There was a time when I was a child when we lived in a little house in the country.  We weren’t in some remote location, but we did have to use antenna to get our television service.  I remember getting something like 6 channels on a good day.  I also remember watching Purdue basketball when we lived there.  Well we watched the games that we could get.  Back then a big chunk of the games weren’t on TV or weren’t on TV we could get.  This was a combination of games just not being televised, or us not being able to get the channel.  In modern times with the advent of 1,000 or so sports channels, I get to watch all the games(at least most of them).  I’m grateful that we live in a glorious time in which I get to watch almost all the Purdue games. 

I enjoy watching Purdue basketball.  Getting to watch all the games is really cool.  It is a wonderful thing when we get to fully enjoy things we love.  Back in the dark days I wasn’t able to enjoy watching all the games.  Watching Purdue basketball is just one of the best things in life.  I’m glad I’m smart enough to realize that watching Purdue basketball is one of the best things in life.

I think it’s wise to find the things we enjoy most in life.  It shows some level of self-awareness.  The next level wisdom in my mind is to maximize how often and how much we get to enjoy our favorite things.  Some things cannot be enjoyed all the time due to costs or other limiting factors.  Too often though the limiting factor is one that we make up in our own mind. 

I find it really dumb when we limit our enjoyment of life for no real reason.  When we enjoy simple, cheap, and abundant things, I see no reason not to enjoy those things more often.  If you like basketball why not watch a game every night?  If you like reading, why not visit the library and read all sorts of things?  I don’t understand why we would limit such things.  I know I try not to limit myself.  I watch all the games, and I love every minute of it.

Popcorn might be my favorite snack.  To be truthful I think I could eat it almost every single night and not tire of it.  There are a million varieties of popcorn out there.  I just want regular popcorn with butter and salt on it.  I used to eat a lot of microwave popcorn.  I don’t eat microwave popcorn anymore though, I have started popping corn myself and adding real butter and salt.  I am grateful I have found the pinnacle of popcorn and left behind microwave popcorn for good.

This post is a little bit about popcorn, and a little bit about finding the best version of things.  When it comes to many of the things we like, we have a lot of choices of varieties.  I think there is value to spending time to find the best versions of things we like.  The best version will be a bit dependent on our own personal preferences.  We should be happy whenever we discover the best version of a thing. 

I am grateful for finding the proper way to cook popcorn.  I am grateful that every time I have popcorn going forward it will be the best version possible.   There may be a better version of popcorn out there, but I have not discovered it yet.  Finding a better version, a better way, a better flavor, that is always something to be grateful for.  

It is a part of the human condition that we lose things.  Friends will move away.  People we love will die.  Our bodies will quit working right.  TV shows will get cancelled.  Loss is a part of life.  Sometimes something cool happens a while after loss.  Sometimes things come back.  Regaining something we have lost, or thought we had lost, that is a feeling that brings overflowing gratitude. 

I have lost many things in life.  Some of those things I got back.  Some just dropped back into my life.  Sometimes I fought to get them back.  I’m glad there have been so many things that came back to me.  Getting more of something we use to love.  THAT is one of the most beautiful things that can happen.  It is truly a gift from God.

I am almost giddy and laughing with joy at the things I realize have come back to me.

With the new Picard series, Jean Luc Picard has returned to Star Trek.

Star Wars came back with Episode 7, none of us thought we were getting more Star Wars.

My friend Grant came back, he emailed me at Purdue, I had not seen him in a couple years.  Then we started hanging out again, he came back and with him a friendship I don’t even have the words to explain.

I broke myself with injury and couldn’t workout hard, was weak and had to have surgery.  Then afterwards I came back.  I was able to set some personal records again.  I fought hard to get that back.  I only got it back a short while, but it was worth it.  I grew so strong out of it.

There are so many other things I have had come back to me in life.  It’s so wonderful to get to do them again.  It might only be for a short while, but sometimes one more time is enough.  In those moments I really feel the love and grace of God.  Some of these things that have come back to me that I lost, there is no way to think of them other than gifts from God. 

I don’t think we should hope that things come back.  A lot of things in our lives are gone for good.  I think when God brings them back to us though, we should experience them with the gratitude, love and passion they deserve.  Losing things and getting them back, that experience should change us.  I know for me that is a path to more joy, more gratitude, and more love. 

Knowing how to do a thing has very little to do with doing a thing.  No one starts out knowing how to do anything.  We all start off at zero.  Then we learn and adapt.  Being at zero is a dangerous place, because it can trick us into thinking we can’t do things.  Most of us can do most things.  I am grateful I don’t let not knowing how to do things stop me from doing things.

