9/9
i'm thankful that after it rained all day yesterday, a wave of cool air came in, which made this morning feel like the first flush of fall. i'm thankful that it was supposed to rain all day today too but now it isn't. i'm thankful to have gone for a run and to have not ended it with my clothes completely soaked through with sweat. i'm thankful that the warm weather will be back in a few days, but i'm thankful for this taste of days to come. i'm thankful to have had shin ramen for lunch. i'm thankful for the built-in portion control of ramen in a cup, since when i make it from a packet in a bowl it's always too much broth and i feel bloated afterward. i'm thankful for the espresso-flavored mini snickers i had for dessert (check your local halloween aisle, they also have chili ones and "sweet and salty", which basically already describes the flavor profile of a snickers and so seems somewhat redundant).
i'm thankful i did not have a nervous breakdown and become afraid that i was dying or was in imminent danger of dying and have to seek medical attention as i have around three (3) separate labor day weekends in the past decade, which feels like a kind of progress. i'm thankful that i have lost a little weight since i moved my runs to the morning and have been able to go longer every day and also started doing those arbitrary daily pushups, not because i think losing weight is virtuous or is going to make any real difference to my health, but because usually when i look at myself in the mirror i'm comparing myself to some generalized and hazy platonic ideal of myself (there aren't a lot of old pictures of me because i used to hate having my picture taken for this very reason, and the fact that i don't hate it as much feels like another kind of progress) and i so rarely measure up to it and "look like myself" (the way i imagine myself to be from inside) and that makes me sad, to not like the way i look, and lately when i've looked in the mirror, i've felt i look like "myself" slightly more often than normal.
i'm thankful that though i feel very anxious about going to work tomorrow, i know that is something i always feel to a certain extent on a sunday and that i always feel extra extra hard on the sunday after a vacation. i'm thankful that though knowing this (and knowing that lots of other people have those same kinds of feelings) doesn't make me feel that much less anxious, it is still good to remember it. i'm thankful that i am very respected and appreciated at work, even though a side effect of that can be me putting too much pressure on myself. i'm thankful that at this job i am always growing and learning, even though that can be stressful. i'm thankful to feel good about the future in general, even if i feel some anxiety about tomorrow and the day after that and the rest of the week and so on. i'm thankful that though i had planned to do some work this afternoon to try to get ahead of things for next week, i'm going to try not to do that (i'm thankful to have stopped my brain from looping and made some notes about the things i was planning to do to help get them out of my brain, since one thing that i think can lead to me ruminating is the idea that if i don't keep thinking about these ideas i will forget them)(i'm thankful to remember a habit i had when i got my first smart phone, when i was first starting grad school, which was to constantly record voice memos of ideas i had, which felt important even though i never listened back to them).
i'm thankful for this ask metafilter thread of things that people have given up doing. i'm thankful for this tweet, which starts with the tone of the banal advice in one of those threads and then becomes, through the power of weirdness, a kind of poem. i'm thankful for this tweet about masturbating with an electric toothbrush (something i also tried as a youth). i'm thankful for this bot collecting fragments of the letters of virginia woolf and vita sackville-west, which is my favorite twitter bot since the susan sontag diary bot. i'm thankful to metafilter also for this post introducing me to this video of a group of punk-feminist eighth graders known as 'dirty girls' in santa monica in 1996.
i'm thankful that we ordered pizza last night from the good pizza place. i'm thankful that we always get the same two pizzas from them: one which has red sauce and sausage and pepperoni and whole olives and onions and one that has more mozzarella and prosciutto and roasted grapes and arugula and honey. i'm thankful for how pleasurable it is to alternate between slices of the "sweet" and "savory" pizza. i'm thankful that because it is expensive, i usually restrain myself so we can have leftovers the next day, but i didn't do that yesterday and ate all the pizza i wanted. i'm thankful we watched the christina tosi episode of chef's table, which was enjoyable, even though that show normally feels pretty flat and airless to me, because i like her as a person and have actually eaten some of the food in the show and so could remember/imagine what it tasted like more than i can with most of the food on that kind of show.
i'm thankful that last night before bed, i started reading crudo. i'm thankful that though i bounced off of the lonely city when i tried reading it a while ago, p tweeting about how good crudo was made me decide to give it a chance. i'm thankful i did, since i really like it so far—it feels like a melange of geoff dyer and gertrude stein and frank o'hara and lots of other ways of thinking and feeling i love ("short skirts but in sentences-form"). i'm thankful for the tumbling run-ons, the pinball of the voice, grace notes of acidity squeezed and zested over the crowded trains of thought. i'm thankful for the description of the 2016 election as feeling "like the Red Wedding episode only actual and huge," for the weight "only actual and huge" is carrying there. i'm thankful that it feels like if a novel was twitter (not the individual unit of the tweet, but the cumulative effect of being in the stream) in the best possible way.
i'm thankful also for this description of twitter. i'm thankful that it's possible to sing without crying. i'm thankful for this taxidermy. i'm thankful to think that inner space is finite.
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