5/15

i’m thankful that this afternoon i was waiting on a coworker to join my video call and staring blankly at the dark mode text editor where earlier in the morning i had written stream of consciousness reassurances to myself when i felt overwhelmed and like nothing i was doing was going right and there was so much of it, just endless struggle, and anyway, i was sitting there for a bit and my coworker hadn't joined yet and he had said he would just be two seconds before i started the call and at that point my eyes, which had glazed over into stress trance, not really looking at anything, and i saw that i had two slack notifications and that they were from him, that a few minutes prior he had written "can you hear me" and then, a beat later, "lol," as i sat there, completely unaware that he was on the call, muttering ruminations about it all being too much to myself and picking at my face and lips, and that was so embarrassing but he laughed and restarted his computer, because he kindly assumed the problem was with him, at which point i realized it was because i needed to unpair my bluetooth headphones, i flipped the switch and he came back and i could hear his voice, and he laughed, and i laughed, and in a weird way it actually made me feel better, to be embarrassed in front of a friend who i knew didn't care and who i feel safe with, and when i apologized that he had to restart his computer, he said that it never hurts to restart, and then after the laughter we had a nice meeting where we talked about something simple we could do that might help our coworkers to meet a difficult goal and we said to each other what we say to each other every time we have a meeting which is basically that meetings often suck but we always feel energized and good after meeting with each other and so i guess in summary sometimes i'm thankful for meetings.