#gratitudeNow: The Whirlwind

So yesterday, I did something amazing. After a pretty productive workday, I turned from the work computer to the personal one, and started tinkering with a pretty significant feature of my secret side project, Project Longbottom. It involved adding SMS based notifications to the app I’m building.

I started work around 3:30pm, and about maybe an hour in, I felt myself slip solidly into the zone. That’s this thing where my brain just flips all the way on and I’m able to see ahead of myself several steps, my thoughts feel fluid and easy, and it’s like I’m suddenly tapping into extra capability. It’s a profoundly powerful and somewhat painful feeling.

I feel like this urge has slipped over me, and this thing I’m trying to do, I have to do. It’s honestly sort of manic. My breath comes easier, my skin tingles, and I just feel this sense of urgent need to keep going. I’ve decided to call this phenomenon The Whirlwind.

I worked almost non-stop from 3:30 to 10:30 that night. And along the way did the following:

• Designed a UI on paper for an SMS number verification system.

• Implemented it in the system.

• Refactored it to make it better.

• Got it to actually generate verification codes and send them.

• Got it to change backend records after the code is sent.

• Got the page to live update based on these statuses.

• Got a core feature of the system to send out SMS messages when a particular kind of user does a particular thing, to another user only if they opt in to receive the message.

• Got the message to format based on user input.

• Figured out how to send a carriage return in an SMS.

Around 10:30 I finally felt the Whirlwind somewhat let go of me, and I was able to get up to bed. Until I lay in bed and checked my repo just to look at the many commits I had made that day. I didn’t see them because although I had committed, I hadn’t pushed. No big deal. I headed BACK downstairs, pushed the changes up to my repo, and then proceeded to chat animatedly with friends about my progress for another hour or so.

Today, I’m exhausted. But happily so. I love being a creative person, love that I can do this. And my wife Missy, she’s a huge cheerleader to me. When she saw I was mid-whirlwind, she told me I could stay up until midnight. As I made progress, I periodically stopped to demonstrate it to her. She very patiently indulged me each time. I would burst out of my office, to show her a demo video on my phone, or broadcast it onto the screen of our TV. Sometimes I’d excitedly call her in to peer over my shoulder at what I was doing. At a certain point, the sheer magnitude of what I was doing clicked for her, and her face split with this combined look of amazement and pride.

I could live off that expression on her face. It nourishes my soul.

I’m ever so grateful to have this profound joy as a part of my life, and to be able to share it with her.

Oh, and a side note. Sometime in the next few days, I’m going to stop calling it Project Longbottom and tell you what it’s really called, and what it is. I’m very, very close to being ready to do that.

Stay tuned.

#gratitudeNow: Recipease

So as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, one of the things I do is that I’m a programmer. I do this both in my day job and on the side. It can be very enjoyable work, but at times it’s also frustrating, often quite daunting. Recently I’ve been tinkering with adding some messaging capabilities to my side thing, Project Longbottom.

At first I wanted the project to use push notifications. I dug in hard, investigating what looked like a promising way to add them in, leveraging a big library that’s part of the tech stack I am using. Then I ran headlong into an insurmountable limitation. Well, crap.

A few days ago I found an alternate way to get where I wanted, using SMS notifications. I started putting it in place. Hit another speed bump, that my wonderful brother Spacey helped me get over last night.

Now I’ve got this plan, this recipe for how I’m going to build this thing. I can see the step I’m on, and see the ones coming up.

That’s actually a pretty standard behavior for me, in almost everything I do. I make a plan, a recipe, but I only hold onto it loosely. To really lean into this particular food metaphor, let’s take that a bit further. Maybe I start out wanting to make a caprese sandwich, but realize that I’m out of mozzarella, so then I take the sliced tomato and capers, and mix them with some sautéed mushrooms over a salad.

It’s a Taoist thing, a form of intentional mindful practice. In Ron Hogan’s awesome gritty, modern translation of the Tao te Ching, Getting Right with Tao he describes this as “forgetting what you know, and understanding what’s real.”

