I should acknowledge that I’m thankful you’re even reading this – SCN Encourager

But I’m going to save my bow to you for later in the week.

Why proclaim today that I’m grateful to you – and every other reader of the Encourager – and spoil the big literary crescendo I’ve got scheduled for three days from now?

Nope. Can’t do it.

I’m a man with a plan… even if I don’t know quite what it is yet.

But one thing is certain.

I have much to be thankful for.

And I’m going to clue you in on a few of the more unique ones over the next four days.

(See? You’re going to fit in perfectly!)

I’ll confess that sometimes I don’t appreciate life’s big blessings in the way that I should.

You know what I’m talking about: a loving spouse, three grown daughters, lots of family and friends, a visionary boss, and a job that has meaning.

I’m very fortunate – despite the shadow of a 2015 calendar that seems to be more filled up with weddings than Tiger games.

It’s weird that it took this sarcastic jolt from “TheTweetofGod” to lift up and improve my Thanksgiving week perspective.

“TheTweetofGod” Twitter feed apparently operates under the well known 80/20 principle, in that 80% of its tweets are typically offensive and irreverent with the remaining 20% totally hilarious.

The only way I can even personally justify checking in with site once in awhile is because it’s British and comes from “across the pond” and not from one of our area high schools.

But you have to love its tweets like: “The problem with immortality is there’s no real motivation to get anything done.”

And this leads me to what I’m thankful for today.

And I’ll bet you’re thankful for this, too… even though this does not rank up there with any of our “big blessings” of life.

I’m thankful that there is NOTHING AUTOMATIC about what we do.

Yep, there may be a Veg-o-Matic out there for others.

But there’s no School-o-Matic out there for us.

There simply couldn’t be since our work is anything but routine.

After all, we’re school people.

Everyday we’re immersed in a continually changing vortex of personalities, situations, and opportunities.

This is just one of the awesome blessings that everyone in our tribe shares.

Although other fields have tried going the “o-matic” route, it’s not for us.

There’s a Tune-o-Matic that offers a fixed bridge device for guitar tuning.

There’s Worlab’s Drug-o-Matic software that helps drug makers concoct a catchy name for every new drug they’re about to market.

Slate Magazine even has a Career-o-Matic input process that charts the professional peaks and valleys of Hollywood film directors and producers.

Slate likes to present consistently stunning graphics that compare winners and losers.

So, I’m going to stop right about here, if it’s okay with you.

I don’t want my “visionary boss” to contact Slate Magazine to see if that Career-o-Matic tool could be used in my evaluation.

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