#gratitudeNow: The sound of your pants

My friends ResonantYes and roadnottaken sent me this awesome magnet.  It's a piece of advice they've given on their podcast, Love In Brief.

LIB is a a fantastic podcast.  It's been going for a while now.  It's an ageplay/ABDL podcast, but super different from the Big Little Podcast.  For one thing, if you can't tell by the name, it's... brief.  They do their best to be downright pithy.  People write them with questions related to love, diapers, kink, and life, and they invite on a guest or two to help them to answer.  There's this one person, Anonymous, who seems to ask a LOT of questions.

The show is really terrific, for a bunch of reasons.  RY and rnt are just regular kinky diaper folks, if that's a thing.  But they're regular diaper folks who are good at introspection, and verbalizing their inner lives.  That's not easy.  They have a wide variety of guests with all sorts of perspectives.  They're inclusive, sex-positive, witty, clever and pretty damn funny too.

It doesn't hurt that they have wonderful beautiful radio voices and fantastic production values either.

And they're right.  No one is listening to the sound of your pants.

#gratitudeNow: The work is the reward

So today I'm hard at work editing the audio from the latest chapter of my new novel, Little Marigold Blossoms.

It's hard work.  The raw audio file is over an hour long.

Audio editing is not a glamorous task.  What I'm doing is listening to the same audio, over and over, clipping out bad takes, laughter, mouth noise, environmental sound that got into the recording by accident, adjusting the audio to be mostly the same level.

It comes with the territory.  My narrator for the book, Suzie is really good.  She has a great sense of timing, drama, and emotion.  I love working with her.  We've got a great working relationship, and she's super patient with me about doing multiple takes for something, in order to get it just the way I want.

Even as good as she is, I still got to take the raw product and refine it.  But you know what? I love it.  Even the laborious, painstaking parts of the gig are worth doing.  

There's this one exchange between Mari, the main character, and her Uncle Norman, where she cuts him off, responding in quick anger to something he says as they're on a plane ride.  I edited the audio so that in Suzie's narration, playing as Mari, she actually interrupts herself, playing as Uncle Norman.  It's a subtle, little thing.  But it's artful and clever (if I do say so myself), and makes Suzie's performance really pop.

I was so very pleased by it that I took a little break to write this post about it.  I feel blessed to have such a talented narrator to work with, and on a project I love so very much.

#gratitudeNow: My brother

Spacey and I had the best phone call today.

It was a Thursday, and like pretty much every Thursday, we had a call on the books.  It's one of the ways in which we stay connected.

Anyhow, our phone call was so damn good.  I mean, they're always good, but this one was spectacular.  Besides planning out about 7 months worth of Big Little Podcast topics, we had this very substantive talk about relationships, about our own connection and how much we mean to one another, about healthy boundaries, communication, empathy, and self-love.

One of my favorite things about my brother is that he loves digging into the deep stuff like this with me.  We're like co-pilots of some spaceship that traverses the brain and the heart.

One of the things he told me is that while he considers me his poly partner, when he's explaining our relationship to vanilla folks he refers to me as his best friend.  Not surprisingly, I'm in complete agreement with him.  We're of one mind on it.  I see it just the same.

I'm so grateful for him.  He makes my life better each and every day.

#gratitudeNow: Good math

For ages and ages, I've said that my favorite episode of the Big Little Podcast is Number 9, Self-Esteem and Coming Out.

It's still true.  Do check it out.

I was on reddit this morning, responding to a thread on r/ABDL about how to come out to your therapist when I recommeneded episode 17, Ageplay and Finding a Therapist.  We recorded that thing waaaay back in 2011, seven years ago!

I'm solidly of the belief now that #17 is definitely my second favorite episode of all time, and that nine plus 17 equals a whole lot more than 26.

I remember it being good, but I hadn't listened to it in a while.  So I put it on.  Man, it sure is good.  First off, my friend Liz had super smart things to say about the physiology of the brain, and about telling a therapist about experiences of abuse.  My ex Kacie said wicked smart stuff about the reality of dating an age player and how it has nothing to do with actual kids, really smart, direct stuff.  

And then there's Andrea.  Andrea was so amazing on this episode.  She just was everywhere in the show.  Everything anyone had to say, she had support for, or great contrasting opinions.  She was raw, honest, open, and fantastic.

We're recording an episode of the show this week about grief & loss, during which Andrea will figure largely.  And it's been bittersweet and challenging, getting myself ready, writing up the list of things we're going to discuss.

Listening to episode 17 this morning gave me the warmest feeling about Andrea.  Listening to her wise words, lovely dirty innuendo, and caring talk just made me feel so good.  

There's this one moment, when I'm talking about my confused feelings around face slapping, due to childhood trauma, and I say something funny in the midst of describing it all.  And Andrea wanted to laugh, so much.  And I said it was okay to laugh, and she did.

Even though she's gone, she's still here with me.  

#gratitudeNow: Mindful Breathing, a video reminder

Been ages since I posted a video blog.  It was time.  It's kind of always time.