Vacation
This #thankyouthursday, I am grateful for vacation.
It’s been a month since I last wrote #thankyouthursday. I didn’t plan to take a break, but I am glad that I did.
I sent my first-ever #thankyouthursday email on March 30, 2016, and prior to last month I had only missed one week—I think it was at Christmastime the first year. That’s more than 400 unique expressions of weekly gratitude in eight years, and I have rarely if ever had to force a post.
And because I don’t force my posts, I haven’t written them recently. I don’t know exactly why. In part it’s because I don’t have capacity: the arrival of Baby A initiated a new era of overwhelm. The postpartum period has been challenging, as has adapting to a two-child household. I love writing #thankyouthursday, but instead of providing motivation and accountability, my weekly deadline had begun to feel like a nagging obligation.
Still, I was making it happen, up until the first week of March, when my family was preparing for a long trip—effectively the end of my parental leave. We departed early Friday morning, which meant Thursday was filled to the brim with tasks and responsibilities. It wasn’t till late that evening, when I was finally in bed with the knowledge I would get only a few hours of sleep, that I remembered: I hadn’t done #thankyouthursday.
Deciding not to write something that night felt a bit like allowing my fingers to slide the rest of the way off a cliff I had been clinging to. And I chose to let it happen.
I took a vacation from #thankyouthursday, and I am grateful. While I was away, I wrote other words I am proud of—words I have not yet published, and maybe never will.
Today I am back here sharing gratitude with you, and I am grateful for that too. But I make no promise about next week. After all, it is fully a week away, and I have plenty to commit to today.
Love > fear,
Christina
p.s. I tracked down my first-ever #thankyouthursday email! I love that all these years later my intention still rings true. That first message started like this:
Congrats! You are reading the first personal writing I've made public in nearly a year, not counting my weekly Thank You Thursday posts on social media.
And speaking of my weekly Thank You Thursday posts, I've decided to expand beyond Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Going forward, my images of gratitude will go direct to your inbox, where they will sometimes be accompanied by additional thoughts and content, sometimes not.
I consider it an honor and a privilege to be an occasional part of your email world, and I'd like to share a bit more with you, a bit more regularly. That means you can count on me for gratitude once a week, and updates about my book and other endeavors when I think you'd be interested.
So without further ado, this Thursday I am grateful for...