Gratitude always starts with celebrating the little wins in life. I know that. But it always feels forced to me. Even fake.

You see, I had a series of little wins recently. Little wins worthy of celebration, like:

• Got my first Stripe payment of USD199 for creating a JAMstack website, because of my marketing efforts in Juicy Jan. This is a hard-earned little win for Sweet Jam Sites. 
• Lenny Bron from theblogproofreader for being the perfect, easygoing first customer I didn’t deserve.
• Hit a 100 items on Keto List Singapore. One hundred is a good number for any curated list. It’s a pre-set milestone that means I can stop adding new ones like crazy, for now.
• Better money habits and literacy, and started tracking and planning out my monthly expenses and learning about investing
• I got a whole month to have FUN now, thanks to Fun Feb. What’s not to celebrate?
• Because I hit my weight loss goals and then some (looking too gaunt in fact), I can now be less strict on keto. I just started introducing a little more carbs, though still within low carb limits. But it does mean I have more food choices now! Yayy! 

I tried to feel grateful, excitement, joy, for all the things on that list. I really did. Writing them down helped somewhat. But after five minutes, it always kind of feels…meh. I’m always just…on to the next thing, towards my bigger goal. Sometimes I wonder if having a bigger goal to shoot towards is blocking my immediate goals of enjoying the present moment, of being grateful of the little wins. The little wins matter so little in the bigger scheme of things, on a practical note. Yet, every journey starts somewhere, with the first step. Without these initial wins, how do I get to the bigger ones? Yet am I living too much in the future, that I’m disembodied from the present? It’s like a time traveler from the future, out of his time and his era, lost in the past, always pining for the future he was from.

I would really like to love little wins. I really do.

What can I do with my time-traveling future self, to bring him back to the present?