Ten Thing of Thankful #1

First – I have to say that I’m very lucky to have found this community… While life has been very hectic lately, the TToT blog hop alone made me grin big and gave me a little boost of serotonin, both through writing and reading. What a lovely way to end (or begin) a week on a Sunday.

Second – Modern Talking. While I can’t say that I listen to them very often, yesterday morning I found myself dancing in front of my coffee maker to songs like Do You Wanna and Diamonds Never Made a Lady like a complete lunatic—and it felt so good. Even the coffee tasted better than usual.

Third – My alone time… this week I had so much time to myself at home that I actually feel revived, quite literally... I kept my favorite songs on replay, danced and sang along, binged a few TV shows I hadn’t watched in ages, and caught up on blogs I have only been reading from e-mail subscribing.

It’s very rare for me to be alone nowadays or do absolutely nothing. I have been feeling like a squeezed lemon… and now I feel like a plump one…

Sour, but pretty and ready to jump back into my endless bucket of responsibilities.

Fourth – My laptop, once again. I’m honestly in love with this thing, and I can’t imagine life without it right now, especially while travelling between two cities.

The computer I built myself at home is huge… heavy… and definitely not backpack-friendly—though it would be kind of iconic to set it up before every lecture.

Fifth – Second-hand stores… there’s one here that has sales where books go for one euro, or even less, and the other day I came back with both arms full, grinning, while my spouse laughed at me like I had gone completely mad (as if it's news after knowing me for 12 years).

I’m a huge fan of Erich Maria Remarque, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and when I moved from home, my mother wouldn’t let me take most of the books I wanted from her library. Now I’ve started finding old editions again, and I absolutely treasure them—their weight, their texture, even their scent… so different from the ones in stores now.

I really want to go back next month… and I don’t even care if the books show their age and have a few bent corners or such. I’m proud if I find some of my favorite classics and to give them a new home.

Sixth – My mother and the librarians who kept bringing me books when I was a child—they ignited my desire to write. Not everyone knows this, but at seven years old I was a very quiet girl. I barely spoke and went to speech therapy.

I’m still better on paper than in spoken word, but I find it a little ironic that someone who once struggled to speak (and still does—I sometimes stutter and can’t pronounce some words correctly) has so much to say.

Devouring books is what made me, and I don’t know who I’d be without it.

Seventh – Grammar helpers for my schoolwork… listen… my writing in my native language is horrendous otherwise, because Estonian grammar is heavily based on strict rules, and commas never come from a feeling. Speaking and writing in a few languages also makes the rules blend together sometimes... For example, my lecturer noted that Estonians don’t use the em-dash—but I’m a fan.

Eighth – The fact that I need only 12 more points to pass my higher math class, if I include the six you get for being present at every lecture. I’ve never been good at math, but the lecturer is the best I have ever had.

Firstly, I can feel like I understand something when she teaches, and secondly, the way the course is structured gives people like me (who graduated high school 15 years ago and aren’t very good at math) hope that we might actually pass.

It may ruin my beautiful average grade, but well, being horrible at one or two courses doesn't define much, right.

Ninth – Instagram and Pinterest. Even though I haven’t been very active there myself or built much of a following, I love reading other poets’ work there.

Sometimes I lose myself for hours, just scrolling and reblogging… I even set a timer for 30 minutes like a kid, only to press ignore and keep consuming, hahaha.

Tenth – I’m actually very grateful for the recent translator features on Chromium and X, because even though I’ve studied five languages, my vocabulary is still… questionable.

With Japanese, for example, I can maybe read around, umm, less than 20??? kanji, which is definitely not enough, and now everything gets translated automatically...

It makes it so much easier to enjoy content from Germany and Japan without my brain going, “wait… what did that word mean again…”