Happy Thanksgiving 2022 .. The Halloween Hangover!

Hope you are thankful for what you've got in life. And cheers to an even better future for all of us!

I am so thankful for all my visitors, commenters, trade partners, and friends scattered through the world! I know this is more of a US holiday, considering the Native Americans, Pilgrims, etc .. but I'm sure most cultures have a time for when they give thanks for everything they have, and celebrate that with those they love. Feel free to type in "Thanksgiving" into the "search this blog" sidebar to read my previous Thanksgiving captions.

Of course, it is also a time for political disagreements, family drama, the hassles of travel, and all that wonderful stuff you never miss until you don't have it anymore! This caption is a small slice of that, boiled down to what matters most, self-gratitude. If you don't love yourself, and who you are, it can be rough to love anyone else.

Here is something I posed for Thanksgiving 2014: "Hope everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving had a great time today. We got the noontime meal with family, which included my daughter who had to work later on. A cousin of mine just got out of rehab, so of course, his sister brings a couple bottles of wine to the meal. Yeah, this family is about as sensitive to recovering alcoholics as they are to not-by-choice vegetarians!"

Find your place in the world, and plant a flag there. Don't retreat from who you are. Let people in, but mostly on your terms. Life is too short for not being true to who you are essentially. 

Love you all. And for those of you that are hitting tough times, I definitely understand, especially after losing my forever person almost 3 years ago. Here's what I wrote in 2017:

Even when I'm a bit overwhelmed with life, I know that there are many people out there with much shittier lives than mine. I can remember days when I was living pretty much out of my car. I would work at a group home on overnights and wash my clothes there, eat the leftover food I was supposed to throw out, and shower when no staff was around. Then when my girlfriend moved to the area to live with me, we found a shitty little apartment for 400 a month (everything included) on the 3rd floor above a low level drug dealer. We thought it was heaven, mostly because we could afford to be together there, and with her hiding from her ex-husband, if WAS safer than the alternative. Every overnight shift, I worried about her, but we kept our noses clean and out of other people's business, so we were pretty safe.

Then the landlord sold to someone else, who cleaned up the property and got rid of most of the trouble .. and we were able to get visitation on my young daughter .. which turned into custody a year later .. once again trying times in dealing with MY ex in this case.

Each time that I encounter some valley in life, I'm been lucky enough that when I can crawl out of it, I tend to be at least a step or two ahead of where I was before. It might not seem like it at that moment, but it just seems to work out that way. I hope that it continues to be so, even though I can see where things could possibly get bad again. I mean, if one of us loses our job or gets hurt, we're probably homeless within 2 months.

But that is why I am thankful for what I have, as I know what it's like to be sleeping in that Bronco, and you just have to believe that whatever is around the corner, it will be a new opportunity to grow, socially, intellectually, financially, or emotionally. So that is my offering to you right now .. HOPE. That you embrace the now, and what you have, knowing that it can be taken away. But even then, with hope, something even better will take shape. 

Things will get better. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!