About MOG

Have you seen all those text images that say "Start each day with a grateful heart"? Or have you heard of those projects where people write down one thing they are grateful for at the start or end of each day? Or even ideas that "being grateful" is suuuuuch an important thing to do? To be honest, something about those bother(ed) me. I didn't like how "grateful", "gratitude", or "gracious" were thrown around the way we throw around words like "nice", "happy" or "negative/positive". Those words do mean something and can stand for such powerful ideas, but for me, "gratitude" seemed like such a more important, significant and multifaceted word.

Google tells us, "Gratitude" is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.There is a certain humbleness that comes with gratitude. It may not necessarily be a happy emotion. I think it should be a grounding emotion as well. Yet, there is an active emotion, it makes us think, reflect, put into perspective and move something within ourselves. To be grateful is to understand things in a bigger picture. However this is just my "so far" understanding of gratitude. Every time an MOG comes in, I learn something new about the term. I hope you do too. 

So, I've set out to spend a year finding, recognizing, researching and exploring this idea. I want to facilitate the same movements in you guys. 
As a sort of New Years resolution, I want to post 365 moments of gratitude over the course of 2014. Notice the subtle phrasing here; there will not be a guarantee of daily posts but there will be days where dashboards will be flooded with thankfulness. The reason being that a daily deadline is just as daunting as it sounds, but an overarching goal allows for much more fluidity. This is more than a New Years resolution, more than just another blog and that's why I'm making it public, posting often and spreading the good word as much as I see fit. I hope you can help do the same. 

The rules for posting an MOG (moment of gratitude):
- quality over quantity, always
- accompanied with pictures, if possible 
- explanations must be at least one sentence long


And hey! This may be MY moments of gratitude, but the MY is meant to be personal to YOU. I want YOU to recognize YOUR moment that become YOURS for OTHERS to read, share and resonate with.

My original goal for this project was, and I want to be very clear about this sentence; I didn't (currently don't, and never  will) want this blog to be another stint in the "Mary Show". I don't want to give you 365 personal posts about my life and the way I recognize gratitude, because I don't think that's realistic or valuable or even something I want to do. This whole endeavour is a "We" movement- let my hosting of the blog simply be a catalyst: I want to share your words, among a few of my own,  to create a positive and relatable space for us to share. 

If you have a MOG- a moment of gratitude; a moment of thankful recognition, something that made you slow down and think about things differently, then please, contact me and let's get a post up. I want this project to start off as my blog then turn into something bigger.. maybe a movement, maybe a book, maybe a chronological movie starting Lea Michele... however, mostly just to spark a change within people to see that the little moments we give thanks for amount to something worth living for.