Happy Thanksgiving (weekend)! Maybe this wasn’t the case for everyone, but the holiday seemed to arrive sooner than expected this year. Is it because we’re so rarely in a holiday state of mind these days, even when we probably need a break and diversion more than ever?

To stop and consider what we’re thankful for right now feels like kind of a trite exercise when nearly every day seems to be a fight with something. But maybe it’s more important than ever to think about such things.

For most of this year, I’ve been trying to prioritize what I truly feel is important and accept that I let some things in my life become more oppressive than I should have. I am most certainly thankful for the opportunity to take time to look inward and outward, and try to become a better person for it.

Yet the impulse to jump back into bad habits — taking a job that would’ve been bad for me, not showing enough empathy and patience, expecting too much from others, not accepting what I can’t control, to name a few — and forget what I’ve tried to accomplish over the past five months is a recurring struggle.

I hope I don’t write so much about trying to find a balance that it comes off as whining,  me being some kind of headcase, or any sort of self-help speak. I might not be writing as much professionally as I’d like, but I do feel like I’m in a better place — both for myself and the people around me. And I have to believe that I’ll yield some benefit from that eventually.

In the meantime, you stopping by to read this helps tremendously. And I am definitely thankful for that.

Reading to Go With Your Pie

** How many people had salad on their Thanksgiving tables? According to this diagram, virtually the entire Western part of the United States goes that way. (Although I wonder if “salad” means greens, etc., rather than some gross Jello-based “salad.”) We did not have mac and cheese, despite living in the South. [FiveThirtyEight]

** Why wombats have cube-shaped poop probably wouldn’t have been appropriate Thanksgiving dinner conversation. (But if anyone tried, please let us know!) I enjoy imagining the engineer studying this having to explain what she does to family and friends while making small talk. [Popular Science]

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