But I'd add to that.
It's also the "Golden Age of Bullying." And that makes me sad.
Wherever you look, someone who doesn't drive a giant pickup or skirt taxes is being picked on my someone who does. Bullies are multiplying like leaves on a freshly-raked lawn. They come from nowhere and they've taken over.
I hate bullies.
More than any other archetype, I hate bullies. And today, in nearly every sphere in our lives, from government, to the oligopolies we are forced to buy from, borrow from and pay with, to the oligopolies (who suppress wages and have eliminated job-security) we are forced to submit to bullies.
I'm also pissed at bullies who lie serially simply because they know they can get away with it. This story hit my in-box a few hours ago.
Yet.
I am mad at lies. I hate mendacity. And moral turpitude.
I always will be. Despite all the Roussean blather about the fundamental goodness of humans and humanity, Hobbes' nasty, brutish and short makes more sense to me.
Yet, for all that, I am optimistic.
And thankful.
In America, we're supposed to give thanks on Thursday. Most people will instead fight with family and watch concussive brain trauma on TV at a volume so loud as to be harmful. Instead, I am doing my thanking today and tomorrow. And really, every day.
By the way, though there are many, I'm not mentioning any individuals. Invariably I'd forget someone. And also, there are too many.
So, here. Some thanks:
1. I am thankful for clients who keep calling me.
2. I am thankful for clients who come to me for help.
3. And actually listen to me.
4. I am thankful for people who can still laugh. Especially at inappropriate times. (Which to the bullying class is always.)
5. I am thankful for the quiet I can find while walking along the sea.
6. I am thankful for never going gentle into any good night.
7. I am thankful for dad jokes.
8. I am thankful for people who care.
9. I am thankful for people who let the phone ring. Who don't answer it if you need them.
10. I am thankful for alarm clocks. Someday more people will awaken and we'll set to making things righter.
11. I am thankful for having the money to buy the books I want to buy.
12. I am thankful for bookshelves in every room in New York and in my small cottage in Connecticut.
13. I am thankful for the programming I get on my big-screen TV, ie my living room window, that looks out over the sea where in the warm months I can watch the osprey hunt.
14. I am thankful for Ebbetts Field Flannels who almost single-handedly have allowed me to scratch my itch for baseball when the grass was real.
15. I am thankful for having grown up in pre-Google times when it actually was good to have a memory, and for having held onto my ability to remember.
16. I am thankful for Citizen Kane.
17. I am thankful for High Noon.
18. I am thankful for Bad Day at Black Rock.
19. I am thankful for On the Waterfront.
20. I am thankful for a thousand other movies and passages from books that remind me that the fight is more important than the win.
21. I am thankful that I love to read.
22. I am thankful that even in our be-dimmed times of shrinking literacy, about ten books a week are published that I want to be my next book.
23. I am thankful for a really good cinnamon pecan roll. With raisins is even better.
24. To that end, I am thankful for raisins. For all the rebuke they receive, despite how they're taken for granted, they're better than almost any "sweet," certainly better than any sweet that is trending.
25. I am thankful that I'm not trending.
26. I am thankful that I'l' never be trending.
27. I am thankful that at a time when almost everyone seems to be ignoring humanity's core values--at a time when the leaders of two of the most powerful nations on earth have shattered about 75 of the ten commandments, I haven't walked away from mine.
28. The same holds true of the ad industry--which has like above--abnegated its core values of helping people learn, compare and buy. I'm thankful for this because it helps me get more business from clients who haven't lost the plot.
29. I'm thankful for clients who haven't lost the plot.
30. As horrible as it was, I'm thankful I grew up during the Vietnam war. At the very least it trained me to always question authority and the party-line--in life and in work.
31. To that end, I'm thankful I grew up impoverished. It sucked never having anything. But it makes me appreciate more today and work harder to get it.
32. I'm thankful for my Connecticut fireplace and my 14-month-old golden retriever, Sparkle, sleeping in front of it having come in from the beach.
33. I am thankful almost everything makes me laugh.
34. I am thankful I'm not afraid to laugh.
35. I am thankful I have the courage to ask questions--especially when no one else does. (I remember once at Ogilvy, a new production lead telling us we had to work more "Agile-ly." I asked, "What does agile mean? And if it's a proxy for faster, we need to talk, because no one is faster than we are.")
36. I am thankful for Cremo Mint shave cream. I know it's not au courant to shave everyday as I do. But it's soothing, fresh-smelling and I like the feeling.
37. I am thankful I've lost my appetite. In the last two years, I've lost twenty pounds without even trying and I'm back, just about, to my playing weight.
38. I think JM Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, said, "I'm thankful for my memory. It gives us roses in December." That's good.
39. I'm thankful for the global supply chain that gives me watermelon in November.
40. I'm thankful for the seventeen remaining art directors who remember how to hang punctuation.
41. I'm thankful for the seventeen remaining writers who remember to punctuate.
42. I'm thankful no one's ever sent me a dick pic or an eggplant emoji.
43. I'm thankful for rays through heavy clouds.
44. I'm thankful I didn't fall through the glass of the storm-door Wednesday night when the wind ripped it off its hinges at three in the morning.
45. I'm thankful for people who smile back.
46. I'm thankful for net30.
47-91 tomorrow.
I'm thankful there will be a tomorrow.
I think.
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