#365Gratitude Day 46: A Complex Moment

Yesterday morning this happened.

Let me explain what you're looking at, exactly.

So, that's me, in bed, cuddling my bestest shark buddy, Chum.  You can't see her, but my dolly Alice is right next to Chum, too.  Behind me, is my wife, Missy.  You can just make out her arm (it's the one with the scrunchie on the wrist.) wrapped around me.  She's cuddling with me, spooning.  

Did I mention she's an incredibly good snuggler?  Because she is.

I'm wearing my favorite I'm with Ghidrah t-shirt, which my other two Ghidrah heads, Pene and Spacey also have.  I'm also wearing a diaper, not that you can see it in this picture.

This was at about 8:30 in the morning.  Missy was still quite sleepy.  I, on the other hand, was ready to be awake for the day.  But I wasn't ready to get out of bed just yet.  Cuddling with my sweetie causes high bed gravity.

I was also reading, on my iPad.  Specifically what I was reading was some Grails documentation, about the Spring Security plug-in.  Wait, wait - don't fall asleep, I know, boring!

I got struck by the thought of just how funny the confluence of all this stuff was.  I was being little and big at the same time.  I was enjoying the love and affection of my wife, at the same time I was grooving on being amongst my stuffed animal friends, all while letting my brain wander to matters technical and diverse.

I'm complicated.  And I'm grateful that I am.  I've always got about a hundred things going on in my head, and in my life at the same time.  I used to worry that it made me stretched too thin, or overly analytical to the point that I couldn't enjoy my life.  

But that's not true.  I like having a lot going on.  And I'm super grateful I have wonderful, loving people in my life who support me with that.

#365Gratitude Day 45: That secure feeling

Tonight after we got home from the DC Littles Munch, Missy and Rachel sat down to slay some electronic demons in Diablo 3, and I got out my trusty laptop, and got to work tinkering on a web app side project of mine.

I had a very specific agenda for the night, which was to run through a tutorial article I found about installing security in a Grails application.  I got about halfway through the article when my environment tossed a lung, because something about its setup just wasn't compatible with the version of the plugin that I installed.

I took a nice deep breath, backed everything out, and started over.  I tossed the article aside completely, and instead found a tutorial based on the latest and greatest version of the security plugin.  

20 minutes later, I had this:

  Success!

The best part of the whole thing was being self-sufficient about recognizing my problem, troubleshooting it, finding a solution, and ultimately implementing it.  

It feels wonderful to me that I can teach myself new things, and move steadily forward doing so.  I remember years ago feeling that without a class to take, or a mentor to show me, I could never make progress learning such an immense volume of daunting new technical things.  I was wrong. The truth is, I can do anything, learn anything, one step at a time.

That's a secure feeling indeed.

#365Gratitude Day 44: Um, how about a story..

A few months back I stumbled across a really neat website/game for people who enjoy storytelling.  It's called Storium.  I joined immediately.  It's not free, but it's pretty cheap.  So far I'm in two beginner stories, a sci-fi adventure where I'm playing a friendly android who's trying to make his way in the world, and a fantasy one where I'm a young, naive magician trying to help out a small village I've stumbled across that's dealing with a plague.

It's really fun.  After I get good at it, I'm going to start some stories of my own.  I'd love to see you there, too.

#365Gratitude Day 43: New job

I wrote that earlier this week I had a really good job interview.

It was really good.

I got the job.

#365Gratitude Day 42: Dirty Ink in more than 50 shades

"Oh no," I can just hear you saying.  "Mako, you're not weighing in on the 50 shades thing, are you?"

Sorta.

My gratitude today is for sex-positive, well drawn, adult webcomics.  I love them.  I'm a fan of a few of them in particular.  

Before I tell you about any of them though, a small warning.

Any of the links you click beyond this point might have nudity, and are most likely NSFW.  Granted, it's drawn, cartoon nudity, but that's on you, ok?

Ok, now that we've got that out of the way...

First off, I love the comic Oglaf, which is this sort of smutty, not-quite-a-story series about ridiculous and often sexy goings-on in a medieval fantasy world.  There are recurring characters, talking sperm (seriously), and one particular strip had maybe the funniest and most spot-on skewering of submissive entitlement I've ever seen.  

Then there's Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques.  It's not smutty per se, but it deals with adult, mature things.  Characters have real relationships, real problems, too.  There's alcoholism, co-dependency, social awkwardness, yet also wonderful stuff like sex-positivity, realistic transgender characters, and anthropomorphic butt-obsessed miniature robots (yes, seriously).

It's fantastic.  You come to love these characters, and want to know about their lives.  They're very, very real.

Lastly, there's Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan's Oh Joy, Sex Toy, which is a webcomic about sex-ed and sex toy reviews.  It's great.  That link leads to their comic about how 50 Shades of Grey is basically the "Big Mac" of kink.

Which I agree with, utterly.  I haven't read the book myself.  I do plan to see the movie.  Several people I know, including my wife and our girl Kate, adore the book.  They find it hot.  

Listen, it's totally okay if you don't.  It's also totally okay if you think it's tripe.  I'm not going to go off on a rant here, and won't spin this in a negative way, either.  After all, this is a blog mostly about what I'm grateful for.  I'm not a fan of negativity.  I do my very best not to be negative in my life, to be for things as opposed to against them.  I think spending energy on anger, and a contrarian position are a waste of time.  "This shouldn't be that way" or "This thing is bad" aren't action.  They're complaints.

To put it in food metaphor terms, if you go to a restaurant and they have something you really dislike on the menu, don't order it.  If you saw other people ordering it, and went over to their table to tell them you don't like it, they'd look at you like you're a lunatic.

Now that's not to say that things which you're against in the world you shouldn't work to change.  But I think that there's a positive, good way to inculcate change.  That's by doing positive things.  Instead of bellyaching about how things shouldn't be, we always have the option to actually make changes in the world to how we'd like it to be.  The people who draw all these comics do just that.  I do that with my own writing, work on the podcast, advocacy, and such.

I'm grateful for people who make positive changes in the world.  I'm grateful I can be one of them.  I'm grateful anyone can be one of them.