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What are you thankful for?
Hello everybody! As the Americans here are probably aware, this week is our holiday for Thanksgiving. One of the traditional parts of the holiday (at least as I've always practiced it) is everybody writing a list of the things they're thankful for in their life and over the past year. Especially since this is our first Thanksgiving together since Tildes was founded, I was wondering if you'd like to contribute such a list. :)
I'm thankful for the internet. It helped me discover that world is more than what's around me, and it helped me learn a tonne of stuff from self care to programming to history to linguistics to infinity. It's the best thing ever.
I'm thankful for my past. It's lots of troubles and was not fun at all until a few years ago, when I started fixing my life, but it helped make me a free person, in that I eventually set out to explore myself and the world, and break many biases and dogmas that were passed on to me through tradition, education, and social circles. I feel like if I was a happy kid, I'd be a stereotypical everyday regular normal guy. But I'm not, I question everything and an intellectually honest, with an open mind.
So I guess I'll get us started off:
Getting into a decent university, even if it's been a tough adjustment and I'm not doing as well as I would like even though objectively I have it pretty easy compared to some of my friends
Even though my brother has what appears to be a terminal genetic disease, his condition has improved a lot since he moved, which gives me hope he gets more then just another year or two.
I've finally started one of my life's goals, which is to have an old / retro computer collection, and although my ThinkPad is a humble start, I hope to someday have something from every era
I hope this doesn't cause any offence, but I'm thankful for the way politics might finally be starting to change again. They've become extremely nasty over the last couple of years, and in the US this past election day, we saw a rebuke of that. I hope we move to an era where it's not as aggressive and stressful as it is today, and we can feel peaceful again and not constantly scared and ruled by fear and anger.
That I've really developed an appreciation for where I live (Hawai'i) since moving here last year. It's much better then I thought it would be, and after years of moving around, I'm thankful I can finally settle in one place for a while.
That even though my kitty who has been with me for most of my life and was one of the few constants in my life recently passed away, my family has adopted two new kitties, who have been great and help to fill the void.
I'm sorry about your brother. Is it possible for him to get better?
My succulent collection is looking pretty good, relatively speaking. Starting with just a few 2" plants now I've got several little collections and lots more cuttings I'm hoping will root. I know it's not a lifechanging thing, but it's really rewarding seeing something come together to match the vision you had in your head.
For simple things at home we take for granted but which only since a century ago or so made life almost video-game-like controllable, comfortable and neat: microwaves, flushing toilets, hot water, bright lightbulbs, vacuum cleaners, etc.
For the results of centuries of (and ongoing) development of medical science and care, so we live more fearless, long, healthy lives than ever.
For the great, life changing, multifaceted phenomenon of the internet, and affordable futuristic devices which enable it to us as much as we like.
For open source software which is free as beer and as speech, is transparent in its mechanisms of working and histories of changes.
For inherent goodness of people, and great power of humanity to create art, develop science, be curious about the universe, self reflect and solve problems.
For capability of being a friend and having friends.
a couple:
the fact that i somehow have friends even though i am (a) somewhat of an unrepentant asshole; (b) probably borderline; (c) someone who has repeatedly burned entire sets of friends both of my own volition and because i'm kind of a reactionary idiot about things when i don't mean to be; and (d) have a fucking smorgasbord of other disorders that just make it kind of hard to be my friend in general.
the fact that i am somehow, despite the above and the circumstances, on good terms with someone who was formerly my boyfriend who broke up with me on my birthday.
the fact that i somehow, despite the above, have a boyfriend who is pretty much exactly my foil.
I'm a Brit, I lived in the States for a minute, and fell in love with TG. When I moved back over the pond, I was upset that I might not be celebrating it again, but serendipitously, my birthday falls right around TG - perfect! Since coming back from the US I have celebrated TG annually, leveraging my birthday - even the most cynical Brits give me a pass and get into the spirit of it because "but muh birfdae!". So I guess I'm thankful I have friends who are willing to entertain me (and secretly I think they enjoy it as it's still kinda "exotic" here).
That I got out of California.
As someone who just moved to California - oof.
What's wrong with California?
It's literally on fire.
Ah. That is a bit of a problem, isn't it.
I mean, not the whole thing