JOURNALING FOR SELF-REFLECTION AND PERSONAL GROWTH

What Are Three Things That I’m Thankful For Today? — Day 1

A self-reflection and personal growth writing prompt response

Dr. Tracy Davis shared some great writing prompts for a 30-day challenge on the path to self-reflection and personal growth. The story was previously published elsewhere, and I’m thrilled and fortunate that she brought it over to the Community Building Movement to share with all of us. I’m going to take part in this 30-day challenge.

I hope that many of you, including our editors, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, JF Danskin, and Mary Louisa Cappelli, MFA, JD, PhD, participate in this challenge as well. Now that we know what the writing prompt is and how it started. I will start to answer the writing prompt question.

My partner and my home

I’m thankful for many things today. To narrow my focus down to just three things sounds tough but I think that I can manage to do so. I have a loving and supportive partner who has enabled me to live a lifestyle I never imagined I’d get to. I’m now traveling the country in a mobile tiny home camper (caravan for the British and European readers).

We have all of the comforts of what we had in a rental but customized for our needs and much better. Our bed is way more comfortable and allows us to sleep peacefully at night when we are parked at any of the travel centers or campgrounds we find throughout our journeys. We have a refrigerator, oven, and air conditioner, along with WiFi and a TV so that we can stay occupied in our self-contained movable room.

I guess that describing these two things in my partner and all of the amenities and comforts in our mobile home were technically two things but they wouldn’t have been possible without the effort, ingenuity, and hard work of the partner of eight and a half years, at the root of it, that I’m most thankful for.

My writing and my publications

In August 2021, I started writing online for the first time. It was here on Medium. I only started off slow then really picked up the pace in 2022 when the New Year started. I didn’t even join or start my own publication until mid-January.

Now, I’m a part of dozens of publications, even owning five of my own now that I’m very proud of, including the newest one that is meant to build a strong sense of community that I’m welcoming all of you to by writing this. I’m very thankful that I could come up with and build a community around a movement to continue to lift up other writers and give people a place to share uplifting messages.

I struggle with my health but coming to a community like this to share ideas lifts me up, even if it’s only temporary at times. I’m sure many of you feel the same way I do about writing. I didn’t even think that I liked writing at all before I started last year but now I can’t imagine my life without it.

Publication details and more thoughts on writing

Going back to thinking about the publications. I started with Digital Global Traveler, geography, culture, language, and travel publication. Then I built The Random Nerdiness Collective to focus more on the spirit of nichelessness but also on sharing random nerdy thoughts and rants. I will always keep that pub very freeform and nerdy.

Then I got two of my favorite publications transferred and gifted over to me this week with The Press Box for sports and Internationale for foreign language writing. Along with The Community Building Movement, aka The CB Movement, I’ve considered the next moves for this family of publications. I’m very blessed with my career in editing and publication ownership so far with such a strong and devoted community to the work in these publications.

I’m very thankful for both the opportunity to own the publications and to be an editor in so many different places. It has been a major blessing. In fact, the first publication I ever joined just accepted me as an editor. Thank you to New Writers Welcome and their wonderful team of editors including publication owner, Robert Ralph.

The community and the supportive friends and family

I sometimes feel all alone in this world, even with a supportive partner and so many lovely people in the community. It’s all in my head much of the time. There have been so many in the community, especially on Medium, who have been super supportive in my writing career.

There are way too many people to name here that I could credit with helping to transform the trajectory of my life. Yeah, I said it. I was very depressed, mentally unstable, and down and out before I started writing. Having a community, well several communities that I leaned on during those tough times, was important to helping me shift my mindset and open up even more about myself and my life.

I think that if I didn’t have a strong support system within my groups of editor friends and the dedicated readers of my stories, I’d have crumbled by now. As I’d mentioned in many of my previous stories, I am a sensitive and caring soul and there is a lot that I take on and sometimes it’s hard for me to process everything, especially my emotions at times.

Hearing other people empathize and understand what I’m going through has made the bond with the community even stronger. I will always be grateful to the community and that’s why I’ve decided to do what I’ve always strived to do and start a community-building, community-focused publication to make others feel the way I’ve been made to feel through writing. I want to make sure that everyone has a voice in this community and my publications strive to drive that message home every day.

Reflecting on all of the things that I’m thankful for today makes me feel better about the things that I no longer have and it warms my heart to know that the next chapter of my life is really just getting started because of all the things that I’m thankful for, the adventure will be transformative, and also probably fun to read.

If you’d like to participate in this writing prompt, just submit stories with the tag “CB Journal Prompt” and it will automatically file all of the daily responses into the section in our publication. I’m very excited to hear from everyone and see your stories.

Also, check out JF Danskin’s publication, Choose Your Own Adventure, for exciting “create your own story” content. You get to read brilliant writer stories and then expand on them yourself. What a cool concept!! The topics range from fantasy to horror to crime drama to all realms of fiction. This is a fun publication and another one of our community writers and a good friend of mine here Sieran Lane is also an editor there.