From May to June (2.11 - 2.16)

Friday, May 29 - Day 11

I went back to Long Island City, solo, and had an evening all to myself at the apartment. Solo time is so rare & precious now!

Saturday, May 30 - Day 12

I'm grateful for access to medical care - turns out this awful thing is an ear infection. I haven't had an ear infection since I was like....3! Now I'm on a course of amoxicillin. Apparently it will take 1.5 days (DAYS) to start to work.

                                               Thank you healthcare workers! An LIC Tribute 

We drove up to Massachusetts to Rob's parents house - had a cookout, socially distanced, although Rob had a covid19 test on Friday (negative) so we're fairly certain we're not carriers. It was so nice to have help with Julian - we haven't had childcare since early March.

Sunday, May 31 - Day 13 

I am grateful for the discomfort that comes with learning.

I tried to speak up today, when I heard one of my in-laws say something deriding the looting but not the loss of human life. I didn't do a very good job articulating myself - but I didn't stay silent. But I tried to be a better ally, where last year I would have just rolled my eyes privately. 

I'll be better next time. 

Monday, June 1 - Day 14

My mother turned 70! I'm glad I was able to send her a cake and a present. Now that I'm a parent I realize how much work and time I took from her, and I'm grateful for all the labor she poured into me.

Tuesday, June 2 - Day 15

Today foreshadowed the changes to come - moves on the horizon.

I received access to my office at Yale for 30 minutes, so I attempted to pack everything up in that time. I'm not sure if I'll get access again by the time my postdoc ends June 30! So it was a frenzied 30 minutes, followed by another half hour lugging all the suitcases filled with books to my car. 

                                                            My (now-former) Yale office

NYC has an 8pm curfew today because of the George Floyd protests. I appreciate all the protestors, standing up for civil rights. I appreciate stories like Rahul Dubey: everyday people who just do what's right.

Wednesday, June 3 - Day 16

                                                                    Game: find Bitty!

My living room in NH looks better with my new lemon tree in it, and my books from my office. 

My ear infection has not subsided, amoxicillin notwithstanding.

Black. Lives. Matter. I am thinking about the best ways to incorporate antiracist methods and lit into my fall syllabi. 

I think I will move to a digest format, because realistically, I am not keeping up. Trying to manage daily (private) journal writing, daily meditation, daily workout, fulltime childcare & occasional work - adding more things isn't feasible. 

On the 10th day of gratitude

J & I took a walk just after it rained, and the smell of warm earth was really wonderful. The flowers were so beautiful, all covered in little jewel droplets. And on the way, we picked up iced americanos from Blue State. Win/win: I get coffee, we support small businesses!

Gratitude 2.7, 2.8, 2.9

Brainstorming ways to fit this practice into my daily routine these days, which isn't really a routine at all, it's a toddler-driven frenzy.

May 25, 2020 | 2.7

R & I agreed to try to eat clean this week: no alcohol, no cheese, no bread & carbs. It's miserable but look, I'm closing in on 40, and drastic times call for drastic measures. 

I made it! I'm proud of that. 

I also had a great call with one of my former students, asking for advice about applying for a Fulbright. I am grateful that I can offer him some pointers, and am excited to see where his life takes him!

May 26, 2020 | 2.8

Well I made it through the cleanse eating-wise but I did have a glass of wine this night...

For Tuesday, I'm grateful that I had an hour to work on a new paper, one that is in the very early stages, about connections between the UAE and South Asia. It was an important reminder that this phase of life will pass, like the other awkward ones before it, and break open  into something new...there will be things to enjoy going forward: new things to research, new people to interview, new shows to study, new work to teach, new work to write. 

May 27, 2020 | 2.9 

Today I was outside a lot, and I am so grateful for every second of sunshine. Sometimes I feel like I'm just trying to get back to what I had when I was 30, a little house in southern California with a citrus tree. I miss the sunshine. The sunshine is really good for me, and part of why Dubai felt so much like home, pretty quickly. 

J & I took a walk to Blue State this am for coffee now that they're open again (a second gratitude) and then played in the backyard before his nap. After his nap, we spent about two hours splashing around in the inflatable pool. It was beautiful. 

