There’s always something to be grateful for. We can practice gratitude by focusing on the Now, and visualizing something we’re grateful for. Tune in to the warm, tingling feeling in the heart space and solar plexus. Now, visualize something wonderful you’ve only dared to imagine in a dream, and tune in to the electric feeling in your future self’s heart when your dream comes true.

∞

I got that dirt dawg in me, which may explain why I have an affinity for the Big Bad Wolf, the most misunderstood figure in fairy tales. We can’t hate on a wolf for tryna get fed when he hungry.

Unlike the wolf, who kept causing trouble like that episode with Lil Red, I got civilized and followed the three little pigs’ lead. 

One of the first things I did when I got a good ass ca$h money dance job was cop a big ass brick house. That four-bedroom, two-bathroom beauty with a finished basement where I watched my hometown Golden State Warriors win titles on the 50-piece was my dream home. My homey Nick Dawg, a fellow dirt dawg, called it Thug Mansion.

Like ‘Pac and everything else in life, Thug Mansion’s moment came and went. I lost it in the divorce, and I’ll be surprised if I ever sign a piece of paper that says I own a piece of land again. As my now wife says, we don’t own the land, we belong to it.

I tend to romanticize Thug Mansion, but I don’t miss it. I prefer old houses, but old houses are always falling apart. So it was with Thug Mansion, a fixer-upper that was already 100 years old when I copped. That thing was a money pit, and it was a Sisyphean struggle to keep up with the endless fixing and upping. 

Not counting the nine months when I lived in Arizona following my Dark Night of the Soul, I’ve rented units in older houses since I split up with my boys’ mom (I don’t love the term “ex” and she doesn’t care for my go-to, “baby mama”), a lovely woman whom I married and then later divorced.

Five years of hard data confirms that renting doesn’t make the constant maintenance part about living in old houses magically disappear.

The mounting repair list is getting out of hand at the aging duplex I currently share in Minneapolis with my now wife, whom I have not married and don’t plan on divorcing.

Even though we don’t have to pay for all these repairs, the twist is that we still have to be around to let the service folk in. It was a headache scheduling repairs when I was a homeowner. These days, when you add in the extra layers of noise with the corporate landlord that owns this joint and is all about the bottom line, plus dealing with the company that manages the property, repair time is a logistical nightmare.

Recently, we had several days of subzero temperatures in a row, a leaky pipe, and a phantom shut-off valve. My wife eventually solved the phantom shut-off valve mystery, but only after the drain company canceled one appointment at the last minute on the first subzero day, and no call/no showed three days later when it was still snotsicle cold outside.

When I called after the show-up window closed, the drain company dispatcher gave me an excuse I don’t believe would’ve held up under even mild scrutiny. But I didn’t go there, so we’ll never know.

Later, the plumbers showed up way past normal hours, and these super cool young men saved the basement where our boys lay their heads at night from flooding. 

I got the vibe that these men got caught in the middle of the scheduling snafu and weren’t thrilled about it. Still, they managed whatever negativity they had about doing a super late job on a bone-chillingly cold night with grace and got it done with grit, care, and professionalism.

Watching those young men power through adversity and handle their biz made my negativity over the repair situation at the duplex melt away. I felt immense gratitude for a fixed pipe I didn’t have to pay for, a sturdy-ish roof over my head, and a lovely home I share with my beautiful family that shops at Aldi and works out at Planet Fitness.

There’s no doubt about it: I’m living the dream.

But I don’t love the part of the dream where them plumber boys left a big ass hole in my basement ceiling. And I’ll request the landlord to repair it, along with several other things, please and thank you, before I re-up on this lease.