Nothing has inspired me to write for several months, so here are some things

Nothing has inspired me to write poetry since August 21st.

I can't think of a time in the last five years that I've gone three months without writing a poem.

This is an uncomfortable sign that life feels bland. And many distressing things are going on in the world. So I want to take stock of several amazing things that happened in the last week.

1. I read Mindy Kaling's "Is Everyone Hanging out without Me?" It was easy to read and not boring, which is much more than I can say about almost everything else I'm reading right now. I was laughing nearly the whole time. It felt good to have positive emotions. And also, now someone has written about being a nervous chubby Indian girl at the top of a diving board. Damn, girl. I know how your ten-year-old self felt. Thank you for sharing that with the world.

2. I watched the first few episodes of Aziz Ansari's new comedy, "Master of None." It made me laugh and cry. The representation of Indian people I grew up with was Apu from the Simpsons. And now there is a show that is mainstreaming at least some aspect of my second-generation immigrant experience of the United States. I want to think I've moved beyond identity politics, but this is how I felt when I walked into the Beyond Bollywood exhibit at the Smithsonian last year. Appreciative. Proud. Like a real, recognized human being. I've been feeling so unIndian and so unanything recently. I guess that part of me is still alive.

3. I ate a slice of honeycrisp apple with chopped cilantro and my palate exploded. In a good way. This was an accident. It only happened because I was too lazy to bust out a second cutting board. I am capable of enjoying food. I am still capable of being inspired by taste.

4. I have been swimming instead of studying. Swimming slowly, in the most unathletic way possible. (That's right, Mindy Kaling, our ten-year-old selves would be so proud of me now!) I experienced a "swimmer's mellow," which I'm naming after the "runner's high" I haven't felt since I was a waifish teenager. There's something about your fingers slicing through the water, over and over again, that's meditative.

These are all good things. If I ever read this in the distant future, cheers to these things.