Self worth and gratitude lists

It's quite hard to retain self-worth when you don't have a full-time occupation (i.e. studying, working, raising children). It's easy to fill your days with things that would normally be accomplished alongside said full-time occupation. I've really enjoyed having the time and energy to cook actual meals, more or less every day, and even created an Excel table with the ingredients for 10 of my favourite basic meals. It makes online grocery shopping a lot easier. Doing laundry is surprisingly satisfying as well, especially when you get to order special soap for special stains and then actually pre-wash your special items by hand, using the special soap, before putting them in the washer on a special program.

However, when your most only productive task in a day is cooking, and then when you cook for others and someone happens to not like it, it can be pretty soul-destroying. Of course I'm overreacting, but it really is the only thing on which I could be judged or praised (and I'm always looking for validation), so disappointment can hit pretty hard. Now, to stay positive (and remind myself to wear pants every day), I tried a daily gratitude list. The idea is to list (usually) 5 things for which you're grateful at the end of each day. I went with 3, and kept it up for about a week and a half, until I realised that nearly 80% of my gratitude sources were food-related. If I were a dog, people would describe me as "incredibly motivated by food", which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing as it can be quite easy to teach food-motivated dogs new tricks.

Anyway, I gave it a break (during which I actually did loads of things that could've gone on my list, like "a country weekend in Cambridge", "saw friends in Finland", "cycled to Brighton", "became an aunt"), but now I'm back on it. My friend C was doing something similar (100 days of Happy, where you take a picture of something that makes you happy every day) and she said it was great, because it motivated her to make an effort and do something nice if nothing special had happened.

Today I will definitely be grateful for the sunshine, and that my knee hurts less than yesterday. On Monday I hope to be grateful for my local dry-cleaner for getting weird dirt off a suede jacket. Tonight I would also like to be grateful for an ace waacking class, where I totally outdo myself in freestyling.