#gratitudeNow: I know... me

So a big part of my mindful practice is a focus on growth. Every single day of my life I consider who I am as a person, what I do, why I do it, and how.

I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. Sometimes I can be self-centered, sometimes oblivious. But I’m compassionate about it. I recognize that I’m a frail, imperfect human creature. Like everyone.

And that fills me with love and compassion for myself, and for every other person, too.

Which brings me to tonight.

So, I’m coding away on WeMinder, working like a demon trying to get the last 3% or so of it done before release. And I make this HUGE breakthrough, hit a big milestone. I save the code, commit it, and have a moment of blissful relief.

And I’m exhausted, so very tired. But I’m also keyed up. So I go online, to a discord I like, and chat a bit.

One of the chatters, someone I’ve never talked to before, asks “Can someone talk please?”

To which I responded, “Sure, for a few minutes.”

Then we got into it. I won’t get into details, because privacy. But he was nervous about something big, and worried how it was going to go.

I dropped some mindful taoism on him. Showed him one of my favorite zen story videos ever, and gave him my favorite zen piece of music ever.

And he was, absolutely, 100% soothed, and had his despair judo-flipped to a place of calm, enlightened, peace.

He thanked me.

But I’m just as thankful.

Because it’s in these moments that I can see myself for who I am. I can be incredibly hard on myself. I have a terrible case of the “type a’s”. I always think I can do more, be better, do it faster, improve. I so rarely allow myself rest, or imperfection.

But it’s after these sorts of experiences I can cut myself a break. Who am I? I’m the sort of guy who always manages to eke out a few minutes for people in need, and who recognizes that we’re all in this together.

I love who I am.

#gratitudeNow: I'm on top of being overwhelmed

So there’s a feature in WeMinder called the Mood Thermometer. It’s a way for the two partners in the chart to convey to one another how they feel, and to know that the other person is aware of it.

I’m getting very, very close to being done with, and releasing the app. In one of my more recent updates I added A TON of new moods and icons to the software.

(The one for curious is so ridiculously adorable, it fills me with joy.)

Anyhow, the technique I use to get custom icons in, I have mastered it.

I was showing Missy the update a few days ago (because much like that bald guy with the hair club for men, I’m not just the developer of WeMinder, I’m one of its users) and she commented that there was one mood still missing, “overwhelmed.”

We picked an icon from the icon provider I use, and this morning, in about 10 minutes, I had transformed it from a pile of path objects and gibberish, into the lovely icon you see before you.

I have high hopes for WeMinder. I think people are going to really get a lot out of it, and that it’s going to be a hit. But even if it doesn’t, I’ve already experienced one of the key benefits of the whole endeavor. When I started, I wanted to get better at being a developer, to teach myself a bunch of things which would come in handy in my career.

And I have absolutely done that, and done it well.

#gratitudeNow: Moral Perspective

A magnifying glass around the world

So this past weekend I was visiting longtime friends. At one point,  the husband and I had a good hour or so to ourselves and we picked up chicken wings. 

 Car rides often come with philosophical talk, in my experience.   My friends shared with me something he says often, both at work and in his life.

“When in doubt, pan out.” 

  That is, step back from yourself,  from your immediate prospective.  Seek the wider viewpoint. 

 This is really smart stuff.   And for several reasons, and several ways:

•  There’s this thing I’m always saying how there’s only hear, only now.  Zooming out in that way helps me see so  zooming out in that way helps me see that.  Whatever amazing thing’s going on, it’s a nanosecond event in a very long life.  That’s also true if something terrible is happening.
•  It’s not all about me. I’m just one among many.  Often what works out well for me isn’t so hard for others around me.
•  Furthermore, we’re all in this together. So it’s often helpful to consider how something that affects me positively might affect others in a profoundly negative way.

 There’s more to this, lots more. I’m pretty sure this is going to be part of my meditation and contemplation for several days if not weeks or months in the future.   Just this morning, I saw this Boudin Doodle cartoon that touches on and aspect of this paradigm. 

