Gratitude: One Year Later

I am thankful for my health and body. It moves me around and feels relatively good to live in despite some aches here and there.

I'm engineer with little kids, and I've been spending about 3 months each year at customer sites doing development and commissioning work. I was in the Middle East for a month January-February this year.

Then covid hit and I've just... not gone anywhere. It's been great to connect with my kids. I'm coming home from the second work trip of the year now, but it's 5 days instead of two weeks (so I can quarantine before Thanksgiving) and it's surprising how tough it's been for me.

I got used to leaving my family but this year has been great and it's going to be hard going out on trips again.

I am thankful that all the non humans had a break in the spring from human activity during lockdown. It was amazing with all the birds and other wildlife that re-flowered during that time.

I am grateful for a good wife and kids, a nice home, some privacy, a good relationship with God, a reasonably good business (all things considered), opportunities to grow and learn, good in-laws and extended family, good employees, and the ability to essentially quarantine myself and my family while still doing my job.

I'm thankful to be alive, employed, and making art.

well, starting to make art.

As others have said, I'm also thankful for things like being alive and not having caught COVID. And in comparison, mine will seem quite trite, but since it hasn't been said...

I'm thankful for Tildes. I like this site quite a lot, and I'm glad it exists.

This is a neat thread, by the way. Thanks for posting this!

Thankful that despite all the stress, that I and everyone I know has been safe and not (to our knowledge) caught COVID. I am worried, as some are really starting to lax up 'in the name of natural selection'. -_-

But, things looking forward to:

• Seeing my kid continue to grow into a person.
• Be able to celebrate my 11th wedding anniversary the way we had planned for the 10th, maybe. There's some potential non-COVID related roadblocks there, but still hopeful.
• 2021 should finally be the year a mid-range GPU will be a worthy upgrade from my GTX 970 for 1080p and possibly enable 4k gaming....the 3.5GB of VRAM is finally starting to show its age in a big way.
• Going to try to put my rhetoric into action and start trying to build up my local community after COVID calms down again.
• Sister is finally getting married to her long-term boyfriend after they sorted out extended-family issues
• Nearby park seems to be getting some rennovations to make it less of a festering mosquito pit with some room for some picnic tables and a playground equipment.
• If COVID well and under control, joining the Y to teach kid how to swim.
• Will be 100% debt-free (aside from mortgage, which I don't count because it boils down to rent vs mortgage and can't really escape that) for the first time since 2004 when I bought my second used car with a loan instead of paying cash for a junker
  • My advice: Don't take out loans for cars, they depreciate too fast. If you need a car, buy used cars for cash, save the money you would have used for a loan for the next car, and run the current car until repairs would impede your ability to upgrade. I learned that one the hard way.

My answer is still the same: Knowing English, along with being able-bodied (basically what hairypotter said and this) and generally not having too many bodily insecurities, and certainly nothing fundamental.

For anyone else:

Last year's thread

Another gratitude thread

A partner to live COVID lockdown through with. It would have been a rather lonely year, otherwise. Also Trump being voted out and (hopefully?) no longer dominating the news.

Other than that, fuck 2020. Fuck everything about it.

I am grateful that here in Brazil not a single relative or close friend of mine contracted COVID-19, and nor did my sister and nephew that are both in a hotspot in Europe.

I am grateful that Donald Trump lost the election.