#gratitudeNow: Silence

It’s really easy to get swept up in being busy. I’m in the middle of a very big weekend. I’ve got plans tonight for dinner as well as something social. Tomorrow I have coding to do, a virtual online lunch, and some dreaded chores.

It’s a lot. Also I’m dictating this blog post I am sitting in the parking lot of my gym, in my car before I go in to go swimming.

I decided to just take a moment to be in the moment. I turned off the audiobook I’ve been listening to. I turned off my car too.

And I sat, closed my eyes and listened to the silence. Except of course there isn’t any really. There is the sound of cars passing by on the road behind me. There’s also the sound of insects chirping and warbling in the forest behind the parking lot.

It’s a kind of meditation. I go looking for silence and don’t find any. Whenever I do this it always helps me to center myself. It helps me to connect with the truth which is that there is no place but here no time but now.

Recently I was telling a friend about my mindful practice. I talked about how it’s not something that you get better at, but rather something that you come back to over and over.

Every single time I do, i’m grateful for it.

#gratitudeNow: Thanks for Nothing

So stick with me here, because this one is a bit inscrutable. It’s Father’s Day as I write this. And what I feel about that is… nothing.

The symbol for nihilism.

Let me explain what I mean here. I guess the first place to start is my relationship with my own father. It was complex.

He was alternately a mythic hero, and a despicable villain in my life. He was largely absentee, often emotionally unavailable or abusive.

My dad was a sociopath and a narcissist. He was a very wealthy and successful businessman for much of my life. He was serially unfaithful to my mother, gaslit and emotionally blackmailed my entire family too. He embezzled an incredibly large amount of money from my grandparents family business, and faked having leukemia.

I know, horrible. Yet at one point I admired the man I thought he was.

All of this is Very Old News™️. He’s been dead at least a decade.

I saw a Facebook post from a friend earlier about his realization of what day it was, and how he was going to absent himself from social media because it hurt too much.

I feel that. Or rather, I did. There was a time in my life when I was so hurt, raw, and angry from the feelings of betrayal I had about my dad. I used to weep bitterly at this certain coffee commercial during Christmas.

But I am long past it. I think about the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, and I went through all of them.

Plus, some astounding good has come into my life because of the villainy of my dad.

Because of his machinations I am not encumbered by the yoke of guilt, secrecy, and shame many kinky people feel. I evaluate every emotional relationship I have on its own merit.

That in turn has helped me to help so many others to learn to love themselves, both inside the kink community, and elsewhere.

Which brings me back to today, to Now. Those old wounds have long since scabbed over and healed. They’re still not happy things for me, but in the context of my life, they have a place I’ve become comfortable with.

I’ve made them my own. I’m going to show this post to my friend and give him my heartfelt wish that he can work his way to a similar sort of peace.

#gratitudeNow: The heights

So I’m a busy guy.

This morning I was cleaning the kitchen, as Missy tasked me to do before work. (Task is an interesting word in this case. She told me to do it, while asking, so even though it’s not really a portmanteau, I’m treating it that way.).

As someone who is very goal-driven, who loves serving his dominant wife, and who craves the simplicity of being tasked, this worked out well for me.

I did in fact, get the kitchen cleaned.

So I grabbed my phone, and I wrote it down in WeMinder, and even snapped a photo and texted it to her.

She was pleased.

I however, was not.

Because as I was entering the good behavior into WeMinder, I noticed something wasn’t right with the look and feel of the screen.

After a bit of thought, it came to me. The height of the card wasn’t right, when the “behavior chip” of my 1 new good behavior was showing on the card.

It pushed everything down, making my brand new bottom navigation icons push too far down.

So I sat and reasoned it out for a few minutes.

I realized that a good fix for this problem was to reduce the height of the behavior list from “40vh” down to 25, 30, or 35vh respectively depending on if I were showing 1, 2, or no chips whatsoever.