A third gratitude, I got to Zoom with Moza, Ali & Hadeyeh, and I'm so thankful for the incredible humans I met while conducting field research. 

Gratitude 2.5, 2.6

Wow I'm doing great with the consistency here, whoops.

I'm grateful for the knowledge that this time will pass. I have lived through uncomfortable patches before. They come and go. So do the good times. 

I'm grateful for my training in anthropology, for the years of studying the forest and the trees and learning how to balance seeing them both, for holding difficult and contradictory truths in my mind simultaneously. 

It's not much. 

But I'm trying. 

Gratitude 2.3, 2.4

Thursday May 21 (2.3)

This day got away from me a bit!

Today's appreciation: J also got away from me while I was putting his swimsuit on him, and streaked through the lawn. It was so cute -  his chubby little toddler legs running, hauling his little butt away from me and the paddling pool. 

Friday May 22 (2.4)

I finished Min Jin Lee's Pachinko (after, well, a long time). It's an incredible intergenerational epic about belonging and family, and focuses on a Korean family in Japan - in so doing shedding light on the experiences of Koreans colonized by Japan, and then those naturalized by Japan. 

My favorite passages:

"Yoseb could understand the boy's anger, but he wanted another chance to talk to him, to tell Noa that a man must learn to forgive - to know what is important, that to live without forgiveness was a kind of death with breathing and movement" (314-315). 

"[Sunja] had loved Hansu, and then she had loved Isak. However, what she felt for her boys, Noa and Mozasu, was more than the love she'd felt for the men: this love for her children felt like life and death" (339). 

I'm grateful for the opportunity to read fiction again, for a few minutes to myself, for this book making my world a little bit bigger.

I'm also grateful for the 30 minutes I spent outside in the yard with a glass of white wine and my laptop, solo, to write.

This day is always an awful day

Day 2

It's the day my grandmother died, in 2017. Three years on and it still stings. There is a hole in my heart.

I try to be grateful that there is a hole, because it means that I can love people that much, that people can be that inspiring, that we have such capacity as humans. 

The Gratitude Project 2.0, Day 1

After *ahem* several years' hiatus, I've decided to start another round of the Gratitude Project. I debated beginning a new blog, to reflect who I am now, and not bring the cringeworthy baggage of my doctoral training, or my prior failed relationships, or just prior failures - to this new endeavor. But the truth is, that's all a part of me. I carry that baggage in real life. So I carry it here too. I ask that you, (few) readers, be kind and forgive these awkward growing pains.

So now we're in a global pandemic, and my country's  leadership has overwhelmingly failed our population. The pandemic has brought our economy crashing down, and revealed all the classist and racialized and gendered fractures in our society. In academe, the field I've chosen, there are dire reports of the collapse of college in America, as well as clear signs that women academics will be farther behind when and if things return to some semblance of normal. There is significant gaslighting about returning to normal, which of course some predicted.

As I write this, there are protestors one block away from me, hair stylists angry that Gov Lamont (CT) has declined to allow them to go back to work. I have become a full-time stay@home mom, which is not a role that suits me. Of course my partner and I have fought a lot during quarantine, because we haven't seen anyone else in 11 weeks (in real life). I am frustrated with my situation: my inability to properly engage and teach my toddler, my inability to communicate with my partner at times, my inability to do meaningful work, my consistent bouts with depression...on a broader level, with the world situation, with everything. I know I am incredibly privileged. That's kind of what makes it worse - that my situation is the ideal situation for lockdown. 

I have been meditating consistently, working out consistently, but these practices have been small goals I've kept to myself. So here is my attempt to focus on cultivating gratitude, again, in a new time, in unforeseen challenges, with some more public accountability. Or at least the idea of it.

Today, on Tuesday May 19, 2020, Day 72 of lockdown, I am grateful for:
- the crinkle in my toddler's nose when he smiles at me, usually up close, usually holding my face in his chubby little hands
-I bought a peony plant and a beautiful pot for it this past weekend. It's quite beautiful, and  I'm looking forward to seeing its blooms here very soon!