thank you notes 2/12
i'm thankful i didn't get offered the job i wanted. i'm thankful i found out via email yesterday evening after dinner. i'm thankful i am such a connoisseur of the language of rejection that i knew from the beginning of the opening line of the email from the manager that showed up in the email notification on my lock screen, which read, "first off, i want to say," that i was not being offered the job (i'm thankful to wonder whether anyone has ever been happy to receive an email that began "first off, i want to say,"). i'm thankful that i was considered a good enough candidate to do two interviews and a practical assignment, which made me feel like i really had a chance at the job (i'm thankful that maybe i did really have a chance, that it wasn't only illusory, and that things just didn't work out once we got to the end of the line). i'm thankful that the team members i skyped with in the second interview described me to their manager as "really personable, highly intelligent, and super nice." i'm thankful that they struck me as really personable, highly intelligent, and super nice as well, and that we had good conversations with each other, even if those good conversations nurtured my hope that i might be offered the job, which i ultimately was not.
i'm thankful for the rejection email's inevitable second paragraph pivot ("that said,") and for the interesting linguistic glitch later in that sentence, when the manager wrote "we are moving forward with other candidates at this time who are stronger fits for our team's current needs" (i'm thankful for his defamiliarizing mashup of the rejection letter boilerplate phrases "stronger candidate" and "better fit"). i'm thankful that even though i was going to put it off until this morning, i sent my short and gracious response to the rejection last night so that the whole thing is in the past now and i don't have to make myself think about it anymore (anymore than my brain is making me think about it by making me feel it) or open the email again. i'm thankful that last night, i was eventually able to extricate myself from the stop-hitting-yourself cycle of opening the rejection letter in the inbox app on my phone, then closing it and putting my phone down, then picking up my phone a few minutes later and reading the email again and so on.
i'm thankful for how shitty i felt yesterday evening after finding out that i didn't get offered the job. i'm thankful for the truly shitty paradox of applying for jobs, which is that in order to write the cover letter and do the application materials and be knowledgeable and strong and confident in the interviews, you have to imagine yourself in the job, a fantasy that is nurtured by your subconscious as you wait expectantly in the silent spaces between the stations of the interview process, the mirage of your new life growing more and more vivid and specific, a fantasy which is then, when you are ultimately rejected, instantly revealed to be no more real than a dream where you are able to fly. i'm thankful to have a very good imagination, even if its power sometimes causes me to feel shitty. i'm thankful that d is always encouraging and motivating and generous to me w/r/t jobs (and everything) without ever feeling like she's nagging or forcing me to do things that i don't want to do or that she's disappointed in me or thinks less of me when i don't succeed. i'm thankful to have a partner that wonderful. i'm thankful that i still have a good job where i make a comfortable living and work with nice people.
i'm thankful for the opportunity to remind myself of those nice facts about my life, and i'm thankful the things i did last night to try to stop feeling shitty, even as the feelings of shittiness washed over me in waves. i'm thankful to have buried my head in d's chest and sighed after i finished reading the email. i'm thankful to have played a video game where you do parkour and run over zombies in a dune buggy. i'm thankful to have eaten the last slice of chocolate cake with too much whipped cream on top. i'm thankful for the cup of rooibos tea i drank in lieu of alcohol. i'm thankful that we were supposed to have plans with our friends for dinner but they had to reschedule because my friend jl is writing an article about a choir that sings at the bedside of hospice patients and she was invited to go with them on one of their visits. i'm thankful for the perspective of that image when applied to my feelings of shittiness, which i didn't think of last night in that moment but am thinking about now as i write this. i'm thankful that i took a hot bath in the dark, even though i got the water too hot and so i was doing that gross thing where you're sweating in the bath. i'm thankful that in the bath i watched the man zone segment from nathan for you on youtube (i'm thankful for the part when he says "what's your favorite posish?). i'm thankful that i shaved my face in the bath, which always makes me feel cleaner and better and more put together. i'm thankful that after my bath, i did some yoga in the nude in our bedroomwhile listening to a funny podcast. i'm thankful that i looked over at d's computer screen as she was looking at the budget subreddit she stalks and i saw a post titled "cheaper altoids?" which for some reason i could not stop laughing about. i'm thankful we watched e's snapchat report of her time at a concert for a white rapper called "hoodie allen" who i had never heard of and who seems terrible to me but who i'm thankful that e likes. i'm thankful to have heard e hoarsely and joyfully singing along to the choruses of hoodie allen's songs and dancing with her friend and having fun at a concert, which reminds me fondly of times i had in college at concerts with my friends. i'm thankful for alternate nostril breathing and for meditation, which is still rewarding even when it feels difficult.
