Every once in a while I sit down and write down things which, to me, are some combination of satisfying or funny or comforting or grounding or lovely or beautiful and strange.

I need to do this. I think it pulls everything back into balance. When I leave my brain to its own devices, it will spend too much time in the dark.

Also these things are wonderful and deserve to be noticed, in their own right. I am surrounded by these things, all the time. They’re right fucking there. What kind of person would I be if I couldn’t see them?

Maybe you can see them, too.

Here are some good things:

• really good storytelling
• affectionate cats
• also, less affectionate cats who need a little time to feel comfortable
• cats who are absolutely terrible
• shoes that fit
• every crocheted blanket anywhere
• radio stations with long stretches of uninterrupted familiar songs
• sharpened pencils and pens that have enough ink in them
• filters available on smart phone cameras which make pictures look so much prettier
• my voice. singing in the car, alone, badly, to keep the darkness away and keep me from feeling nauseous
• the German poem which I read in its entirety this week
• interesting astronomy observations
• (Parallax is fucking fascinating. So are the stars and all the ways we learn things about them.)
• long rambling talks about Ethics
• Vincent van Gogh
• Skepticism
• The friend who helped me build a schedule for this semester which is actually working beautifully
• The Last Podcast on the Left
• all this time I have before my term papers are due
• the birds, who are coming back
• whoever set me on the path of looking for nuance and presupposing complexity and thinking outside of the boxes and outside of binaries. Thank you.
• the book that taught me that it’s not what things seem like, it’s what things are like. (A Wrinkle in Time)
• whoever taught me how to listen.
• whoever set me on the path of reflection; (Hello!!)
• the professor who told me that there’s hope for a growing acceptance of different kinds of people, because he’s seen it grow so much in just the space of one lifetime
• the recent aspiration to pack my bags and head south and become a sort of homeless boondocking nomad. This has actually been very fun to think about.
• online learning.
• the capacity to pause or rewatch lectures and walk away from them when I get tired, or if I need to write something down
• the capacity to watch lectures on 1.5x playback speed, because it helps me focus
• learning from my bed, my couch, my place at the kitchen table
• memes and funny posts that make me laugh inside. I have officially hacked my Instagram algorithm and now this is it, that is all there is. Just memes
• and sometimes pictures of the night sky from very dark places.
• the first time I was able to drink coffee in several weeks
• boxer shorts
• cool glasses of water
• the MCU
• Friends
• You.

I hope it’s a solid Wednesday.