#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: Recipease

So as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I do is that I’m a programmer. I do this both in my day job and on the side. It can be very enjoyable work, but at times it’s also frustrating, often quite daunting. Recently I’ve been tinkering with adding some messaging capabilities to my side thing, Project Longbottom.

At first I wanted the project to use push notifications. I dug in hard, investigating what looked like a promising way to add them in, leveraging a big library that’s part of the tech stack I am using. Then I ran headlong into an insurmountable limitation. Well, crap.

A few days ago I found an alternate way to get where I wanted, using SMS notifications. I started putting it in place. Hit another speed bump, that my wonderful brother Spacey helped me get over last night.

Now I’ve got this plan, this recipe for how I’m going to build this thing. I can see the step I’m on, and see the ones coming up.

That’s actually a pretty standard behavior for me, in almost everything I do. I make a plan, a recipe, but I only hold onto it loosely. To really lean into this particular food metaphor, let’s take that a bit further. Maybe I start out wanting to make a caprese sandwich, but realize that I’m out of mozzarella, so then I take the sliced tomato and capers, and mix them with some sautéed mushrooms over a salad.

It’s a Taoist thing, a form of intentional mindful practice. In Ron Hogan’s awesome gritty, modern translation of the Tao te Ching, Getting Right with Tao he describes this as “forgetting what you know, and understanding what’s real.”

“Can you hold on to your ego and still stay focused on Tao?

Can you relax your mind and body and brace yourself for a new life?

Can you check yourself
and see past
what’s in front of your eyes?

Can you be a leader
and not try to prove you’re in charge?

Can you deal with what’s happening and let it happen?

Can you forget what you know and understand what’s real?

Start a job and see it through. Have things
without holding on to them. Do the job
without expectation of reward. Lead people
without giving orders.
That’s the way you do it”

— Getting Right With Tao, 10

This behavior is a huge thing for me. I fall out of it daily, and then find it again. When I let go of how I think things should work, and refine my recipe based on how things actually work I become calm, relaxed, and profoundly more capable.

I’m grateful for it.

#gratitudeNow: Face time together

That’s my brother Spacey.
I love him.

We aren’t biologically brothers. We are family by choice. And have been for decades.

We talk every week, often by phone, many times by video call. We see each other in person as often as we can, which is never enough for either of us.

We are just there for each other in our lives. Our relationship is one of the most enduring and important ones in my life.

We celebrate each other’s victories, help one another plan and sound out things, act as willing and enthusiastic navigators for each other, and soothe each other’s pains.

One of the amazing things about our long relationship is that we have developed patterns, rituals, and a sort of private history.

In this artsy filtered picture of my brother you can see one of them. He loves to FaceTime with me while he holds his phone and walks around his house. He’ll do these conversational laps as we dig into something. Or I’ll just be present with him as he moves about his day, cooking a meal, doing a chore, or even going to the bathroom.

Yes, we listen to each other pee.

And that’s super intimate. But maybe not in the way you’re thinking. We just open to one another, and lay bare the contents of our innermost thoughts and feelings. We don’t have secrets or shame.

Compared to that, the sound of some urine hitting water is no big deal.

I’m grateful for my brother every single day. He’s a remarkable person, and my life is an order of magnitude better for his having been and continuing to be in it.

#gratitudeNow: Been A While

It’s been a while.

I was chatting with a new friend today, someone I met through the Camp Crucible chat, and showed them this blog.

Which I realized I had not updated since January. That’s been on my mind lately Brother and I were talking about my blog the other day and he lamented how much he missed it.

My new friend, let’s call her M, is a mindfulness fan just like I am. We had this amazing chat about how mindfulness pervades our lives, and the many ways it can be helpful.

That got me thinking and wanting to write here again even more. It’s been a while for many things for me, that I’ve begun to focus on again.

Here’s a few:

• Since January I’ve been actively working out and food journaling to get in shape.

• I’m headed back to Camp Crucible this month.

• I’m open to new connections with other people. I don’t need them, I’m just open to them.

I’m fascinated by the fact that while I’m a different person than I was before, I CAN pick up things from the past and embrace them again. After several months of swimming, I’ve started walking on a treadmill and also hiking, which I’m new to.

There’s this thought I’m struggling to express properly. I’m grateful that while things change, while I change, nothing is ever truly lost. Nothing’s thrown away in the rubbish bin. It’s just put behind me, made part of my past. Those prior experiences, interests, connections, and relationships help inform the me-that-I-am-now, which is really the only me that there is.

I’m grateful for all that’s happened. And all that is happening.

#gratitudeNow: My brother

Spacey and I had the best phone call today.

It was a Thursday, and like pretty much every Thursday, we had a call on the books.  It's one of the ways in which we stay connected.

Anyhow, our phone call was so damn good.  I mean, they're always good, but this one was spectacular.  Besides planning out about 7 months worth of Big Little Podcast topics, we had this very substantive talk about relationships, about our own connection and how much we mean to one another, about healthy boundaries, communication, empathy, and self-love.

One of my favorite things about my brother is that he loves digging into the deep stuff like this with me.  We're like co-pilots of some spaceship that traverses the brain and the heart.

One of the things he told me is that while he considers me his poly partner, when he's explaining our relationship to vanilla folks he refers to me as his best friend.  Not surprisingly, I'm in complete agreement with him.  We're of one mind on it.  I see it just the same.

I'm so grateful for him.  He makes my life better each and every day.