Listing The Good Things

This week I thought of listing the good things in my life. Here are a few:

Annual family camping trips to the Rocky Mountains when I was small

Christmas when I was small

Learning how to play chess (when I was 9)

The first two years of college (1971-1973)

The first week of college (1971)

Some of the reading, writing, running, and trumpet playing

Reading to, and taking care of, my two children when they were very small

Explaining things -- an example is when I was helping my fellow students add fractions in grade school.

About this list: I have found it difficult to make a good "list of good things". There's always something about it that is problematic -- either I have to leave out something because it cannot be revealed, or I will offend people I don't want to offend (indirectly).

For a long time in my life I have had a short list of bad things in my life which I have always thought were very important. I still think that way, but this week I tried this experiment in which I write down good things.

I like to arrange concepts. Usually that takes the form of prose writing, and is like a short rough essay. The concepts may be bad things, good things, technical things, or some kind of reasoning or solutions. I usually begin after encountering something provocative, such as someone's email post, or an injustice, and I write an email about it.