#365Gratitude Day 333:Downunderfeedback

This morning I had a gratitude moment big enough to break my current too-busy-doing-stuff-to-blog streak.

I got this absolutely lovely piece of fan mail, from a listener/reader in Australia.  Stuff like this blows me away, for a few reasons.  

Way back when the podcast first got going we got an awesome piece of fan mail from a listener in South Africa, telling us how when she listened to the podcast, she felt, ever so briefly, like she was home again.  That's about 13,000 miles away.  It boggles my mind that something we did could affect someone so strongly, from so far away.

I knew then that the work we were doing was important work, work that not only could make a difference in people's lives, potentially, but that was actually doing it.

So, cut to the email I get this morning.  It's from M., a listener/reader somewhere in Australia (16,000 miles away roughly, this time, not that I'm counting, although I just did.). I was humbled by what he had to say to me, and asked his permission to reprint his mail here, which he happily agreed to.

“Dear Mako,

Right now I am listening to episode 104 of the BLP about writing ABDL erotica. I am stuck at minute 30 where you ask your guests whether it means more to them to get feedback from a stranger vs. a good friend. In the following you agree to your guest that it means more to you to get feedback from a stranger than from a good friend.

At this point I decided to hit “pause” and write you a couple of lines as a stranger ☺

First of all I want to thank you, Spacey and May for your great work creating the best resource I know about age play on the planet. In your recordings you have collected so much knowledge and life experience that it would have filled a big library with books prio to the internet age. I produce a podcast for my professional life myself and know how much work it is to find and coordinate guests and to edit and publish a show!

Your podcast has changed my life and improves my marriage: From time to time I find an episode that is “safe” enough to listen with my vanilla partner and I listen to the episode again with my wife. Through your podcast the ADBL world is not a tabu anymore and we can openly talk about it. Thanks from the deep of my heart for your work. You guys have helped already countless people.
”

This warms my heart.  And, it's just what brother, Mae and I were after when we started the podcast.  I'm a huge believer in the idea that if you want the world to be a better place, you do the work to help make it so.  This is particularly meaningful to me just now, too, because my life is both really busy and really different from when we started the podcast.  I'm very busy working on a side project in my vanilla life, that, if things go well, will dramatically change my professional life.  

It's eating into my time for almost every other aspect of my life.  I haven't written a word of new fiction in months.  My 3rd book is sitting in a sort of limbo, waiting for me to have time to work on it again.  And the podcast is still going, but we're recording once a month (and sometimes not even that much!).  Yet, the body of work we have done is still out there and still making a difference.  That's huge for me.  I feel like the investment of effort I put forth five years ago is still paying dividends.

M. continues:

“Now let’s rock some feedback:

I am not a professional author and can only offer the view of a consumer.

In the past I never bought anything related to ABDL on Amazon as I was to concerned about “being found out”. Even if I have decided a while ago that my little side is “private but not a secret” anymore - I still feared the step of shopping online. Anyway I did it, I signed up for a new email address, used an older credit card and bought it. Done

I read your book in two days: This might not seem like big staff but it is for me. I am a very slow reader. Normally I don’t enjoy reading at all. I have read many work related IT and coaching books but those are references and I rarely read those books cover to cover. I think the number of books I read cover to cover in my whole life is probably under 20.
”

This too warms my heart.  It's exactly what I want to happen when someone reads my work.  I want to take them out of their head and bring them into the vast fictional world inside my own.  I want to entertain them, arouse them, educate them, and when they're done, have them bring back to the real world things to make their own life better.  Which, as M. tells me, is exactly what happened.

Warning, some of this is slightly spoiler-ish, for Concerning Littleton

“Parallel plots
One thing that freaked me out and at the same time enjoyed so much were your cuts between the different scenes from chapter to chapter. While reading how Christina gets spanked I wondered whether Aidan and David were still angry about each other. So the plot with Christina runs in your head like a background task on your computer. Similar to the Lord of the rings where you wonder how Frodo and Sam are progressing on their journey towards the mountain while you watch Legolas running across middle earth hunting orcs. So I really enjoyed this cuts that you had between chapters.

