No, Iām Not Fucking Writing About Being Grateful or Thankful One More Time!
How some journaling prompts just make me feel despondent especially when the PDA is strong.
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This is in lieu of Poetry Wednesday, cos Iāve not got anything for you there.
Hello Red Cabbage Heads,
I did say some time ago that I would try to write a cheery essay. I feel this is not going to be it. You have been warned.
I am in the process of doing various journaling prompts and have done in the past. This time itās to try to get the creative juices flowing again. And in the main I am either enjoying them or at least finding them interesting. However, and this may seem ungrateful in some respect, especially when most of these are given for free⦠but, for goodness sake please stop telling me to think about what Iām grateful and thankful for. I think Iāve encountered at least 5 of these prompts in the last 3 weeks, and now my PDA (pathological demand avoidance) has kicked in and I canāt do any prompts at all.
I really dislike journaling about gratitude and thanks because a) it is incredibly overdone and seemingly simplistic and yet not and b) most importantly I feel left out, ostracised from the exercise, it feels ableist and it annoys me that I feel that way.
Now before you go off on one or stop reading as Iām an ungrateful ingrate (yes, doubly, deliberately, ungrateful). . . Let me explain. For someone who is chronically ill, living in pain everyday, with very limited energy, being invited to be grateful all the time is galling. So very galling.
The only way, the ONLY way I get through some days is by noticing the little things and forcing myself to find some meagre thankfulness in it.
Oh look! I just woke up again and yet Iām still completely exhausted and in a lot of pain. My medical life is just as bad is it was before I slept. But yay, hark! A bird is singing outside (if I can hear it passed the constant tinnitus). I wonāt be able to get up in time to see it though, my shambles to the window too slow, too sore. But I must make sure Iām grateful I got to hear it.
Itās a bit like when people ask me how I am and then insist they really want to know, really, really want a full run down, not my simple ādiddling alongā. I always ask them if they are really asking me to do a body check and to categorise all my issues precisely. And when they say yes, and I explain how doing that will make me so infinitely aware of pain levels Iāve been suppressing, or how absolutely shit I feel 99.9% of the time, and I would really rather not, I hope they wonāt press. But if they still insist I will go into the full rundown and about 1 minute in their eyes start to glaze, and after another minute they start to try to back away, and still I continue - I mean, they asked, they insisted, and they brought the tirade upon themselves. And then I spend a long, long time stuffing those symptoms back into the box they were released from and my life becomes harder for a time, all because they asked.
And yes, I could, and do, skip those prompts, but I need to read them first before I decide to move on, and that is triggering too.
in her Journaling advent prompts managed a better promptI distilled it into 3 words in my journal.
Various! Magic! Explore!
These are my thoughts. What is magic? How does it exist in its many and varied ways? Now isnāt this a better question than āwhat are you grateful for?ā Basically it is the same question but phrased so much better; and that in itself is magical. A moving on from the mundane and generic (the question that is always asked) to the magical, the less obvious. So what is magical? So much! So much!
The tiniest of fungi photographed by an enthusiast and placed to share with others.
Another photographer who placed a new miniature pond in a Dutch forest and films the daily visitors, mainly birds but occasionally deer or other animals.
All of this and many others that I enjoy without having to think āam I grateful about this?ā
So please, think before constantly asking me to be generically gratefully. Itās so worn, so . . . generic. Make it more explicit. Make it detailed. Why not, think and consider your favourite pen and why you like it so much? Or think about why your favourite birds are your favourite birds? Or your favourite instagram person who makes you smile? Why is it always just āwhat are you grateful/thankful forā?
So here endeth my moany groany sermon for today. Maybe the next one will be that cheery one I talked about before.
Ta-ra Tx
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Can I just say I adore you? I love the way you just own your feelings so unapologetically and challenge us to think differently. Also fungi! Love me some fungi!
You and your writing (and especially your knit creatures) bring me joy. Through all my pain and suffering I know if I open your feed I will see something that lights up my day. So thank you. š
I love it! But people are so weirdā¦who presses someone for details of their physical issues?
It amazes me, how much you do get done ā your photos of light have touched me, especially.