{"id":13902,"date":"2011-11-24T15:44:12","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T21:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=13902"},"modified":"2011-11-24T15:44:12","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T21:44:12","slug":"gratitude-its-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/gratitude-its-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"Gratitude: Its Sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13903\" title=\"gratitude\" src=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude.jpg\" alt=\"gratitude and joy\" width=\"468\" height=\"466\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude.jpg 468w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude-300x298.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude-50x50.jpg 50w, https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/gratitude-186x186.jpg 186w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, and not just because of the abundant feast that comes with it (though that&#8217;s a big part of it). I love the idea of taking some time to consider our good fortune, blessings, gifts, and opportunities. I enjoy reflecting on the generosity I&#8217;ve experienced over the past year. And I&#8217;m truly grateful for the joy I&#8217;ve shared with friends and family.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m always grateful for the good things in my life, even if I haven&#8217;t sat down to write about them each year. This Thanksgiving is unique, though, as I&#8217;ve got some really basic things for which to be thankful: mostly, being here to share the holiday with family and friends, and to write this post. Exactly a month ago, I was admitted to the hospital: a shunt I&#8217;d had placed in my brain as a child was in the process of failing. Within 24 hours of admission, I was off to surgery. I spent six days in the hospital, and have been in recovery mode ever since (which, by the way, is going really well).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m writing this post not to share my own story, though, but to express my deep gratitude for the people in my life that saw me through the initial emergency and the recovery period. It&#8217;s easy to say &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t have done it without you,&#8221; but, in this case, I really can&#8217;t think of a better observation. Not only do I have my health, but also two blogs that aren&#8217;t dead.I owe a deep debt of gratitude to many people; those listed below are likely only the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My wife, <strong>Jan McIntire-Strasburg<\/strong>, has to be first on the list: not only did she get me to the hospital, and stayed by my side through the worst of it, but she&#8217;s also dealt gracefully with having her world turned upside down. In addition to the normal stress a spouse experiences, she was also my boss for the semester as I was teaching two writing courses at Saint Louis University (which she&#8217;s now taken over). She&#8217;s been my rock through all of this&#8230; I can&#8217;t begin to express fully the thankfulness I feel.<\/li>\n<li>Other family members, from my parents <strong>Jo <\/strong>and<strong> Otto Strasburg<\/strong> (who came up to St. Louis for a week to help out), to my sister <strong>Karen<\/strong> (who did a fantastic job of keeping the news flowing on Facebook), to my stepkids <strong>Katie, Matt, <\/strong>and<strong> Beth<\/strong>, to my in-laws (got a bunch of &#8217;em!), each contributed their own time and talents&#8230; and I&#8217;m grateful for all of them.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;ve been equally fortunate in my work life: my old friend <strong>David Anderson<\/strong> (the guy in charge of <a href=\"http:\/\/importantmedia.org\/\">Important Media<\/a>) jumped right in to get editorial arrangements made for sustainablog as soon as he got the word of my illness. <strong>Zach Shahan<\/strong> and <strong>Becky Striepe<\/strong> have kept the blog plugging along beautifully: we&#8217;ve even seen an uptick in traffic! The regular team of writers &#8211; <strong>Ziggy<\/strong> and <strong>Talancia<\/strong> &#8211; kept at it, and were aided by others from within the network (particularly <strong>Chris Keenan <\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>Beth Buczynski<\/strong>) who took the time to contribute. I&#8217;m thankful for all of you and the efforts you&#8217;ve made to keep sustainablog humming along.<\/li>\n<li>At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundancechannel.com\/sunfiltered\/\">SUNfiltered<\/a>, editor <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundancechannel.com\/sunfiltered\/author\/perrindrumm\/\">Perrin Drumm<\/a><\/strong> has been the model of supervisory kindness and understanding. She kept my spot in the line-up open for me, and is allowing me to begin contributing again at a pace that works with my recovery schedule. It was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundancechannel.com\/sunfiltered\/2011\/11\/serving-board-texas\/\">two<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sundancechannel.com\/sunfiltered\/2011\/11\/land-grab-in-africa-mali\/\">posts<\/a> this week; will probably be the same next. But I plan to get back to the four posts I was contributing, and I&#8217;m truly grateful to Perrin and the other folks in the Sundance Channel digital media team for working with me during this difficult period.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m thankful for all of the notes of kindness I received through various social media channels &#8211; more people sent words, thoughts, and prayers than I can possibly name here. I also thank you for you patience: I haven&#8217;t been able to respond to everything, but please know that I got your message, and valued it. Good buddy Joe Mohr, however, deserves a special shout-out: I&#8217;ve never been <a href=\"http:\/\/joemohrtoons.com\/2011\/10\/27\/hank-d-and-the-bee-hanks-halloween-costume\/\">included in a cartoon<\/a> before (and I&#8217;m grateful!).<\/li>\n<li>Finally, I&#8217;m very thankful to those of you who&#8217;ve continued to visit sustainablog over the past month&#8230; even if you didn&#8217;t know what was going on with me. I&#8217;m so happy with the path the blog&#8217;s taken since we joined IM, and being able to keep traffic growth on pace even as I had to step away for weeks (I&#8217;m still not fully back yet) has been a great gift. We&#8217;ll try to repay it by keeping an eye on the data, and giving you more of the kind of content you obviously value.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I hope you all enjoy your feast today (if you haven&#8217;t already), the time you get to spend with family and friends, and the opportunities you have to reflect upon the things for which you&#8217;re thankful. Happy Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Image credit:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/spine\/2302426137\/in\/photostream\/\">rick at Flickr<\/a> under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/deed.en\">Creative Commons license<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So much for which to be thankful this year; here&#8217;s just a smattering of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":13904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[5504,185,5505,2068],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Some Thanksgiving Gratitude<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It&#039;s been an unusual month at sustainablog, and we owe a real debt of gratitude to those who kept it all going.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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