Guessing the plot
Very early in the books I came to the conclusion that all parallel plots will come together at the end and all people will meet for a huge spanking. I really enjoyed that I was (almost) right – I felt like a private investigator who figured the shit out! My little side is a well trained private investigator. ☺ I liked that I could predict what happens next or at least hope that his or that happens next.”

Wow.  He just compared my work to Tolkien.  When I first read that I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.  Thank you!

Then that teaching thing happened.

“Educate about Age Play
Another thing I really enjoyed is that you educate about age play while you tell an awesome story. You kicked my diapered bum in the chapter where Simon commands Abby to strip her cloth down in front of Christina and Adam’s dinner table. In the following you explain through Abby that Simon and Abby have a D/s relationship contract and Christina makes Adam watch her and says: “Daddy, that is where I want us to go”. What a great thing! You had triggered my greatest wishes and I could so much imaging to be Christina bagging for that.

This type of D/s contract was new to me and I had to tell my wife about it straight away. I stopped reading and told her directly ☺ As she is super vanilla she didn’t understand a thing what I was bubbling about but it actually led us in the following conversation to a great conversation about our relationship.

Through that we wrote down what we learnt from each other and what we would like to learn in the future. We never really did this either before. So even if it was not kink related it was a great conversation with my wife because of your work.

I am looking forward to read your next book!

Cheers,
M. from ******, Australia

”

This whole thing made me feel so good.  I've been struggling a bit lately, because I want to do all the things, and there just isn't enough time, and enough, well, me.  I've had to say a whole lot of no to people and activities, while I focus my attention on just a few very important people and things.  But it feels so damn good to know that my work with the podcast, and my books are out there, still improving lives, still entertaining, still helping, while I focus.  

My friend Moliére taught me the concept of passive income, things you do which can't help but make you money without any further action on your part later.  This is similar.  It feels good to know that my efforts in the past are still bearing fruit today.

I'm so grateful for that.

#365Gratitude Day 317:A reunion sandwiched in

So there's this supermarket not too far from where I used to live.  I used to stop in there many mornings on my way to work, for a breakfast sandwich. 

There was this lady behind the counter, I'll call her Polly.  When I first started going to her counter, I was not particularly thrilled with Polly.

I was often in a hurry, and Polly never seemed to acknowledge that. She would take her time doing whatever sort of sandwich or coffee related chore had her attention before giving me the time of day.  She would happily grouse with her co-worker about all sorts of unpleasant things about her job, their boss, the market price of Chilean Sea Bass in a turbulent economy (okay, that one I'm making up), all sorts of things, rather than just get me my damn sandwich. 

And, she seemed so very, very grumpy. 

Then I had an epiphany. First, I realized that it's not about me , and that perhaps her job really wore her out. Maybe, I reasoned, people all morning long treated her like some sort of breakfast-sandwich-ATM, instead of a person, and that she found it ponderous and terrible.  

So, the next day I resolved to talk to her, be thankful, kind, polite, and just treat her like a person.  

Everything changed. Her face lit up. She opened to me, and we really connected. Polly became kind, sweet, and real.  

I began to really look forward to seeing her, and she did the same. When I would walk into the store, she'd meet my eye and smile. She would get a spring in her step. It would make my whole morning, too. I'd carry the good feeling of seeing her with me all the way to work.  

So, today.

I haven't been going there for many months now.  I moved not too far away, but enough that going there would be out of my way.  One of the few times I did stop in, looking for her, I was told she had been moved to a different job in the store, and that she didn't work the café anymore.

