REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL, PART TEN

Over at Facebook, I was tagged in a meme that required me to list three things that made me grateful, every day for three days.

So I thought I'd list them here, too.

1. I'm grateful for my art. It has provided me with friendships, income, travel opportunities, and was the vehicle by which I escaped the soul-destroying depths off despair I was slowly being crushed by while working in the Public Service. I'll never be famous, I'll never be remembered, and I'll never be considered at even the middle of the tree, but my art has been the thing that has kept me from disappearing into the obscure midst of my mediocre family tree, and I'm grateful.
2. I'm grateful for a reasonable income. Yes, we struggle, and we juggle finances on a fortnightly basis, but I'm aware that we do so from a level of decent comfort. My children go to a good school, my wife is able to study, essentially, full time, and we have room to both expand our horizons and entertain our hobbies & indulgences. We never suffer, and having both come from backgrounds of grinding poverty, Lyn and I have only ever wanted our children to appreciate a good upbringing.
3. I'm grateful for the respect of my peers. I get little of it at work, and I rarely feel like an author doing good work, so when a fellow artist expresses their respect or admiration for the work I do then it usually comes as an enormous, and humbling, surprise, because, to be quite honest, I generally don't know what I do to merit it. I've undervalued my work for so long-- it's only in the last fortnight, for example, that I've decided to set a minimum fee for appearances, despite doing them regularly for the last 12 years-- that I'm always a little stunned when others do value it. And grateful, because sometimes, I doubt I'd go on without it.
4. I'm grateful for my readers. Despite all the mechanical hoo-ha-ra that goes into writing, ultimately it comes down to entertaining a stranger with the power of your imagination and your words. Anybody who comes back for a second helping, or who picks up my work because they like the cut of my snippets, is someone who has chosen to invest their time and imagination into my maunderings. It's a weird kind of long-distance love affair of the mind, and I'm thankful to all who take it on.
5. I'm grateful for my children. As you've probably noticed if you've read this Facebook page for long enough-- by which I mean half a day or more-- my kids constantly entertain me, fill me with wonder, and enrich my life by keeping me innocent, impish and focused on doing good for others who need me in their life. Whether it be my naturally-arrived Miss 12 and Master 9, or my inherited bonus kids Cassie, Aiden and Blake, granddaughter Little Miss 2, grandson Little Man <1 boys="" enrich="" in="" life="" multitudinous="" my="" or="" partners="" span="" the="" they="" ways.="">
6. I'm grateful for the quickness of my mind. I've mentioned before that my father's mind is failing, and it's killing me to watch a charming, erudite, quick-witted man struggle for words and concepts he used to fling about like gossamer. I love being funny, I love being deliberately unfunny to spark a funny exchange, I love to tease, to argue, to explain, to build worlds and concepts out of nothing more than my vocabulary and my ability to knit words into never before-seen shapes and tastes. All my other gifts belong to the people who bestow them upon me. This is the only thing I have going for me that is purely mine. If it ever begins to desert me, I don't know what I'll do.
7. The care and love shown to Master 9 during his illness by people who have no other investment in it than they are his teachers, or our friends. From just-because gifts, to messages of support, to structuring his classroom, people have gathered round him for the 14 months of his illness and provided him with an atmosphere of caring and support that has done wonders for his morale and self-esteem. To Kris, Kim,Grant, Lilysea, Mark and countless others, my gratitude.
8. Free education. I went to a shitty High school in the 80s, when my pre-Child Support Agency divorced mother raised two teenage boys and covered a mortgage on a single mother's pension and a $30 a month in child support payments, and thanks to a nominally free education system I still managed to claw my way through 4 years of University. Now, it's going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to send my children to a good high school. Much as I would love to do my Master's degree, I simply can't afford it. My wife's attendance at University each semester is a matter of financial negotiation. My eldest sons struggle to hold down shitty part-time jobs and find enough time to attend to their study obligations. If I were starting my educational career today, I'd be working at K-Mart full-time, because that's the best that people like me could have hoped to afford. I'm grateful that free education enabled me-- and subsequently, my children-- to escape a lower-class existence through education.
9. A stable political system. Yes, Tony Abbott and his Ant-Hill Mob of witless cronies are a blight on our culture, and yes, we can argue back and forth about the relative merits of our chosen allegiances until we're blue in the nads. But nobody shot at me today, and I own my house, and my children are safe and my wife can wear whatever she wants and get herself a tertiary education, and any meal I've missed since I was at Uni has been by choice, and I have freedom of travel, speech, religion and thought. And I'm an artist, and a well-paid member of the permanent workforce. I've never been conscripted, I've never fought in a war, or against my own people. I've never been gaoled for my beliefs, tortured, or disappeared. My neighbours don't spy on me. I'm safe, and warm, and comfortable and educated. And I'm grateful.

And, things being what they are, here's a little bonus extra grateful content:

10. Above all else, I am grateful for the presence of Luscious Lyn in my life. We have been together almost twelve years now, which boggles me to think of, and in that time we have faced innumerable struggles, traumas and hardships, but throughout it all she has been the pivot around which our family revolves. She has brought me unparallelled joy, belief and support, and whatever happiness I have managed to gather unto myself has been, in large part, because she is beside me, pointing me always towards positivity and joy. I cope, and occasionally flourish, because of her. I am a better person because of her.

And for that we should *all* be grateful.