overlooking the small stuff

     My life is pretty routine: get up, feed the animals, do school, eat dinner, go to bed---you get the idea. So naturally, I start complaining about the lack of excitement. I have burning desires to travel, to climb Mount Everest, to meet William Fox-Pitt, to write a novel in Australia, to play polo, etc. But, until I'm ready to face one of these adventures, I have to content myself with what I have and appreciate the small stuff--the 'simple pleasures' as Mom's friend says.
    
     Seemingly unimportant things are hard to appreciate when oftentimes we don't even acknowledge them. I challenge you to become aware--take in everything around you and realize how pleasant life can be when the small stuff occurs.

 

SMALL STUFF:

1. Receiving a letter from your good friend who wrote you 'just because'
2. Settling down with a good book and a cuppa tea
3. Being able to fluently quote poetry
4. Feeling confident about your appearance
5. Finding that one Bible verse that's been running through your head for days
6. Checking things off of the to-do list
7. Turning in an essay and knowing you did a really good job
8. Making your friend laugh (and laughing so hard that your abs hurt)
9. Successfully building a fire in the woodstove (without smoking the house up too much)
10. Smelling bread bake in the oven
11. Galloping across the field into the sunset
12. Walking uninhibitedly throught the mud barefoot
13. Using long vocabulary words frequently in your speech
14. Making somebody at church smile
15. Belting out lyrics to a country song on the radio
16. Listening to elderly people tell stories of their childhood
17. Haunting antique stores
18. Sightreading sappy love songs out of the Reader's Digest piano book
19. Telling a lame joke
20. Playing full registration on the pipe organ at church--well aware that everybody on the entire block can hear you
21. Getting a difficult math problem right the FIRST time
22. Crying because you're happy

     Yup. I'm still trying to be content with what I've got, but it's awful hard considering how rampant my imagination runs sometimes. Living epically is such a sweet temptation.............