It’s the Fourth Friday Challenge for November. My friend Paul and I, both posting daily in 2011, decided to give each other a job once a month to keep things spicy. In his words, “we want to push ourselves to do something more interesting than we might otherwise.”

And here is his challenge to me:

What are you thankful I didn’t ask you to write about?

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I could go the easy route, Paul, and say that I’m thankful for you not to make me list things I’m thankful for — although I’m grateful for that for sure. Facebook has accelerated my growing distrust and dread of the Mandatory Gratitude Access Holiday, with all the, all the, so very much many lists of things people are grateful for, all day relentless posting blah blah.

I could go another easy route and name something of a similar vein, that is, the Life List. I don’t want to provide a link, you can do the GooGoo if you want. I have a lot of issues with Life Lists, this treacherous meme on steroids. Again, I’m grateful you did not have me make a Life List, but this is too easy too.

I guess I’ll zoom out and say THANK YOU for not making me think critically nor blue-skyingly. I don’t want to dig deep, form opinions,  pros,  cons nor analyze anything at depth. I also don’t want to think about things that make me feel good or bad or things I should do to make me feel better or things that I feel that I deserve. I want no what-ifs, dredging, nor dwelling.

Perhaps you knew yesterday’s feeding frenzy would render me useless to think too hard, or care too much. If so, good call. I’m thankful to you for not making me work!

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Read Paul’s response to my challenge here. You’ll see on his blog my challenge was in the same vein. And I love his response (particularly about bananas) and his discovery of why I gave him this particular challenge.