#gratitudeNow: Berry Responsible

So the other day, Missy went grocery shopping. She brought home a big pack of fresh strawberries. There’s this funny thing we often go through with these. They’ll sit in the fridge, unopened, not hulled, and slowly go bad. Then, just when I want some, I reach for them, and have to throw them out.

I hate it.

Missy and I talked about it as I was helping her put away the groceries. And we agreed that we’d just cut them up, so they’d be ready to go, whenever we wanted some.

Later that day, I did it. Cutting board, knife, ten minutes of effort.

I’ve been noticing something about what I did, and about being an adult, in general.

I think part of being an adult is recognizing that you can expend effort ahead of time, to rely on yourself later.

I’m super looking forward to having some of those strawberries. I feel damn good knowing they’re going in my belly, not the trash.

And I think a whole lot of things are like that. That there’s joy in the delayed gratification that comes with effort. Not that it’s like some video game achievement, and once you’ve done it, you don’t have to again. There’s dishes stacked up on the kitchen counter that really need my attention. I’m going to get to them today. And when I do, it’s going to be a berry nice feeling.

Maybe I’ll reward myself with a bowl of strawberries and a little whip cream for it.

#gratitudeNow: A never-ending echo

So one of the bad things that resulted from Spacey’s passing was that it also, eventually, took down the website and feed for the Big Little Podcast.

I struggled for a while trying to figure out what the heck to do about it.

Brother really was the technical arm of our podcast effort. He secured our hosting, set up our gear. In hindsight, I wish I had been more involved with that, and that we’d made sure to share credentials and responsibility for that stuff equally.

But, there’s really a subtle but important psychological reason why it was that way. Spacey was really quite introverted. Being behind the mic was always exciting but exhausting for him. As we created the show, and grew it over time, each of us struggled with bringing equivalent effort to the show.

I have a big personality, a big mouth. I’m a charismatic and compelling public speaker. I don’t say that in a boastful way. Brother was a technical genius, and a skilled artist. Everything he designed and created had a beautiful look and feel. We sort of naturally fell into our roles, with me as the go-find-em guy for guests, and he as the wizard behind the scenes.

And together, along with Mae, we created a really special environment, that let people speak to who and what they were.

But, it did come with cost. Which is that when the horrible accident that put him in a coma happened, it caught us completely by surprise and without any sort of disaster recovery plan.

After he passed away, I found access to the recordings through a different means. Thank goodness. So, I bought a domain, and ended up creating the archive.

It’s not done, but I’m steadily getting it together. There are 57 episodes, and most of the little-somethings already up in the archive. And I won’t stop until it’s all there.

I was going to wait until I was done to release the thing to the world. But three or so weeks ago, I changed my mind.

And I’m so glad I did. The work of creating the archive is sometimes really, really heavy. I think about Spacey all the time. I miss him terribly every day.

But sometimes, as I work on the archive, and re-listen to our shows, it’s joyous. He was so smart, sweet, funny, and kind.

There’s roughly 200 hours of the show. 200 hours of him helping others, lovingly teasing me and joking with me and our guests. 200 hours of us appreciating one another.

And as much as I can, I’m going to make sure all that never fades from the world. I’ve got my eye on it. When the archive is done, I’m going to approach some folks about ways to make sure it never goes away.

So many people have contacted me about what the show has meant to them, about how sad they are at his passing. And that is helping me process my own grief.

I’ll say too, that there’s work on the archive people can help me with, if they want. I’m definitely looking for help filling in those missing show notes and transcripts. If you want to get involved in any of that, go to https://www.biglittlepodcast.info/news-contact, and use my email link there to drop me a note.

There’s a saying that as long as we speak of them, those who have passed away never completely die. I know I’m going to be talking about him forever. And listening to him through the archive.

It brings me a whole lot of joy to see that all over the world, people are still listening to him.

#gratitudeNow: Enduring friendships

So the other day, I caught up with an old friend, S. I saw her posting about something near and dear to my heart (cooking with an air fryer), asking for advice and help.

I’m a big fan of those things, and do a lot of cooking with the ones we have. (Yes, plural.)

So I pinged her, and we got a video chat going.

She and I have been good, loving friends for a long, long time. She’s someone I see at events, one in particular. But we don’t live close to one another, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her in person in the past five years.

But I adore her. And she adores me. So I video called, and we caught up. And it was glorious. We expressed our mutual affection and feelings of connection for one another, caught up about our lives, and doubled down on why we feel so fondly for one another.

It was good.