I have done a lot of things I didn’t know how to do.  I didn’t know how to build websites, but I did.  I didn’t know how to make database driven apps, but I did.  I didn’t know how to write a book, but I did.  I organized and hosted events even though I had no public speaking experience at all.  I just did these things.  I didn’t know anything when I started doing these things.  I am grateful I took these leaps.

I haven’t always taken the leaps.  I still often let a lack of knowledge stop me.  I really shouldn’t, I should just do things.  I’m grateful for all the times I did hard things even though I didn’t have a clue how to do them.  It is from these things I have learned the most.  I’m grateful we get to jump in and do things, even if we don’t know how to do them.  If this wasn’t true, I wouldn’t have gotten much done in my life.

“There are more of us.” – Lando Calrissian, The Rise of Skywalker.  I love a good Star Wars quote and this is one of them.  Lando says this when it looks like the Resistance is about to fall to the Evil Empire/First Order/Last Order (Whatever they call it, the movie was a bit…scattered?)  In horrible situations we can forget that there are more decent people than there are evil people.  I am grateful we have a few more good people than horrible people out there. 

There is a lot of evil at work today in the world.  Without some massive resisting force, things will get really bad.  I don’t pretend to know what way things will go.  There are a lot of evil, horrible people out there.  There is still hope because there are more of us than there are of them. 

It’s all a numbers game and that is where the hope is.  All it takes for things to be better is us decent people to keep being decent and fight the nonsense.   All it takes is a bit of effort on the part of us decent folks.  We can’t be lazy I know that much.  There are more of us than there are of them.

Fresh blueberries might be my favorite food.  When it is blueberry season here I buy 10 pound boxes of them, and eat every single one.  I also freeze them for the rest of the year, because frozen blueberries are fantastic.  I have a serious blueberry obsession.  Today fresh blueberries were cheap at the store, they are out of season right now, but they are cheap and available today.  I am grateful to have a supply of fresh out-of-season blueberries sitting in the fridge. 

I am pumped that tonight, I will be eating a fistful of these awesome berries.  I am quite literally excited about this.  This is an odd thing to be excited about, but I am going to go with it.  They are giving my day a little boost, that is never a bad thing.

This little boost makes me think there is something more to this spark.  Isn’t there something wonderful about getting things out of season?  It could be food, it could be music, it could be anything.  Maybe that’s why summer league basketball is fun to watch, after a couple months of no basketball I am ready for a little dose of ball again. I watch a lot of basketball in the winters, but then there is a long gap of no basketball.  I’m all for things being seasonal, it is the nature of things.  It is still nice to get a little taste of something out of season, it is a little spark of magic I think.

I think maybe this is magic we can use a bit more.  We can get stuck doing things we like seasonally.  Well there is little reason to hold most things to a single season or time.  Ice cream is still good in the middle of winter, and soup is pretty good on a hot day still.  Maybe doing things out of season can be a little touch of spontaneity and fun to break up monotony.  There is magic here that we can all wield.  This post stops here because its time to go eat some blueberries. 

Thinking is a hard thing to do.  Some people refuse to do it.  Some people cannot do it.  Some people are too busy to do it.  The power of thoughts and ideas are unmatched.  I am grateful I am capable of thinking about things. 

My brain can think, that is something that I am not nearly grateful enough for.  I can think my way to solutions and out of problems.  I think that is about all a man can ask for in life.  I think that is all I need to make all sorts of dreams come true.  I forget this sometimes.  It blows my mind that I forget this kind of thing. 

I listen to music while I work.  I spend a lot of time working in public places, so a little music to drown out the world is a wonderful thing.  In this context of work, music is a tool to me.  The music I use as a tool can be different than the music I might listen to for fun.  I am always on the search for new music and genres that help me get into a good work flow.  Time and time again bluegrass music keeps coming up as one of the best.  I am grateful that bluegrass music exists and that I have access to it.

I remember the dark days before the internet.  Before the internet we had music we bought and the radio, that was it.  In the past I would have never really had much access to bluegrass music.  Sure country radio would play a bluegrass song now and then.  Radio just isn’t near as conducive to work as internet radio.  Traditional radio has too many commercials, too much talking, and too many interruptions.  I can get a far better flow from the internet radio and music options. 

If I have a lot of writing or coding to do, bluegrass radio on Pandora is my go to music.  It helps me get into flow a bit and anything that helps with that is awesome.  It is not a big thing, but anything that helps me be better, that is something I can be grateful for.