These three adorable old codgers are veterans, and best friends. They're having a get together with other vets today.
I ran into them while I was getting breakfast this morning. Their laughter, gentle self-mockery, and cheer was infectious.
I'm late for work.
I'm late for work for the very best of reasons.
First, last night I have this amazing life coaching session with a client. It's just super-positive in the best of ways. I told them this one thing, that I tell all of my coaching clients, and when I tell them they do one, or possibly both of two things:
- They cry.
- They tell me to go fuck myself.
To date, all but one client has done some combination of these things. But last night, my client did neither. I improved my batting average, or something like that.
(What's the one thing that almost always does this? Well, you're going to have to sign up with me and become a coaching client to find out, I guess. Feel free to opt for choice 2 because of this right now. You're welcome!)
Anyhow, I digress. So this morning I wake up to an amazing, insightful e-mail from said client which requires my immediate response. This is around 6:24am. I'm ten minutes into writing the e-mail when I get a text message from a friend I haven't heard from in a while.
Uh-oh.
My texting friend has the equivalent of an extinction-level-event going on in their relationship. I read the first couple of texts, totally recognize what the issue is, and set my e-mail aside to immediately FaceTime with my friend, so we can talk it out.
Which we do, for about 90 minutes. We laugh, lament together, wrap our shared-heads-around-this-issue, and come to a place where they can finally allow themselves to really cry about it.
Then I hung up with them, and finished my email.
And since I was late for work already, I decided to get my gratitude caught up.
It's almost impossible for me to express the depth I have for this particular thing I'm grateful for today.
I'm grateful that I am someone that people trust to lean on, when they need help.
That is such a beautiful, humbling thing. I told my friend that too. They know that they absolutely can text me at 6:34am. I'm grateful for this because this is the person I want to be. This is what is important to me.
There's all kinds of things in my life I have these loose plans for:
- Write more books
- Get to a certain goal weight
- Become a paramotorist (not sure it's a word, but paramotoring is amazing.)
- Move to Seattle
- Create successful web apps that are so awesome they really help people and strip me of any need for a day job
I have like this laundry list of what my friend Squee calls wanna and gonna items. And they're important to me, no mistake. But none of them matter as much as this one thing, that's already fully manifested in my life, that people can and do turn to me for help.
I'm so lucky.
I'm sort of an addict.
I'm addicted to other people's happiness. I love helping people explore their own potential practice of mindful self-love and self-acceptance. It feels so good to help people to teach themselves gratitude.
So, yesterday. I'm in the car, driving to work, and my phone rings. It's my friend William. He's been going through some Serious Shit™ lately. I am not going to get into the exact nature of the serious shit, because this is my blog, not his, and I didn't ask him if I could share it with you.
But it's been going on a while. And William, who is awesome, has embraced all the ideas and philosophies of mindfulness I've exposed him to. He fucking loves Pema Chödrön. We hadn't talked on the phone in a while, and he has some awareness of my patterns, and knew I'd be in the car, so... ring ring!
We had this fantastic talk, about our lives, his serious shit, some of my own serious shit, how little control we have over anything at all, and how utterly, almost painfully beautiful that makes our lives.
If phone-calls-during-commutes were fancy restaurants, this one would be a five star one in the Michelin Guide. It was epic.
And we both thought so.
While I proceed to utterly and completely go bonkers about something I've been looking forward to for a very long time.
In June, Finding Dory is coming out!!
This Friday we're recording another Big Little Podcast episode about diapers. I'm super excited to be back doing this. Apparently, lots of folks are excited about it, too. We've got some great guests lined up for the panel, some old friends and some new. When I posted about it on Fetlife, lots of people confirmed they'd be attending right away. Some folks I really wanted on shuffled some stuff around and made sure they could be there, too.
I love doing this. I love that other people love it too. Saddle up, everyone! Yeehaw!