#365Gratitude Day 7:Hot Tub Teacher

(Not the actual hot tub in my gym, but use your imagination.)

Yesterday I decided to go to the gym, and I'm so glad I did.  Besides getting in an excellent 45 minute swim, I spent time afterward in the gym's hot tub as a reward-to-myself for getting out in the snow and cold to work out.

Here's my tattoo, a pic right from when I first got it.

When I got in the hot tub, it was already occupied with a very nice couple.  Let's call them Mr. and Mrs. Tango.  Mr. Tango had an interesting kanji tattoo on his arm, and I asked him about it, and then shared my own tattoo, the one I have on my leg.

I told him what it means:

The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao, The name that can be named is not the name.

And that led into a very long conversation about all sorts of things. including Taoism, mindfulness, shenpa, meditation, and zen stories.

At one point, Mrs. Tango said I was very funny, and could do stand-up comedy.  And Mr. Tango said I was really good at explaining things, and asked if I was some sort of teacher.

"Well, sort of," I said.  Then, after taking a moment to think it through, I told them I was a podcaster, and an author.

"Oh, what sort of author?" they asked.  So I told them.  And we kept right on talking.  It was fun, and awesome, and felt good to share openly with open-minded folks.  I shared my belief (gleaned from one of my favorite books/movies, Way of the Peaceful Warrior) that there's no greater calling than service to others.

Mrs. Tango grabbed her cell phone and started jotting down a lot of the things I had been talking about, the authors, books, lectures, songs, and movies I made reference to, and said, "Wow, there's so much stuff.  You should maybe have a list."

What a damn good idea.

I told her I would indeed start one.

And look, Mrs. T.  I have!  

My shiny new resources page

I'll keep adding to it, of course.  What's there for now is just the beginnings of it.  But hey, that's what this blog is all about, right?

#365Gratitude Day 6:Rocket time

What an amazing workday.

I worked from home today, and had this laundry list of things to do.  I sat down, got coding, and just didn't stop until maybe 10 minutes ago.

I'm involved in this big CSS refactor for a project at work, moving the software I work with from the busted, jank-ass old CSS we were using to this super-slick framework based thing.  It's beautiful.  Along the way, I'm learning all sorts of things.

Like what?  Well, for example, how to use DataTables columnDefs functionality to stop a column from being sortable.  Or how to mitigate loading-order issues with CSS and JS files.

Anyhow, technobabble aside, the best part of the whole day was just feeling so on.  It made the day fly by.  I had to remind myself to eat.  I flew through coding.  It felt like playing.

I feel blessed to do the work I do.  That's a pretty awesome thing to be grateful for.

#365Gratitude Day 5:Pottycat

Sometimes gratitude entries are these big, deep, philosophical, meaningful things.

And sometimes, they're not.

This is my boycat Yang.  He and his sister have been my cats since they were 10 weeks old.  They will be 12 years old in February.  I was saying to Spacey and our friend Fee this morning how much I love them, and how they show me they love me too, in little ways, all the time.  

One such way is that they love being in the bathroom with me.  This morning Yang did as he always does.  He comes into the bathroom, and watches me, fascinated.  If I sit down near him, he cuddles up on me, giving me super warm fuzzy hugs.

This never gets old for him.  He's never not interested in doing it.

I love that.

My cat babies are a daily source of my gratitude.  They constantly make me smile, laugh, and feel loved.

#365Gratitude Day 4:I've got the time

This one's a bit ineffable, so stick with me for a bit here.  This morning's been busy.  I got dressed, made myself a nice breakfast, did some house chores and financial management type stuff, and sat down to spend a good hour and half or so on my side project.

I've been struggling with this little interface nicety, about selecting rows in a table, especially in a tiny space, like on a cell phone.  While I worked, I was listening to a favorite album, on Spotify, Phillip Lober's Children of the Wind.

At a certain point, I made a good decision about how I'm going to move forward, technically.  I looked up, where that green arrow is pointing, and saw the time.  I realized that if I wanted to get to my day job on time, I couldn't do any more work on it just now.

It felt frustrating.  But then, I had a flash of insight.  

I've got the time.  Expecting to be done with something, anything really, by a certain time, is a shenpa, an attachment.  Specifically, it's a form of the anger shenpa.  "If I just get this done by then, then everything will be perfect.  The fact that that's not the case, or might not be the case is unacceptable and thus makes me angry!"

Don't mistake me, I'm not confusing determination for anger.  It's a good thing to push forward, be ambitious, seek change and roll with it.  The problem is the attachment.  Attachment gets in my way.  

I did spend a good amount of time this morning realizing the reason my checkboxes weren't displaying on the page I was building was because I was missing some needed CSS and JS files.  And I did get it working, enough to see that the direction I first was headed in was not the direction I wanted.  It wasn't time wasted, not at all.

What's more, I had a loosely held plan, and I traded it for a new, slightly different, but also loosely held plan.

Tonight, when I get home, I've got some time to myself.  Missy will be away doing something else tonight, so I can pick it up when I get home.  

When I stop fretting about it, I see the truth: I have all the time in the world to keep going on things that are important to me.  When do I have it?

Now.

#365Gratitude Day 3:and four peas

There's this scene in the movie Secretary that I absolutely love.  Lee Holloway, is the secretary and submissive to E. Edward Grey, a meticulous, somewhat neurotic lawyer who yearns to sadistically spank and otherwise control her.

In the particular scene, things are heating up between Lee and Edward, and he's regularly spanking her, making her crawl on all fours, and over the phone even dictating exactly how much and what she can eat.

I just adore this movie, and that scene in particular.  When she eats the odd, sparse dinner, the rest of her very vanilla family look on in bewilderment.  They just don't get it.  But Lee's face, at first on the phone, and then later as she's eating the peas, is caught up in a rapture of ecstasy.

Why?  Because she's living her authentic life.  This is who and what she wants to be.

The reason it's my gratitude, or a piece of it, is because I live this way, too, sort of.

My wife Missy, and my girlfriend Alissa are my Mommy and my Auntie respectively.  Recently, just after New Year's, we decided together that it was in my best interest to start tracking my food and exercise again, and they both expressed an interest in me sharing pictures of everything I eat with them, so they can keep an eye on me.

And that's exactly what we've been doing, me and my kink parents, for days now.

Here are some of the pictures in our group text.  You can see the salad and steak I had for dinner the night before, the fish sandwich and fries I had for lunch before that, the pretzel M&M's I had for a snack, and the simple little breakfast I had earlier in the day.

You can also see the thumbs-up emoticon that Mommy sent us both, showing that she approved of many of my choices.

At work today, I already noticed some positive effects to all this, too.  I ate moderate portion sizes, and had water more than graze on junk food in the kitchen.

In this group chat we have, the two of them have talked to one another about me, and what I'm doing, how I'm eating.  It feels a bit like having dinner around the family dining room table.  It feels a bit like the 4 peas scene, too.

What really sticks with me is how the three of us, even separated by distance, are living an authentic life, together.  That feels so damn good.