Recently, there have been changes made in my life. Over the past two weeks, I went from texting my daily gratitude and my “bookend 0’s” to my accountability partner. We had to stop for reasons outside of my control. I decided to start writing my daily gratitudes in my moleskin journal. I had been writing the three 3 good and 3 bad things that happened in the last 24 hours (my daily 10th step) for a while, but this is a welcomed addition that I really am excited to share with you.
I start my template by writing this out. “1) I am grateful for…”, “2) I am grateful for…” what a wonderful way to start each day. I love that it is in my journal now so that I can look at it throughout the day or flip back through one day and smile reading through these. Note, number 1 is always the most important. I am SO grateful for staying sober and solvent yesterday. If I were to lose my sobriety and my daily solvency, all bets are off. I can win today if I keep that front and center and thank God each day for his Grace in this area.
My Bookend 0 list is a list of daily action items that must be completed each day. The term “Bookend 0” came from when texting with my Action Partner each day, we had a gratitude list and at the bottom of the list, we would have at least three action item that we called “bookends.”
Bookends are items that we would tell each other each day at the start of the day what we are going to do during that day. When we finished, say item #2, I would text him: “Bookend 2 (check symbol)” so he would know that I knocked that one off the list. Well, we had things that we did each and every day that we didn’t think diserved to be on the daily action items. We called these Bookend 0 items. As we finished all of them, we would send each other a text that was copied and pasted from the day before that said all of these items with a check next to them in one simple text. Once that is complete, I can start my day.
I will share in the next post, what each of these Bookend 0’s stand for in more detail.