I have always wanted to keep a journal.

As a child, I had various notebooks, diaries, and the like with which I would regularly begin to log daily activities, thoughts, and plans.

I had grand visions of being seated in my library years later, perhaps with my grandchildren at my side, recounting from my life's collection of journals some youthful struggle as they listened intently.

In later years I would envision myself as the artistic, professorial type.

I imagined sitting in coffee shops or urban parks, jotting down notes about my life that I would later review, perhaps while drinking a fine wine or smoking a good cigar.

To that end, I've purchased, over the years, several lovely leather-bound journals with gilded pages and silk markers.

I got about as far as I did with those childhood notebooks. Which is to say, I don't have much yet in the way of written stories to share with my grandchildren.

So I guess it's good that I don't have any grandchildren.

My latest foray into journaling started with purchasing a copy of The Daily Stoic Journal. Unlike the notebooks, diaries, and fancy journals I've tried to work with previously, this journal is not filled with endless blank pages.

Instead, it is divided into 52 weeks, each covering a different principle of Stoicism. Each day contains a prompt for a morning and evening reflection upon some particular aspect of that week's principle.

This week's principle is counting one's blessings instead of obsessing over things one might be missing in life.

Today's prompt is "What blessings can I count right now?"

As I said yesterday, I've been somewhat depressed for the last couple of weeks. As a result, I wasn't having the easiest time coming up with answers to that question.

To begin with, it felt silly. Making a list of things to be thankful for felt like a waste of time. Besides that, nothing great has happened in the last couple of weeks.

In fact, some crappy stuff has happened, which made listing things I could count as a blessing even harder.

Eventually, I decided to keep it super simple. Here's my list:

—I am able-bodied and can walk to work easily.

—My basic living expenses do not present an insurmountable financial challenge.

—I have no debt.

—I have the freedom to set my own schedule today.

—I will enjoy many things that are luxuries for others, such as drum practice and choosing the food I eat.

The last one got me thinking about the small blessings I take for granted.

I mean, seriously, think about all the people in the world who don't have much choice as to what they'll eat today. Or how many people, especially kids, would love the opportunity to learn an instrument.

I felt ashamed that it took me so long to develop my list. I had a little room left, so I decided to think of the simplest, most basic thing I could count as a blessing.

And it was. . .

. . .that I have a place to poop.

When you gotta go, you gotta go. But can you imagine never having a place to go?

Compared to the 500,000 people in the United States who are homeless, I live like an opulent king in regards to my variety of choices wherein I can take care of my most basic bodily functions.

Three bathrooms in my house, one at the office, plus another half dozen in the building where my office is located.

In San Francisco, where there are 50,000 homeless people, one of the favored places to poop is on the escalators leading down to the subway.

It's not the most comfortable spot, but when the subway is closed at night, it affords more privacy than the sidewalk.

Recently the city had to call in a HazMat team to repair an escalator because all of the internal workings were gummed up with human poop.

The problem is so bad that you can report the finding of poop on the city's website, and someone even created an interactive map to draw attention to the problem.

You can find that map on Google.

The next time I'm having a bad day, or I'm disappointed by something I don't have, I will remember that I have a place to poop.

And I will count that as a blessing.