#365Gratitude Day 272:Watts in a good article

Rascal, entertainer, and personal hero Alan Watts. His laughter sounds like music to me.  

It's no secret how much I love the written and spoken work of Alan Watts. Watts was a priest who studied eastern spirituality and philosophy and became a sort of "spiritual entertainer."  

Watts made it very clear he was no guru, he did not have all the answers for you.  Rather, he had a different way of seeing what it meant to be alive, a way you too might try to see.  The ideas he talked about were a mix of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and a distinctly modern sensibility.

His ideas, combined with the work of some others (Pema Chodron, Brené Brown, Dan Millman, Wayne Dyer, and Viktor Frankl) have changed and informed my whole life. 

My friend Manuel sent me a link to a 3,800 word article by Tim Lott about Watts, his life, and his work, Off-Beat Zen.  

I'm very grateful for it. It taught me some things about Watts that I didn't know, and expresses in a marvelously pithy way some of the very complex, powerful, transformative ideas I learned from his work and which are a part of my daily practice. 

#365Gratitude Day 271:Conference Crawl

Actually, it wasn't a crawl at all.

This morning I woke up, remembered that working out is a habit again, and then linked up with my morning walk crew.  I got on the phone (featuring my lovely boycat Yang on the lock screen) with my girlfriend Squee, and my bestie Moliére.

We shared our routine.  We listened to Squee get the Squeelets off to school, listened to Moliére go through and finish his workout and return to his meow-purring room-mate Figaro, and listened to me as I pushed myself to go a little further, and a little faster.  

On the way home I remarked to them both that I was taking the Really Big Hill™ by my house a lot easier today than I did yesterday, and that I really was powering up it, without sounding like a wheezing camel in a cuisinart, or whatever.  

So, after I crested the hill, and was in the last half mile or so back to the house, I actually broke out in a run for a bit.  At one point I was doing a 9:30 mile.  Now, it's not like I did it for 9 minutes, I did it for about 2 minutes.  But, I wanted to do it, and I did it. 

Back when I was first learning to run, I felt this way.  I remember it.  Brother told me what it was even.  It's when you start to progress and want to burst through to the next level.  Tomorrow, I'm going swimming, and while I'm excited to cross-train, I'm just the tiniest bit disappointed.  Because I'm excited to go out again, and see how much more I want to and do actually run.

I feel myself actively "on the grow" again.

I love having Squee and Moliére to share it with.  It's connecting, supporting, and enhancing.  I love them and the way they help me.

#365Gratitude Day 270:Hanging out in the bathroom kitchen

I realized this morning that my girlfriend Squee, and her children live with us, in our enormous house. 

It's a really big house. It stretches all the way from Virginia to Illinois.  It has funny combination rooms in it, that kind of change like the staircases at Hogwarts.

Another morning in the bathroom kitchen.  

That's because we spend a lot of time together on Skype.   Sometimes our kitchen is the size of two kitchens.  Sometimes our living room has multiple couches in it. And sometimes our kitchen counter attaches to a bathroom sink vanity. 

Squee, Missy, and I spend a lot of time together. We have mastered the long distance relationship.  Yes, sometimes the ache to hold one another, to be physically present with one another is almost unbearable. But more often than not, just like the rooms in our house melt into one another, so do the moments of our days. 

#365Gratitude Day 254:Stroke, stroke, slide

Saturday was a mix of familiar stuff and new things. Missy and I were going to the DC Littles Munch.  Beforehand though I wanted to work out, to go swimming at a new pool that opened up near us. 

There was in fact cake. Cake & swimming. Great combo.  

I decidec to do 45 minutes of breast stroke, because it's a really good calorie burn for me, and I knew there would be cake at the munch.  As I swam I debated cutting it short at 30 minutes, but realized my health mattered more than that 15 minutes. ​

To reward myself for my diligence I went on the new pool's absolutely amazing water slide. So fast. So tall. So dizzying. So GREAT. 

It felt good to make my exercise a priority again.  

At the munch, I was almost completely  just a guest there, instead of helping run it. I did stand up during announcements to talk about the Littles Express holiday train ride I'm helping run this year. But that was just a small thing. It felt great to be at the munch while not being in charge of it.  

I'm grateful I can do new things that are informed by old things, and old things in new ways. 

#365Gratitude Day 253:Shrimp-lickers or pen linings?

On Friday I had a moment of mad scientist frenzy. I had stumbled across this electronic party game called QuipLash and what u wanted more than any other thing was to play it across the Internet with friends.  

The game is meant to be played by a large number of people in the same room, each using their smartphone or tablet as a controller.  

Cool, right? 

As for the game, it's like putting Cards Against Humanity and The Game of Things in a blender, mixed with a dash of fart jokes and crude flirty behavior. 

I love it.  

Using my xbox, twitch, and my laptop I worked out a way to get a bunch of nice folks from the Big Little Podcast slack to play.  

Which resulted in choices like that delightful one. So fun!