thank you notes 9/16
i'm thankful for the challenge of finding new ways to describe how much i am struggling with work right now, even though i know that's probably not that interesting or fun to read about, because i think it's good for me to talk to myself (and by proxy, you) in that way. i'm thankful that though wednesday was hard, i also felt energized in a way by dealing with the difficulty as a member of a team, whereas yesterday i just felt isolated and incompetent and completely defeated all day long, as difficult tickets piled higher and higher and every time i thought i'd resolved one, the person came back with a new problem they needed me to fix. i'm thankful that i was able to take a short break in the afternoon, even though i didn't have the energy to do yoga or qi gong or wash dishes or run an errand like i usually do and just laid on the floor of our bedroom staring up at the ceiling. i'm thankful that eventually the day ended and i closed my computer and i'm thankful that usually fridays are our quietest days, which, if that holds, might afford me an opportunity to catch up on all the work i didn't get done yesterday before the weekend.
i'm thankful to have finally experienced the sensation i've heard others describe about depression, where food just doesn't taste good anymore. i'm thankful, even though it sucks, for the strangeness of that, to have picked at my rice and roasted seaweed, which normally i inhale with total pleasure, and then left them uneaten for d to finish. i'm thankful, i guess, to have not consumed calories i don't need. i'm thankful to have had a short glass of whiskey with dinner, which i did consume all of, even if it didn't taste good either and i don't know that it actually made me feel any better. i'm thankful that after dinner d and i had a good conversation about our stresses with work lately. i'm thankful that she was able to listen to me and i was able to listen to her, even if neither of us could really solve the problems the other person was having. i'm thankful that the conversation made me feel a little better and am thankful to be able to talk my manager about how much i'm struggling when she gets back from her vacation next week.
i'm thankful that d took a personality test while i was zombieshly video gaming on the couch last night and then gave the test to me aloud while i pressed buttons and twiddled sticks. i'm thankful she accidentally navigated off the page after getting almost all of my answers and so had me take the test again. i'm thankful for how many of my answers were different the second time, which i saw as a reflection of the the fact that my personality and perspective is always changing every minute, though i guess it could also be a sign that i wasn't paying as much attention or giving the questions as much thought the first go round. i'm thankful for the latest issue of the feelings club, which has some really profound things to say about how "one of the problems with living in a capitalist culture is that we often apply binary categories to the way we spend our time. If something isn't a profitable use of time, we tell ourselves, then it must be a waste of time. And if we see the way we use our time not in terms of whether it brings us joy or meaning or security but whether it is profitable or productive, then it grows all the more difficult to prioritize the things we need to do in order to feel not just happy, but stable."
i'm thankful for this video of fifteen thousand dominoes being set up in a perfect set of interlocked spirals, then perfectly knocked down. i'm thankful to have been reminded of sand mandalas, which are created just to be destroyed. i'm thankful for macro video of paint mixing, of pills dissolving, of ice cream melting.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to thank you notes: