I stole out a day right at the end of October to fast, although it was a midnight to sunset fast, vs a full 24 hours. The focus was to be grateful for the last month, and to strengthen my sense of gratitude in general. And to express gratitude for the positive changing fortunes in the lives of various people close to me.

I think that if I don’t take more time to stop and be grateful (without reflection), life and events will seem as an unbroken chain of struggles and challenges without reward. That really hasn’t been the case. Some things I have struggled with and left feeling like I failed only to recognize later that the situation had matured and changed, and in the end I got what I desired, just not in the way my hard head wanted or expected it. In fact, I often got more. But, being in a position of never really being satisfied with even little achievements, I guess it is no surprise I failed to recognize the large achievements, especially when they take months to develop sometimes.

Lately I’ve taken to making it a ritual to offer gratitude upon returning home from work. Regardless how the day went, no matter what time, no matter my mood. There is a small fountain in our foyer. We keep it off most of the time because it splashes on the floor if we leave it on. But I stop when I come in the door, touch the fountain, and repeat the mantra: “I am grateful for this day, and for everything that happened today, and for coming home in safety and security.” Takes about 10 seconds. Like any good habit, I feel like this one is compounding in benefit the more frequently I do it. My sense of gratitude lasts longer, and pops up in challenging situations. My new job is miles away from perfect, but it is also miles away from where I was when I was so unhappy, just a few months ago. My relationship with my wife… not perfect, but certainly peaking from the hardships of the previous year. Other friendships, mostly resolved and improved. Nothing is perfect, but everything is in motion, and always will be. For that I am grateful, too.

And there are things happening in the lives of people dear to me, goals being met, changes being wrought, investments paying off, growth happening… Good things for good people. I contemplated their prosperity as well and mentally spoke gratitudes. I hope to see it continue for all of them, and that they can see the successes as well.

I may be on the verge of finally getting “it”: Why gratitude should come before the achievement, come without reflection and analysis, come without pro vs con, come in the absence of evidence. Gratitude should be first, and constant. Gratitude despite the way things look in a moment. Gratitude regardless. 7 months ago

Tomorrow I have a very important tasting to prepare for a potential job that I have been yearning after for several months. I sat down with the sales manager and one of the owners yesterday and we had a very positive, energized and promising interview. They wanted me to do a tasting next week but when they learned I would be out of town (and out of the country), they rearranged their schedules, got babysitters and made plans to hold the tasting tomorrow evening. Not a lot of time for me to prepare but I have some good ideas and after an hour shopping at Buford Farmer’s Market I have almost all the food I need.

Prep will be a little tricky since I am going to do it out of the kitchen where I work now. Fortunately there is not that much going on tomorrow and I should have the free time. I am going in at 5am to start prep, then resume around 1pm. I expect to conclude my prep around 4pm. Then I’m going to load up and go to the event center’s kitchen where I will finish and plate the courses. They have a server coming in to help with the delivery of the plates. I am bringing Dolores along with me to help execute the meal. She will cover the kitchen while I am in the dining room explaining the plates and smoozing the sales staff and two owners.

Because of the last two chefs and the way they left, it has been impressed upon me that attitude and cooperation will be as valuable as cooking skills in the choice of who will be hired. They have worked with me before, and they really like me. I have to really turn on the talent and the charm to win them over. My hope is they will not even talk to any other applicant, or if they do, they won’t be able to help but compare other applicants to me; that is how high I want to set the bar.

I started fasting earlier this afternoon, and plan to go for 24 hours, to strengthen my mind, spirit and resolve. I know in my heart I am up to the job. I am ready for it and I want it. I crave it. I so desperately want to get out of where I am, but that is not my sole motivation. This job is a great stepping stone of both experience and exposure. If I get the job and I can make it two years, I will vastly improve my skills, knowledge, and prestige. They want to make a decision soon, too. I am hopeful that we can come to an agreement (assuming they will select me) effective the first of next month. So, tomorrow is potentially the most important day I have gotten up for in a long time.

