Dear friends:

As you might know, I started this blog in January of 2014 to document my effort to go a year without complaining.  Thus far, I have failed in that mission; and so, along the way, I declared my year to be measured by infinity.  

These days, I strive to share small events of my life which remind me of how fortunate I have been.  My friend jane Williams inspired that direction for this blogsite.  She observed that my initial entries only recited lists of circumstances about which I then proclaimed I would not lament.  I perused the recent passages at the time and decided that she had a valid point.  Her gentle nudge sent me in a different direction.  I started truly striving to ‘count my blessings’.

The events of this weeks have underscored my positive judgment of my own condition.  While Ukrainians huddle beneath the onslaught of Russian aggression, I ruminate over what to cook for dinner or whether to take myself out to breakfast.  This dramatic reminder not to whine about one’s lack of shoes in the face of another’s lack of feet strengthens my resolve to move closer to a state of joy.

This blog documents that path.  It is not political.  But today, my #journeytojoy has particular poignancy, as I pause in the day’s chores to reflect on what my life could have been like if I had been born in another place and time.  So, I have no pithy slogan for you today.  I’ll tell no sweet story.  I will simply, briefly, remark, that I have nothing about which to moan in the slightest, smallest manner.  All good here.

It’s the twenty-sixth day of the ninety-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

If you wish to read my commentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, click HERE.

Russians protesting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  The sign says, “No war.”