#365Gratitude Day 238: My Rollercoaster is Your Rollercoaster

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by life.  I'll feel like I've got four hundred things to do, but only time for four of them. Or perhaps I'm trying to figure out some complicated thing, and feel  utterly lost, unsure where to even begin. 

When this happens, I don't just think these things, I feel them in my body. My heart pounds.  My stomach grows cold, and clenches. It's not pleasant. 

It's familiar though. It feels a lot like crawling up the steep upward climb of a Rollercoaster.  

Often when this happens, I'll feel like I'm riding that Rollercoaster alone.  How can Coworker X be laughing, and swapping meatloaf recipes with Coworker Y, while I'm crawling upward to my inevitable doom?  Can't they see I'm panicking here?  I'll feel momentarily angry at the world, convinced that it's stepping on me, and only me.  Somehow this unique, special torment is reserved only for me, for some karmic reason I don't know or understand.

It's a lie though.  Actually, it's several lies, that we tell ourselves.  

The first lie we tell ourselves is that we know exactly what's coming up.

When we get to the top of the coaster, and descend, it's going to be frightening, we're going to fly out of the car over the safety bar to our death, or at least we're going to just completely hate the experience.  

Maybe. Maybe not.  

The second lie we tell ourselves is that this fear is ours, and ours alone. No one else can known or understand this fear and pain.

That one is tricky, because while it's true that pain is intimate, everyone does experience it.  WHAT we find painful is unique.  THAT we experience pain altogether is universal. 

Ok, so what? Who cares? I do, and so do you, because of the third lie.  

The third lie we tell ourselves is that our pain is wrong, needless, unnecessary, or yet worse a punishment. Either it's completely random and pointless, or Someone Really Hates Us. 

In a word, bullshit.  The philosopher Alan Watts says that you are a function of the whole universe, in the same way that a wave is a function of the whole ocean.  Each wave is shaped by, and shapes every other wave.  Each wave is necessary. 

This is absolutely true.  I just had a shared experience that drove it home to me.

This morning I was working on a very challenging technical problem at work.  It wasn't going well, either. I felt totally lost.  

I caught myself panicking, stuck in that "I can't do it, all hope is lost" style attack. I realized I was psyching myself out.  

I took a deep breath, and emptied my mind. I allowed my racing thoughts to sputter out, and die. Then I started again, reducing the problem to simple steps. 

About 30 minutes later, I solved it.  Just before my victory, I got texted by a friend.  

We had this exchange:

CATGIRL FRIEND:

I'm not dead. Was asked to do 100 tickets in 2 hours, at a meeting. (Started with 50. Then a TL said, "well, if we're asking the impossible, why not shoot for the stars?") I normally do 50-100 tickets IN A DAY. 

Did I do it? Of course. I'm the Impossible Girl.

...belated panic attack commencing.

ME:

Hugs. Similarly, I'm untangling a big tech problem. Similar feelings of drowning in thoughts/actions. 

Breathe. 

Empty the mind. 

Do.

CATGIRL FRIEND: 

❤️

We helped each other. We shared our necessity of experience.  My suffering and move through it, eased hers. 

I'm so grateful we're on the same Rollercoaster. It makes the ride better.  

#365Gratitude Day 237: Love for what I do

Steve Jobs said, "The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

I'm very fortunate in that I do.  I'm not just talking about my job, although that's included in the list.  Here's my list: 

° I work in IT, as a developer/programmer  

° I'm the author of two novels, and lots of short stories, with plans for more

° I'm a life coach, specializing in coaching sexually alternative people

° I'm a podcaster.  

All of those things are a form of work, of productivity and discipline.  I have to make a conscious effort to do them. 

I'm not going to lie - that's a big list. There are times when I feel stretched way too thin.  I'm constantly experimenting with how to best use my time so I can make progress on all of these things.

But it's a great problem to have. I'm grateful I have so many things which call to me. 

#365Gratitude Day 236: A Busy House

Missy, my sister-in-law, and I live together.  There are long stretches of time when it's just the three of us. 

​It's nice. 

