Gratitude Challenge: Complete!
Hello! Welcome Back! How was your Thanksgiving holiday? Mine was lovely and not too crazy busy. I have a tradition of baking apple pie and pumpkin pie from scratch that I learned from my mom. The dome on the apple pie is ridiculous, and I managed to fit 15 apples into this pie this year. I'm quite proud of that achievement.
We are also celebrating because I finished the gratitude challenge! I’m happy that I didn’t miss any days this year and that I was able to take a moment every day to be present and think of what I am grateful for. The first year I tried this challenge I struggled a lot more. I was just beginning to learn how to be mindful of my thoughts and the negative rabbit holes it would dive into, so the connections that remember gratitude were much weaker than this time around. I have noticed an improvement in myself and the gratitude challenge helped a lot. Let’s recap the last 5 days of the challenge:
November 19: Last weekend I went to a life celebration of a passed coworker and legend in my industry. He was a devoted fan of the Dodgers and so his life celebration happened at Dodgers stadium. I am not as much of a fan of baseball in general so I had never been to Dodgers stadium before. But it was a wonderful way to be introduced to the location. The ceremony was beautiful. (I cried. Many times. We knew I would.) And lunch was served afterward in the plaza where you could walk right up to the entrance to the field and look out at the stadium seats. It was really special and I knew I would never have the opportunity to see the stadium in this way again. It was a lovely last gift from a wonderful human being.
November 20: I am thankful that I chose to move to Los Angeles. There is always something fun happening in the city and there are plenty of nerdy-type events (Like the Bridgerton Ball for example) for someone like me to do. Other large cities I’ve lived in don’t have as many pop culture events save for the yearly anime convention or comic con, but LA has these more specific pop-ups all the time and it’s pretty incredible to see the difference in things to do that appeal specifically to me. I’m not super interested in sports events or concerts as they are much more expensive and too overwhelming for me sometimes. (Although if I knew I could handle a Taylor Swift concert, I’d like to go one day.)
November 21: Since I went back to work, I went back to listening to my favorite podcast: Financial Feminist. When I started listening to this podcast, I had reached a point in my healing journey where I felt like I could start to sort through my financial trauma. I had been living paycheck to paycheck for my entire independent adult life. I had gotten into some sticky situations in the past because I didn’t have enough money to do something simple like pay a contract severance fee for my Japanese phone (I was moving back to the US and you had to pay to end the contract and I just burst into tears in the shop because the amount they wanted was all of the money I had left to try and get home with and they didn’t know that until I started crying. I still feel bad for that poor associate. But he took pity on me and let me cancel it anyway.) Anyway, I was ready to not allow my finances to control my life anymore. So I started looking up some IG accounts to follow and eventually decided to see if there was a good podcast to listen to. Financial Feminist was the first one to pop up and it immediately spoke to me. Listening to Tori speak about women’s issues alongside financial advice has been really enlightening for me. She speaks to you like she’s your money-wise big sister and doesn’t make you feel bad or guilty for not knowing how to do personal finance. In fact, she validates your feelings and helps you feel seen by acknowledging that literally everyone else is subjected to the same negative narratives about money. It was such a relief when I found this podcast. She’s really changed my life and my worldview in such a positive way and I’m so extraordinarily thankful for it. Because of it, I wanted to share it with all of you in case anyone else was interested. As Tori always says, “when you have all you need, building a longer table – not a higher fence.”
November 22: This is Daniel. My partner. He got a brief mention on day 1 but he also deserves his own day of gratitude. He has been such a wonderful partner to me and is empathetic towards my needs. He sees me for exactly who I am and accepts me, but he also sees the potential in me that I don’t see in myself most days. He fights for my success together with me and also takes care of me when I’m running on 10%. I was able to go to therapy because he was there to support me and help me live outside of survival mode all the time. Now, he’s not perfect, and neither am I, but we are always willing to come to the table and talk out our concerns and try to work through things constructively or come to common ground. All of my previous partners and even some past friendships of mine were very different. No one talked about anything, everyone always shoved everything under the rug and never verbally apologized or addressed poor behavior. Then they would act like nothing happened and it wouldn’t even get addressed. I would somehow get blamed for things because I wanted to talk about them (because that’s gaslighting…) or not measuring up to someone’s unrealistic idea of me or some other abusive narrative. Which led to a cycle of resentment and worse behavior later on completing the cycle. Daniel is different and the friendships I have now are also different. Everything is open and honest. I am truly thankful for the healthy relationship I have with him.
Thanksgiving 2022
November 23: HAPPY THANKSGIVING! This day marked the completion day for this challenge! On Thanksgiving day, I was thankful to celebrate the feast with the found family I have in LA. Traveling across the country at thanksgiving time is too expensive both money and time-wise this year since I only went back to work 2 weeks ago after a 4 month furlough. So I’ve been doing friendsgiving for the past few years. These were the friends who sheltered and helped me when I had just moved to LA and needed to find a roommate and a place to live. They opened their doors to me and built a longer table. (metaphorically) I’m really thankful I get to spend this meal with them for the last few years and share my own pie-making traditions with them in return.
The pie is so huge it makes a 1.5L bottle of wine look normal.
I hope your family feasting holiday was wonderful! We are going into the most magical time and sometimes the most stressful time of year. I have already decorated my living room for Christmas (save for a Christmas tree because Daniel likes to get a live tree so we wait a little bit so it isn’t completely dry by Christmas day.) And I won't lie, I’m that lady that watches YouTube videos of people decorating for Christmas. It brings me joy. And we will have some more travel posts coming your way starting next week! (Let’s talk about that cross-country drive I did, shall we?)
Happy Holiday season!
~Kristen
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Thanksgiving 2023
