From an article about a Katie Couric photo shoot for Harper’s Bazaar:

Couric calls herself a joyful person. "I mean, hello? Yes. I am. I am! And unashamed that I’m not cynical or dark or ironic."

I’ve never been the world’s biggest Couric fan, but her Sarah Palin interview from late 2008 cracked the ice, and now I find she’s an irrepressibly joyful person and I’m all agog and giggly and aw-shucks and toe-twistingly blushing over The Perky One.

I still won’t watch CBS Evening News, or any other network news show for that matter, because I loathe lowest-common-denominator sensationalism that deals almost exclusively with violence or hate or pain or anger or catastrophe or extremism, but the producers have the control over that stuff.

It’s been a good couple days.  My team completed the iteration in style, finishing all our commitments and making headway on some important analysis that put us in a good place during upcoming iterations.  I have a good team, and I am very lucky to work with them.

Gratitude is back on my mind again today – a random blog post elsewhere talked about it.  I ask myself am I expressing gratitude as much as I could? I don’t know, I guess that’s a never-ending question.  Plenty of people are deserving of my gratitude.  Thinking about it, I can think of times each day for the past few days where I’ve made special mention of someone who has done something nice or what have you.  Is it becoming second nature?  Would a friend describe me as someone who expresses well-deserved gratitude?  I hope so.

I’ve been doing some deep-dive exploration of PowerShell’s WMI provider and am thinking about adding yet more to my plate by doing a short series of blog posts for the smart-but-new-to-PowerShell developer about how to use WMI.  It’s powerful stuff.  And I’m guessing that those kind of posts will be hugely popular for the right search engine terms, because the current documentation is pretty thin.

Two people have told me that they felt “stalker-ish” by going to my blog to find out more about me.  I have to laugh – I put so much out there, that if I had any stalkers, they’d basically be able to find out anything they want, and know exactly where I go, almost all the time.  There is however, a part of me that occasionally wishes I could be even MORE open, MORE transparent, MORE clear – but there are some topics that are still taboo in this era where we expose almost everything.  Not to mention that if I write about it, it becomes more real, and sometimes I just want to forget, to move on, to seek out new worlds, to boldly go where no man has gone before…sorry, I digressed into a Star Trek moment there.  But writing-as-catharsis has a counterargument, writing-as-disguising-reality, and I don’t want to breathe life into something that’s bothering me by worrying it to death on these pages.  Maybe I’m bothered for no good reason, or I’m properly bothered and the appropriate response is just to ignore it and move on.  Blogging about it would just give it legs.

Which brings me to another recently reoccurring topic, Other People’s Comments.  I’m on much better terms today with a couple things that were said that hurt my feelings than I was, say, a week ago.  Stuff gets said.  Deal.  It helps when you realize that no malice was intended.

Big night of coding tomorrow night – wonder what coffee shop I’ll be at.  Probably Zoka, unless a better idea presents itself.  Then more work this weekend, intermixed with some time with the kids and (maybe) watching the Super Bowl.  Maybe I’ll look around for a Super Bowl party that a friend is already throwing and bring some chips and beer and Drew Brees jokes.

Wow, another novel!  Yay me. Thank you for reading.

While I’m waiting for a 300+ MB CVS update to complete…(drums fingers)….

I’m thinking about gratitude today.  The notion of feeling grateful, of finding things to be grateful for.  The disaster in Haiti has been weighing on me a bit more than I might have expected – perhaps I’m more clued in to the news lately, or maybe I’m searching high and low for perspective and have found a great counter-example in the plight of the Haitian people.  It’s weird, because I’ve never really been one to take on any extra emotional burden from disasters across the world, at least not up until now.

But I look at my life, at arms’ length, and think to myself that things are not so bad.  Today.  Tomorrow I might be struck by lightning, or leukemia, or get hit by the #7 bus, but that’s all abstract, worry-fodder, and takes my attention off of what I should be worried about, which is today.  Now.  What decisions can I make, what attitudes can I cultivate, that make my NOW better than it might otherwise be?

Which brings me to my topic.  I was talking to a friend this afternoon about gratitude and how expressing gratitude is one awesome thing that (a) I can control and (b) makes the world a better place, all around.  Saying “thank you” – and meaning it – is open and available no matter what else is going on in your world.  You can be devastated, blown away, numb, bombed into smithereens, empty as a dry corn husk – yet you can still say thanks.  That’s why the title of my post references the cockroach – it’s a reference to 1980’s pop culture, when we all watched The Day After and worried about mutually assured destruction and kept a wary eye on the Doomsday Clock.  After we started World War III with the Communists and collectively nuked the world into a radioactive pulp, the cockroach would be the last thing to die off.  So it is with gratitude.  I could make the argument that it’s the last of the “good” human emotions to go away.

So I express it.  Or try my best to.  People do amazing, thoughtful, selfless things every day, if you’re looking for it.  You sometimes have to look very carefully, but if you’re tuned in you can find it.  Sometimes it’s a process of realizing it’s right under your nose.  Other times you have to stretch.  But expressing gratitude, deservedly so, is a win-win.  It makes me feel good and it makes the recipient feel good.  It’s good karma, if you’re into that sort of philosophy.  It’s certainly part of Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You, if that’s your bag.

Right now I can rattle off a half-dozen things that people have done just in the last week that I could express gratitude for.  That’s a good feeling.  It lends support to my search for perspective.

What are you grateful for?  To whom could say “thank you” – and mean it?