When your brain is wired bipolar-fashion, it’s not always possible to do the whole “attitude of gratitude” thing consistently.

But it does happen, for me, sometimes, and now is one of those moments, so I think it might be good to record here a few specifics, so maybe I can refer back to them later.

So here we go.

I am grateful for the strength and adaptability of my body, which allow me to do amazing things.

I am grateful also for the weaknesses of my body, which keep me humbler and more human than I could be without then.

I am grateful for the path my life is on, as strange and hard as it is sometimes, and for the messengers in my life who remind me that control is an illusion and that not all who wander are lost.

I am grateful for the path my life has taken, through dark places and through bright, because it has brought me here, and here is pretty good.

I am grateful that I am able to feel that way, at least right now.

I’m grateful for the knowledge that gratitude, like everything else, is fleeting and enduring all at once, and for the knowledge that I’ll lose my grip on it, but that’s okay, because I’ll get it back.

I’m grateful for the freedom to be as I am made, and to live this weird, liminal life, even though tomorrow I’ll lyrically complain both about the way I’m made and the life I’m living. That’s okay, too. I’ll get it back.

I’m grateful for having lived long enough now to know that this moment will pass, that harder ones will follow but that these, too, will pass.

I’m grateful fly the burgeoning ability to take both these kinds of moments and turn them into art.

I’m grateful for a life that lets me do so.

Tomorrow I might be ungrateful and irritable. That will be okay. It happens to the best of us.

Today, right now, in this moment, I’m grateful.for these things, and other things, and for all the people who have helped me see.