I’m grateful for many things on this Thanksgiving Day: most importantly the family and friends that fill my life. I’m thankful to be in good health and able to do for myself those simple tasks that consititute everyday life.
It’s probably completely weird of me, but I’m thankful for something that most people don’t care about at all: HTML and CSS. Not the book I’ve got coming out in December (although I am certainly thankful about that) but the subject of HTML and CSS as a fascinating mental pursuit. I don’t know what it is that makes people become hooked on a topic to the point that they want to endlessly know more and more about it. For some people its coin collecting, or baseball stats, or salsa dancing. For me, its “View Source” and code views. I’m not a computer geek, I don’t understand programming. My background is in education and writing. But somehow this HTML and CSS thing got my full attention and I’ve been having a ball with it for several years.
There’s a TV show called “It’s Good to Be…” where they dissect how good it is to be whoever because they make a lot of money. When I watch it I think about things like Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson: a poem about a rich and admired man who commits suicide. It’s only money, people.
It’s good to be me today: good to have people I love who care about me in return, to be American and free, to be healthy, and to have a never ending source of interest in HTML and CSS.