#365Gratitude: Routines

I really like routines.  I love patterns and rituals. They call to me, help make arbitrary order out of chaos​.

I think that's why I'm a writer, and why I write code for a living​.  I'm fascinated when I find these things, like spider webs, or moiré patterns. 

I like making and having rituals too. I stumbled across a new one at our new house. It's a slightly older home, with a few little quirks all its own. One of these has to do with my shower. ​

It takes a little time to warm up. In the morning I have to reach in, get a tiny bit wet, and wait for it to warm up. I've taken to keeping my towel nearby, drying off my arm, and then brushing my teeth or putting in my contact lenses while I wait. 

This morning I realized it's become routine for me, in a way I find charming and reassuring. 

It's the little things that just make every day special. 

#365Gratitude: A long walk with a particular burden

So I went for a long walk today.  Just got back from it.  Spent a good deal of it talking with my friend Snow Cone (not their real name, but a great nickname), about some Heavy Stuff Going On In Their Life™.

Snowy was particularly upset at how life kept seeming to just poop on them, unrelentingly, and how little anyone around them seemed to give a shit about it.

I told them all about a different way to see things that might prove helpful, something I call The Burden of Expertise.  I was glad I got to share it with them, and now with you.

Here's a video log all about it.

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Here's a list of some of the stuff I reference in the video:

Pema Chodron's Getting Unstuck

Alan Watt's On Spiritual Authority

Verse 2 of the Tao te Ching:

When people see some things as beautiful,

other things become ugly.

When people see some things as good,

other things become bad.

 

Being and non-being create each other.

Difficult and easy support each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low depend on each other.

Before and after follow each other.

 

Therefore the Master

acts without doing anything

and teaches without saying anything.

Things arise and she lets them come;

things disappear and she lets them go.

She has but doesn't possess,

acts but doesn't expect.

When her work is done, she forgets it.

That is why it lasts forever.

#365Gratitude: Boot Operations

This whole find-new-house-pack-old-house transition has been crazy stressful. Lately I've become QUITE aware of how my body manifests and processes anxiety. ​

Stress putting its best foot forward, on me.  

When something troublesome comes up (like say, getting a house I wanted yanked out from under me, or mistakenly having my internet service turned off too early, purely hypothetical examples <insert slow sarcastic wink here>), I have been feeling this giant pressure in my chest , somewhat akin to someone stepping on me in a big, heavy boot.  

Here's the thing - after a few weeks of it, I was pretty freaked out. I thought maybe I was having heart problems. (I'm not.) I researched it a bit, and had just had a big if checkup anyhow, which I passed with swimming colors. (Because they were all out of the flying ones that day.)

What I figured out was that it was an autonomic bodily response to stress. Basically, it was me giving myself a nice little panic attack.  

Now that I knew this, I knew what to do about it too, practice mindful detachment. Stay with the feeling, witness it, honor it, move through it.  

I still feel the boot sometimes, when stuff comes up, but I'm aware of what it is, why my body is feeling it, and I can move through it quickly. I actually had one this morning about cutting off my internet this morning (so, maybe not so hypothetical after all <insert saucy wink here>), and just taking the time to think about it, breathe, and write this blog entry has shoved that boot right off my chest. 

Good stuff.  

#365Gratitude: Jars & Boxes

We picked up the keys to our new house Wednesday night.  It's been a difficult time, lots of moving parts and pieces to juggle. I was so grateful we got this house, and so excited to pick up the keys that I made sure the very first thing I moved into the house was my Gratitude Jar. 

There it is! 

My gratitude jar is a ceramic jar I made (well, painted). Every so often that I feel spontaneously grateful for, and I'll dash off a little note about it, and stick it in the jar.

​Putting the jar in my house, let me drop a sort of arbitrary line in the sand. Now I really live there.

Well, almost.

Boxes, and tigers, and furniture, oh my

I just have to move these many many boxes, and our furniture, and our cats, and our home network, and our utilities, and every other little thing I haven't thought of yet.

But it's okay.  Because life is filled with these sorts of arbitrary crossroads. Yes, I'm moving, but I'm also, you know, still moving.

#365Gratitude: Pandora's Box (and well spanked ass) are in your face again.

Pandora Blake

So there's a British pornographer whose career, aesthetic, work, and drive I really admire, Pandora Blake (NSFW link).  She ran (past tense) the very lovely website DreamsOfSpanking.com.

There's this evil, patriarchal, boundary-overstepping British regulatory agency, ATVOD, that passed a law/regulation/encyclical/evil-scroll-of-doom banning all sorts of pornography, back in late 2014.  Here's a relevant quote from an article from the British newspaper/blog The Independent.

The Audio Visual Media Services regulations (AVMS) banned sex acts that were deemed morally damaging or life-threatening, including strangulation, face-sitting and fisting. Spanking beyond what was deemed to be a gentle level, humiliation, full bondage and restraint (which involves a gag and all four limbs), female ejaculation, and depictions of non-consensual sex were also forbidden under the laws enforced by the Authority for Television on Demand (Atvod), which has since been overtaken by Ofcom.

(The boldfacing and italicizing are mine.)

What a load of sex-negative, woman-hating trash!  Female ejaculation is morally damaging and life threatening?! 

I was outraged, as were many.  There was a protest, a face-sitting sit-in in front of a government building.

Pandora wasn't going to take this sitting down.  (Pun intended.)  She protested.  She rallied.  She went on British mainstream news programs to discuss it.  She mounted a legal defense, and would not be silenced.

And you know what?  She won.

Ofcom, the British Office of Communications ruled that the law didn't apply to her site at all, and that the ATVOD overstepped their bounds.  Ofcom in fact has completely taken over that sort of regulatory work from ATVOD, effectively shutting the agency down.

Sometimes, the good guys win.  

WAY TO GO PANDORA!