Journaling Reads:
In the south of Turkey, just at the edge of where the Aegean and the Mediterranean meet, lies this beautiful club.

Before we had our boys, we made a family tradition of meeting my parents and sister there yearly. Some of my fondest memories of going home are from these trips. The delicious food, fantastic weather and incredible water.

I remember feeling at peace and fully relaxed while I was there. To me, that’s the quintessential holiday. One where you’re truly leaving your worries behind and enjoying the very moment.

Since we’ve had our kids, we haven’t been back there and now my family has another vacation home so we might not get a chance to go back. But I will still remember this place and my time there with gratitude and joy. Those early mornings, thanks to jetlag, I got to see the sun come out from behind the water and all the chairs empty, sitting there, basking in the peace of nature untouched. Just looking at the photo makes me feel that peace all over again.

Journaling Reads:
When Jake and I were planning our honeymoon, we decided to each make a wish list of locations and compare. Seychelles ended up on the top of each of our lists. So off to Seychelles we went.

I can safely say that I will never be able to take a trip that compares to that one. The sheer beauty of this place is unparalleled. The color of the sea and the sand and the rocks. The perfect, paradise weather. The multi-lingual population. The delicious food. There’s nothing about the Seychelles that I didn’t think was perfect.

While the journey was long and our luggage got lost, I am so very grateful that we decided to go to this unusual location for our honeymoon. It was a trip we would otherwise never make and I would have missed out on so much had we not chosen to go.

One day, when the kids are grown, and it’s just the two of us again, we shall return and enjoy a few more moments of this paradise, Until then, I am grateful for all the memories.

I’ve spent the last week or two wallowing in self-pity, overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy. I’ve been looking at other people’s blogs and yearning for their life. Their talent. Their poise. Their spunk. Their sense of calm. Their professionalism. Popularity. Their perfect pages. Amazing drawings. Fun personalities. I can go on and on.

I’ve learned over the years that my mood and sense of self can move in waves. When I am feeling good, I am optimistic, driven, energetic, and kind. But when I am on a negative cycle, I can be depressed, whiny and insecure. I can look at what’s around me and take the very best of others and line it up against the very worst of myself. Where there’s no chance I could ever measure up.

This is where I’d been lately. Even though I know jealousy and worry are completely wasted emotions, I was still unable to pull myself out of it. I looked at everything from a negative point of view. Someone would tweet or write a message about someone else and I would take it all personally. Make it about me and my shortcomings. I’d look for hidden messages in everything. I’d get bitter that so and so hasn’t written back to me yet and it must mean that they secretly hate me. On and on and on.

Two days ago, I was on the phone with my friend Tonya and whining to her about one of these concerns in my head. About feeling like life was just not fair to me. In a single sentence, she was able to change my perspective and allow me to look at my situation in a completely different way so that what I was sad about actually looked like a blessing. It was so simple and so obvious in retrospect but because I’ve been wallowing, I hadn’t seen it at all. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since because it’s the perfect example of the biased lenses I’ve been wearing for the last few weeks.

While her comment was helpful for that situation, it wasn’t enough to get me out of my pity-party. I was still feeling sorry that I wasn’t thinner, more talented, able to draw or write or do some of the millions of things I really wish I could. In the end, it’s really about being popular. Just like high school. Blogs, twitter, facebook are very much like high school to me. People link to each other and talk about each other and I sit there and watch them from the outside. On a sound day, I can tell it makes perfect sense that they talk to each other since that’s how I found them. One linked to the other cause they were friends. Then I follow both and then they talk about each other cause they’ve been friends all along. Before the internet this happened over the phone in the privacy of their homes. Now it happens in front of my eyes and I get to be a voyeur. I get to feel like an outsider all over again. Let me tell you the feelings that brings up…..not good ones.