As I sit here, typing away, I am mindful of my prep lady, Dolores. I gave her a ride home after work, as I often do. It is a little out of my way, but giving the prep staff occasional rides has been a great relationship builder. They laugh and call me “Mexican Taxi” and I constantly tell them “cinco dolars!” On the way to her apartment, Dolores and I were talking about how some people where we work have been with the company for 20 years or more. Dolores, who can smell the change on the wind (or listen to me rant and rave on a daily basis) said that I would be there only one year. I joked that she would be there 14 years. She said: “No, no. In 14 years me muerto.” Dolores, for the record, is my age, older by one month. We are not spring chickens, but we are not decrepit either. I objected to her prediction. She told me she has worked since she was 8 years old. She married when she was 15 (her husband was 40 at the time {shudder}) and she spent her youth working and raising babies. Now, she ticks off on her hand, she has no school, no house, no retirement, no vacation, no vocation, no insurance, no husband (he divorced her and screwed her over terribly, forcing her and their childern to live in near poverty), no romantic attatchment, and nothing to look forward to but more work at menial wages. She acknowledged all this with a calm fatalism that would have made Marcus Aurilius say “daaaammmnn!” I’ve certainly had times in my life where the future was unclear, where I didn’t know that my life would ever be any better than it was at that miserable moment. There were times when I would say out loud “I hate this life and I wish it was over”. But to date I have always turned the corner, gotten back into the fray and set my goals higher than before. I know where Dolores’ mindset comes from because I have been there, too. It makes me very sad for her. Not pity… but sad.

It is shamefully easy to over-look how fortunate I am today. Like the song goes: “I got everything that a man could want. I got more than I can ask for.” There are people, not just “out there”, but in my very orbit, who cannot imagine even being alive in 10 or 15 years; who cannot imagine every being able to just relax and enjoy life instead of being stressed about money and finding and keeping a job. It makes me feel like a bastard when I complain so much about my job and she, and others like her, are grateful just to have a job. I’ve never been that way. I’m too hard-headed and arrogant to be grateful for what I have, or to accept less than I imagine I deserve. I should strive for greater humility (if that can still go hand in glove with ambition) and more appreciation for the fact that not everyone gets to choose the job they are passionate about, they just choose the one that they can do, that will pay them a barely living wage, and suck away the years of their lives.

With strength, good vibrations, and powerful intentions, I aim to have a new job in a couple of weeks. I shall find a means of holding in my heart a place for Dolores and my other prep monkeys I may leave behind. They have taught me many more valuable lessons than I have taught them. 9 months ago

I haven’t been very diligent with this goal as I outlined it at the begining of the year. I have fasted, but irregularly. And I haven’t found a focal point to hone in on and direct my energies and intentions. I find myself fasting because I am supposed to fast, because it is my goal. But for a while I was very directionless in what I needed to do to strengthen myself. And the others part was a complication, too. I tried the routine of focusing on a situation with friends and family and thinking of ways to be proactive and helpful. It has never really gelled in a way that I think is providing much benefit.

This past week I have had both an opportunity to fast and a need to strengthen myself and others. It is a complicated situation and to do it justice I decided I needed a three-day fast, Wednesday thru Friday. Three day fasts are not that hard for me anymore. I drank a lot of water and tea and lemon juice. The tea was an herbal concoction a friend assembled for me that helped with internal cleansing as well. The first day is always the hardest because it is hard to break the mental routine of eating. The second day is the easiest because you feel light and refreshed and cleansed, but haven’t been hit by the calorie-fatigue and growling stomach yet. Day three is only as hard as you make it. Sometimes I allow a little cheat and have some fruit before bed on the third night, then skip breakfast and officially end the fast mid-day on the fourth day. This week I was very strict and maintained discipline in spite of exhaustion, headaches, and sluggishness.

Mentally I put a lot of thought and energy into what happens next. At work I am approaching the end of a 60 day self-imposed time limit on my company to start functioning like a real business and damn it all, there have been some improvements. Not enough to change my mind, but enough to make me take notice. Right now there are a few people saying all the right things. I’d like to see them do the right things, too.

I have some new friendships developing with people whom I think are going to be very helpful and positive influences in my life. One friend, Lana, I have actually known for about three years. Our contact was sporatic and uneven until a couple of months ago, about the time I put out the energy that I really needed some new and helpful people in my life. Now we email, text, talk or see each other nearly every day. Other friends with whom things were not so good have been drawing away, and part of my fast was to determine if I should let the lines to them drop (or cut them altogether). One friend is far too erratic to rely on the promise that she would just be gone for good. She’s in and out like a bad internet connection (I use that example because when the internet is on, everyone is connected and having fun and it is great, but when it fails, it is aggravating, upsetting, and there’s never any good reason). Others have fallen off and been out of touch. Friendships can survive great distances but they cannot always survive neglect. I spent a lot of time trying to decide on the right course of action. I have to take ego and reactive emotions off the table and be more honest; what is motivated by hurt feelings of rejection and dismissal, and what is really in the best interests of everyone involved.

