I don't have much time. I don't mean literally, I mean you're out buying ice cream and you'll be home soon.*

Despite the events of this past week that very few people are privy to (and when I say "few" there are probably 4-5 max) I find myself feeling incredibly grateful for my life. I don't know, I find that almost odd, especially for a pessimist like myself. However, I can honestly say that I feel very optimistic about my current situation and my future possibilities. I feel little tugs of sadness, but overriding all of that is this great feeling/sense that I am going to be okay...in fact, I'm going to be better than okay, I'm going to be great!

I think this keeps in the spirit of my Sunday gratitude posts. This is my first one without an "assigned" topic so pardon me if it goes all over the place.

A few of my favorite things:

• Getting that phone call, e-mail, text message, letter from a friend at exactly the right moment. The moment you feel abjectly alone and walla...your friends magically pull through for you.
• When the row of stop lights goes red - yellow - green...i.e. the left turn is red, the straightway just turned yellow, and the right turn has a green arrow. It just makes me happy for some reason.
• When you are driving on the highway in the rain and you go under an overpass and there's this new kind of silence all of a sudden, like you've just lost your hearing. Then before you know it you are coming out from under the overpass and the rain hits the windshield again. ...I love the sound of the rain hitting the windshield again.
• Stepping on the scale to discover you've lost weight (I had to put this in here).
• When people laugh at my jokes.

Things I have learned in the past week (and am very grateful for):

• Your heart is going to get broken almost as many times as you put it out there, but that doesn't mean you stop putting it out there. Don't give it a half-asked job either, don't put your heart out there with walls around it, just open up and enjoy the good that comes.
• Fear accomplishes nothing except to hold you back from everything.
• Everything in this life, good or bad, has a lesson attached to it and that lesson teaches us how to become a better person than we were yesterday or even today.
• People enjoy your laugh, no matter who you are, as long as it is genuine people want to hear it.
• If music moves you - dance. Others don't have to join you, you don't have to be in a place where you're expected to dance, you don't even have to understand the language the song is being sung. If people don't want you dancing, they shouldn't play music that makes you want to.
• There are people out there who see you as an incredible person. Take the compliments - don't ignore them and believe the good that people have to say about you.