i'm thankful to have articulated my reading management contingency strategy to myself and you in yesterday's notes, because yesterday evening when i got into bed reading my current novel felt too depressing and reading the graphic novel by my bedside about the discovery of DNA seemed too hard and reading the history book about life in the soviet union seemed like it would offer no solace, so i had to break the safety glass and go to an emergency standby reread from the vault. i'm thankful for geoff dyer, who is perhaps my favorite author, though that is hard to say with so many wonderful authors and books in the world, but who is definitely the author whose books i have reread the most as an adult, which i think has to mean something. i'm thankful for his novel paris trance, which is so romantically quotidian and quotidianly romantic. i'm thankful for his nonfiction books, especially out of sheer rage and zona, which are my favorites and which i have reread so many times. i'm thankful in particular for out of sheer rage, which makes me laugh more than any other book and which is the one i picked up to read yesterday evening, because i wanted to not feel shitty.
i'm thankful for the time a couple of years ago when geoff dyer gave a talk on campus here related to the book of his that interests me least, the missing of the somme. i'm thankful that day was the first snow of the year that day and that it had been falling in big fat flakes since morning. i'm thankful that for some reason i couldn't leave work till 5 on the dot and the talk was supposed to start at 5 and i hate being late to things, so i quickly and excitedly bundled up and ran down the steps of the building and through the parking lot and across the street and through a snowy meadow and up a hill to the lecture hall where the reading was being held. i'm thankful that when i got there, of course the event hadn't started yet and people were still milling in and talking and looking at their phones. i'm thankful for my distracted relief as i knocked off snow and peeled off my outer layers and went to sit in the back row. i'm thankful that there was a back row to sit in where hopefully i wouldn't run into anyone i knew, which i was hoping for partially out a general social anxiety and partially because i was embarrassed that i hadn't written, much less published, anything in years and that my current job was to be a secretary on the campus where i had gone to graduate school.
i'm thankful that, of course, just after i sat down, breathing heavily from the exertion of running over, so relieved that i wasn't late for the reading, the person sitting in the chair to my left tapped me on the shoulder and i realized that i had somehow managed, without intending to, to sit down right next to the only two other people i knew at the reading, who were in the class after me in our mfa program. i'm thankful that they are both very nice and smart and interesting women who i have always enjoyed talking to and spending time with, even if one of them, who had always been lovely to me but who, according to stories told by several other nice and smart and interesting women i know and trust who dated her, is almost certainly literally clinically a sociopath (i'm thankful for the thanksgiving we went over to the sociopath's house and she made quail and we toasted each other with champagne and for another great party she threw one springtime where d and jl got very drunk in her kitchen and joined hands and sang their favorite songs from the phantom of the opera acapella).
i'm thankful that i quickly recovered from my shock at seeing them and the three of us had a nice conversation about geoff dyer, who the sociopath (who had left our program abruptly in her first year after she was accepted to the iowa writers' workshop) had just seen read in iowa earlier in the week and hung out with at an iowa bar and who i guess was now following him like one might a jam band. i'm thankful she and i talked about ben lerner, who we had talked about loving at a party before and whose novel 10:04 had just come out. i'm thankful to remember that i explained i was afraid to read 10:04, even though i loved his first novel and this one was supposed to be even better, because i had read in some pre-release publicity thing that the narrator supposedly discovers that he has a heart defect similar to the heart defect that i have (i'm thankful to d, who, upon hearing my problem, lovingly offered to do surgery on an ebook of 10:04 to remove all references to the heart defect)(i'm thankful occasionally i have the thought that maybe my hypochondria and sense of existential dread about the heart defect has improved to the point where i can read the book, but then after letting the idea sit and develop for a moment decide against it). i'm thankful that i told them that geoff dyer was maybe my favorite writer and that i was so excited to hear him read.
i'm thankful, as i ran out of easy small talk to make, to have knowingly joked about how it seemed so geoff dyer of geoff dyer to be late for his own reading, at which point the sociopath leaned in and whispered "he's standing right behind you." i'm thankful that he didn't seem to hear me. i'm thankful that he looked mostly like i thought he would look, tall and thin with short gray hair and angular features, though somehow smaller than the image i had in my head. i'm thankful for his artfully unbuttoned dress shirt, which oozed with intentionality under his sport coat and over his jeans. i'm thankful that the room quieted as he lankily approached the podium, the kind of hush that accompanies an orchestra tuning up. i'm thankful i seized this moment to check and make sure the ringer on my phone was off. i'm thankful that i looked in the pockets of my hoodie, then the pockets of my coat, then the pockets of my backpack, then, straining to not be heard as the room got even quieter, twisted around to look behind and under my chair and the chairs nearby. i'm thankful that no matter where i looked, i couldn't find my iphone 6, which i had preordered and received on release day just a few weeks earlier. i'm thankful that some professor from the history department started to introduce geoff dyer and i had to stop fidgeting with my things so as not to be rude and/or draw attention to myself.
i'm thankful for the series of things that happened in my brain instead of me listening to the history professor's introduction of geoff dyer.
i'm thankful that first i realized, while silently groping around in my pockets in the desperate hope that my phone might like in a magic trick still appear, that i must have lost my phone at some point while i was running between my office and the lecture hall, that it must have fallen out of my pocket into the snow.
