a little something

i'm thankful always to stop doing something for a while and then come back to it, to take a break. i'm thankful for the return of today in tabs, which has quickly become my lunchtime reading staple once again, not just for the thing itself, but also for the notion that you can stop doing something for a while and then come back to it and it can still work and the people who knew it will still be there. (i'm thankful to also belatedly say how much i enjoyed brian feldman's bnet, which ended recently but has some excellent archives you should check it).

i'm also thankful that while, for the early years of this newsletter, i was still really banking on somehow this newsletter being a route to micro fame and fortune, when i write this now, i really am writing it for me and for the sake of writing it and what that does for my consciousness/memory/emotions rather than what it could "do for my career" (which i say not to malign other people who write for that reason, which is a perfectly good reason to write, especially if you lean into it better than i ever have been able to, but not a reason that historically worked well for me)  i'm thankful, as someone who values stability and security, that i have a steady job that pays me well and where i am respected and cared for and that enables me to be creative sometimes, even if it takes up a lot of time and energy.

i'm thankful i have once again been slowly building a small yoga practice back into my daily life (very basic: some cat/cow, some sun salutations, a warrior sequence, pigeon pose, plow pose, seated forward bend, headstand), which on one hand is such an annoyance (i have really chafed this winter more than any other winter before against the need to spend my time on daily exercise in order to maintain my physical and mental health), but, ultimately, i'm always glad to have done a session after i do it and i feel like it's been helping me pull my body together and build distance back into my runs as the weather has gotten warmer. i'm thankful that i dropped my prozac down from 60mg to 40mg, which, a month or so out, feels like the right choice.

i'm thankful that my boss is back after a month on sabbatical. i'm thankful to recognize how life-dominating work can be for me and i'm thankful to have practices like these notes and yoga and playing music with d and reading which can form a counterbalance. i'm thankful for the book there's no such thing as an easy job by kikuko tsumura. i'm thankful for piranesi by susanna clarke, which is a short weird novel that i devoured and which i liked so much has got me over the hump of starting her book jonathan strange and mr. norell, which i tried and bounced off of a bunch over the years. i'm thankful for the jagged anger of minor feelings by cathy park hong and the free world by louis menand (even though the latter feels very basic and obvious, it is the kind of capsule intellectual history i love about a period that has always dominated my interest).

i'm thankful, even though it is boomer rockist hagiography, for the apple TV+ series 1971, since a) i have always been a sucker for boomer rockist hagiography and b) the historical footage they've compiled for this show is so good and it's been nice to be able to share it with d, who doesn't know that music and those musicians like i do. (i'm thankful to remember when i was sixteen years old and had a walkman CD player with exactly four CDs: queen's greatest hits, the who sell out, live at leeds, and led zeppelin (I)). i'm thankful for this new bong we got after our last bong broke, which is very nice.

i'm thankful for mare of easttown because i did not know how much i needed an incredibly twisty and plotty drama to binge watch last week but i really did! i'm thankful, as someone who does not watch saturday night live regularly, for this sketch about the mare of easttown, which was very good. i'm thankful for ziwe, which has continued her very entertaining interview style while also including  musical skits like "wet diaper goo gah,", which made me laugh harder than anything i can remember recently.

i'm thankful that i had a week off recently and we went to seattle for the first time. i'm thankful for the cheap and easy amtrak ride from portland to seattle. i'm thankful it was supposed to rain every day we were there but it didn't. i'm thankful for walking like ten miles a day on vacation and the feeling of coming back to your hotel room and sinking into the bed. i'm thankful to eat fresh seafood on the water and for the post-vax thrill of eating in restaurants. i'm thankful that our hotel room had a soaking tub.

i'm thankful that i have dental insurance, since a few weeks ago, one of my wisdom teeth which has been in a state of "eruption" for years which my previous dentist (the best dentist i have ever had) said to just ignore unless it was hurting, shifted somehow and started to hurt more and more, and i'm thankful that there was a dentist a couple of miles away that i could make an appointment with and i'm thankful that though the staff was really nice, the dentist (who decided that all my wisdom teeth should now come out) had a really crappy bedside manner that made me feel like shit. i'm thankful that they had an online portal where i could cancel my appointment so i didn't have to do it on the phone. i'm thankful that my tooth stopped hurting and that d and i are going to try another dentist together.

i'm thankful for d, who found clever ways to make our tiny kitchen more usable. i'm thankful, as a person who is like missing the chip in his brain that makes sustained periods of online shopping enjoyable, that she likes researching various products at length and depth, since sometimes i need to buy a product and i do not want to do that. i'm thankful that though the bougie grocery store we went to to buy the limited season fancy local strawberries didn't have any, to have bought nectarines at the normal grocery store. i'm thankful that we have a big watermelon in the fridge that we bought for a cookout last weekend but forgot about to have with dinner this week. i'm thankful for cold fruit.