It’s quarter to nine. We’ve had breakfast, I’ve got my tea, the dishwasher is running, and dear friends are coming over at 11 to cook and nosh and generally hang out. It’s my kind of holiday: fancy plates and yoga pants.

The colonialist roots of this holiday are so terrible, and there’s no need to celebrate them. But a holiday that is about connection, that is about gratitude (even though I have some issues with gratitude), that is about good food and good people? That I can get behind.

There’s so much to be grateful for. The flipped version of this, which is sometimes easier for me is this: so many things went right. So here’s a brief list of what went right and what I’m grateful for.

1. No one’s been hospitalized or had surgery this year! It’s been … a few years since I could say that, and hot damn, it’s nice to be able to. (One ER visit doesn’t count.)
2. My low-dose naltrexone continues to keep me at a higher baseline level of energy than I’ve had for a long time. Although my energy is still limited, I don’t have to spend all of my non-work time lying down, I don’t need to work from bed, and I can make it all the way through a workday with brain cells intact. This is a big shift. It’s fantastic.
3. Catharine’s new psych med has meant that everything is just so much more stable. I don’t have to spend time and energy worrying about the bottom falling out.
4. Our kitties are well, including the Elder States Cat, who is now 16 and a half and still jumps onto my desk, explores the basement, and demands breakfast RIGHT NOW MOM I MEAN. She needs regular B12 shots and prednisone to keep her absorbing nutrients appropriately, but that’s super minor. There was a time when I worried she wouldn’t live as long as other cats, and I’m conscious, every day, of the fact that she’s old and that I adore her cranky little being.
5. Really, animal antics are the best. I love watching them be themselves, demanding sink water and trying to sneak around eating the plants and laying in the cat bed in front of the fire.
6. I’ve been at this company now for over 10 years, and I can see myself being there 10 years from now. I’ve had a lot of different positions in the company, and I’m currently moving into one that’s going to be even more interesting. Most of all, though, I deeply appreciate my colleagues, who are fun, smart, and reasonably functional.
7. We have a lovely home, and although we don’t want to stay here forever (it has a lot of stairs and we’re renting) it is a fantastic and gorgeous space. My office takes up the entire 3rd floor, where I perch above the street and the city like I’m in an aerie. The light and the space, which I’ve filled with plants, somehow heals my heart every time.
8. We got to visit family on the East Coast this year, and while the trip took a lot out of us (two disabled people flying 3k miles for 10 days has some challenges), getting to hang with the niblings and see parents and siblings was great, especially since my MIL has since moved to Italy.
9. There were a lot of amazing books published this year, books I’ve already reread half a dozen times. Books are my way in to other worlds, other lives, and while I’ve definitely had periods when I didn’t have the wherewithal to read anything new, I’ve still read over 100 books this year not counting the comfort re-reads. The fact that I will never, no matter how hard I try, run out of books is deeply grounding.
10. It doesn’t take a lot to delight me, which is something I really like about myself. The tea I drink every day, the mug I drink it out of that a friend of ours made (it’s purple and green!), the fountain pen someone gifted me that writes incredibly smoothly, my thin markers arranged by color, green plans in the sunlight, my dorky little crochet projects, candles that smell good, color everywhere because it brings us joy — all of these things are living refutations of the hedonic treadmill. I don’t get tired of them, and while I’m accustomed to them, they still make me happy.
11. We made some incredible friends this year. Catharine knew M from a retreat, and we went to dinner with M and his husband C and immediately hit it off. We spent Christmas together last year, they’re coming over today, we have dinner pretty frequently, and once a month M and I go on daylong adventures around the state. We want water and pretty, and we take pictures and hang out and look and catch up and process our lives and it’s one of the best things going.
12. There’s a lot of fantastic television out there right now, and since I am firmly against a hierarchy of media (why are books better? it’s all storytelling!), I give thanks to the creative minds and talents that bring us smart, funny, heartbreaking television.
13. Twitter. I know it can be a cesspool, like any other form of social media, but over the nearly 10 years I’ve been there I’ve curated a list that is smart, snarky, wide-ranging, and deeply interesting. I get most of my news from my Twitter feed, and at any given time I’m reading about restorative justice, how people write books, what people’s cats have gotten up to, terrible dates overheard in coffee shops, and all manner of things. When I left academia, lo those many years ago, the sometimes-stated assumption was that only in the academy could you have deep, intelligent, wide-ranging conversations. To be fair, social media barely existed, but I have better and deeper and smarter conversations on Twitter than I ever did in higher ed.
14. Friends who know me and get me and support me, as I do them. My friend I lives in Minnesota, but we’ve both been in DC for work at the same time twice now and gotten to hang out, and although we don’t talk on the phone or text much, when we do see one another it’s like no time has passed. Also, we’ve been dear friends since we were 17, so we’ve loved one another through a lot of bad choices. My friends K and H listen to me snark about ADD fails and work and everything else, and I hold them up through divorces and challenging partners and driving over bridges that freak them out.
15. I love that we live in Portland. Home is a fraught concept for me, because I grew up in the Navy and there was no such thing. Growing up that way means I know, deep in my bones, that every place has its beauties and its challenges, that no place is inherently better or worse than any other (although it absolutely can be more or less hospitable or safe for different people). But I also know that home is a special thing, that some places are yours, no matter their problems, even if there are other places you love. Hawai’i and Portland are mine, for reasons I can’t quite articulate, but here I feel grounded and deeply held. I love this state so much for its beauty and the ways it lives into its reputation as liberal, and at the same time I see its history of racism, the way it treats people with mental illness, and know that needs to change. I feel so grateful that I get to live here.
16. I’m actually loving middle age. I love the grey hairs and the way they pattern my red. I’m not entirely thrilled about the wrinkles, but they’re a map of me smiling and concentrating and being my mother’s child. I love that I’m feeling less and less concerned about what is supposed to happen or who I’m supposed to be. There’s a deep freedom in it, and it’s just one more reason to commit to comfortable clothing.
17. Music. Music feeds me deeply, and it’s the surest way to express and shift a mood I know. Nearly all of my music library is women, and I have a leaning towards singer-songwriters, and at any given time I’ll be playing Taylor Swift, Dar Williams, the Indigo Girls, Sarah Barellies, Rachel Platten, Beyonce, Pink, and musicals, because musicals. Music makes everything better.

I’m so grateful for everything that has gone right this year, and for all the ways we’re safe and taken care of and supported and connected. I wish the same for you.