Joelle at the meeting: the shrug, not the Gratitude
He didn’t so much conclude or make obligatory reference to Gratitude or any of that usual shit as grip the lectern and shrug and say he’d started feeling just last month that the choice he made on the kitchen floor was the right choice, personally speaking.
Context
Even the sincere apparatus can go stale, and the truest speakers refuse it. Where a lesser share would close on the "obligatory reference to Gratitude" — the AA sign-off cliché that has hardened into performance — this man just grips the lectern, shrugs, and says the flatter, plainer, un-triumphant thing. The register discipline is knowing that the pious close would cheapen it, and choosing the shrug instead. (Cf. 076's Gately saying "Lucky" not "Grateful" — sincerity as declining the expected true-sounding word.)