1. My access to clean drinking water.
2. Random thinking.
Ridiculous antics from my childhood come to mind sometimes, giving me good material to use for entertaining my students.
3. A simple life.
This is what I hope to have as a family man someday, but already I've been blessed to find a very simple, sweet life as a bachelor for now.
4. The memory of my granddaddy.
He died a couple years back, and I keep realizing/rediscovering things in my life that either came directly from him or remind me of him.
Two things he loved were guitars and watching television shows about the Wild West. And wouldn't you know it, cowboy movies and guitar pickin' tickle my fancy too.
5. Days when it rains just enough during school to make the afternoon perfectly sunny and breezy instead of hot as all get out.
6. Responsibility.
Two things - being responsible only for myself in my personal life, and being responsible for hundreds of students over the years - cause me to arrive at the conclusion that a person becomes more of who he has the capacity to be when he has others to look after.
7. A teaching job that's a pretty good way to spend a workday.
There have been previous classroom teaching gigs that were more like dying slowly week after week.
I still love weekends, but I don't have to live for them like I used to because there's so much to appreciate and make the most of at work nowadays.
8. The realization that I don't know everything about what I really want.
I used to live in a town I absolutely loved and wanted to be in forever...and now I live in a different town that strikes me similarly.
9. A good plan.
It's such a good feeling when you have one, execute it, and hit your mark.
10. Those courageous grad school and undergrad colleagues of mine, who packed up and left their homes in places like Romania and Jamaica to experience another part of the world. Knowing them helped embolden me to do the same.
Playing a Jobim duet years ago during graduate school.
Jazz piano provided by Akiko, my friend who was in the states from Japan to study at UGA.
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