Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. If I’m being honest, it’d probably be my least if I had to rank them. These days, I don’t have any family that celebrates or cooks, and I obviously have conflicting feelings about how we’ve treated the Native American culture and the fact that, as Jess Day put it, we’re celebrating the fact that we “didn’t know how to farm by ourselves”. If I’m being honest, I also kind of dislike that lots of people wait till this time of year to express gratitude. We should appreciate life every single day, even when we feel like we’ve been dealt a shitty hand.

The sparkly lining is that people are more likely to talk about what they’re thankful for right about now, so I take the opportunity to ask my fellow Baltimoreans that very thing. (And I would love it if you would share what you are grateful for in the comments.)

What Are You Grateful For? Installation | Uncustomary Art

As per usual, the answers were a mixed bag, including:

 Pizza!
Soap
Love <3
Craft beers
Ingress
Netflix Instant: Really? How did we live for so long without it?
Jesus
My kids
Suboxone
Friends!
Bailey (my dog)
The baby in my belly 🙂
God’s grace
Decriminalization of marijuana in Maryland
People who write stupid shit (with an arrow pointing to the above response)
My family 🙂
Life
Silver medals
“Snow drift”
Dog

And to put my money where my mouth is, here is my list:  When Bug lays on top of my feet  Cleavage  The healing power of Joe’s cuddles  How hot Christ Pratt is  The accessibility of craft supplies in the US  The way my vanilla candle makes my room smell yummy  The way Cristen and I can just make random noises back and forth for minutes straight without speaking normally  80’s movies  Being able to see the stars  Science  How comfortable you feel when you wake up in bed without an alarm clock  Water  Sex  Being able to send gifs on my phone  Guys who have beards wearing flannel  Piano solos  Sharing casseroles with my cat  Puns  My car  Ability to receive (and send) mail  When my friends describe me as “colorful”  Not having a 9-5 job  Lipstick that stays on all day  Dogs in costume

Speaking of being thankful, I’ve actually really been feeling that way lately because I’ve been going through a lot of pictures and video footage from the first eleven months of this year in preparation for 2014 to come to a close, and while we still have a very healthy month left to conquer the world, I’m extremely glad that I’ve been able to have the experiences I have so far this year, and I really really love my life.

For the Get Messy Art Journal prompt today (focus on one word that describes you right now), I chose “thankful”, and I copied Ashley‘s washi tape page idea.

I hope that you will take some time today (and every day for the next year) to note what you are lucky enough to have, experience, and be on this Earth of ours.

Check out last year’s installation

Gratefully yours,