Without getting too deep into the weeds of technical details, I figured out exactly how to do that, and got a hot fix ready, tested it, and deployed it into production in WeMinder.

It’s out there now, working just fine. I know, I checked just before I started writing this post.

But this post isn’t really about viewport-height. It’s about the heights of owning my own business, while also having a full-time job, while also serving my wife, while also being polyamorous, while also… the many other things I do.

It’s often really challenging. I have a lot going on in my life.

But honestly, that’s a blessing. My mind is pretty sharp. As long as I take good care of myself, I can maintain and even increase that sharpness.

This means I need to get decent sleep, allow myself rest, maintain good boundaries by often saying no to the things I can’t do, and practice copious amounts of self-compassion.

By and large, I really do, do that.

I’m 50 years old, and while sometimes that seems like a lot, it really isn’t.

I feel wonderfully in touch with who and what and where I am. I like the me I am, and the way I’m stretching myself to be more.

It feels good.

#gratitudeNow: The Reboot

This morning I rebooted several things. The kitchen desperately needed attention, so I did that. The cats’ litterbox drawer was full, so I emptied it, and wiped it down with some special wipes. I started tracking my calories again in earnest, too. I started tweeting again, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I caught up on a few episodes of Love in Brief (One of my favorite ageplay podcasts.)

And I rebooted… me.

Which I do each day, but sometimes with very careful deliberate action. I was talking to my brother Spacey last night, as I usually do most Tuesdays. We were talking about health things, and life in general.

And it got me thinking about What I Am Doing™, just my life in general. There’s a lot going on that I’m really quite happy with. But some things I’m not. The pandemic hasn’t been great for my health, specifically my waistline. I heard someone jokingly refer to pandemic weight gain as the “Covid 19.”

It’s not inaccurate.

I talked to my wife/mommy/bestest-friend-ever Missy about it last night too. And agreed that today is a new day, and I’d be starting fresh.

So this morning I carefully recorded my calories, using an app. That sort of journaling and staying under my caloric budget, combined with regular exercise has consistently worked for me before. I’m at it again.

I’m just a person, like anyone else, so I often lose sight of my mindful practice. I’ll get bogged down in regret, or worry about the future. But the awesome thing is that just like, say, cleaning the kitchen, or dumping out the cat’s litter, that departure-from-mindfulness can be undone, with a mental snap of my fingers.

Being in the moment, fully embracing it is a simple, profound, powerful act. I forget it often, and I’m always utterly gobsmacked by how good it is when I find it again.

#gratitudeNow: This VR thing is working out

So for my birthday last month, I got an awesome present, an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. It’s amazing, and I’m quite taken with it.

Besides being fun, it’s actually a dorky way to get some exercise in, too.

I’ve started this morning routine, where I spend about 35-45 minutes doing two fitness games.

The first is called Beat Saber. You use these glowing light sabers to hack and slash little block in time to music, while you duck and dodge obstacles. It’s hard, and I love it!

(Yeah, Mission 4A is kicking my ass. I’ll get it eventually!)

The second one, Echo VR I love even more. It’s a zero gravity e-sport. You are in this robot body that has thrusters in the wrists, and a main propulsion unit on the back. It’s very Iron Man like. You can float, flip, and glide through this sort of space station which has an arena in it. In the arena, you play a sort of soccer-like game chasing a disc (think TRON) around, and trying to throw it in the other team’s goal. (Each team has three players.).

So far, I mostly play it with AI teammates against AI opponents. But I’d love to get together with some friends to play it regularly. I’ve also found I’m something of a bruiser. I enjoy floating up to my opponents, grabbing onto them and punching them in the head.

This morning, that behavior, plus a sudden quick save throw got me a win!

It’s fun, but it’s also really exercise, that I look forward to doing.

And it’s totally working. I’m losing weight, actively look forward to my time in virtual space each morning, and seeking out the exercise. Yay!