But today I had an errand nearby, and stopped in.  I go get myself some delightful tater tots off the hot bar, grab a bottle of affogato from the cold case, and go to grab a breakfast sandwich, when I see her, back turned to me, talking with someone behind the counter, and in the midst of performing what looks like a food safety inspection.  I call out to her by name, "Polly? Is that you?"

She turns around, and her face splits in a wide grin.  She greets me like an old friend, which in a way, she is.  Our relationship is very limited, and not all that old.  But it's got history.  She tells me she hasn't seen me around in a while.  I tell her about my move.  She tells me about her job change, which is really a promotion.  We both tell one another how very much we've missed seeing one another, and really both mean it, too.

It was lovely.

She wished me happy holidays, in case she doesn't see me again before them.  I walk off feeling light as a feather.

As soon as I got in the car, I had this long talk with my girlfriend, Squee about the whole thing.  She laughed, long and loud.  Back when I first started going to this place, and dealing with my no-longer-crabby friend, she used to hear my daily woes about the poor service, and was witness to my realization of needed compassion.  We've both referred to the sandwiches as "Polly Sandwiches" because of this.

We got into this long talk, at first just about the reunion, and how wonderfully silly and fantastic it was.  But then, I saw something I observed to her.

The whole thing, the way I turned my impressions around, the way Polly and I became friends, the lasting good effects it's had on both her and my own life, are an example of really powerful 德 (te, "virtue" or maybe "magical power").  I threw off my judgments about Polly, embraced mindfulness, and made a genuine and lasting friendship.

It's amazing how good a world this can be, when I'm fully present in it.

#365Gratitude 315:Boundaries

One of the great things about working out, is that part of how I do it helps my mind as well as my body.

Often when I swim, I listen to philosophy lectures.  Today it was an Alan Watts lecture on the wisdom of the ridiculous, a lecture about Chuang-tzu. 

A big point that Watts made has to do with the boundaries we see between ourselves. What he said was "all boundaries are held in common." What that means is that part of how I know who I am, is because I'm not you.   However at the same time, boundaries are where we meet, where we join.

The example that he gave for this was sitting outside at night, looking up at the stars, and feeling how very far away they are. Millions of miles from here, and billions of years ago, that light shone forth that we're only seeing now. 

But that's us, too.   The light that comes from our world shines in a multitude of night skies elsewhere.

In a manner of speaking we are everywhere.  We are everyone. We are everything.  

If you need a little more down to earth example of that, I've got one from this morning. 

When you're swimming laps in a pool, and you've got one of those plastic divider ropes, separating your lane from the one next to you, whose divider is that? Is it yours? Does it belong to the person in the next lane?

Yes.  

#365Gratitude Day 314:The sweet embrace of the unknown

So, yeah.  President Trump.  I'm one of a very large number of people this morning who feel "like I was thrown into a dumpster from a moving car being driven by a giraffe high on PCP."

Sometimes, we all have that moment where we're walking through the house, in the dark, in the middle of the night, and we bang our toe against something.  It hurts.  And for a moment, we sit down and grab our toe, and worry that perhaps this time, it's not just sore, but maybe broken.

And maybe for a little while we wear shoes in the house, or decide that maybe we don't need that fig newton and slug of milk right from the carton in the fridge in the middle of the night.  (Hey, it's my house.  Don't judge.)

And we keep going.

That's the whole point of this blog.  We don't start anything.  We don't stop anything.  We just keep doing.

There's a zen story about it that's my favorite.

This one.

Let's keep going.

#365Gratitude Day 304:Pleasantly Unpleasant "music"

I stumbled across this oddball thing, that's made me laugh over and over again.  

It's covers of music featuring a flute played, well, in the most shitty way possible. It's discordant, jangly, off-key, terrible and completely wonderful.  

It's so gut wrenchingly bad, that it's funny. I can't listen to more than a few seconds of it without absolutely busting out laughing. 

Here's the first one I found.  

I love laughing. I love making other people laugh. This stuff is going to get a whole lot of play from me.