Just as nice are the weekends where we have a full house.  Everything is different then. The house, always a safe, comfortable place, becomes a bedlam of busy, cheery chaos.  

Visitors visiting. 

We seem to go through all the forks at once, and the living room erupts with laughter and spontaneous cuddling at all hours. 

This is awesome, and exhausting. It can be very overstimulating. But I treasure it, too. I collect and store these memories, which sustain me through months when we don't see our extended family & friends.  I'm grateful for this managed chaos. It's joyful. 

#365Gratitude Day 235: Sharing in Friends' Birthdays

We have friends in town visiting with us.  One, my friend M. is one  of my oldest, dearest friends.  

His partner is super close to me, too. WT is a good friend too, who I first met a few years ago at Camp Crucible. 

Each of their partners is here too. Everyone converged on my house from different parts of the country.   

Part of the visit has been one couple and I planning to surprise the other. That went off without a hitch and was super fun.  

I love helping create happy memories with loved friends. 

#365Gratitude Day 234: Being outed, and being out

This morning on my way into work I was surfing the net, as you do. Saw a post on an ageplay message board from this guy who had ordered diapers online, thinking they'd be delivered long before his vacationing family returned.  He was wrong.

Now he's all in a tizzy about it, worried that he is about to inadvertently out himself to his whole family.  People were advising him with potential excuses, and coping strategies. I understand where they are coming from, but had a different take. 

Here was my reply to him.  

Can I offer an alternate solution altogether?

Step 1) don't panic. You have no idea how this will play out, so stay cool.

Step 2) if asked, when asked, say "just something private."  If they persist, say, "it's personal, and sexual, and really none of your business."

Step 3) stand firm about your privacy and that you don't need to explain, justify, or seek permission. 

That's all. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that's an easy choice to make, or even The One Right Choice™ - there is no such thing. 

The whole thing reminds me of something similar in my past, which at the time was devastating to me, but actually ended up working out just fine. 

Back in the mid 1990's  I was a few years out of college, and engaged to a nice, but vanilla girl.  After I came out to her as an adult baby and spanking fetishist, we split up quickly. 

One of my ex's parting "gifts" to me was to out me to my entire family. She called my mom, my aunt, my grandmother, anyone and everyone she had a phone number for.  

Super.  

But actually, it worked out just fine. It went right over my grandmother's head. My aunt and I had an interesting talk and were as tight as ever.

The only real negative consequence, and it was a pretty tiny one, was my mom.   She asked me, "where did I go wrong?"

I told her not to be ridiculous. I told her that I've been having these thoughts and fantasies since I was very young, and it was no big deal, and that it was perfectly healthy and she didn't do a thing wrong. 

Was it awkward? Of course it was awkward.  But it didn't kill me.  Actually, what it did, was set me free.   I didn't have to hide what I was doing, where I was making all these new friends, who I was as a person. 

Let me be clear about this, though. I didn't live with my mom, she was on the other side of the country.   Moreover, I was a grown man, and a college graduate.  I was in my early 20s, but I was on my own.

While I was out, I wasn't indiscrete, either.  I learned from the whole experience that there's a difference between secret and private.  I was able to say to my mother, with some degree of pride, that I didn't need her approval.  I wasn't going to share inappropriate details with her, that she didn't need and I didn't want her to have.  But not because I was ashamed, not because I didn't like who I am.  Just because it was none of her business.

If I hadn't been forced to, would I have made the same choice to be out to my family in the way that I am?   I don't know.  Eventually, I probably would have.

More people in my life know than don't know about this aspect of myself.   Sure, there are places where it's not appropriate to share.  But even with that, I consider myself to be a sex positive sort of person.

I can talk about my own sexuality, and that of other people, without shame and without it being some titillating thing.  The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of human beings are sexual beings to some degree.  Having sex, and doing things that are sexually pleasurable is as real a need as eating or breathing or drinking or sleeping.

I don't pretend that I have the right answer for everyone. I don't even think there is such a thing. But speaking for myself, I'm glad that I'm out.  I'm grateful for the freedom it affords me.