These days a person can wake up feeling small and anxious. I often do. This morning was a good example. I’ve been nursing a hamstring injury for over a week and the first walking hours are the worst. The sky is dark and cloudy and it is predicted that we’re getting 10-14″ of snow tomorrow. My daughter has been sick the last few days. Those are local issues. Add all the political turmoil and malevolence in the world and it’s a quick spiral to the bottom of the mood barrel.
It’s my nature to go dark. I have to resist it on a pretty regular basis. I am a practiced skeptic and cynic, which has served me well in many ways, but sometimes it shuts out the joy and the gratitude. Now, if you’re like me, gratitude feels like a trigger word, having been beaten to death by the Pollyanna meme-making journalers of the world. I feel gratitude in a hundred small ways, but talking about it feels like bragging. What doesn’t feel like bragging is talking about the great things that other people are doing.
Fea
rless Fridays are about what happens when we don’t let anxiety rule our lives, when we stay open to the good things in the world, and take time to recognize them. On Fearless Fridays, I’ll talk about the awesome things other people are doing. If you just got published, or you witnessed an act of kindness, or you have someone in your life who amazes you, drop your story into my contact page or email it to TheGreenStudy (at) comcast (dot) net and I’ll run it on a Fearless Friday. If you’re a blogger, it’s an opportunity to advertise your blog, but this is open to anyone who would like to share. These will be 100-300 word stories, subject to editing for clarity and space.
To kick off the weekly feature, I’m sharing some good news and giving a shout out to a couple of friends.
Congratulations to Lisa Ciarfella at Ciarfella’s Fiction Corner: Writing Fiction Now
Lisa recently earned her MFA from California State University, Long Beach. Her writing slants dark, towards the Noir, crime fiction and hard-boiled, channeling inspiration from greats like Jim Thompson, Paul D. Marks, and Paul Brazill. She’s been featured on PulpMetalmagazine.com, Nowastedink.com, Ashedit/.com, and will be soon at OutoftheGutteronline.com. By day, Lisa shepherds high school kids with their daily grind, and on the weekends, likes throwing Frisbees around the beach with her pups and catching ball games. 
Lisa has just published a couple of stories – congratulations! Check out her blog or one of her published pieces at “Last Night’s Lift” at Near to the Knuckle.
Thanks and Best Travel Wishes to Sandy at A Mind Divided
I met Sandy through blogging. Over the years, we’ve met for coffee and emailed and texted. Sometimes more than others. She is one of those people who I admire for her tenacity of spirit and her persistent dedication to creativity. My favorite thing about her is her laugh – it’s an honest laugh that makes you feel like you earned it. Several of her gorgeous, quirky handmade cards grace my study.
She decided to take a big step and move to Oklahoma to be near family after living in the Midwest for many years. For most people, this is a life stressor, but for Sandy, who has lived with literal ups and downs of bipolar disorder, this is a leap of faith. Sometimes those journeys that seem so ordinary are really these amazing feats of courage. I wish her the best in her travels and that she finds great joy in her new home.
Sometimes You Just Have to Be Kind
One of my best friends has been having a really tough last week or so. I thought about her today while running errands. I was feeling very grumpy and yelled at least once at no one in particular Get off your goddamned phone and drive! These days I recognize not only how toxic my anger can be, but also how frequently it arrives. I pull myself back and try to imagine the person I’m yelling at – what kind of day are they having?
It’s funny how we’re all sympathy and light for those closest to us and can be so unkind to strangers. I had the weird thought of what it would be like to see that person’s day, to be in their body with all its twitches and pains. What was their work like? Was it backbreaking or soul-crushing or a little bit of both? Was one of their parents or children ill? Is their spouse cruel or indifferent? We become so incurious as to they and them, when they are us and we.
Kindness is not only something we extend to others, but also to ourselves. My friend is a widow with a 14-year-old son who has autism. He is nonverbal. He bites her sometimes and has a laundry list of triggers and compulsions. She knows them by heart. She has built a life for the two of them with a lovely home and routines that comfort her son.
Sometimes she berates herself for not doing more, for not being a better parent. But she doesn’t see what I see. She doesn’t see how amazing she is to get up each day, taking care of his needs while trying to meet some of hers. She doesn’t see how persistent she is – that even after weeks of the flu or one of his meltdowns, she plows forward. She doesn’t see how very capable and loving she is, despite the challenges of the day. I see it and I wish she would, too. It’s the oddest human quirk, how we can easily see in others what we don’t see in ourselves.
So that wraps up Fearless Friday. Share your stories, thank your friends, be kind to strangers. And drop me a line so that I can share your stories here.
The Green Study 
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