#365Gratitude Day 336: Many safety nets

I'm amazed by the number of technical and social safety measures there are looking out for me. 

Last night I got emailed by my bank that my debit card had suspicious transactions. I called them and got it handled immediately. 

This morning I had a doctor's appointment with a sleep specialist. I had put it in my calendar, and when I went to look at my daily overview, the phone warned me to get on my way due to the excessive traffic. 

I have so many things like this in my life, implicitly and explicitly. Having the habit to save money is one such safety net, as is having loving friends and family who watch out for me. 

I'm a big fan of the concept of interdependence, where capable, strong people become stronger still, through mutual reliance. 

It's neat to see it happen for me, to me, at such a personal level.  

#365Gratitude Day 335: Growth will Turn Up

So I learned a new word this morning. 

Neep

nēp/

noun

SCOTTISHNORTHERN ENGLISH

1. a turnip

I learned it playing Words With Friends, with my wife.  Every so often I'll engage in an online scrabble tactic which podcaster John Hodgman disdains and has named "spamming the engine."

That's when you play a word which might be a word, kind of looks like a word, and, penalty-free, can be checked for actual validity as you play it. 

Regardless of Hodgman's disdain, it's an approach to learning new things which is actually pretty good.  

My brother Spacey is fond of saying that people often vastly overestimate the potential negatives of taking risks, of putting one's neck out there.  

I totally see this.   

I'm in a similar neep-acquisition phase in my vanilla career. I've switched technical disciplines, and know some things really well, and am just learning others.

It can be exciting at times, and really intimidating at other times. Today I've got something like that ahead of me. I'm learning a new skill, that I have a succinct high level understanding of already, but have never done before.  I'm both excited and nervous about it. 

I think I'm going to start referring to this seat-of-the-pants skills acquisition as "neep farming" from now on.  

I'm grateful for it.  

#365Gratitude Day 334: big little bedtime wakeup

I've mentioned before how I'm a morning person, right?  I'm also a creature of habit.  I like my routines.  This penchant for routine and repetition is only enhance, really magnified by my being an age player.  

I also have a very patient, loving wife, who loves me for who I am, and enables, even encourages these things.  For a while now, she's helped me to have, even enforced my having one of the brass ring, ultimate, can't-beieve-I'm-so-lucky-to-have-it prized aspects of an ageplay relationship:

I have a bedtime routine.  

The funny thing about this bedtime routine is what it often, but to be fair not always,  turns into.

Here's the basic rundown.  Somewhere around 9:30 or 10:00pm on a "school night", it'll be time for me to get ready for bed.  She'll tell me to go upstairs, brush my teeth, get out my contact lenses (I know, I know, shush!), and get undressed.

Some nights, many, she'll put me in a diaper for bed.  Other nights, if the whim strikes her, or she's too tired for diapering, she'll have me put on a pull-up.  Lately, and I'm lucky for this, she's been very insistent that those are the two choices: diaper or pull-up.  Not undies, not naked.  If I make the mistake of not getting that pull-up on (which I'm supposed to, when I come to bed and she's already asleep), it means a spanking the next morning, or sometime soon after.

Then it's lights out, CPAP mask on (because I have sleep apnea), and off to bed.  Most of the time, the way I'm dressed, and the routine of it gets me nicely little and I drift off to sleep cuddling Missy, a shark, and usually my best doll pal, Alice.  

As I've said I'm a morning person.  I'm usually up about 10-15 minutes even before my alarm, which is set for 5am.  

The next morning I wake up feeling refreshed.  My night being diapered and little has me ready-to-meet-the-day.  It also often (granted, not ALWAYS) means I wake up, in a word, horny.  I'll roll over and as Missy and I call it, "go all bed octopus" on her.  

Sometimes this results in a very, very enjoyable morning.

Now as I may have mentioned before, while I am a morning person, Missy is not one.  But she'll wake up with me, guide me to do good things, and as I'm getting out of bed, and getting ready for my day, go crashing back to sleep.

She's spectacular.  My wife is maybe the single most generous person I've ever known.  I love all this loving guidance, structure, firmness, closeness, and romance we share.  She's just so damn good to me.

I'm grateful for her and for my bedtime routine.

#365Gratitude Day 333: Stay out of my way

Mindfulness is a practice, and as such requires nearly constant action. 

But it's easy, even tempting to get lazy and slack off about it.   I've been a student of it for almost a decade now, and still make plenty of mistakes like this. 

But, thankfully, I'm not without help I can turn to.  

Just today, @mindfulleveryday gave me just that kind of help. 

They tweeted this:

Peace of mind cannot be attained, only obstructed. 

#mindfulness

So true.  Mindfulness does bring much change to my life, often in slow increments, but peace of mind is not one of those slow boils.

It's INSTANTANEOUS, on one condition.  I have to allow that it is so. 

You can't plan to get out of your own way.  You can't regret that you didn't, on pain of still doing it.   

You can't start doing it.  

You can't stop not doing it.  

There is only doing it, or not.  

#365Gratitude Day 332: Load Balanced Compassion

So, given the source, take it with a grain of salt, but the truth is cats are jerks. 

I've known this for a while.  My cats, however, think I am totally unaware of this.

Take this morning. I get out of the shower to get affection-dive-bombed by both of them.  

Mako, we LOVE YOU SO MUCH.  Now, about our breakfast....

I know what the score is. Once that wet cat food is down, Snugglefest 2014 is over.  

Sadly for the cats, I'm also aware of "The Oxygen Mask Theory."  This is the very wise dictum given by airline staff that, in the event of an emergency, you have to put your own oxygen mask on before you can begin helping anyone else. 

This is great advice, that applies to almost every situation. You see to your own needs, and when you're stable, THEN you can go about helping others.  

Sometimes it's something I struggle with. I like helping people, and often have a tough time saying no, not today, or that it's time for bed for me.  

But my cats, my dear, lovely, selfish, asshole cats, are amazing reminders of the truism that it's okay, even necessary, to say "no" or "later" to others.  Despite Yang's incredibly large eyes, and Yin's heartfelt meowing and purring, I know that they will not, in fact, expire from starvation if I take the time to shave and brush my teeth. 

I'm grateful for this knowledge.  My cats think it sucks. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a toothbrush waiting for me.