I started the day anxious and worried.  After a brief dip into a successful witness interview, I discovered a lurking disaster not of my own making but with which I had to deal.  A potentially costly mistake that required considerable effort on my part to repair, the event cast a bitter pall over my entire day.

I admit it:  I complained.  Loudly, with a sprinkling of mild profanities, even.  I lost my grip on three years of NVC practice and raised my voice.

What galled me was not the mistake itself, but that the person who made it could have prevented the little whirlwind of calamity.  That person had a chance to see the error and take action.  Another person also knew of the impending difficulty and remained silent.  I bore the burden of the mistake and the failure of two people to see the stumbling block and alert me.

But.  Ah yes, there’s a “but”.

And it’s a HUGE one.

The purpose of this cursed blog is now, and always was, to chronicle my journey to joy, undertaken and orchestrated by forswearing complaint.  I strove for accountability, so here it is. Three years’ worth of steps forward peppered with the occasional backwards stumble.

Now I’m home.  I’ve eaten.  I’ve stared mindlessly at a re-run of Chopped and read a few emails.  I wrote a thoughtful reply to a parent voicing concerns about my performance of my GAL duties.  I poked around on the Internet looking for some threads to pull or knot together, as the case might be, in creating a path forward for myself.  I fed the dog; and texted a few friends; and walked around the house planning my Wednesday.

I asked for forgiveness of the person on the other end of my little rant; and of someone else who inadvertently stood in the path of the backdraft.  I took a long, deep, breath, and forgave myself.

I’m calling this a total turn-around.

It’s the twenty-fifth day of the forty-third month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

From Alice in Wonderland, By Lewis Carroll