#365Gratitude Day 318: Pickledate

Saturday was the DC Littles Munch.  This time around Missy and I brought the cake.  We have this funny tradition at the munch of bringing a cake decorated with whatever goofball holiday it happens to be.

This time around it was National Pickle Day.  

I have been doing the littles munch for years now.  I love it for many different reasons.  Yes, it's great getting to hang out with old friends and new ones.  Yes, it's great to have an excuse to eat cake.

But the big reason for me that I love the munch is that it's an act of service.  The primary reason the munch exists is that it's a place where new people can come to talk to folks like me about what it means to be an age player.  It's an easy on-ramp, where we can share our experiences, answer questions, and assure people that they're okay.

Case in point, this new girl, E.  She had mailed me earlier in the day, wondering how to find the munch people at the restaurant.  I gave her the easy heads up about it and told her I'd see her there.  At the munch we sat down and had a long talk.  She was full of questions.  "Is it okay to not want to do the whole diaper thing?"  Yep, I told her, sure is.  "So it's okay to just really like teddy bears?" Absolutely, I told her.  "Do I have to pick a specific age?" Nope, that's just something people do, and you don't have to.

She looked happy and relieved.  I told her that when I first got started I had this very specific idea about who I was, what I wanted and needed, and how all those things have since changed.  I said that she didn't need to listen to anyone else, even herself, about the one right way to ageplay, because there's no such thing.  I said that she's in a great position, because there was so much good stuff coming her way, so many experiences and changes yet to happen.

She looked pretty relieved, and pretty happy about it.

Afterwards, Missy and I had a date night.  We went to go see The 33, about the trapped Chilean miners.  What a good movie.  

Along the way we stopped for dinner, and even did a little shopping.  (I finally got that Steven Universe t-shirt I have been wanting.)  Then we went to a super-fancy-reserved-seat-leather-recliner theater we like.  

Missy is a news buff, and she had followed the story about the miners back when it first happened.  So she knew everything about the story.  Every so often as we watched the movie, she'd lean over and whisper extra little tidbits about what was happening.  It was kind of like that thing Nickelodeon used to do with Avatar cartoons, where they'd show them with pop-up bubbles with insider information about what was happening on-screen.  It was awesome!  We both loved it.

I love these date nights with Missy.  They recharge our relationship batteries.  Missy is really good to me, and supports me in a lot of things I do.  She has to share me and my time with a lot of people.  I love getting private just-for-us time with her.  

What a good day that was.

#365Gratitude Day 317: Hats On

It's been a while since I put on a podcasting hat.

By a while I mean over 5 months.  Not that I was counting.  Which I sort of was.

It was a good recording.  Afterwards, the "after dark" part of the show went on a while.

By a while, this time I mean until about 2 am.

The next day I had such a sleep-deprivation-hangover.

Mostly, I didn't care.  I have missed this.

#justBecause Howie, Ed, & Bob

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. 

#365Gratitude Day 316: Help! Being Needed By Somebodies

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:

1. They cry.
2. 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.

#365Gratitude Day 315: A great talk makes for a great day

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.