It’s become something of a tradition now, The Mighty Jimbo digital pronouncement of thanks. I spend so much of the year gobbling up all the gifts and hardly taking notice of the grace. I binge and forget I’m blessed. And I’m not just speaking of the fact that I can fill my gullet with as many tofu dogs and veggie burgers and yam-avocado sushi rolls and pumpkin-shitake tempura as I can stuff into my mouth.

I’m talking about the fact that I live a life with choices despite my inability to choose. That I live that life free to make those choices despite the fact that so often I choose not to choose.

I have a family that loves me and supports me and I know without even a shred of doubt has my back despite the fact that my back has been turned away from them for more than a decade.

I keep friends who keep me regardless of how much I keep then underneath my own needs.

I can run and climb and swim and ski and surf and ride and reach and fall and despite the fact that I bitch and moan about my aching knees or stiffening shoulders, there is nothing, NOTHING at 32 that I can’t do better than I could at 22.

Although I probably can’t do it as often.

I work from where I want, when I want and more often than not, how I want despite the fact that I really don’t want to work at all.

And for that work, I make an obscene amount of money and collect ridiculous frequent flier miles (miles currently being used as I write this particular post from 33,000 feet) and eat in fancy restaurants and sleep in ostentatious hotels and shake hands with interesting and brilliant people and accrue discounted shares of stock and receive fifty cents on the dollar for my 401K contributions and in three years haven’t spent a dime on a home phone or cell phone or office supplies or that glorious cable modem that keeps me in contact with all of you, regardless of how often I complain about the hours in airports and the ever smaller commission checks and the ISP that likes to crap out when I most want to be blowing off that work and surfing for porn.

I have been on five continents and in ten countries and hung on countless cliff sides and stood on mountain tops and walked in the sands of amazing beaches and swam in the water off perfect coastlines and danced and dined in incredible cities and have seen more and done more than most people have a right to, regardless of how much I crave to see and taste and touch and do more.

I have spent the last year with more love and more sex and more beauty and more comfort and more women than I have in my life regardless of how much I heartache I endured or how often I bitch about she-who-must-not-be-named.

And no matter what happened and why or what she did or what she said or how I felt or how much money or how much heartache, I had no regrets, no doubts, and I did know love for the first time in my life.

And I know that, really, I am rarely ever alone regardless of how often I feel lonely.

I know that when I look in the mirror a capable, strong, attractive and intelligent man is looking back at me even when I’m only looking at the scars and the blemishes and the veritable stampede of hair from where I want it to where I don’t.

I know that even if life is just a river, I have a really big paddle. And I know how to swim.

I have no debts, no responsibilities, no bills and no priorities to keep me from taking risks, and regardless of how frozen in fear I might find myself when I contemplate those risks, I know that the greatest risk is not ever taking those risks at all.

I have known no tragedy, no tempest, no disease, no disaster, faced no doom, encountered no obstacle I couldn’t climb, and yet have learned that even in the darkest places of the world, people still smile at their life, no matter how often I forget to smile at my own.

I spend so much time looking at the holes in the puzzle that I don’t see the picture. I spend so much time trying to understand the lyrics that I never hear the music. I spend so much time getting dressed that I end up missing the dance.

I get so frustrated and flustered with the painting that I forget I am holding the brush.

The very fact that I am here to write these words, my very existence even, is profoundly miraculous, biologically, chemically, cosmically, mathematically.

And for all of it, ALL of it, and all of you, I am desperately, truly, overwhelmingly thankful.

Thank you.

That being said, as soon as this plane lands, I’m gonna go surprise my family in Dallas, play with my nieces, meet my new nephew, wrestle with the dogs, ride the horses, hug my mom, and if I get home in time, eat an obscene amount of tofurkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Happy Thanksgiving.