11/29
i'm thankful that yesterday was a really fucking bad day at work. i'm thankful to have the hindsight to recognize that it was going to be a bad day, that i probably couldn't have prevented that, but to also recognize that what made it really fucking bad were my expectations and perceptions and fixations, which, while not totally under my control, since the mind is a black box, are things i can at least try harder to control to make my days not feel really fucking bad. i'm thankful that this does not mean forgetting the things that made me so angry, or the person that made me so angry, because i do not want to forget and i need to make things better at my job, but i'm thankful to work on myself to prevent those things from consuming me the way they did yesterday.
i'm thankful that this does not feel like cowardice but like self preservation—i could feel my stomach hurt and my blood pressure rise yesterday in a way that i haven't felt in a long time and that did not feel good at all and for the sake of my health i need to try to live in a way that doesn't cause those things to happen, even if i'm having a bad day where there are things and a person whose actions make me so angry. i'm thankful to keep reminding myself to take deep cleansing breaths. i'm thankful to remember that i didn't listen to music while i worked yesterday, which is often something that helps my moods. i'm thankful that i know i am doing a good job and that i am respected and loved by most of the other people on my team and to remind myself that doing a good job should be a reward in and of itself, that praise and recognition don't really matter that much. i'm thankful for the coworkers i had DMs with who helped me to vent the steam of my stress to make it possible for me to get through the rest of the day without doing something i'd regret.
i'm thankful for one thing westworld gets at, which is how a good night's sleep can feel like a reset button, at least temporarily. i'm thankful that when i first woke up this morning, i didn't feel bad anymore and am thankful that this absence of feeling bad hung around for a little while before i started feeling bad again. i'm thankful to have experienced firsthand what it feels like and so to have a short term memory of the state that i want my body to be in that i can aspire to and work toward. i'm thankful to have this space to write about these feelings, which is always a helpful thing for me. i'm thankful to hope that (i can make it so) today will be a little better than yesterday. i'm thankful that while i don't believe in miracles, i am hopeful for incremental positive change.
i'm thankful for my rain jacket and pants, which made taking out the trash and recycling in the storm after dinner last night not so bad. i'm thankful for last night's episode of the walking dead, which even if it was based around a stupid character who made a totally illogical decision without any sense of why she would make it, because it felt like it borrowed a formal trick from lost. i'm thankful for lost, which i love even though i know a lot of people hate it and which, if i am fortunate enough to be able to someday retire (and there is a world left that i can retire into), i look forward to binge watching. i'm thankful that two new episodes of d's favorite cartoon, bee and puppycat, were released yesterday and i'm thankful that though you have to watch them in this stupid, limited platform on a mobile device (as opposed to youtube, where the earlier episodes are), it is totally worth it because they are surreal and hilarious and moving and great. i'm thankful that the new episodes have a larger canvas, that they have an internal coherence and heft that feels more like a tv show without losing the essential strangeness at the heart of the show.
i'm thankful for d's comics, even when they are sad. i'm thankful to intimately know her "sweet sweet keyboard cadence." i'm thankful princess beatrice 'sliced ed sheeran's cheek when she tried to 'knight' james blunt with a sword in a party prank." i'm thankful for the new big winter coat that i got from uniqlo: i'm thankful for the fleece-lined pockets and mid-thigh length and little astronaut seals (i don't know how to describe them properly) inside the wrists of the sleeves. i'm thankful that to hope that it will snow while we are in chicago, though so far the winter has been mild. i'm thankful for the large glass jar i use as my water glass during the day, the size of which means i don't have to constantly refill it. i'm thankful for our humidifier and for our house's heat, which generally works well, if somewhat unevenly, and am thankful that the gas fueling it isn't very expensive (especially in contrast to the electricity powering our air conditioners in the summer), which means we don't have to feel guilty when we turn it up. i'm thankful for sweatpants and for thick warm socks.
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