to choose a Magic Rock, I knew just which one to pick.

But then? I fetishise my stone, my Magic Rock. I make sure it has the perfect receptacle on the bedside table. So it's close at hand for night-time holding purposes, when I'm being thankful for my day.

And it goes on. I get greedy. Decide I need to take it on outings with me, in case it exponentially increases the synchronicity and magic of my regular gratitude practice as I go about my day.

I then decide I can enhance my morning’s gratitude practice (“Imagine saying ‘thank you’ through your heart”) if I put the Magic Stone actually on my heart. It’s brilliant.
Then I carry on with life admin and mindless scrolling. The stone warms to my body temperature and sticks to my skin. I forget it’s there. Remember only when I’ve gone to the bathroom and hear a gemstone falling. Hear the unmistakable sound of it chipping.

Sigh. What to do?

Maybe this is a lesson in keeping it simple. Not getting carried away with the symbols. Because this gratitude thing is the bomb. As someone who so often fights with what is, wanting things to be better, a gratitude practice has been transformative for me.
And I don’t really need the heart-shaped gemstone to do it.

But I want it. So I place an online order heart-shaped polished gems in every colour of the rainbow.