thank you notes (R)

i'm thankful that the girl at the coffeeshop today who was sitting next to the outlet i was coveting stayed there for several hours, seemingly studying, after a few false alarms where it looked like she was leaving but actually she was just putting on a jacket or fidgeting, left the table and the outlet just as my macbook battery was at 5%. i'm thankful that i was in the kind of mood today where i was able to interpret that as delightful providence, and not the kind of mood where it felt like a personal insult that she had stayed there as long as she did. i'm thankful that the server who kept passing through the coffeeshop trying to find the right customer to deliver food orders to looked over at me and smiled, and i'm thankful that although my time in food service doesn't allow me to read smiles like that as flirting or even really friendly because i know how automatic smiling becomes, it still felt real to me. 

i'm thankful that needing to find an old picture for a project today forced me to look through some old jpegs from ten years ago, and thankful for the uncomfortable feeling it gave me to look through them and the faces of people i've lost touch with or cut off in ways i'm not proud of, because i think that uncomfortable feeling is probably healthier for me than the non-feeling of avoiding thinking about those people and that time in my life. i'm thankful that realizing how few of those old photos i'm in — either because i didn't want to be or because i was the photographer — led me to experience a new kind of gratitude for selfies; for the fact that whatever else this time of my life turns out to be in retrospect, it won't be a time when i was unrecorded, invisible. 

i'm thankful that a friend sent my name up the flagpole for a cool and scary opportunity that i think i'm really excited to pursue — i'm thankful that while i don't usually think of cis white gay men (or men generally) as being in particular solidarity with my community, and while to be honest we are really more friendly than close friends, when i thought about it i realized he has always been very supportive and helpful to me, speaking highly of my work not just to me but to other people when he doesn't have to. i am thankful that people in my life do kind things for me out of love without an expectation of reciprocity.

i'm thankful that i spent money i really shouldn't have on a cheap new eyeliner while grocery shopping, and that when i got home i unpackaged it and went to my bathroom mirror to try it on, and quickly got frustrated with myself for not applying it very expertly, and then thought to myself scoldingly ""this is supposed to be fun!"" i'm thankful because then i could laugh at how obviously, fundamentally un-fun it is to say ""this is supposed to be fun!"" and that the laughing was in fact itself fun. 

i'm thankful that in that moment i had the thought ""i'm thankful for this,"" a thought which i don't think i would have had before reading these emails, at least not in that precise way. although i don't know if it's ""the point"" per se (or if there is a point, exactly, if that's maybe a reductive framing) i'm thankful that these emails are gently training my brain to do that, to point at things and say ""thankful!"" the way a child points at things with great pleasure to announce them to the world. dog! bus! shopping cart! telephone! thankful!

- R (3/8/16).