I’m having a banner day! This just arrived from Vistaprint. ‘Tis a thing of beauty. Thanks to writer pal and graphic designer, Christopher D. Ochs, for his brilliant work.
Category Archives: Gratitude
The Gratitude Box
The Gratitude Jar has become an increasingly popular method for recording positive moments in one’s life and reinforcing a mindset of—you guessed it!—gratitude. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s simple. There are several variations, but the basic steps are:
- Find a jar.
- Whenever something good happens in your life, write a short note about it, fold it up, and drop it into the jar.
- At the end of the year, open the jar and review all of these wonderful moments in your life for which you’re grateful.
- The following year, repeat steps one through three.
Mine is a clear acrylic box, the kind used to store trading cards. I have plenty of empty jars at home, but I chose a small container when I started it because at the time, I was spiraling into yet another bout of depression and anxiety, two demons that have plagued me since childhood. Gratitude was the furthest thing from my mind.
The past ten months have been turbulent for me and I’ve been struggling to adjust to the changes. I won’t bore you with the details and I’m certainly not fishing for sympathy. Suffice it to say that it’s been an enervating experience which exacerbated my chronic depression and sent my writing productivity—not to mention my outlook on life—plummeting. As a result, I felt myself foundering, failing, and generally falling apart.
Given all of that, I couldn’t see too many positive moments in my future, so why bother with a jar?
As you can see from the above image, the box is nearly full and we’re only halfway through the year. I also tossed in some uplifting fortunes from the occasional cookie.
Thus, I stand corrected. Clearly, I have much to be grateful for and seeing it manifested in this collection of notes reminds of this even through the darkest times.
While I’m still working to find the right direction for myself and struggling to surface from what has become the longest bout of depression in my life, perhaps I need to upgrade to a jar after all.
Getting Outside…
As an outdoorsman, I’m always grateful for beautiful weather, especially since my new day job has me tucked away in a basement office for roughly 40 hours per week.
Unfortunately, life has been so hectic and fraught with stress, anxiety, and depression this year that it took weeks longer than unusual for my first fishing trip. This morning, I drove up to Beltzville State Park in Lehighton, PA for several hours of fishing followed by an hour of just kicking back and enjoying clear skies and sunshine.
My first catch of the day was a sizable black crappie. This was followed by an enormous largemouth bass that threw my hook just as I was about to pull it out of the water. I was disappointed, but only for about an hour. Near the end of my day, I hauled in one of the biggest bass I’ve ever caught from any lake in Pennsylvania.
All told, it was a fantastic start to my fishing season!
After-Action Report: Beach Pulp Book Signing
Another wonderful book signing has come to an end. I had a blast with my fellow Beach Pulp authors at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth Beach earlier today. Special thanks to Cat & Mouse Press owner and editor, Nancy Day Sakaduski, for publishing another fun anthology and for bringing us together at the beach!
From giant creatures to ghostly specters and from heroic superheroes to hard-boiled detectives, our beach towns are in for a shock. Beach Pulp is a collection of nineteen stories in the style of the old Amazing Stories pulp magazines set in Rehoboth, Bethany, Cape May, Lewes, Ocean City, and other beach towns that covers a range of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and noir.
Prior to the book signing, my wife and I enjoyed walking the boardwalk and eating lunch at the Green Turtle. Overcast skies in the morning cleared by the afternoon and the welcome sunshine quickly raised the temperature to 73F. We look forward to returning for vacation this summer!
Call Me the Tin Man…
Anniversaries have been on my mind over the past few years. Last September, my wife and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary while November marked my 25th year as an IT support tech—a career that I hope to change as soon as humanly possible before it destroys my health.
Traditionally, each anniversary is symbolized by a specific, unique material. Appropriately, these materials increase in strength, resilience, or value with each passing year. For example, first anniversaries are associated with paper, fifth with wood, 25th with silver, 50th with gold, and so on.
Tenth anniversaries are marked by aluminum or tin. That being the case, you can call me the Tin Man in 2019, although I’d like to think that I have a heart.
As I reach my first decade as a published author, I am immensely grateful to the critique partners, mentors, editors, publishers, and fellow writers who helped me along the way. While writing is a solitary endeavor, publishing is a team effort.
Deepest thanks to Steven H. Wilson, Howard Weinstein, Aaron Rosenberg, Robert Greenberger, Paul Kupperberg, Nancy Sakaduski, Weldon Burge, Joanne M. Reinbold, Susanna Reilly, Stuart S. Roth, and all of my fellow members of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group.
Below is an image of every book I have written or contributed to over the past ten years. I never dreamed my writing would take me this far. With three novels and nearly two dozen short stories out in the wild, I hope to continue crafting powerful fiction that changes lives and inspires readers as well as young writers.
