Starting my week with an attitude of gratitude.

Friday night last week could be considered one of the worst times I’ve had to endure.  We’ve been traumatized by Typhoon Glenda, we’ve been burglarized, I’ve been scared when I had that accident in the bathroom, and now this fiasco with Camella Homes.

Still, I just want to focus on feeling gratitude.

I’m not a religious person.  I rarely go to church or attend service.  What I am is prayerful.  I say a prayer of thanks for every little thing.  When I wake up each morning with my husband beside me and our children nearby, I say a prayer of thanks for the gift of a new day with them. When my daughter in college responds to a text message promptly, I say a prayer of thanks knowing that she’s safe. When I see my mother preparing snacks for me and the kids, I say a prayer of thanks for her long life and her tenacious approach about her health.

I’m also a person who tries to find the good in a bad situation.

When there is an unannounced power interruption, I focus on appreciating the time I can spend doing housechores or chilling with the kids instead of working at my computer.

When my husband lost his employment (in the guise of being given an early retirement), I focused on being happy that he gets to work at home with me and be with the kids more.

When Glenda happened, I was grateful that we stayed dry while the storm raged outside.  When we were burglarized, I was grateful no one in the family was hurt.

Now that we are in the middle of another storm, figuratively, I’m again trying to focus on the blessings brought about by the trials.

For the past months, I have been experiencing that minty feeling at the back of my throat.  It was only last week that I thought of Googling it.  This article is helping me identify my symptoms now.  Because I don’t have the symptoms for GERD, I’m now trying to rule out anxiety.  However, with the recent problem with Camella, I don’t think I will do very good on this.  So I’m really hoping that Camella will offer a resolution soonest.  🙂

A month ago, I was going to a client meeting in Manila. On the trip from Ibaan to Lipa, I lost my left peripheral vision. Like it was really dark on the left side, and I had to move my head sideways to see what could normally be seen peripherally.  I was thinking, if this persists, I will have to cancel my trip.  Take the van from Lipa back to Ibaan.  I started taking deep breaths while flexing my fingers open and close.  The vision cleared before we reached SM Lipa, so I went on to the meeting.

But on Thursday night, it happened again.  My vision just started to blur on the lower part, like when staring at my monitor, the desk in front of me was blurred.  I didn’t tell anyone about it.  I just shut down my PC and went to bed.  I was thinking that my eyes were just tired.

I was feeling better when I woke up Friday morning, but by mid-day, I was again experiencing blurred vision.  Like there was a haze in front of me.  Imagine being on the road on a really hot day, and you stare at the hood of your car?  You’ll see a haze, like the heat in the air forming some shapes?  That’s what I was experiencing.  So again, I lied down, closed my eyes and rested, with the decision that I was going to see my ophthalmologist the next day.

And I did.

But what my ophthalmologist told me worries me now. He said: “If it was your eyes, it would not have resolved that fast.  It would have persisted.”  And my eye tests were good.  In fact, my myopia is gone. Although my astigmatism is a bit higher.  Pressure on my eyes are the same as they were in 2013.

So what could be my problem?

“You might have had a mild stroke and you didn’t know it.”

Wow!

My sedentary life is causing me to lose circulation, my brain is being deprived of oxygen, causing to impair my vision.

That’s my assessment.  Not the doctor’s. But I know I’m right.

And I’m thankful that I get to write about it.  I’m a survivor.

Now back to gratitude…

All the things I mentioned above are the cakes.

Here’s the icing…

On Saturday morning, I received an email from the founder of Feedspot.com, congratulating me for making it the Top 60 Work From Home Blogs and Websites.

“Making it” is the operative word, because the search is for Top 60, and they only listed 52, and I’m number 49.  So yes, good of me to make it.  And very grateful!

I mean, I’m not even blogging regularly.  So maybe if I did, then I would have fared better?  I’ll never know now.  But this fuels me to blog more frequently.

I think I’m the only one from the Philippines in the list.  Mostly are from the US and I saw some from Australia, Canada, the UK and Kenya .  Cool!

The email asked me to put a badge on my site, just for bragging, you know. 🙂 And I’ll do that soon, when I have more time, but for now, I’m just putting it here within the post, with gratitude.

Now, if only they will send a real medal in the mail…  But that’s already asking too much.  🙂

Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave a reply below, or post them at my Facebook Page.