I know I can be a real Pollyanna sometimes. There's a reason for that. I made a conscious decision, a couple of years ago, to try to banish, or, to use a five-dollar word, to eschew negativity in my life. It's been transformative, something I recommend for everyone, actually. But that's a topic for another day. Anyway, take away the negativity and what you're left with, I guess, is Pollyanna. Or Paulieanna.
I had another Pollyanna moment yesterday.
There is a street in Provincetown named Ships Way Road. It is about a 10-minute walk from my house, maybe 30 seconds from where I work. It's a road that most people in town don't even know is there, much less where it leads. Well, at the end of this little-known road is a little-known open, unspoiled space called Shank Painter Pond Wildlife Sanctuary. It's huge, it's open, and it's a place where I have been able to take my dogs over the years where they can run around unleashed and enjoy their dogness.  There is a single walkway which leads to a nicely constructed viewing deck, which overlooks the pond itself and the adjacent wetlands, but other than that it's completely wild and there are acres and acres of unspoiled wilderness. 
Anyway, it had rained most of the day yesterday, That was kind of a bummer, because it was my day off and I was hoping to be able to enjoy one of those long, sun-drenched spring walks I've been waiting so long for.  But by 4:00 or 4:30 in the afternoon, the rain had finally abated, and the sun began to come through, just in time for the afternoon dog walk, so I decided to take the dog to Shank Painter Pond. 
I stood on that nicely constructed overlook. The air smelled crisp, if crisp is a smell. It smelled like air that had been washed and hung out to dry in the sun. The sky was 1970s-eyeshadow blue; as if once the rain ended, the sky said to itself, "I gotta get pretty before the sun goes down!" There were still some Maxfield Parrish clouds painted high in the sky; and it was cool, but a nice cool, like the cool of your car's A/C blowing on your face on a 90° August afternoon. I looked out at the pond. Even though it still has the rather dull grey and brown palette of an early Cape Cod spring, it was beautiful. It took on the glow of an expectant mother, thinly concealed fecundity and the promise of so much life, hidden for now, but oh-so there.
So, that's when I had my Pollyanna moment. At first, I noticed how big it all was, marveled at the sheer acreage of all this; and how funny it is that probably 90% of people in Provincetown don't even know that it's there. That made me think how lucky I was that I do know about it. How lucky I am that I can walk for 10 minutes and have this whole, huge, amazing place pretty much all to myself, any time I want.
My mom would have called it "counting your blessings". I call it "conscious appreciation". Call it what you will, I think it's really important, like petting the dog or telling your husband that you love him or that he looks nice in those jeans. You have to consciously appreciate the things in your life that make you happy, the things in your life that are good. With your mind you have to really appreciate these things, to be thankful for them if you want to think of it that way, to remember how easy it would be for things to be different. Once you start thinking that way, you'd be amazed at how long the list starts to become. Instead of thinking things like, "I really wish I had a dishwasher," you start thinking more like, "I live in a beautiful house." 
Anyway, so I sat there, looking out at Shank Painter Pond and the largest quaking bog in the entire world (it's true, you can Google it), only 10 minutes from my home, listening to the peepers below singing a duet with the spring birds above, consciously appreciating stuff. I was mostly thinking, as I often do, of the place where I live, this amazing, quirky, bi-polar mix of earth, air, fire and water.
It may not be obvious, but I have lived my life pretty much like a leaf, floating on the surface of a brook in the woods. I have always lacked direction, just sort of floated along through life, more or less allowing the current and the landscape to push me along. "Let go, let God", some would say. "Lack of initiative" or "Squandered potential" others would say. "Too much pot" might be the closest to the truth, but what I usually say myself is that "things just kind of worked out that way." Sometimes I think it's my greatest weakness, and sometimes I think it's my greatest strength.
So I began to appreciate yesterday not only the beautiful town where I live, but the very fact that I'm here at all. Some wisdom, some force, some quirk of fate, knew that this is where I needed to be. And here I am. Some gentle breeze just nudged that little leaf downstream to just the right place. How amazing is that?
Then the dog reminded me that we had places to go. I got up, and soon my mind returned to stuff like, "I can't believe how much the electric bill is," or, "How many days until I can sleep in?" But I was smiling, and feeling very, very blessed.