thank you notes 7/20

i'm thankful for eastbound and down, which, as the young white man that almost all media in this country is designed to cater to, was so powerful and so funny because it let me see on screen something so close to the texture of my specific childhood, so much closer than anything i'd ever experienced on TV or in a movie before. i'm thankful that this let me really for the first time feel viscerally something i had only understood intellectually, which was the vital importance of telling and ensuring distribution of stories about people that aren't white suburban American males like me, so that everyone can have that intense, rewarding experience of feeling so known by a work of art as much as possible.

i'm thankful that i've been having better runs lately, after a brief period of feeling like i had lost some stamina and speed during the period when i was quarantined to the treadmill because of allergy season. i'm thankful that in my runs the past few days, i let myself slow down a bit and suddenly i didn't feel so overwhelmed so quickly. i'm thankful for the shuffle feature, which i never really used in the past because i always knew what i wanted to listen to, but i'm thankful for the way that the totality of the availability of recorded music now available now makes shuffling and algorithmic suggestion feel much more vital.

i'm thankful that i sat and tried to meditate last night, even if my meditation wasn't successful and i gave up five minutes in. i'm thankful to have acknowledged that frustration to myself and accepted it the same way i accepted my disappointment that i'm not doing anything particularly "productive" in the evenings lately. i'm thankful for the chance to tell myself that doing my new job and maintaining basic personal care routines is enough to have on my plate right now and that there will be time to push myself more once i get more settled into the job. i'm thankful that a mistake i made at work yesterday wasn't as big of a deal as it seemed like it might be at first.

i'm thankful that AP style now lowercases the word "dumpster." i'm thankful for this text screenshot that d's sister e sent her of autocorrect changing "i am" to "anal" in a conversation with dad, which d didn't realize at first was a meme and thought was actually her sister accidentally texting the word "anal" to their dad, who is a methodist pastor. i'm thankful for the intense spasms of choking laughter that overcame d as she read this. i'm thankful that d's sister e did not actually text their dad the word "anal."