Avon Van Hassel

What it is

In November, I usually post something about National Novel Writing Month. For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is a month-long event where participants write a 50,000 word long novel from start to finish. However, in light of recent criticism regarding misconduct within their organisation aimed at kids, and their recent stance on AI, I can no longer affiliate myself with the Office of Letters and Light. If you still like the challenge and the community, let me know, and I will see if I can set something up next year.

~This post contains affiliate links. If you’re interested in any of these items, please consider purchasing through the link provided. It gives me a little bit of Jeff Bezos’ filthy, filthy lucre because writing full time is expensive, and he doesn’t need the money for more joyrides in space. 🙂 ~

So, without NaNo to talk about, how do I theme a writing post for November? November, here in the United States, is Thanksgiving season. Thanksgiving as a holiday is a sensitive subject, and becoming more and more delicate every year. In my own house, we put less focus on the accepted story and adopt the day as an opportunity to take stock of our good fortune in the passing year.

Let me be clear, we stand with the descendants of the indigenous people, whose stories differ wildly from the story we were told in school and around the Thanksgving table for generations. Columbus Day has been changed to Indigenous People’s Day, and I feel it won’t be long until National Day of Mourning is observed alongside Thanksgiving. I’m not sure it will ever fully replace it- we do love a food-based holiday in this country- but it is certainly gaining more visibility.

So, in the spirit of my family’s approach, I thought a good overlap between thankfulness and writing is gratitude journaling.

Why do it

Depression is on the rise. The Happiness Quotient is in the toilet. The political climate is dire across the world and we live in frightening times.

Yet, studies show that a gratitude practice can play a big role in maintaining our own personal peace. It helps, in the maelstrom of the daily stresses, social media mire, relentless news cycle, etc, to take a pause, recognise the blessings big and small in your own life, and focus on those. It won’t solve the hurts of the world, but it could, over time, make them more bearable. The world feels a little less hopeless when you can look around and recognise the happinesses you do posess.

And if all it does is make you feel better for one day, that’s still one day that sucked less.

Journalling also serves as a sort of record keeping. It keeps track of some things that you’ve done and felt. Milestones at work or in the home, social engagements, tracking progress with going to the gym or taking your meds.

When Cassie, my previous cat, was in decline, I knew it, and I wrote ‘another day with Cassie’ in my journal, most days. When she passed, I lamented that I didn’t make the most of my last months with her, I wasn’t ready for her to go and I didn’t appreciate her as I should have. But one day, I was going through past jorunal entries, looking for something, and I found the dozens and dozens of ‘another day with Cassie’s and I realised that I did appreciate her, I did know what was happening and I did make the most of it. It was just my grief in the moment robbing me of the memory of that gratitude. That helped my healing, a lot.

A lot of people see gratitude journalling as part of the Toxic Positivity movement, and that is shortsighted, in my opinion. Yes, negativity exists; yes, some situations suck, and there’s no way to candy-coat them. Gratitude journalling is not ignoring negativity, it is not stubbornly reframing tragedy as Good Actually. You can acknowledge that shit sucks right now, but also you had a good sandwich for lunch. Both things can be true.

We live in an environment where the negativity is So big and So pervasive that it’s difficult to ignore. I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to give the good things some room to breathe so that the bad things aren’t the only things you see. This isn’t about tinting the world in a rosy filter, it’s about finding good things to cling to so that the bad things are more bearable. It’s self-preservation.

How to do it

There is literally no wrong way to do it. At its heart, it is just a list of things that make you happy or are net positives. They can be as big as having achieved your dream job or a loving family; or it can be as small as a really good cup of coffee and smooth traffic on the way to work.

Because I crave structure, my list is usually three things:

• something I have (my new Shark Flexstyle, which I paid an absurdly low price for)
• something I accomplished in the previous day (deep cleaned the kitchen)
• a trait that either I or a friend exhibitted that helped me get through a challenge (my adaptability, Cristian’s stupid joke that improved my dark mood, etc)

I am the sort of person who self-soothes with retail therapy, so it helps to stop and remember the Really Cool and Good stuff I already have. Sometimes you forget you have certain things, so rediscovering them can feel like buying them anew. I am also the kind of person who can tie mental and emotional health directly to productivity and accomplishment, so aknowledging those things can help keep me grounded. And lastly, I feel it is important to note the invisible, intangible things- personal strengths and community ties. Remembering to take a breath instead of snapping at a customer, a friend who was there when you needed to vent, an extra minute of cuddle time with your pet. If you like, you can add a fourth category for things that happened to you- a random stroke of luck that worked out in your favour.

