#gratitudeNow: Frandom

Over the years that I’ve been an author, and we’ve been creating the podcast, my work has made me pretty well known in the ageplay and kink communities. I’m always leery to use the term “minor internet/kink celebrity” because of even the slightest whiff of Gilderoy Lockhart style self-aggrandizement. But it’s true, I do have fans.

I love hearing from people how the podcast has helped them, or how they enjoy my books. It’s super gratifying when a complete stranger, someone I’ve never met, and wouldn’t know otherwise, reaches out across the aether to let me know that my work has had meaning to them in their life.

Relatedly, I had the nicest thing happen to me about two weeks ago. I was hanging out on a discord server I like, “MDLB and Friends!” just chatting when I struck up a conversation with someone, Danny.

I told Danny about my secret project I’ve been working on, Project Longbottom. It’s a software tool, an app-as-a-service for age players. I’ve been working on it like crazy for several months now, and it actually just went into beta testing a few days ago.

We were chatting about it when Danny told me he was a fan of my work. He’s listened to the podcast for ages, and had recently bought and was actually in the middle of reading Concerning LIttleton when we were talking. He told me “I bought concerning littleton and started to read it, I just got to say how amazing it is.”

So we had this lovely conversation.

And just like that, he went from fan to friend.

We’ve become fast friends, me and Danny, and his lovely wife/mommy Steph too. They’re helping me to test Project Longbottom and their help has been of immense value to me.

I feel incredibly lucky to have good friends like these.

#gratitudeNow: Sounds like service

So this is an experiment.

I was getting ready to leave the house this morning, and had some house chores to do. Which gave me some ideas about service, and what it’s really like, now that I’m really doing it.

And gave me the idea to record myself, so I could do my chores and blog at the same time.

#gratitudeNow: Gravuncular

Stan and Ford, from Gravity Falls

So what do I have in common with these two guys?

Just like them, I’m a grunkle. That is, I’m a great-uncle.

Through my marriage to Missy, I’m the uncle of my nephews, A1 and A2. And A1, the older of the two nephews, has two awesome sons of his own, K. and S.

I’m very fond of all four boys. In one way or another, I’ve done the avuncular thing with three out of four. (And S. is pretty new on the planet, being a newborn, so I’ll get there soon enough.) I’ve given advice, brought them to college in my car, and gone swimming with them, to name three different activities with three different nephews.

This makes me happy in a way that really struck home to me today as I was driving into work, and talking to my girlfriend about it. I also raised my stepson, Turtle for many years, back when his mom and I were married, and we still are in one another’s lives.

When I think about those things, they help me connect to an important and complex truth about myself.

My relationship with my dad was problematic to say the least. He wasn’t around a lot when I was a young kid. I idolized him and saw him as a mythic figure because of the way he floated in and out of my life. He traveled a lot for his job, and as it turned out for some not so great reasons. When I was in high school, and college, it was revealed rather spectacularly to me that he was in fact a terrible man who had done, and continued to do terrible things, to my family, and many others. That really knocked me for a loop for a damn long time.

As an adult, I tend to shy away from many norms and conventions. When I hear “This is how everyone does x…” I tend to go the other way. That’s especially true about social norms around family obligations.

But, over the years, I’ve gone from my knee-jerk, “I’m not gonna do what everyone else does” position, to a more moderate one, where I opt-in to what works for me, and make things my own.

Which gets back to that truth thing I was talking about earlier. The truth is, I love my family, bio, marriage, kink, poly, all of it. And I interact with them in the ways that work for me. I’m really a very good uncle. (And such a modest one, at that!)

I’m happy to share what I know, donate my elbow grease and effort to help my nephews, I’m patient, loving, and kind with them. And they’re all great. I’ve watched A1 and A2 grow up to be spectacularly great men. A1 is a good husband, and a great dad. A2 is smart, motivated, and adventurous. He moved to a foreign country to be with the man he loves, and married him. I’m so happy about that, and about them. I love my great-nephews, and I’m glad to have them in my life.

If I could phone-call the me of 20 years ago, and tell him that two decades down the line, he’d become a step-parent, and a grunkle and be happy about both of those things, that me just wouldn’t have believed it. I was so angry and bitter at my dad for being terrible and the betrayal of his falling off the very unrealistic pedestal I had put him upon.

As an adult I see that I get to opt-in to my family relationships, in the manner which works for me. That’s beautiful, and I’m grateful for it.

#gratitudeNow: This thing

I’ve had this blog for several years now. I journal for a bunch of reasons, and I wax and wane in how prolific I am with it.

Every so often I do this thing where I dumpster dive through the blog looking for old memories about a person, time in my life, or given subject.

It feels good to have a rich past of experiences, feelings, relationships and changes to swim through to see where I was, and how I got here.

This thing started as an experiment, I was looking for a journaling mechanism that would prove to have flexibility and longevity. Well, that worked.

#gratitudeNow: A More Detailed Submission

It started with, of all things, cat litter.

We have two cats. We love them very much. Missy and I have been married for 12 years as of Sunday. The cats have been in my life since before she was. They’re an enduring part of our relationship.

It is, and has been, largely my job to be the one who cleans their litter. Sometimes I’m really diligent about it, and sometimes, well not so much.

And I felt bad about that.

I told Missy, and she spanked me really hard for not doing it. But then we got talking about the whole interaction.

Together, we decided to try an experiment. We would practice a sort of mindful power exchange.

How would it work? It wasn’t super complicated. We decided together that at home I would be diapered a whole lot more, and that I had chores to do every day. (Really it was just the cat litter. We started simply.)

After a few weeks of that, things sort of organically morphed. Missy, or as I like to call her, Mama, became more or less in charge of my time at home. That means that when I’m home I do what she wants. If I want to work on my side project and spend a few hours coding it, I ask her.

Sometimes she says no, because she wants us to watch a movie together, or to go to bed early for cuddling. Sometimes she needs me to give her a massage or rub her feet.

The thing, the very big thing that has changed between us, is a frank and open understanding between us that I am in service to her and that that is what she wants. That means that I put her needs first, ALWAYS.

Is this a sex thing? Sorta. And sorta not at all. This subtle change is profound, pervasive and deep. Yes, it includes sexual things. But it’s not ABOUT them.

I’m blissfully, delightfully and completely in service to her. I’m her property.

This change, it has changed our lives. I think I’m the happiest I have ever been in my whole life

I love her more than words can say.