#365Gratitude Day 29:Palifornia

I've been friends with my pal Sarah Noel for a loooong time.  I first met her through my friend Cleo, back when she was in service to her.  Ages ago, she came down to visit me, and go with Missy and I to Six Flags, an amusement park outside of Washington DC.

I've know her through every incarnation, and she's had many.  She changed careers, went back to school, changed her identity d/s wise, all sorts of things.  Through it all, we've always been close.  One of my favorite memories of her is a time we just floated together in the pool at my apartment building, talking about our lives.

A few months ago, she moved very far away, to California.

We had a farewell lunch at my house.  It was bittersweet.

But the funny thing is, she and I have talked more often, more regularly since she moved than in the past several years she lived in the area.

We took for granted, both of us, how easily we could see and talk to one another, spend time with one another.

And now we don't.  Whenever we feel like it, which is often, we reach out to one another to talk about Very Big Things, or just How We Are Feeling.

It feels good.  I'm so grateful for my friendship with her.  Love you, Pal.

#365Gratitude Day 28:Things Change

I rarely get into politics on this blog, but I will about the events of yesterday.

President Trump signed an executive order this past week titled "Protection Of The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States."  The order indefinitely suspends admissions for Syrian refugees and limits the flow of other refugees into the United States by instituting what the President has called "extreme vetting" of immigrants. (From this article by CNN.) 

I think this thing is dreadful.  It involves border guards administering "religious tests."  On a wide scale it will lead to suffering, injustice, and death.  It's already caused a shit storm of trouble.  Last night, there was a massive protest at JFK airport.

I was one of the 80,000 people watching the protest over the internet, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the crowd chanted about an emergency hearing to be held in a Brooklyn, NY court house at 7:30 that night.

The hearing resulted in a temporary stay of the deportations.  The key word here is temporary. This is a band-aid not a solution.

But it gives me some hope.  

There's a verse in the Tao te Ching that speaks to this:

74

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut your hand.

What I take from that verse is that there's no permanence.  Things DO change.  And while we CAN push them in a certain direction, it often comes with pain and suffering.  

Yes, this is awful.

Yes, there is work to do.

But no, this isn't a forgone conclusion.  It's not a done deal.  There is no such thing.  No starting.  No stopping.  Only doing.

So grateful for that.

#365Gratitude Day 27:Knowing my $#!†

This might be the first time I've put a cartoon poop in my blog.

I've been involved in this big refactoring at my day job.  That's when you take something you've already made, and you keep the good parts, and throw away, improve, or upgrade the rest.

The old way.  Perfectly serviceable, kind of ugly.

Yesterday, and some of the day before I was researching ways to replace the jQueryUI Date Picker with something a bit more modern that fits into bootstrap.js's way of doing things.

The new hotness.  So shiny!

I found something great, a js library called bootstrap-datepicker.  It's much prettier.  And it has way, WAY more configurable options for how it looks, what it does, and how to get it on your page.

However, there were some not-immediately-obvious things about it.

For one, the documentation was a bit unclear on exactly what files I needed to put into my project to use it.  After I dug around a bit, I figured out exactly which javascript file and which cascading style sheet I needed to go with my particular flavors of bootstrap and jQuery.

The other thing the documentation was none too specific about was whether or not I could use it commercially.  But I sussed that out too, eventually finding on the project's GitHub page a file for its license, which is an Apache License, meaning it was a-okay to use it.

So I download everything, put it where I think it needs to go, and get tinkering.  And it won't come up!  That was when I realized that while I had created an asset-pipeline manifest for the files, and put them where they need to go in my project, I hadn't actually put the required asset tags on the page where I was trying to use the feature.

They look kinda like this:

<asset:javascript src="cooljslibrary.js"/>
<asset:stylesheet href="coolcssfile.css"/>

I got them on the page where they should be, reloaded, and VOILA! 

And that was when I realized that I know my shit, meaning I also know I'm not shit.

#365Gratitude Day 26:Thursday Night Brother Brick

So on Thursdays, my brother Spacey and I have an hour or so dedicated to just talk.  Sometimes that's when one, or both of us, is in the car on the way home from work.  Sometimes, we're both home by ourselves and can really lean into it and unwind.  However we do it, it's pretty damn important that we do it.

Because we love one another very much.

Brother and I, we are polyamorous partners.  Our relationship has been, is, and continues to be one of the single most important things in my life.  It's magical.  He's not my boyfriend, but we are intimate in all sorts of ways, physically, emotionally, ways that I can't even really describe.  He's an atheist, and I'm a non-theist, we're both highly technical, rational people, and yet there's a bond between us that defies reason and explanation.  We genuinely feel like we're extensions of the same person.

It's profound.

Which is why when we have our little Thursday night talks, we can (and do) talk about everything and nothing.  Our talks range from the sillies of goofy nonsense to seriously ponderous life issues.  We have no boundaries.  There's no topic off limits, no piece of information that's sequestered.

So often, I know myself better through him.  

We had a thing just like that this past Thursday.  I was lamenting to him how frustrated I am lately, because I'm so on, creatively.  

I have this side project for a business I've been working on for several months now.  It's QUITE real.  I've been engaged in it for about six months.  I have a business partner, a mentor, a code repository where I keep it, went to a conference to do research for it, and broke ground on coding it back in early November.  I hope to have the prototype for it done sometime in the spring.

After which, I have another software project I'm going to build with one of my best friends, which will also be a business, and is something I have wanted to create for well over a decade.

Meanwhile, my 3rd novel is in a sort of stasis, "up on bricks", waiting for me to get back to it.  I have some major retooling I want/need to do to it, too.  

And the other day the idea for my 4th novel hit me like a thunderbolt.

Based on the time and energy I have, the schedule for my software/business projects, and just my life, I won't be going back to work on my 3rd novel for at least a year and a half.

I can't see that I will be able to get to that 4th novel for probably two years.

That's right.  Two years.

While I'm excited about all these things I have going on, I also feel almost smushed by it all, like a heavy boot is pressing down on me, constricting me.  Because I want to do all of it, and I want to do it right now.

This is where my magical relationship with my fantastic brother comes in.

He complimented me on how effective I've been lately.  About how I am getting shit done.  I've written and published two novels, helped to create over 100 episodes of a podcast that's been running for over five years.

He reminded me of a truth I hold dear, something I know intimately, and which I have taught countless times to others.  I can do anything, but not EVERYTHING.  

When I've taught this same thing to coaching clients, or just people in general I describe this feeling I'm having as having a Great Wall Problem.

The Great Wall, counting all its branches is over 13,000 miles long.  There's a long running myth that it's the only man-made object that can be seen with the naked eye from space.  It's massive.  When you think that human hands built it, and try to conceive of it, of going from no wall to finished wall, your brain kind of crashes.  It's so ridiculously big, that the idea of building the entire thing just can't fit in your head.

Yet there it is.  And it was built, brick by brick, by human hands.

Brother reminded me that I've been doing some excellent brickwork lately.  It's each brick that matters, not all of them.

I love him.

#365Gratitude Day 25:Getting a whole lot of stuff done

Wednesday was an amazing day for me, technologically speaking.  I woke up fresh from a good night's sleep, tromped downstairs still in my overnight diaper, and sat down to several hours of work on my side project.

I got feature after feature done, I just tore through them, like a lawnmower through blades of grass.

Then I got out of my diaper, into a shower, drove to work, and did the exact same thing at work.  My brain was on fire.

I love that feeling.