#365Gratitude Day 301: Galactic Insignificance

So my day was going really pretty well, until about three hours ago when all at once it turned into a giant cluster fuck. 

The application I was working on suddenly didn't work in a way that was utterly inscrutable. What's more, the part that broke had exactly zippo mcnothingpants to do with what I had been working on. 

I got stressed out.  I asked $friendly_coworker for help, and he genuinely tried to help me, but none of his advice panned out for me.  

So I did the "nuke it from space" option, and blew away everything I had been working on that day, to the point of utterly rebuilding my development client. Those who do dev work know, this is a big deal. 

No effect. Same problem persisted, but only for me.  

Great. I sought advice from someone else, still no joy. 

Hours later, Friendly and I figured it out. It was because of something HE had done.  

I twiddled some things, rebooted, and VOILA!, everything was aces.  

Except I had thrown away my day's work.

I was feeling totally crushed and retreated to the sweet embrace of my Twitter feed when I saw this retweeted gem:

"About me: I'm enjoying a vacation as an alive person on Earth in between my multi-billion-year segments of nonexistence"

All in one fell swoop, the absolutely minute, minuscule, irrelevancy of my stress, situation, and setback were driven home to me.  

Millions of years from now, or millions of light years from where I'm sitting, what just happened to me is utterly meaningless.  

It's as ridiculous as getting upset when you go to the beach because a particular grain of sand you were looking for isn't there. 

My stressful moment is GALACTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT.

At the time it didn't feel that way.  But even now, just minutes later, as I age beyond it, I can see that that is so.  It's blissfully liberating.

One day, in a galaxy far from here, beings may come to exist who have no idea that I ever existed, and may never, as I will have long since perished. 

Weird as it sounds, I'm grateful for that 

#365Gratitude Day 300: Catching a Twain

I was doing some writing on the train this morning, and thinking about a famous quote by Mark Twain.  He supposedly said, "Write what you know."

It's taken me the better part of 30 years to understand what he meant, and absorb the importance of it, as an author.

When I write characters, experiences, plot details, humanizing aspects to the people and situations in my books, I do so following this important, possibly most important rule about writing.  

WHAT I KNOW is the way I feel when I'm sad, angry, happy, turned on, or curious.  But it's about more than just me.  An enormous part of knowing is being an observer of others.  

I also know the hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny little details in the endless variation of how people I know act, and react.  I'll take my friend Aiden's gender fluidity, my brother Spacey's firm, quiet resolve to learn something, my wife's delighted laughter and excitement, my friend Moliére's anticipation of finding new joys and tap into them.  I mix and match my memories of people, and the things which inform them.  

In a very real way, I've come to understand that writing fiction is a form of emotional alchemy.  You beg, borrow, and steal from your own life and that of everyone around you.   

Just this morning I was working on a character in a Littleton back-story of sorts.  He's a womanizing, misogynist, breast-obsessed judgmental asshole.  Lucky for me, I had a few jars of experiences with just such a person saved up, back in the memory store room.  I uncorked them, and poured them into this character, and worked up a nice good froth of healthy dislike for him.   

I'm grateful I figured out how to write what I know. 

#365Gratitude Day 299: Tickling? Kill me.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts this morning, The Morning Stream, episode 699.

Scott's sister, Wendi, who's a therapist, was on discussing the Gamer Gate thing. Really worth a good listen.  

Wendi and her family are living in Sweden lately, so these segments often end with her teaching the guys some funny thing about Swedish.  

Today's funny thing is that the Swedish word for "tickle" is "kill".

I think that's fricking hysterical. I'm grateful I learned it and that now you have too. 

#365 Gratitude Day 298: Aiden

So here's a semi-not-secret secret.  In my writing, many of my characters are baed on real people I know, at least in part.  Sometimes that part is very, very big.  When I know someone really well, or there's some aspect about them which really speaks to me, they begin to take up room inside my head.

One such person is my friend Aiden.  Aiden Carlin, one of the main characters of my novel, Concerning Littleton, is soundly and squarely based on the real Aiden, who is amazing.  

Here's Aiden's "official bio"

“Try-sexual” by nature, I enjoy pushing my boundaries or deconstructing them altogether as a dodecahedron of passion, play, and desire. Using school and life as my classroom, I have spent the last decade (and then some) learning about myself and my passions by delving into love and relationships, sexuality, gender, kink, polyamory, spirituality and more. I advocate for authenticity in all areas of life – especially sexuality – and enjoy inspiring curiosity and exploration, as well as informed decision-making as a sex-positive nurse-midwife, sexuality educator, sacred intimate, model, blogger, bootblack, Cuddle Party Facilitator-in-Training, founder of the Judgment Free Health Care Providers Resource & Directory, as well as the host of a monthly sex-positive social gathering in NYC called Prohibition NYC. As a "Kinky Catalyst," I tend to encourage debauchery wherever I go. If I'm not organizing Cuddle Parties, Fist-A-Paloozas, Safer Sex Orgies, or Sensual Feasts, I am generally out and about orchestrating mischief or silliness as a Mad Scientist or Little. I positively love being a facilitator of deviant fun and mischief. :)

Aiden has been instrumental in my own growth as a person.  Aiden's transgender, and gender fluid.  I first met them back when they were presenting female, and found them to be plucky, quirky, silly, sexy, and fun.  I was instantly charmed.  As Aiden progressed through several gender transitions, that's a feeling that stuck with me.  I was attracted to the essential Aiden, the person inside, not how or as who they presented.  

I came to realize that I wasn't straight, because I was attracted to Aiden regardless of their gender.  That didn't mean I was gay, or bi either, but something else entirely.

So, here's another super important thing you need to know about Aiden.  

For the past several years, they've been in school to become a midwife.  They graduated just a little while ago, and passed the licensing boards too but due to mistakes on the part of their school's financial aid office, owe about $6,000 in additional debt.  This debt is preventing them from getting their transcript, literally the VERY LAST STEP between them and practicing their career!  

This will not do.  It's a grave inequity.  I've already donated to help them, as have many other folks, and they're about 40% of the way towards correcting this terrible mistake.  

Operation: Sex-Positive Midwife is the website where folks have been helping Aiden.

I'd be ever so grateful if you could help, too.

#365Gratitude Day 297: My new hat

Our girl Katiebug got me this sharktastic new hat.  Isn't it awesome?

I'm grateful for her, and grateful for it.  This is going to make a rocking good podcasting hat.  It's as comfy as it is silly.  I love it.