i'm thankful that there was a large window behind the stage, so that i could see that outside, the snow was still falling heavy and wet and that even though it was only 5:15, it was now almost completely dark outside thanks to heavy cloud cover.
i'm thankful, as everyone clapped at the end of the introduction and dyer began to talk about the horrific death toll of the battle of the somme, that the aforementioned bits of information combined in my brain to create an opportunity/dilemma. i'm thankful that i realized that my phone had not been out in the snow for very long and that if i left the talk right now, i had a pretty good chance of being able to find it. i'm thankful to have understood very clearly that every minute i waited and didn't go to search for my phone, it would become more difficult to search for my phone because it was getting darker out and because of the likelihood that it would be covered with more and more snow.
i'm thankful that despite knowing this, i stayed glued to my seat and could not make myself move.
i'm thankful that this was partially due to a general sense of social anxiety and adherence to politesse and the rules—if i got up now, i would draw the attention away from dyer talking about the horrors of the somme and the way the war changed the world and would be embarrassed as everyone turned away from him to look at me. i'm thankful, though, that i might have been able to get over that general anxiety, but that then there was also the specific discomfort of having emphatically told the two women from graduate school that dyer was my favorite author and how disrupting his lecture and leaving without having heard him would make them think i was weird/crazy.
i'm thankful that as dyer continued to speak, instead of listening to him or learning anything, i stared with my eyes glazed over at his photo slideshow of images of england and france before the war as these anxieties were overrun by an increasingly intense sort of disgust, disgust that i was person who cared more about what a bunch of strangers and two people who i hadn't seen or talked to in nearly a year and might never see again (ed: have not seen again) might possibly think of me than not losing my brand new $600 phone. i'm thankful that this occasioned, as i sat in my chair and listened to the grain of dyer's accent without hearing what he was saying, much shameful self-critical questioning of my values and the choices that i have made in my life. i'm thankful that i felt like this terrible situation, as it tore apart my insides, was really teaching me something about myself that i didn't know, about the intensity of my self-consciousness and how much it had warped my connection to the world around me.
i'm thankful that fifteen or twenty minutes later, when the lecture finally blessedly broke for questions, i decided that it was now or never and noisily gathered my things, even though i normally look down at people who leave at the beginning of the closing Q&A for an event, which always seems so rude to the author and the others present even though most Q&As (especially in academic settings) are terrible and tedious. i'm thankful that as my fear brain had predicted, the two women from graduate school looked at me as if i was weird/crazy as i got up and pulled myself together to leave, but i felt there was nothing to do and i had to go so i did, which i'm thankful for, that i didn't sit there hating myself any longer.
i'm thankful that after leaving the building, i slowly retraced my path down the hill and through the snowy meadow and across the street and through the parking lot and up the stairs and into the building where i work, my eyes scanning all around in the hopes of seeing my phone in the snow. i'm thankful, not finding the phone, to go back down the stairs and through the parking lot and across the street and through the snowy meadow and up the hill to the lecture hall again. i'm thankful i went back and retraced the path again and then back again, with no luck, as it got colder and darker and more hopeless. i'm thankful that it was so cold and that i felt so uncomfortable and hungry and tired and upset. i'm thankful that the nearby student union had a warm computer lab and thankful that on the computer there, i finally had an opportunity to use the find my iphone feature, which is supposed to be able to locate your iphone within twenty five feet of its location.
i'm thankful that i logged into the icloud website and opened the find my iphone app, only to be struck by the fact that in a childish rush to be able to play with my new phone a few weeks earlier, i had not set up the find my iphone feature. i'm thankful that looking at the map and seeing no pins, nothing, i decided to finally give up and go home.
i'm thankful that i got home and told d (who i hadn't been able to tell, because i didn't have my phone) about the situation. i'm thankful that she wanted to go back out and search but that to me the phone was gone and it was cold and dark outside and i wanted to just let it go and not feel shitty anymore. i'm thankful that it was just a phone and while it sucked, in the grand scheme of things, losing a phone wasn't that bad. i'm thankful that we found out after dinner, when i felt slightly better, that my cell carrier's website had a less accurate version of the phone finding feature, which showed my iphone still pinging from the snowy meadow, which gave me a slight bit of hope, even though i thought there was no way i would find it and that soon enough (probably overnight) the cold and the wet would kill the battery. i'm thankful that before bed, d made me agree to let her drive me to campus the next morning so that i could have some time before work search for my phone. i'm thankful that i teased her about how she wouldn't give up and told her i wouldn't find it, but said that i would go and look just for the hell of it.
i'm thankful that the next morning at the stop sign beside the snowy meadow, i kissed her on the cheek and within 30 seconds of getting out of the car found my phone, glinting on top of a snowdrift a couple feet away from the path. i'm thankful that i brought it inside and warmed it with a hand-dryer and it was okay, it still worked and there wasn't a scratch on it and it still works today. i'm thankful because of her support, i didn't give up, even though it seemed hopeless, and i found my phone. i'm thankful that sometimes when we think our phones are really lost, we can still find them and they can still be okay.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to thank you notes: