My friend Autumn shared this with me today:
It's worth repeating:
EAT like you love yourself.
MOVE like you love yourself.
SPEAK like you love yourself.
ACT like you love yourself.
I'm grateful for the reminder.
Back in the old days, when I used to ride my dinosaur to school, uphill mind you, both ways, and use my command line ui computer, there's this thing I used to encounter, the Abort, Retry, Fail prompt.
"Not ready reading drive A - Abort, Retry, Fail?"
Most nerds have seen this lovely little fellow. It's the indicator that that thing you were trying to do just now (most likely getting a file off a floppy disk that wasn't inserted properly, or perhaps at all) wasn't working out, and that it's time to make a decision about it.
I know, I know... floppy disks. So retro.
Anyhow, the reason I bring up the A. R. F. is because it's relevant in life too. Although maybe the order's wrong. This year I decided to explicitly not number my gratitude days, because it set up a sort of expectation roller coaster that was driving me a little batty. I'd get behind, and rush to catch up, or goof up the count, or some such, and it would just make me pressure myself about it in a way that wasn't fun.
So I decided in 2016 that I'd ditch that altogether. Then I got the idea to still jot them down in a handy app on my phone, just a little bit of shorthand, so that I'd capture them, still know the number really, and be able to jot them down later.
Well, that worked just great - until the middle of March, which for one reason or another turned into a very busy, tiring month. I dutifully jotted stuff down all right, but got so behind in actually writing the posts that my little shorthand ended up losing context for me, and I just couldn't manage to decipher what I'd meant.
Why did I fuzz out the shorthand? Because that's kind of what reading some of the entries felt like two weeks or so after I'd written some cryptic summary for myself.
Here's the thing though. It's really okay. I'm not scrapping my gratitude practice at all. No, far from it. In fact, this whole fail at a new way of doing it, abort that process, and retry yet another way has become this sort of mega-meta-gratitude.
I forgot along the way why I started doing this practice in the first place. The value is (go ahead, roll your eyes right along with me) in the doing of it. It's not about completing a collection, indulging in reverie, anything like that. All those are nice additions to the main purpose of the thing, which is to stay present and write it down.
But, that's totally okay. In fact, it's better than okay. This "getting off-course and finding-my-way-again" sort of stuff, this is the very essence of mindfulness. When I am mindful, I don't really even notice it, celebrate it, or frankly, give a shit about it. I just do. The only time I am aware of my um, "percentage of mindfulness" is when it's less than 100% and dropping. When that happens, it's like this little gong goes off in my head, or a little voice whispers to me:
"Psst, hey, this whatever-it-is-you're-doing-right-now, it's not working for you!" it might say.
or maybe "You're caught up in expectations about the past and the future!"
or perhaps "You're congratulating yourself instead of paying attention."
or, my least favorite, "Why don't you stop shaming yourself? It's not necessary."
Ouch, right?
But kind of not really. Because as soon as I hear my little voice, I laugh, gently, right along with it, and remember that this one moment, right here, right now, is the only moment, and it goes on without end for so long as I am alive.
And when that happens, I realize it's time to try again, and I'm grateful for it.
Just like now.
Years ago, several of my partners and I taught a class about kink and polyamory, for a kink group in Roanoke, Virginia.
One of the cooler things we did was a sort of visual food metaphor I call Poly Spaghetti.
Here's how you do it.
You get a bunch of people from the audience to hold different colors of rope, one at each end. So you might have, say, Fred hold Rita's orange rope, because he's her daddy. She on the other hand, is holding both that orange rope, as well as a blue one, linking her with Nancy, who is her slave. Nancy in turn has Rita's blue rope, and a green one linking her to Norbert, her lover, and another going to Dave, her baby. Dave is considering sharing a rope with Fred.
Sounds awfully confusing right? Let me help by asking some important questions:
Let's say that Nancy, from the example above, has a terrible day at work, takes a sick day, and has to then go into work over the weekend to finish a project, meaning she has to skip dinner with Fred and Rita, can't meet Norbert for coffee, and is going to need Dave to change his own diaper when he wakes up Saturday morning.
Who is affected by Nancy's actions? Who is she accountable to?
The answers are:
Everyone Nancy has emotional ties to, or plans with are affected by her actions and choices.
She's ultimately accountable to (and responsible for) herself.
Power exchange, dominance and submission, and kink can make these waters seem awfully muddy sometimes. But in the end, good healthy relationships start with good emotional health and well-being for oneself.
Which is why this morning, many years later, I have an addendum to the poly spaghetti.
I am the sauce of my own happiness.
I'll throw myself under the bus for my own poly example. I'm down at my partner Maya's house. She's very not a morning person. Neither is my wife, Missy. I made the very sensible choice of not in-person or remotely-via-technology trying to wake them up. What I did do was greet my partner Squee over Skype (who also wasn't up yet, but she actually wants me to do this), catch up my blog, and hang out with the lovely folks over in the Big Little Podcast slack.
Later, when Squee was up, we connected and affectionately noodled with one another, and it felt great. I feel wonderfully content, and emotionally self-regulated.
Man, this is some good sauce.
This. Is. Great.
I hope you love it and get as much out of it as I did.
And if you didn't....at least this last line made you laugh.
I'm just gonna leave this nice little video here for you about why someone would event want to do bondage in the first place. I love Dr. Jenn, she's a great sex educator.
