My gratitude journal: “I’m grateful for coffee. Lust for coffee gets me out of bed every morning”

I recently found a “gratitude journal” I started keeping after I graduated college and began looking for a job. 

Yep, that was cool.

And the entry below is nearly three years later, after I landed my first professional newspaper job in Vallejo, Calif. I wrote not only that I was grateful for coffee and books, but how I went on a mini-adventure to San Francisco and realized I wanted to pursue a career as a reporter, a profession I’ve since loved for more than 20 years, because I wanted to: “Meet people, to learn, see and write about life.”

Later I even used the word “cool!”

Tuesday, September 14, 1999

1. I am grateful I decided to get up and go on the ferry to SF, saw the farmers market, walked through Chinatown and Union Square, and to Starbucks, read the paper and just escaped; realized what I wanted to do, to be — To meet people, to learn, see and write about life.

2. I’m grateful for the yummy food in the house, that I treated myself to brie to put on bread for breakfast and on crackers at night.

3. I’m grateful for coffee. Lust for coffee gets me out of bed every morning, without fail. It’s a love I never tire of. It’s still the same, the excitement over the first sip!*

4. I’m grateful for books on tape, for the idea, and of books in general. For lovely walks by the ocean, listening to my stories. I don’t feel quite so lonely, and I don’t have to deal with the damn commercials.

5. I’m grateful for my car, the 3/4 of a tank, and that Chris washed it yesterday. We found the self-serve place, he told me to drive in, he hopped out and scrubbed it down. Cool.

*As of November 2022, more than 23 years later, I can report I still feel exactly the same about coffee: Lust for it STILL gets me out of bed every morning, without fail.