Okay, friends. It’s time. I’ve noticed that I’ve slipped into negative thought patterns again. Negative thoughts are not what I want guiding my life, so when they start to crowd out the positive ones, I want to take action.

And that action is this: forcing myself to appreciate the good things in my life.

A gratitude post, if you will.

» Long talks with a new friend about the Orthodox church. I cannot tell you how relieving it is to talk with someone from a similar background who understands my struggles and can tell me how she dealt with similar things. (A mentor!)

» Finding William Davis’ book Undoctored. I want this book to be the physician view of what I’ve personally gone through on my health journey over the past few years, and I’m excited to read what he has to say. Wheat Belly was an influential book in my diet explorations, and helped explain so many of my horrible detox symptoms when I quit wheat. My only complaint is it took me a YEAR to learn that this book existed! It was published last May!

» Peones. They are one of the most beautiful flowers on God’s green earth, and when I look up from my laptop, I get to stare at a vase overflowing with peones. I’m so thankful that I live near a cutting garden where you can go and have the pick of any flowers I want.

» EXO’s Forever.

» This will probably mean nothing to those of you who don’t have access to my analytics (which is…everybody), but it so heartening to see this blog pick up in traffic. Certainly I have a long way to go in content, presentation, and promotion before Batfort is worthy of major traffic, but I’m enjoying the steady-ish increase. Organic views for May 2018 surpassed all of December 2017, which had a spike of views from Twitter to a specific post. I’ve had better months in between then, but I find it immensely satisfying when a slow-and-steady month nets more views than a wait-until-the-hero-at-the-end month.