Anyhow, back to my pity-party. Fundamentally, I was feeling sad about not being popular. Because as we all know, that’s the answer to everything. We all yearn to be loved and be worthy. How better to measure that than by all the numbers the internet gives you? My readers, my facebook friends, my twitter followers, there are numbers everywhere. And all they scream to me is: you are not enough. Not good enough. Not popular enough. Not loved enough.

Oh yes, it’s been that kind of a week.

or two.

And then this morning, I woke up and read this post by Amy about how she lost her father-in-law. But, as many of Amy’s posts are, it was eloquent and about so much more. Amy ends her post with these words:

People die. One day it will be my turn, and a last blessing of Kent’s passing is this feeling in me: get up. Do better. Experience more. Stop wasting time. Live.

And it was the kick in the rear I needed. It’s time to stop wallowing. Life’s short. It’s time to get up and do better. It’s time to dive into the things I want to do. Stop worrying about the popularity contests and invest into things more deeply. To the people I love and people who love me. To things I want to learn. Things I want to master. Ironically, I also realized I need to slow down. Just like it’s not about the number of people who like you, it’s not about the number of things I accomplish. It’s not about numbers at all. It’s not about quantity. It’s about quality. Deep, caring connection. True enjoyment and satisfaction. It’s not just about living fully and doing more. It’s also about living more deeply.

So, once again, I am choosing joy. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of these cycles, it’s that it ends when I choose to end it.

And it’s time.

For the last 11 months, I’ve been writing down three things I’m grateful for every single day. That’s 957 things so far. Of course, there are many that are repeated but still. That’s quite a few things that I can look at on a down day.

The thing is we have blessings to count even on the worst of days. Little things and big things. Health. A stranger’s smile. A favorite song on the radio. A roof to sleep under. The list might be different for each of us but it’s there. So are the bad moments. Even on the best of days, there might be a sorrowful moment, a missed opportunity, a negative comment. These are the pieces of life. Good and bad.

And you can choose to focus on either. The choice is completely yours.

Practicing daily gratitude forces you to take a moment and remember the good. Put the light on the positive moments of your day. And if you do that day after day, you eventually realize that all days have something good in them. You realize that life is pretty good for the most part. You realize that focusing on the good makes life feel better. Even during the rougher days, when you look back, you remember the good because you took that extra time to note it down. Memory is magical like that.

So, even if it’s just for the next few weeks, I hope you take the time to focus on the positive in your life and take the perspective of gratitude.

You will reap the benefits immediately.

Journaling Reads:
I was recently reading a blog post by an artist I admire who’s about to have a kid for the first time. She was saying how she’s been told it’s impossible to be creative and successful once you have a baby. They are so much work and so inspiration goes out the window.

I thought, no way, it’s totally the opposite.

My children have brought me more inspiration, more creativity, and more success than anything else. They inspired me to scrap, to paint, to take photos and to get better at each of them so I could capture our memories in the best possible way. They gave (and continue to give) me unlimited fodder for art, photography, writing.

More significantly, they inspired me to be more authentic to myself, to be happier and more peaceful so I could set the best example to them. Show them that people can live a full life and still be authentic. They accepted me and loved me just the way I am. They encouraged me by telling me how beautiful my art is. They are the definition of inspiration.

Journaling Reads:
When I first started practicing photography, I remember being awed by the range of greens in nature. Have you ever noticed how very many shades of green there are? It’s breathtaking.

There is so much in nature that inspires me. The towering redwood trees of Marin, the endless Pacific Ocean, animals, flowers, the sky. Sand, water, snow, leaves. Pretty much all of it leaves me speechless.

On days when I am down or in need of some inspiration, I take my little boy and go on a walk in my neighborhood. I take the time to look at small details. The way young leaves of a plant are several shades lighter green than the mature ones. The way a single flower can have six shades of blue or red. The way a tulip opens wide like it’s waiting for a hug.

When I lived in Southern California, I used to go to the beach for that. My mom always said that she didn’t like seeing an endless ocean. She likes to look at the sea and see other islands, some land. Not me. I love the immensity of it all. I love how it makes me feel like all my problems are so small.