9/21/17

i'm thankful to have yesterday exchanged virtual hugs with a teammate who was also having a bad day. i'm thankful to hope that we can balance our emotional equations by expressing care to each other in the same volume and with the same intensity that strangers on the internet every day (but seemingly a lot more this past week, for some probably astrological reason?) snap at, denigrate, and belittle us. i'm thankful to have empathized with her about how she and my female coworkers have it much worse than i and my male coworkers do (i'm thankful to have been particularly disgusted by a customer who recently told her that she couldn't read)(i'm thankful to think about the nice conversation she and i had about books while waiting at the airport for our flights after the company retreat) and for her previous discussion of something that they did at her last company, which was to create a fake male support agent and role play at that person and where they found, of course, that the fake male support agent was on average granted a baseline level of respect and authority that the real female support agents didn't get when they claimed their own identities. i'm thankful to recognize how totally fucked that is, even though i know that does not really actually make anything better.

i'm thankful that though it is hard because, in addition to the weight of work, of the shitty things that are happening in the wilder world every day to not feel immense dread all the time, i still find moments of happiness. i'm thankful for the look friends share when someone they both hate enters the room. i'm thankful for this micro-parody of makeup videos. i'm thankful for this video of liam gallagher making tea. i'm thankful that pierce got a tinyletter. i'm thankful for the gentle chamber ambience of the penguin cafe orchestra, which is nice music in the morning. i'm thankful to have had oatmeal for breakfast for the first time in a while.