#gratitudeNow: I’m pro context

My contemplation today was about a superpower I have come to realize I have. Don’t get too excited, I’m not going shopping for a cape or anything, because everyone has this same power.

It’s the ability to selectively turn on or off my awareness of context.

I’ll give you a bunch of practical examples, all from this morning.

First, as I showered I put on an Esperanto podcast, to see if I could understand it. I really couldn’t I could make out about every eighth word. That made me feel a brief stab of futility at the past couple of months worth of study I’d been doing.

Then I mentally fiddled with my context dial. I stepped back to see I have only been studying a few months. Since I started I have completed around 300 little Duolingo lessons. Roughly 80 hours of study. My friend Maddy and I now regularly text each other in the language.

Tio estas damne mirinda.

So, context matters. It’s good to stretch towards goals, and there’s no crime in my finding I’m not there yet for something I’m stretching for.

A bit later I get in the car and head for work I’m very proud of myself for getting out the door around 6:30, and feeling like a grownup what’s capable of doing all the grownupping what one can do.

As I drive, I make the mistake of missing my exit off the highway and wind up doing a nice little 18 minute or so detour.

I’m lamenting this on the phone with my girlfriend, MJ as I drive.

But I still manage to park at the office at 7:30, right on target.

As I review the drive and what I could have done differently, again I fiddle with my own perception of context. This time, I turn it basically off. People make mistakes, that’s human. But I did get out the door early, with having had breakfast too. I got to work exactly when I wanted.

Ahhh.

As I walked in the door, both applications of context awareness struck me simultaneously, and started this contemplation.

I’ve known for years that I am not my thoughts. But this part is actually new to me. By treating my own mind like a tool, something I can use mindfully I can change my perceptions of myself and everything I do.

Woah.

#gratitudeNow: Sweet Beef Money Niece?

So as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been teaching myself Esperanto using Duolingo. It’s quick and fairly easy, something I do every day for around 15 minutes at least.

I really really like Duolingo. It’s free to use, unless you opt in for the pro version. I never realized before that it was a sort of open source language school. So much of their content is free.

Yes, they are a private company. But they’re clearly doing good in the world.

I know that in the month or so I’ve been actively using it, I am definitely learning. I’m able to read and write on a very rudimentary level in Esprinto already.

I first got the app a couple of years ago to try to learn Spanish. An ex of mine was married to a man who mostly spoke Spanish. I thought it would be a good idea for me to learn it too. That went by the wayside, but I still had the app and my account when I got bit by this new bug .

So about that goofy post title. For the most part I find the way Duolingo teaches me to be really smart, and on the nose. Instead of drilling grammar rules into me, it teaches me words and simple phrases.

Every once in a while though the app really surprises me, in a couple of ways. Sometimes the example Frases it wants me to translate are really odd, or are wonderfully inclusive and progressive. Just recently I translated a bunch of sentences about Adam and his husband, and Sophia and her two boyfriends.

One of the ways it teaches you is by having you select potential words for a phrase out of a pool of choices. Whenever I do this is zero in quickly on what I think are the correct terms. Sometimes after I’m done I take a look at the words that are left in the pool.

More often than not what’s left over is completely ridiculous.

Just now, laying in bed, I was taking a lesson where the phrase was: La edzino de mia frato estas mia bofratino. That is, My brother’s wife is my sister-in-law.

What was left over? You guessed it: sweet beef money niece.

Sekreta lingvo por Ni!

Who what now? That is, a secret language for us. That language is Esperanto. Esperanto is a constructed language, created about 100 years ago by a polish ophthalmologist, LL Zamenhof.

The Esperanto flag

The language has 16 grammatical rules which I’m still learning, and a vocabulary which is based on many different European languages. I speak French, although it’s been a while, and that’s been really helpful in my learning. Esperanto’s rules never have exceptions. This makes learning the language really fast and really easy.

Part of what sparked my imagination about doing this is that this is a language that is both everywhere and nowhere. It doesn’t really belong to anybody. There are about 2 million people who speak it, as a hobby. They are scattered all over the world.

It occurred to me that this could work in my favor, in our favor. That is, that kinky people in general and age players in particular could get a lot of use out of this thing.

Having the ability to have a conversation that cannot be understood easily if overheard is damn useful. The only people who know this thing are those who make the effort to know it.

Plus, in the month or so that I’ve been learning it, several interesting things have happened to me.

Learning something useful and real for its own merit on my own time feels remarkably childlike to me. The time I spend every day in practice is a bit like having piano practice, or chores.

There are some Esperanto words which just sound little and are fun to say.

Here are a few fun sentences, see if you can figure them out:

Ĉu via vindotuko estas malseka?

Vi estas tre fia.

Mi pensas, ke iu bezonas frapadon sur la fundo.

Mi volas tuŝi vin en specialaj lokoj.

So fun! I’ve been taking a Duolingo course to learn it. And over on the Big Little Podcast slack I’ve started a channel for others who are learning it with me.

I’d love it if you’d join me!

#gratitudeNow: Enry Hiccups

I’ve got the enry, got it bad. ​

That is, I’ve got New Relationship Energy, going with my new girlfriend, MJ.​

​I could (oh heck I ​am​) gush to you about how she’s beautiful, smart, witty, and soooo sexual.  All true. But the thing I most appreciate about her is that we are firmly oriented toward one another.

I feel like she’s this fantastic book I can’t put down, and just need to stay up reading.  She’s told me repeatedly she feels the same way about me.  It’s this positive feedback loop of mutual admiration and exploration.  And, for the skeptical among you, it’s not all bubbles and sunshine. We explore our ouchy places, ways we’ve been hurt before, ways we have hurt others.  We are doing the deep dive. ​

​And each and every time growing closer and getting happier about it. What we’re doing feels like the loving opposite of the scene from ​How to Train Your Dragon​ where Hiccup’s dad asks him “Can you just stop doing... this?” To which Hiccup replies, “​YOU JUST POINTED TO ALL OF ME!​”

​We keep pointing to all of each other and saying how much we love it. 

Remember: Helpful Google Calendar hints for iOS poly peeps

Everyone lives and dies by their google calendar, when you’re polyamorous.

Recently, because of my new squeeze, MJ, I’ve been adjusting those pesky google calendar settings.

Wanted to write this down for you, dear reader, as well as myself for the future. Because I’m bound to forget this damn stupid thing again.

If, like me, you’re an apple person, and use iCal and iPhones, and iGetFrustrated when they don’t work seamlessly with your partner’s gCal:

These instructions tell you how to add a google calendar to the iCal on your mac:

https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/99358?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=0

And THIS technote has the workaround for how to add them to your iPhone when the above instructions don’t do squat.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7647157

The crucial thing to remember is to add a new CalendarDAV account, using google.com as your server, and your regular credentials to log in.

You should probably ALSO remember that sharks are the best animals on the planet. That’s not technically helpful, it’s just true.