#gratitudeNow: Enjoying Collapses

So I’m starting a new feature on WeMinder today, that’s going to make it more friendly to a wider group of people. When I got started creating it, I made the roles of the two people in a chart the caregiver and the little. But really the application could work for all sorts of roles, as long as discipline is part of the relationship. Top, bottom, dominant, submissive, handler and pony, all sorts of roles can use this thing.

Discover & share this Fail GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

But I started with caregiver and little, because you start with what you know, right?

I’ve had it on my list to do for a while. I sat down to think on it, come up with a good user interface, and some options.

And then began really thinking about how to implement it.

Which was a bit like pulling on the loose thread of a sweater, or maybe placing that last domino.

And slipping.

What I thought would be a pretty minor thing is turning out to have all sorts of side-effects and related concerns. Which, I’ll admit, when I first looked at it, made my stomach churn a bit, and I kind of clapped my hands to my face, like this poor guy.

But then right after, I felt just the other way. This is exciting! Because once I started to realize some of the other implications to what I’m doing, it began giving me all sorts of ideas not just for how to do it, but how doing it will make the whole application even better.

I love this process. LOVE IT. I feel the same way when I write fiction, or when I cook. There’s a kind of phase-shift that my brain goes through, where a problem, assumption, omission or mistake transforms and instead becomes a data point, an asset.

As a friend of mine said to me once, long ago:

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

#tao_of_kink: No. 1: The Beginning

Years ago, I had a profound spiritual experience at a pagan festival, which resulted in my casting aside my atheist and objectivist beliefs, and becoming more spiritual. Pagans find their own particular path. The one that called to me the loudest was Taoism.

I practice “philosophical Taoism” or Tao-chia. I find it’s like Othello – simple to learn, but a lifetime to master. Tao-chia is more spiritual philosophy than religion, and blends very well with many religions, and with kink and sexuality in general. It’s very sex-positive. If I had to sum up Taoism in one word, it’d be “Relax.”

The central work of Taoist wisdom is the Tao te Ching, the “Book of the Way and its power”, written by Lao-tzu around 600 BC. It’s a tiny book, of 81 small poems about various aspects of life. I’ve read these poems over and over, and spent years in contemplation of their meaning in my life.

We’ll explore each of them together one at a time, and see how they might apply to living a more fulfilled sexual life.

Let’s start at the beginning.

1 
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name. 

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Tao is Chinese for “way”. There are all sorts of tao’s. A “tao” is the way you do something, or the way that it happens. The way you pull down your submissive’s pants to spank them is a tao, as is the way their bottom gets red when you smack it.

But that’s not the tao I’m talking about. I mean the big one, the Tao. It contains all those other little tao’s. Wikipedia defines it as “the ever-lasting essential and fundamental force that runs through all matter in the Universe, living or not.”

That’s about as clear as mud soup, isn’t it? What the heck does it have to do with being kinky, or sexual? Everything, actually.

The Tao is the movement of everything. It’s the way sunrise follows sunset, and the way seasons turn. Everything that ever was, is, or will be, is the Tao, including you.

One key idea about the Tao is that it’s not good, nor bad. The Tao just is. As part of it, you can’t study it, can’t learn it, and can’t judge it. You just perceive it.

We kinky people sure do love our labels. He’s a submissive. She’s a dominant. That person is a top. This one is a bottom. The truth is though, that names, which Taoism calls “ming”, get in the way. Ming imply judgment, often a source of difficulty for kinky people.

Let’s imagine that you like to tie someone up and watch them struggle against it. What if you also have a desire to suck someone’s toes? Maybe that makes you a foot fetishist, or a bottom. Can you be a rope top and a foot fetishist at the same time?

Well, if you are those things, then clearly you can be. The Tao is known, not judged. So is kink. Go ahead and tie someone up, and then suck away to your heart’s content!

People in the scene often make value judgments about it, like “A real submissive would do (fill in the blank)” or “A top would never do that.” These are opinions, not facts. The very words we use are subject to debate.

What’s the difference between a submissive, bottom and slave? People hold up the standard of Safe, Sane, and Consensual as a holy grail for these things we do. But who’s to say what’s safe, what’s sane, and what’s consensual? Those are relative definitions at best.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t form your own opinions. You can, should, and will. It’s just human to do so.

When I first got into kink, I was convinced I was completely submissive. I’m an age player, an adult baby. I thought that was all I was, and wouldn’t or couldn’t enjoy being someone else’s top, or Daddy, or Big.

But it just wasn’t true. Over the years I’ve developed a love for caring for other age players. I love giving a good spanking, or checking someone’s diaper and cradling them in my arms. I love topping and bottoming in many other ways, too.

Lao-tzu had it right. When you stop worrying about the kind of kinky person you should be, you can fully embrace the kinky person you actually are.

Originally published by Fearless Press