I found it very hard to come to any conclusions on these points. I am leary to being too open and honest with new people. I’ve made that mistake over and over and it comes back to haunt me and I don’t know why I haven’t learned. I think that focusing too much on what happens next may be the wrong place to look. More and more I feel that if I focus on the process, if I focus on emitting the right energy and changing the way I look at things and the recasting my mindset, what happens next will simply fall into alignment with the energies I am projecting.

So I’m finishing this fast with the intention of concentrating on not necessarily trying to fix anything or sort out anything by calculating what happens next. I’m going to do my best to be a beacon of the energy I want to receive, and what happens next shouldn’t come as any surprise.

^{And to that end I used my Ipad to create the above illustration which demonstrates that attitude. I put a copy on my vision board – which is due to receive a reconstruction process as well.}10 months ago

Tomorrow I will fast for the day with the intention of encouraging physical, mental and emotional healing within myself, and within a friend of mine who is going through a tough time. By avoiding food and drink, aside from some herbal tea and water, I desire to remain mindful that our spirits are great instruments of healing. I still have physical pain from various injuries I’ve gotten over the last couple of months. My mind is a whirlpool of personal doubt and negativity, my emotional life swings back and forth between rift and recovery, never touching either shore, but constantly in flux. I need the strength to heal, and to do that I have to pay attention to what is causing me the injury.

The same goes for my friend. I don’t know about any physical pains she might be having; as far as I know she is in good health. But there is evidence she is still in deep personal pain in her mind and heart. She is by turns a giver and a taker, and on both counts she can go to extremes. I recently had a communication with her where she finally opened up about the cause of some of those deep and abiding pains. Right now I think she is still in the examination stage of acknowledging those hurts, not ready to begin laying them down and start healing. She’d rather open them up and explore them and talk about them and our relationship is such that she feels she can confide in me about what she is going through. At first I thought this just wasn’t a good time for me to be a recipient for this kind of emotion, but over the weekend I thought about it and realized what a gift it is to be the person who is “there” for someone else. Again because of the nature of our relationship, past and present, certain precautions have to be taken, certain boundries maintained. She is a taker, after all. But she is a good-hearted and caring woman and the problem is that she’s a free spirit trying to live in a box that hems her in on all sides. Maybe by being there for her as she needs, I can also let loose some of my pains and injuries and go further down the road to healing as well.

The magic-marker-looking mess is another sketch I made. I drew this one on my IPad with a sketchbook app. I am only now learning how to use the app and I don’t know that it will ever be more than a drawing board for very basic ideas but I like being able to quickly sketch and color a concept without having to find paper, pencils, pens, inks, paints… It actually came together pretty quickly and I think with some more dedicated effort I can turn out some simple illustrations of better quality.15 months ago

Tomorrow I’m going to fast for the day, taking in no solid food, no caffine, no sugar drinks, only water and herbal teas. I’m going to meditate for one hour in the evening on narrowing my focus and deciding on the priority of the things I really want and how to get them. I’m going to affirm these desires to the Universe and begin acting as if they have already been received. No easy tasks for some goals, but things feel a bit scattered for me at the moment. I want to take some quiet time to really laser in on the most important things.

The physical fast is important for me because it helps me remember what I am supposed to be mindful of. Instead of popping that little bit of food into my gullet I can take a pause and reflect on the purposes I am supposed to be pursuing. I think that meditation that comes after a fast tends to be clearer and more potent, adding strength and energy to my intentions.

I am also fasting and sending meditative energies to h.g. happiness as she overcomes the trials of her feckless friend and transports her spirit and mission. I feel that what she is going through is a necessary, albeit painful, step toward expanding her soul-path and reaching a new plane of positivity and accomplishment. That is the energy I am going to put forth to the Universe on her behalf, anyways.

The poor illustration is of my own creation. It ties into another goal I am contemplating adding. It is a rough work done quickly without a lot of planning. My apologies to the real artists for my amateur efforts.17 months ago