A few days ago, I announced our latest recording of the Big Little Podcast. We had a little schedule hiccup, resulting in our rescheduling the show to tonight, in about an hour.
To celebrate, I'm wearing my newest podcasting hat for tonight's show. Time to get this circus going again.
My friend Moliére came down to visit me this weekend. He's created this awesome hardcover book, all about his travels around the country with his adorable stuffed dog Padmé.
Their last visit to see me is one of the chapters!
Go on, say it with me, "Awwww!"
I'm grateful to be honored so.
My friend Ashley sent me this today:
Aside from the fact that it's utterly, amazing, it speaks volumes for my friends. I love that friends of mine groove on my shark thing, play into it, support it, and send me stuff. It's like a telepathic hug-at-a-distance when someone sends me some shark themed thing they found, that they know I would like. I love being thought of. It makes me feel loved.
I'm grateful I have such magical friends.
The Big Little Podcast returns tonight, and I'm thrilled about it. Spacey and I started the podcast over three years ago, almost on a whim. We live several hundred miles apart, and miss each other all the time, and were looking for a way to spend more time together doing something meaningful.
He and I (and our polyamorous sister, Pene, collectively known as The Ghidrah) have taught classes together for years. We thought, "Wouldn't it be cool, fun, neat, and maybe really effective if we put those chops into making a podcast?"
We had no idea how well it would turn out, and what a big deal it would turn out to be.
When it first got going, we were obsessed with our "numbers", the amount of downloads we were getting per episode. That kept being a thing for me personally, until we took our first hiatus at the end of our first "season", and we tallied up the numbers for the season. The 52 episodes comprising season 1 had been downloaded over 875,000 times.
That blew us away. I won't say we NEVER look anymore, but at a certain point, we stopped worrying about being validated. Which is ironic, because not requiring validation is a major theme of the show.
The numbers really don't matter at all, anyhow. On a fairly regular basis, we hear from folks all over the world about how the show has helped them to love themselves, and grow. It boggles my mind that as far away as South Africa, or Australia, this thing we're doing is helping people. Honestly, I feel the podcast is among the most important things I have ever done in and with my life.
The show went on hiatus at the beginning of the summer, as brother and I needed time for some significant life stuff we each had going on.
The show returns tonight and I'm ever so grateful for that. It's time to get to work.
I'm grateful today for a car accident that didn't happen.
It wasn't even mine. It almost happened to my friend Shokolada.
The important word here is almost.
Someone else's car accident.
I'm glad he's okay.
I've been in car accidents before. Some of them were my fault. Some were not.
I'm grateful to be healthy, whole, and unharmed from them. I'm grateful that my friend wasn't just in one.
Moreover, at moments like these, the various small displeasures and discomforts I deal with on a daily basis recede and diminish, much like the tail lights on a car driving away from you at night.
Sorry, it's a theme on my mind.
But anyhow, things like needing to drive to work instead of taking the train, or figuring out when you can fit a workout in your day, or having to remember to buy contact lens cleaner on your way home, all those little bothersome minutiae, they just mean so much nothing when you compare them to a car accident.
I'm grateful for the perspective.
