I am horrible company at a very specific type of event. Culmination or closing events make me feel fevered and overstimulated. Moments like graduations, closing ceremonies, whatever — feel to me like many days in one. I grow fatigued.
When I’ve thought about it, it’s because these events are for a very specific reason: aligning gratitude with a certain type of logistical set up. They function as activated containers for those specific feelings. While intellectually that seems reasonable (and quite pragmatic), I can rarely seem to muster up the feeling the moment asks for. I feel grateful pretty frequently, but decidedly NOT when I am told to for a specific set of hours in a particular place. It makes me feel weirdly out of rhythm, which makes me CRANKY.
It’s akin to the feeling of hearing “you must be so excited” about a new thing in life when it hasn’t quite processed yet. That moment comes, but it’s challenging to activate in a linear way. There is no such thing as arrival.
Gratitude is a funny one. When we feel and receive gratitude, we produce dopamine and stimulate neural growth. A great feeling, and highly regenerative, undeniably healthy.
SO because I hate activating it on demand for an occasion, I have been trying to routinely practice it in my own brain. Instead of reallyyyy focusing on the specifics, here are some things that feel easy to be grateful for, for free — or close to it.
visual
-Sunset and sunrise are always available! my sleep schedule has been strange lately, but i have really enjoyed the mornings when I have woken up tremendously early and watched the world brighten.
-Just finished The Sopranos. thats’s a whole OTHER story (maybe a whole newsletter, uh oh!) but I find myself so grateful to care about stories, thankful to people for writing them. What a treat to dive into another world.
-Watching the Sopranos made me remember my brilliant friend Isabel’s memes from long ago. She is so smart! I dug them up.
This speaks to a larger gratitude thing which is: LOVING YOUR FRIENDS. This is not exclusively visual, but (as a not-visual artist myself) I find myself in awe, and frequently, of what my near and dear can do. love u Isabel!!!
auditory
-Wind chimes, birds, ocean, whispers. singing in the shower.
-Favorite songs that make you feel like yourself. Mine?
Moonlight Mile by the Rolling Stones. Lucky by Grace Ives. And She Was by the Talking Heads. Ride, by Lana.
-Silence. I’m serious!! Ironic, as I am a CHATTY GIRL but I grew up going to a Quaker School and we would sit in silence in the mornings for Meeting for Worship. I think it did something. In silence, you can hear your breath. This is a nice metronome.
olfactory
-Bakeries, shoe cobblers (is that weird??), palo santo, cinnamon, brown butter, lingering perfume, Old Spice, chlorine, mulled wine
-Roses, lavender, eucalyptus
-I hate sneezing, but if you like it? that is something to be grateful for because boy does it happen.
tactile
-Baths, slugging, having your hair played with, staying in a towel for an unreasonably long time.
-I find that I love kind of mannered, platonic touching. Bopping someone with your hand when they say something funny. Gently placing the palm on the back of someone you want to get out of the way (the gentler you do it, the quicker they’ll move). Tucking a tag into a shirt, pulling a hair from a sweater.
gustatory
-This one is literally about food and the palate, which feels perhaps too on the nose.
maybe nice to consider simply this: you can always change the flavor that’s in your mouth.
more soon!!! rest up <3 xoxo