The Recession: Why I am Thankful for it

The recession of the last few years has been difficult for many of us. Cuts in pay, loss of jobs, and the ever rising prices on goods and services has made life for many of us much more challenging than we ever dreamed possible. It hasn't been fun for any of us. 

However, looking back over the year, as I often do at this time of Thanksgiving, I find that this recession as hard as it has hit most of us, has for me been something that I am thankful for for a number of reasons. 

The most important reason I am thankful for the recession, is that due to the financial difficulty it threw my family into I have been able to realize a life long dream of mine. One that I doubt I would have ever had the courage to pursue if the recession had made it a necessity. 

I have always dreamed of being a professional writer. I always pictured myself sitting at a keyboard and making money from the one thing I felt passionate about and enjoyed immensely. Writing. As a teen and a young adult I wanted desperately to fulfill that dream. 

I simply lacked the self confidence to do so. I was afraid of rejection. So, writing remained a hobby and my dream remained just that a dream. 

That all began changing this spring. After my husband and I got through a very difficult and seemingly endless winter, we knew that with our hours cut at work we had to find some source of additional income in order to survive. With jobs in short supply like many other people we turned to the Internet. 

With my husband's encouragement I began writing online for pay. While the pay was not great the couple of hundred dollars I managed to bring in a month helped to pay the bills. It also brought my desire to write professionally alive. A couple of weeks ago I was offered a real paid professional ghost writing job. I am now writing professionally, and if my income keeps growing at the rate it is now, by spring I will be able to quit my day job and write professionally full time. Something, I would have never done had it not been for this recession. 

The recession has also helped us cut a huge expense from our budget and at the same time improved the comfort of our home. 

The home we own is old and has always been heated by fuel gas heat. This was an expensive way to heat during the winter and did not keep our home at all warm as the furnace was old. A few years ago we tried to convert to natural gas and found that due to the age and type of heating pipes through out our house that such a conversion would cost more than our yearly income. 

Last winter just heating our home took all our savings. So, we knew that we had to find a solution to our heating problem before another winter hit. 

The solution turned out to be a wood pellet stove. Not only has it cut our heating bill in half but for the first time our home is actually warm. No sweaters for me this winter. 

The recession has also due to the cut in job hours allowed for my husband and I to spend more time together. We find that we really enjoy each others company and have been having a wonderful time despite the economic hardships we experienced at the beginning of this recession. 

So, this Thanksgiving as odd as it may seem, I will count this recession among those things like health, love, and happiness as something I am thankful for.