i'm thankful, reading the latest jonathan franzen novel, that i do not have any issues
i'm thankful, reading the latest jonathan franzen novel, that i do not have any issues (at least that i'm aware of) about my parents, that while i may have issues from them (both genetic inheritances (anxiety, depression, a sweet tooth, probably eventually dementia!) and ways their being during my upbringing with them shaped my own way of being (a sweet tooth, worrying about money, being an antisocial homebody)), i can't, like, think of any major (or really even minor!) decision in my adult life i've made in which my relationship to my parents and what they'd think of the decision and how they might have made the decision themselves has been at all a conscious factor for me.
i'm thankful, reading this jonathan franzen novel about, for example, a smart college student who leaves what seems like a very happy romantic relationship and the (in this case literal) safety of the ivory tower to give up his draft deferment for vietnam because of...some complicated issue that he needs to work out to "show" his father (?), leading me to do the novel reading internal monologue equivalent of when you shout at a character in a TV show like "NO YOU DUMBASS YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THAT," that i have never ever felt this sort of pressure in my life, that when i think of what i want to do, i mostly just think about what i want to do (or now what we (d and i) want to do), which is something that's easy to take for granted but that, as the miserable lives of the family in the novel shows, is truly truly a fucking gift!
i'm thankful that i just feel like i love them (without that needing to be a major part of my life, which belongs to me) and they love me and there's not a lot of baggage to tote through my life. i'm thankful that i don't have children and don't want them and i'm thankful that d also doesn't want children and i'm thankful, again, for my parents, who have never in the slightest expressed any pressure about us having children or displeasure about us not having them. i'm thankful for emily gould, my all-time favorite blogger, who, after a long absence, is blogging in newsletter form regularly now about having children and the latest jonathan franzen novel and other important topics.
i'm thankful for the latest jonathan franzen novel being a "return to form," especially after not liking his last one because it was a departure from form, and i'm thankful for some other books i've been reading lately: mordew by alex pheby (a dickensian fantasy novel about a city built on the dead body of god, great for people who don't usually like fantasy novels (me)), the black jacobins by c.l.r. james (recommended by a coworker, about the haitian revolution, an old book that wears its age sometimes but is also a vivid and powerful history), on compromise by rachel greenwald smith (interesting essays that go deep on the concept of compromise and its effect on culture and history), and a touch of jen by beth morgan (a dark and funny tale about instagram obsession, if you loved halle butler's books or ingrid goes west, you'll also love this).
i'm thankful, since i am always wanting d to make more art because she is so talented, that she has been doing inktober by doing a different drawing of miso every day and they have been very good and you can see them all if you follow her on instagram (here is a one of my favs). i'm thankful that after a period during which work was really grinding her down, things have been going really well for her lately (i'm thankful that on a zoom call with her, her therapist remarked that her voice sounded different, happier) and there is promise on the horizon. i'm thankful that things are what we call in tech company jargon, "directionally correct."
i'm thankful that work for me has also been going well, that though month 2 as an engineer has involved more friction and stress than month one (as well as having to go back to conducting interviews for my support team replacement after an interview reprieve of a few months), i'm still so happy that it is (most of the time) my job to read and write and talk about and think about code and that my manager and coworkers seem to think i'm doing a good job of it. i'm thankful that in less than a month i'll get to meet some of my coworkers at the job i have worked remotely at throughout the pandemic never having met at our company retreat in utah. i'm thankful that though it seemed like kh wasn't going to come to the retreat, she's coming now, which is very meaningful to me because our friendship started at a retreat at our last company together.
i'm thankful for josh comeau's css for javascript developers course, which we got a group buy of at work and which is really great so far. i'm thankful to have recorded a musical setting and made a simple webpage for this guided meditation my friend and coworker k gave. i'm thankful that when l was visiting j in brighton they recorded a video while they were hanging out and sent it to me. i'm thankful that e came over for pizza the other night and i'm thankful that we have been friends for five years now (ever since she did a skillshare course by emily gould that used a thank you note as a prompt), and that though i am selfishly sad she's moving away, i'm happy because it seems like it's going to be really great for her. i'm thankful we're going to get to do karaoke together on friday.
i'm thankful for josh comeau's css for javascript developers course, which we got a group buy of at work and which is really great so far. i'm thankful to have recorded a musical setting and made a simple webpage for this guided meditation my friend and coworker k gave. i'm thankful that when l was visiting j in brighton they recorded a video while they were hanging out and sent it to me. i'm thankful that e came over for pizza the other night and i'm thankful that we have been friends for five years now (ever since she did a skillshare course by emily gould that used a thank you note as a prompt), and that though i am selfishly sad she's moving away, i'm happy because it seems like it's going to be really great for her. i'm thankful we're going to get to do karaoke together on friday.
i'm thankful that when we went to the grocery store today, after several weeks of going to the grocery store and thinking that there were no more nectarines and feeling sad and then finding that actually there were fewer and they were in a different place, that this week there were finally no more nectarines, even though that made me sad, because it is an opportunity to appreciate how many great nectarines i had over the course of the summer at all times of day but especially diced onto my breakfast cereal each morning. i'm thankful for the reliability of nectarines, which can go bad but which, versus peaches, always feel like a safer choice, and, unlike many fruits, are ones that i can get a lot of enjoyment from at both ends of the ripeness spectrum. i'm thankful that mangoes were on sale this week, which will help me come down from the high of summer nectarines.
i'm thankful that i have done mushrooms each saturday for the past three saturdays, even though the sumo total of those experiences is a reinforcement of the understanding that i will probably never get to have a full-on mushroom or acid trip while also taking the SSRI that i will (probably, happily!) be taking for the rest of my life (though there is always the question of what if i just took more 😈). i'm thankful, still, that those drugs still do something to my consciousness that i enjoy, and i'm thankful that mushrooms feel much gentler on my body than acid, which is more powerful in terms of the trip i experience but also makes me feel like shit as i'm coming down. i'm thankful for the legs up on the wall yoga position, which i can make myself do even when i am too lazy to do actual yoga (which is most of the time). i'm thankful for my most recent anxiety prescription of gabapentin, which seems effective and which hilariously miso's vet also prescribed for her after an anxious vet visit.
i'm thankful to d for procuring the mushrooms for me and for the many other wonderful things she has done for me lately, which are too numerous to count but probably the best one is painstakingly replacing the cups of my noise cancelling headphones, something i never would have done myself or expected another person to do but which has made them new for me again. i'm thankful clairo's sling, which i think is just a perfect thing, an artistic whole that i can't imagine being surpassed as my album of the year. i'm thankful for how much it feels like it creates a physical space, like a site-specific installation of sound, kind of in the same way that astral weeks can be seen as a terroir record for a place that doesn't exist but feels like it could. i'm thankful, in the same vein, for khruangbin's "so we won't forget," which d and i listened to on audio sharing while walking to the train station in the sunshine and feels like a summer afternoon in a bottle.
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