Avon, you say, you’re congratulating yourself on remembering to breathe. The bar is on the ground.

Yes. It is. That’s the point. We are so conditioned to always be aiming for bigger and better, to only celebrate the big wins, and discard the little ones. That is the road to burnout. You’ve seen those posts on social media that say ‘It’s ok if all you did today was survive’? I mean, when you have severe depression, that’s where the bar is. And, as the adage says, that’s ok. You have to start somewhere. With time, ‘survive’ becomes ‘got dressed,’ then ‘bought groceries,’ ‘cooked dinner,’ ‘went to work.’ Notice that there isn’t a timeline there, it just goes at its pace. The point is to be grateful, for anything, no matter how big or small.

Now, I don’t want you to list EVERYTHING, unless a long list is warranted. If you list everything you’re grateful for every single day, that’s going to be difficult to make a habit of- and the habit is the point. Additionally, listing the same things over and over dull their shine. You’re likely to have the same job for multiple entries, the same family, the same weather even. So try to mix it up, try to keep it on the short side; that encourages you to look for new things every day, and get the exercise done quickly so that it doesn’t interfere with your other obligations. The exception is if you’ve had a particularly exciting day.

I’m writing this post on the day after my 37th birthday, which I spent in Antigua, Guatemala. I am grateful for a lovely day yesterday, where:

• I played with my Shark Flexstyle. My curls fell out immediately, but I had fun, all the same.
• I had a cup of coffee on the roof of my family’s house, in the shadow of three volcanoes
• Dad took me to breakfast at a coffee plantation
• I went shopping for shoes, a purse, traditional candy, and some pretty jade jewelery
• I had a long, quiet afternoon, listening to my Regency comedy romance audiobook and playing the Sims
• My friend in Argentina and I shared an alfajor together over Instangram, which was super cute
• Another friend told me that he had sent a parcel to my house
• My mother messaged me pictures of my cat, Artemisia
• Many friends wished me happy birthday
• My cousin’s baby sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me
• A bunch of stores gave me enough birthday points for me to get a bunch of free stuff
• Dad took me to a fancy dinner
• I gave myself a mini facial and mani-pedi before bed

So, that’s more than three, but I had much to be grateful for, and I wanted to remember all of them, and they are individually unlikely to repeat, even on my birthday next year. Except the points from the companies, that’s automated.

My advice is to aim for three things every day, either in the evening or the following morning. Three things minimum, but less that five unless the situation calls for it. But you do what works for you, if you have the time and discipline to add more.

How to get fancy

Now, I know some of y’all are like, eww, a list. Some of us are busy ladies who crave structure and routine, but also get bored and want to be free. We’re basically cats.

But some of y’all are artistes, and the aesthetic is everything.

I assume by now that you’ve heard of bullet journals, but if you haven’t, they’re essentially a bullet list that you can adapt to any purpose, and you can make it as simple or complex as you want. There are blogs and YouTube videos, and social media accounts, and miles and miles of Pinterest boards to give you inspiration on how to set up, structure, fill, and decorate your journal. Make it your own.

Personally, I have a digital planner designed for people with ADHD (THOUSANDS of tabs, and endless personalisation options). The daily entries have spaces not only for gratitude journalling, but a section for the highlight of the day. It also has a whole tab for gratitude journalling specifically. I prefer digital planners, but there are physical ones (my therapist swears by this one), blank ones, already decorated ones. There’s even a fantasy quest-themed one that I also use. Stamps, stickers, coloured pens and markers, washi tape, highlighters. Creatives, you know what to do.

A prompt

So, how do you get started? I know I prefer a road map. The blank page is my ancient nemesis. So, here is your November 4 prompt:

Settle yourself somewhere comfortable and quiet. Take a deep breath and think back to yesterday, November 3. What was the weather like? What did you eat all day? Who did you talk to?

Don’t judge yourself, and try to frame everything you did as positive. If you only ate junk food, that’s still food and you kept yourself alive. If the weather was rainy and dull, that’s good for the earth and the air quality. If you only spoke to your pet, that still enforced that relationship. If you need to phrase things sarcastically at first, that’s ok. Once you get used to saying the words, eventually it will come more naturally and what started off sarcastic will become genuine.

It’s the practice that matters. Hang in there. Keep your chin up. You have more to be grateful for than you think.