Introduction

I wanted to wish you good morning.

I wanted to wish you good night.

I started to write these on Twitter,

A way of just being polite.

I’m really quite hooked on the Twitter,

They should take my phone out and lock it.

The biggest distraction for someone like me?

An audience up in my pocket.

So I start the day with a greeting.

And I end with a night variation.

It safeguards my evenings and weekends at home,

To sign off, a mini-vacation.

The greetings are sometimes flirtatious,

Or cheeky, or weirdly specific.

They’re pulled from my life or my brain or my thoughts,

Terrific’ly Twitter prolific.

I don’t have a book of quotations

Or wisdom I pull from the shelf;

Most often the greetings I wish you

Are the greetings I wish for myself.

So if I write “relax,” then I’m nervous,

Or if I write, “cheer up,” then I’m blue.

I’m writing what I wish somebody would say,

Then switching the pronoun to you.

And after a few years of greetings,

They started to vary in tone;

And people said, “Lin, your gmornings and nights

Are the nicest things up in my phone.”

Now I get tweets like “This saved me”

Or often, “I need this reminder.”

You tell me, “I printed this out and I keep it

Around, on my desk, in my binder.”

So you asked, “Will you make a book, please?”

I replied, “Oh, consider it done.”

Then I reached out to Kassandra Tidland

Who lit’rally RT’s my best

And speaking of best T’s, and besties,

There’s besties I’ve made through my writing.

Among them is polymath Jonathan Sun,

His drawings and words so inviting.

Then we sat down together and made this;

It’s the book that you hold in your hands.

You can open it at any moment or page

With the hope you find something that lands.

And it’s nice to have things to hold on to,

Some kindness right here, within sight.

You can read this whenever you want to.

It will be here. Gmorning. Gnight.