2/15
i'm thankful for stardew valley. i'm thankful to recognize the irony that in my short break from work i am playing a game about work, but i'm thankful for how pleasing and addictive the work/wait/grow loop in the game is, even when individual gameplay experiences like combat or building aren't as good as in, say, terraria or starbound. i'm thankful for the child happiness of going to sleep in the game and waking up and stepping out of the house to see how the plants are doing. i'm thankful for how sad i was when my crop of cauliflower, which i had been counting on bringing in a lot of income, died as the season changed from spring to summer. i'm thankful to have "walked" through the fields with my scythe tearing out the remains and then hoed the field for summer crops. i'm thankful that for summer, i am growing blueberries, hops, and tomatoes and am thankful to hope that me being more on top of things will help me produce enough to expand my farm.
i'm thankful for parable of the sower, which is so good and which i can't believe i never read before. i'm thankful that even if i have to come to something late i can still come to it. i'm thankful for the narrator's hyperempathy syndrome, where she feels the pain that others feel in overwhelming waves, and i'm thankful for her determination to survive and persevere. i'm thankful for kristie chua's zine goodbye, which is beautiful and small and large at the same time and reminds me of college in all the best ways (read online/order here). i'm thankful for her thoughts on journaling, which are a great crystallization of thoughts i have about writing these notes:
i journal regularly as a way to document things as i remember them at that point in time, because i feel like things are moving too fast, and i’m just trying to gather my thoughts in one place so i can forge an understanding of my own life. i recognize that this constant documentation affects how i remember things, because what i find significant enough to write down or photograph eventually replaces the original memory, given enough time. despite this constant erasure of how i originally remembered an event, it still says a lot to me about how i chose to present these memories to myself. it says a lot about me when i’m looking back and rereading how i interpreted a small conversation, or how i processed certain emotions after a bigger event. it feels like meta text when i’m rereading something and i know i chose to leave certain details out, for whatever reason.
...
this is the version of myself that i want to present. and this version of myself will be interpreted differently based on how well or how little you know me, but i hope the confessional nature of this project allows you to feel close to me, though it’s important to recognize that this closeness is on my terms. this isn’t a comprehensive or even accurate representation of me, but it is the representation that i would like to exist at this point in time, on this certain subject.
this is the version of myself that i want to present. and this version of myself will be interpreted differently based on how well or how little you know me, but i hope the confessional nature of this project allows you to feel close to me, though it’s important to recognize that this closeness is on my terms. this isn’t a comprehensive or even accurate representation of me, but it is the representation that i would like to exist at this point in time, on this certain subject.
i'm thankful for burning peacocks, who make perfect sexy dreamy french music and whose album i listened to on the couch with d last night and am listening to again in bed with her this morning (spotify, yt). i'm thankful for the absurdity of spotify telling me that my library is too large. i'm thankful to have gotten d 3 different kinds of cookies for valentine's day and i'm thankful we are going to dinner this weekend bc we prefer the regular menu of our favorite restaurant to the special valentine's menu. i'm thankful to remember our first valentine's day, when i gave her a small assortment of last minute gifts which i hoped she would love but worried wouldn't be enough or wouldn't be right to make her happy and i'm thankful that she loved them. i'm thankful sometimes it is the thought that counts. i'm thankful to remember having laid them out on the bed in my first apartment here and to have brought her into the room for the surprise.
i'm thankful that "you can hire a small plane with, essentially, a mattress in the back for fucking," even though that is gross as hell. i'm thankful for missing asparagus tips and i'm thankful for challenging toothpaste. i'm thankful for sarah hagi's raw beef heart "big mac." i'm thankful for modes of being. i'm thankful to have made some good progress yesterday on my current web app project. i'm thankful to have solved a major problem that was confusing me with a single function call. i'm thankful that i am much better with CSS than i used to be, which is something to thank my old job for. i'm thankful for this animated gradient generator. i'm thankful to try to meditate today.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to thank you notes: