Freelance Traveller

#75: Gratitude

I often come across books or blogs or bullet journal advice around the idea of maintaining a gratitude log. Giving daily thanks for the good in our life and improving our mental health as we reflect on it. I’ve struggled with this as a ‘habit’ not because I’m not grateful, but because it’s always been a natural part of my life. From being taught to ‘give thanks’ before each meal to a habit of thanking those I encounter for help or advice or gifts. Daily Christian prayer has been inculcated in me as including Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication. I find the last two the easiest.

Indeed, a retiring work colleague… No, let’s try that again, it seems to be a standard assumption that librarians are retiring. A colleague who was retiring… That’s no better. A colleague who had reached retirement confided that she’d noticed how publicly thankful I was even in a work context. I hadn’t realized that was out of the ordinary.

Thus, with formalized journaling (see typical templates and other books of advice) trying to force myself to come up with three (or whatever the recommended number happens to be) always feels a bit forced and becomes something of a chore. When I’ve tried it, I never return to the list so I don’t get any benefit out of it that way either.

But it made me stop for a moment to consider what I’m grateful for with regard to Traveller. Obviously Marc Miller inventing it in the first place, we’d all agree on that. But going a little further, here is my initial list. I’m sure there’s more. Presented of course as a d6 list so that you can choose one randomly if you would like to dwell on how it’s impacted you.

1. The imagination it inculcates as it takes me out of myself and into fantastic worlds and possibilities and adventure. I used to struggle with vastness of ‘you can imagine anything’ and Traveller gave me a framework to organize my thinking.
2. The creativity it inspires in designing, planning, writing.  I’ve written about this before (see Confession #12, #36, #39 for starters).
3. The fun of adventure and exploration – well duh, that’s the whole point!?  But I’m still grateful it’s central.
4. The delight it’s given me in nature, people, science, technology and so much more, to see how they ‘work’ and how I might then design, generate, build my own creations.  As well as Traveller adventures/rules etc, this has also fed into writing haiku and planning better lectures and sermons amongst other things.
5. The glimpse all that gives me into the mind of a creator God who has made me “in his image”.  I’m wary of describing Referees as being gods of their universes, but there is something in that.  Perhaps best of all:
6. The opportunity to meet like-minded friends from around the world.  It’s perhaps not quite as strong as brothers and sisters I’ve met through faith, but it’s not dissimilar.