The Challenge

This blog is about a challenge.

It starts with a story I was told not too long ago about a woman who was asked to write 1000 things she was grateful for. She put down the usual things, her house, the food she ate everyday, and so on. Very quickly, however, she ran out of ideas and the list stalled far from the goal of 1000 things.

That is where I want to pick up this story. I want to challenge myself, and whom ever stumbles across this blog, to be grateful for 1000 things in life. It seems easy, but like many seemingly simple tasks I can't see this going as smoothly as I think it might at the moment.


We live in a world of constant hardship. Almost every where we look, from newspapers to T.V and movies, we can see scenes of war, poverty, disease, fraud, racism, prejudice, greed and ignorance. You don't have to go very far from your doorstep to see it.


You may not even have to leave you house to realize that life has a lot of obstacles. I, like most people I know, stress regularly about money, taxes, bills, school, jobs, friends and many other things. It is just like what S.E Hinton wrote in The Outsiders, "Things are rough all over."


With all these things out there it isn't hard to get kind of down and forget the good things in life. And so this is where I begin my quest, to rediscover the things out there that make life better, make me smile and that I should be grateful for. Hopefully, as the days go by, I can fill these pages with the great, the simple and sublime and come away looking at life like a glass half full.