Day 158: Gratitude

Here are some reasons for me to be grateful, because it always pays to train your mind into recognising what’s great in your life. Going down to the soil of the brain and carving little plots and filling each one with a seed of gratitude. 

• I’ve got money in my bank account
• I can afford a trip down to London to see my cousin's newborn daughter in October
• I can afford a long weekend to Berlin with Fran in November
• I can afford a fixed 50 lens for my camera
• I ate three pains au chocolat for breakfast this morning
• I drank lots of strong black coffee
• I’ve been able to lie in bed for hours and play Super Mario Bros. 3 on my Switch, which has been fantastic
• I’ve got a roof over my head
• I’ve got two lungs, two kidneys, a heart, digestive tract, liver (bombarded with less poison these days)
• I’ve still got some hair left on my head, and lots on my face
• Got ten fingers, and ten toes
• Got this sweet mechanical keyboard, and this gaming mouse with EXTRA BUTTONS
• No work for the entire rest of the day
• There’s a chill to the air outside but these sturdy walls keep me warm
• Been listening to, and appreciating, classical music, which appreciation of music I was not able to do when I was in the depths of depression, it was all just harsh noise, meaningless, cold, cruel, empty
• I’ve kept this blog up for 158 days, I don’t think about it now, it’s just what I do, and it’s often only half an hour at the end of the day, but I’m still doing that, turning up, over and over, even for a short time, and that must be helping to slowly build a sense of responsibility and dedication and willpower and pride inside me, even if at glacial speed. Glaciers can be powerful forces, they crush and smoosh everything in their paths. So keep turning up, buddy-roo, keep putting little snowflakes, unique, glittering, some beautiful in their symmetry, some wonky and broken - keep putting them one on top of the other until there is an unstoppable wall of ice moving forwards
• The low pale light gleaming in through the skylight window hitting the wall turning the blacks of the poster there to silver and gold
• Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians playing on Youtube
• Stompy steel-toe-capped boots that Steve bought me for my man work with him, now to be reappropriated as excellent winter/delivery-day boots for many months to come
• I’ve got plenty of clothes. I mean, I’ve got hardly any clothes compared to many of my friends, but I’ve got way more clothes than lots of people on this planet, which is the only planet we know of that has any people on at all, and there are an infinitude of empty atoms twirling in the cosmic void that possess no clothes at all, so I think on balance I’m up
• And hey, anyway, the fashion industry is now the second worst polluter in the world, after only the oil industry, due mostly to the trend of recent decades towards disposable fashion, buying outfits for a tenner made in Bangladesh by basically slave labour, then chucking the outfits away after a month and buying new ones, because you’ve been manipulated by high street retailers who want all your money and tell you lies and make you feel worthless to trick you into handing it over. So it’s a good thing I’ve got three-year-old shirts and stretched t-shirts and jeans with the knees all worn down, is what I’m saying. Everything you dislike about yourself is something great, seen from another angle
• I’m grateful that Fran is in my bed not commenting on how loud my EXCELLENT mechanical keyboard is as I clatter the keys down one after the other after the other - but I probably shouldn’t push it too far, by which I mean I'm going now, goodnight!