Good Things

Hello friends and neighbors and friends and readers. It's been radio silent over here for a while now. At first I was lazy and just wasn't making the time to sit down and write, but then I got into a bit of a funk and quite frankly I've really been struggling over here these days. There's been a lot going on in the world and it's starting to feel like the walls are closing in. Does anyone else feel that?

I've hesitated taking to this space for a while because when big things happen in our world - big, tragic, awful things - there's a lot of noise that gets turned up and then everyone picks a side and retreats to their Facebook corners and hurls insults at one another. Heavy on the rhetoric, light on the facts. I just figured I probably don't need to be part of the noise and the last thing the internet needs is another opinion.

More so than that, I've been thinking a lot lately...probably too much. I do that actually, I think way too much most of the time. I've been thinking about how I should respond to events in the news and how to still find joy in this world and good things in life and figure out a way to push the walls back a little. To do that I decided to try and look harder for the good. The good people, the good stories, the good jokes, the good places...all the good stuff. Not only does this serve as a good personal mantra, but it also makes for a good (i.e. easy) blog post. And because blogging used to be one of the good things in life for me and I've missed it, I figured yolo let's blog it up right?

An Incomplete List of Good Things That I Really Really Like

1.) Re-discovering an old CD you forgot you loved (talking to you, Sum 41 All Killer No Filler)

2.) When it's about to monsoon and it turns everything orange outside

3.) Monsoons

4.) When Gunther puts his paw in my hand and squeezes and it feels as if he's really trying to hold my hand

5.) When Maycee sleeps next to me, nose to nose when I'm by myself to keep me company

6.) Solitude

7.) When people make a typo at the end of their emails so it ends up saying "thanks you!"...never gets old

8.) When I open a bottle of wine and it has an actual cork in it and not like, one of those fake rubbery ones

9.) Wine....because what would a list of good things be without wine

10.) Costco (all Kirkland Signature all everything)

11.) When this emoji is in my "recent" emojis:

...because that means I've texted my friend Sarah "slap hands!" after a Dbacks win, which means the Dbacks have been winning frequently enough for this emoji to stay in my "recent"emojis (this is a rare occurrence this year...)

12.) The smell of chlorine on my skin after a day of swimming

13.) The sound of your voice in a tent while you're camping. It's like, kind of echo-y but not? Like, more distinct because it's so quiet out when you camp? I don't know how to describe it, but it's a good sound and your voice only sounds like that when you're camping in your tent

14.) Camping in your tent

15.) Being out on the lake after everyone has left and you have the place all to yourself

This world is full of good things and I'm trying hard to remember this and focus on this in the midst of all the bad and the mean and the wrong in this world. Be good, guys...don't be bad, or mean, or wrong in this world. We need more good.

Genesis 1:31: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good...