The Buddha doodle monk and his elephant buddy, in spacesuits observing the earth. “Grateful for the gift of life” 

  The thing about perspective is that as a means of observations it’s controllable, blinking your eyes, are we going your ears maybe.   I know I can make the conscious effort to shift my perspective.   When I’m considering the moment I can choose the context buy which I am considering it  

Here’s a simple example.

 It’s Monday, October 29 as I write this, around 8:25 AM.   It’s simultaneously  early in the week,  not particularly early in the morning,  and rather late in the year. 

 None of these perspectives or wrong, they all matter.   By changing which one I musing, I can wrap my head around different truths about my life.

 For one thing, shortly I need to get on the road and get to my job because it’s waiting for me and I have things to do there.  

Simultaneously, the midterm elections are a scant number of days away, and it’s very important that I vote.  

At the exact same time, it’s valuable and worthwhile for me to take the 10 minutes or so to stop and write this post. I feel a profound sense of peace and strength from doing this sort of introspection, and sharing it with you.

 During the conversation with my friend, I was trying to explain this very difficult concept related to non-duality, that of satori. Satori is, sort of, the realization that you as a separate entity do not, have never, and will never exist.  We’re just the totality of existence expressing itself in this place, at this time, through this body.  As I told my friend, this isn’t terrifying, it’s actually quite soothing.  Through what he shared with me about panning out, I think I’m beginning to understand why somewhat. 

#gratitudeNow: Code Green

So, it’s about 4:30 this morning. I’m lying in bed, drowsing, about ready to get up.

The past several days I’ve been really hard at work on Project Drummond, my side software gig.

There’s this thing I have to do in the software, come up with cumulative durations for time spent working various tasks.

Let’s use the example of taking care of an adult baby. Let’s say from 10:00am to 10:45 you spend time reading them a story, then put them down for a nap, only to find out they’ve horribly misbehaved earlier that day, so when you wake them up at 1pm, you spend a good forty five minutes scolding and spanking them.

I want to add up that time doing both activities, and lots more.

I realized that in the groovy programming language I use, there is already some awesome functionality almost baked into the language to do this.

import groovy.time.*; 
dateStoryStarted = new Date().parse('hh:mm a', '10:15 am')
dateStoryEnded = new Date().parse('hh:mm a', '10:45 am')
 
TimeDuration durationStory = TimeCategory.minus(dateStoryEnded,dateStoryStarted)
 
datePunishmentStarted = new Date().parse('HH:mm a', '01:00 pm')
datePunishmentEnded = new Date().parse('HH:mm a', '01:45 pm')
 
TimeDuration durationPunishment = TimeCategory.minus(datePunishmentEnded, datePunishmentStarted)
 
TimeDuration CareTotal = durationStory + durationPunishment

All told, that’s 75 minutes of care, by the way.

So, I realize I can do this, while I’m laying in bed, and when the alarm goes off, I just pop right up out of bed, excited. Time duration and time category are the total boss.

I run some initial experiments with it, and it looks like it’s going to be just what I need.

Now I feel energized to go to work, rocket through my whole day, then come home and finish this thing in my own project.

Awesome. That my friends, is a code green moment.

#gratitudeNow: Hup two three four

There’s this thing that gives me great comfort, that comes with a degree of irony. I’m a fan of clarity. I intensely dislike vagueness in certain contexts.

I love it when in my writing, my personal coding projects, my work-at-work I have a strong sense for what I’m doing next. I often refer to this as having “marching orders.” That is, I know what the task is, and I have definite, discrete points by which to measure success over the task. I often say to my boss that I dislike uncertainty.

Which is ridiculous. Because certainty is an illusion except in certain very specific instances. Yes, π is 3.14. Yes, a day is 86,400 seconds long. But when I really turn and look at it, I know that here is the only place, and now the only time. I know that success is measured in travel, not destination.

But it doesn’t stop me from enjoying the creature comfort of some “fabricated certainty.”

Just this morning, I was looking at the work I’ve been doing in Project Drummond, my software side-project. I scoped out 8 next actions I need to do on this feature I’m coding. There’s javascript functions to write, a GSP to modify, possibly some service methods to write, and I have to teach myself how to use a certain javascript charting library, something I’m very excited about.

I’m excited to have this set of marching orders to follow to get to a place I want to go. It doesn’t really matter that the orders came from me.