#365Gratitude Day 338: Moments & Memories

My aunt often says that life is made of "moments and memories."  It's advice I take to heart, generally favoring experiences and adventures over material things. 

Missy and I just had a weekend like that. We left home Friday night, and drove vaguely in a New Yorkish direction, but with no fixed idea of where we would stop for the night. 

After many hours drive we got off the highway in a town I had heard was plentiful with Ingress portals, and wound up parking in the empty lot of an elementary school around 11:45 at night while I found us a hotel, using an app on my phone.  

We got back on the highway and drove a few miles to our hotel, which turned out to be right across the street from an abandoned car, which was attended by police.  

That's because it was on fire.  

Seriously. 

The next morning we slept in, and got ourselves a late breakfast at an art-deco, retro future chic diner, called the Skylark Diner.  It was amazing. It was also an Ingress portal. 

We sat next to a couple who ALSO happened to be Ingress players and who Missy had been chatting with in-game from the car as we circled the parking lot. 

Eventually we made our way into the city.  We had a wet, rainy day of window shopping and Ingress,  followed by riding in a bicycle cab to see The Lion King. 

The bicycle ride was "soggy, yet satisfying," and very romantic.  

The play was amazing. Funny, beautiful, and moving.  

We did all of this because we were celebrating our 7th wedding anniversary. 

I am so grateful I get to make moments and share memories with my sweet, beautiful, funny, gentle wife.  

#365Gratitude Day 337: Duh, piglet

So over a year ago I ran in a half marathon, and then stopped being mindful about exercise and healthy eating.

A year of such mindlessness took its toll on me, and I've put back a significant amount of weight. ​

For a few months now I've kind of wanted to get back to being serious about health and exercise, and made several false starts with tracking my calories, and working out. ​

This week has been different though.

​First, it's been different in my exercise. I worked out three different times this week, swimming. The first time was 30 minutes of breast stroke. The second was 45.  It was tiring, but felt good.

Before yesterday's workout was the tip over point for me though. I had the choice to do 30 or 45 again, and I went for the extra.  I just wanted it. ​

​Similarly I have been really on top of my calorie tracking. Each day I've come in under budget for my eating.  Several times when confronted with the opportunity to eat poorly, or over budget, I said no. 

I think I know what's changed. I found my de again. ​

De, pronounced like "duh", is a hard concept to explain, or even understand.  The Tao Te Ching (or Dao De Ching) is, loosely translated, "The book of the Way and its Power."

Saying that de is power isn't exactly right though. Over years of reading, contemplation, meditation, and mindful practice I've come to understand de to be "virtue in action."​

De's power comes from applying oneself consistently and constantly in small things.  It also comes from the understanding that small  things are all there are.  You build the Great Wall a brick at a time. You eat (or rather don't eat) a plate of french fries one at a time. 

There's an amazing book about this called The Te of Piglet, by Benjamin Hoff.  Piglet, Pooh's tiny friend is very, VERY powerful.  He's positively LOADED with de.

It's not because he's strong, not because he doesn't get scared of things.  Rather it's because even when he feels unsure of himself, he still goes about his business and does what is necessary. 

As I stood in the locker room of my gym yesterday, I once again found that same familiar, powerful feeling.  

It didn't matter what had come before.  I would swim, and push myself, because it was what I wanted for myself, in my life, now, utterly.  Fear, doubt, the past, the future all were irrelevant.  All there was was this action I was intent upon doing. 

Once I knew that was so, getting in the water and doing it was positively pleasurable.  

I'm so grateful to have found my de about this again.  

#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.