My mailbox is full right now – loaded with the unread entries of everyone else who has been sharing their thoughts on spydergrl’s inspired end of the year goal. I know that there are wonderful things waiting there for me to read. Things that will make me smile and things that will make me nod my head in agreement. Things that will make me say, “Oh, I wish I had written that!” I will read them all when I finish this. But I wanted to write my entry here without knowing what the others here, who I have grown to admire, have said. I wanted to think about this in my own time and from my own perspective.
I am not prepared to say 43Things has changed my life or helped me evolve into a better person. 43Things has given me the opportunity to express my hopes and my appreciation and, sometimes, my frustration, in writing and to receive immediate and remarkable feedback on what I have written and how I have written it. I have always fancied myself to be something of a writer, ever since I wrote a sappy story about an organ grinder in the 7th grade. I have received praise for my writing in my work life but that writing is cold and formulaic (usually) and very dry. Here, I get to let my fingers fly and say things that, in everyday conversation might be too fanciful to put into the world, but, here at 43Things, they are embraced by the like-hearted spirits who have found me!
As much as I appreciate my opportunity to express myself at 43Things, I appreciate equally, or more, the opportunity to read what so many others have expressed. We are so alike yet so different. I shake my head in wonder that the people I have ‘met’ out here have formed such a lovely little cybercommunity. There are thousands of people on 43Things and many of them have nothing in common with me, yet so many do! We find each other through Zeitgeist or by checking out the people who have cheered the others we have met or by exploring deeper into this grand community. And we send each other a few words of welcome and encouragement which are received with warmth and appreciation! It is a wonderful chain reaction and it fills my spirit with light! I have laughed and I have cried reading the words of total strangers. I have felt your joy and wanted to comfort you when you are wounded. I have thrilled at the messages that arrive in my mailbox from people I have never met but whom I have come to consider valued friends! I have debated whether or not to name names in this entry and I have decided that, no, I will not highlight specific 43Things neighbors who have touched me because just about everyone who has cheered me and everyone I have cheered has touched me.
And, of course, 43Things has helped me amass evidence that, indeed, cute and geeky are not mutually exclusive. I am heartened that this, my top goal, is also my most cheered. My husband is still not convinced but I know that the power of 43Things will influence him in 2007!
Finally, and most importantly, 43Things has brought me back to my inner Pollyanna and has helped me return to the me that always looks for the good in any situation, even the most dire. Before I found this site (if I am not mistaken, I was browsing through bookcrossing.com and they listed it as one of their favorite sites), I had fallen into the trap which a couple of rough years and life with 2 teenage girls lays for the unsuspecting…I had started looking for the bad. I had become a whiner and a crank. I would never have thought that would be a comfortable life for me, but really, I had learned to embrace it and was sharing my angst with everyone who crossed my path and noticing that fewer and fewer people dared to. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite so bad but, trust me when I say that Pollyanna was in hiding and my attempts to bring her out were mostly futile. Then came 43Things. It took a while for this to catch on with me but then one day, I checked my mailbox – it had been my “junkmail” box and I rarely checked it. But on this day, when I checked it, I found odd little messages from 43Things. Replies to my entries…huh? and then, when I went back to 43Things I noticed these cheers! Wow! That felt good. I started working on the happiness goal and then NYC invited me to do the Happiness Manifesto and that included the gratitude goal. And now, every day, I start out in the morning with my eyes wide open, looking for opportunities to embrace happiness and to be grateful for everything I have and everything I am able to do. And, that, my friends, is the best thing that 43Things has done for me. I have to look very hard now to find the bad, the ugly, the disappointment in my world for there is little room left for those things. Because of 43Things, my world is filled with happiness and gratitude!
