#dailyThink: How do you play?

Brené Brown says that play is an important aspect of living a wholehearted life.  Rather than define the exact nature of play, she describes certain aspects of it.  Two really big honking ones are: 

1. Time spent without purpose. 
2. Time you lose track of, or, more succinctly, time you don't want to end.

I definitely have some things like that.  

I love playing games.  (Word games, trivia games, video games, board games, dirty-kinky games, all great.).  Sometimes, if the person I'm gaming with is the right sort, I enjoy a friendly rivalry with them, too.  (I've had a lifelong one with my aunt, in Scrabble.)

I love reading fiction, including comic books and graphic novels.  I love movies and cartoons too.

I forget it sometimes, but I love exercise.  I love a good long walk, or run, love to swim, to scuba dive, to ski.  I love to just explore.  I think it's really, really neat to get in my car, pick some random place I haven't been before, and just go check it out.

I love to tell stories. 

I love to hear someone else tell them. 

I love to laugh.  I love stand-up comedy. 

I love to listen to music.  While I'm not a fan of big crowds, I love concerts.  And if the venue is right, I'm good. 

I love to make things.  That's why I love to cook, especially with our girl Kate, who is a brilliant cook.  I love things like paint-your-own-pottery places, too. 

Even programming/coding and writing can be play for me, depending upon the spirit with which I approach them.   

How do you play? 

#365Gratitude Day 231:Oreos and Milkshakes

A close friend of mine got some awful news today.​  She texted me, asking if I wanted to have lunch, and shared said news.

I texted her back immediately​ and said I was going to get her a milkshake.​

When I first heard about it, my whole body thrummed like a high tension wire being hit with a baseball bat.  My stomach knotted.  My head pounded.  My empathy-flight-or-fight mechanism went off, hard.​

I'm a sensitive sort.​  At first I was going to say "sensitive snowflake", but then I corrected myself, because that's a value judgment, and a nasty one.

I've been listening to Brené Brown's The Power of Vulnerability lately, and learning a lot from it.​  One thing I've learned is that there's this social filter in place, especially in men, where we tend to see ourselves as either Viking or Victim.  

We're either winning or losing.  Champ or Chump.​

It's a toxic fucking lie, filled with shame and expectation.  

After a few minutes of calming my breathing, expressing my sorrow to loved ones about my friend's situation, I did some self-care of my own.  I went and got some Oreos from our company kitchen. 

Funny thing about that.  Another lesson I picked up from the book is often we are able to see and appreciate vulnerability and the need for self-care in others, but struggle to see it in ourselves. 

I'm super focused on this sort of stuff lately.  Part of leveraging my own vulnerability, part of living in a whole-hearted way is placing value on my own self-care.  Oreos might not be the most nutritionally healthy choice at the moment, but they were absolutely a good emotional choice. 

Now I feel armed to go help my friend.  I've got my empathy close at hand. 

It's going to go well with that milkshake. 

#365Gratitude Day 230:Voices from the past

This morning in the shower I was thinking about a code problem at work, like you do, and happened upon a solution.  

As soon as I had rinsed off the Himalayan Pink Salt body wash, I got out of the shower, dried my hands, and grabbed my phone. I popped open the voice memo app to quickly record my thoughts for later.  

This is something I do often.  I'll record notes about work, writing, code ideas, sounds around me I think are funny or memorable.  

Sometimes after I listen to them later I delete them. But often I hang on to them, knowing I'll savor them later. 

That happened today. After I recorded my work notes I went diving through old recordings. I found among other things: 

• A nice voice note my ex Kacie and I recorded for our friend Miss Jessica
• A recording of the elevator voice announcing Missy and I had arrived at the Lido Deck on the Carnival Valor  
• A fiction idea I had recorded about six years ago

I love  this sort of digital nostalgia. The files don't take up very much room on my phone, and they give me this instant hit, this sense of my personal history and longevity, each time I stumble across them. 

On my computer I have an old video of my cats when they were about six months old.  They are eleven years old now! Sometimes it boggles my mind that so much time has passed.  

Personal history is a big deal for me. Because my dad wasn't a very good person, certain traumatic events in my past really tainted a huge portion of my childhood. My past has been previously a touchy, painful area.  Things I thought to be true were not, and never had been.  At one point in my life I felt like I had no reliable past to look back on, and that was a bitter feeling indeed. 

But as I get older, each day I'm making more and more memories which I treasure. I'm not a very materialistic person, I don't set much stock in things. My aunt says that a good life is made of moments and memories. She's right.  Every time I dig up one of these old voices and hear it again, I feel happy. 

#365Gratitude Day 229:Monopolizing a friend's evening

My buddy Moliére is one of my closest friends.  We have a lot of things in common. He's an age player like me, and a techie too. We talk a lot about Very Serious Things™ about life, intimacy, relationships, technology, programming, business, and being entrepreneurs.  

But we're also like little kids who never grew up. So we also play video games together.  

He just got an Xbox and was asking me about games to get. So sure, I had him get Overwatch, my latest time-sucking addiction, and he had me get this golf game which he loves.  

But I also had him get Monopoly. And we played it over the Internet last night.  

It's funny. Another way we are alike is that we're both really gentle, kind people, who are generally soft-spoken and easy-going.  

Except when we play games.  

I thought it was just when I play Scrabble, but as it turns out, other games too bring out my competitive side.  

He is much the same. We spent a good hour or so playing and working hard to screw the other guy over.  

And laughed about it the whole time. It was fantastic.  

#365Gratitude Day 228:Your gratitude is my gratitude

These are the baby wipes we keep in my nightstand drawer.  

MY gratitude is my discovery that they are amazing at picking up cat-hairball-throw up.  

YOUR gratitude is that the picture I posted is the pack of baby wipes.