“Can you hold on to your ego and still stay focused on Tao?

Can you relax your mind and body and brace yourself for a new life?

Can you check yourself
and see past
what’s in front of your eyes?

Can you be a leader
and not try to prove you’re in charge?

Can you deal with what’s happening and let it happen?

Can you forget what you know and understand what’s real?

Start a job and see it through. Have things
without holding on to them. Do the job
without expectation of reward. Lead people
without giving orders.
That’s the way you do it”

— Getting Right With Tao, 10

This behavior is a huge thing for me. I fall out of it daily, and then find it again. When I let go of how I think things should work, and refine my recipe based on how things actually work I become calm, relaxed, and profoundly more capable.

I’m grateful for it.

#gratitudeNow: My tree

I was looking at a friend’s Facebook this morning, and stumbled across a cartoon on it that pushed some buttons of mine, in a mostly (not entirely) good way.

One of the things I have spent a lot of time considering in my meditation and contemplation has to do with chasing others.

That is, chasing people for anything. For example for love, sex, affection, attention, validation, time, or help. I try my level best to not do it, and when I do do it, I compassionately remind myself to stop. When I saw this cartoon some things about chasing and the buddhist concept of maitri finally clicked together for me.

Maitri is loving kindness towards all, including oneself.

And when you have it, when you do it, when you live it, you can embrace a powerful truth about the world. That truth is that when you put another’s love for you before your own love for you, you do yourself and them grave disservices.

In your own case, you deprive yourself of calm and peace that would otherwise always be available to you.

With others, you create a kind of non-consensual dependency upon them. People have all sorts of reasons why they don’t have it to give back when you love and need them.

Some of these reasons are frailties of the human condition. They’re stretched too thin, they’re depressed, they’re sick, all sorts of things.

Some are not. And aren’t very nice.

But neither of those things matter. There’s a favorite quote of mine:

“Love is knowing I am everything and everyone. Wisdom is knowing I am nothing and no one. Between these two poles my life moves.”

— Nisgardatta Maharaj

When you can love yourself first, and enjoy the love given you without needing it, you understand the truth.

You are not the main character in the story. There is no main character.

It’s not about you.

#gratitudeNow: Ally the ally

So recently I made a good friend, and ally. Her name is Ally.

Ally is a little like me, in that she’s a little, like me. We have a lot of things in common. I met her through FLAMEcon, a virtual kink conference I “attended” a few weeks ago. We’ve become fast friends. We both have had a lifelong interest in spanking, both are interested in discipline based relationships, and both have a drive to help other folks.

During all this covidiocy, she decided to start a YouTube channel.

Just a day or so ago she released her first video, about making a physical space for yourself in which to feel little.

Here it is:

I love this thing. As I told her, I find it to be helpful, authentic, and honest.

I’m super grateful that even in the midst of all this awfulness, people are still looking to help one another.

And make no mistake, this sort of thing absolutely is a need. Having a sense of connection, and belonging, has a place in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Right up in that sweet orange spot is where Ally’s work goes.

I know I’ve been looking for ways to help out too. It’s why I went to FLAMEcon in the first place, why I’ve been hosting “big little video hangouts”, and I’m getting involved in creating a virtual version of the DC ageplay munch.

Yeah, that stuff is fun. But fun doesn’t mean unimportant. Last night, for instance, I got to play Overwatch with one of my oldest, dearest friends, Shokolada. Even though he’s a couple of hundred miles away, even though public health is a dumpster fire right now, we connected. I slept like a baby last night (hush, you.). This morning I feel so positive and energized.

Connection matters. And people like Ally who help make it happen, I’m grateful for them.

#gratitudeNow: That's Just the Ticket

So tonight, I’ve got plans. I’m going in to the movies.

Yes, you read that right, in.

My sister-in-law, MB lives with us. She has a basement apartment under our house. She’s lived with us for years. She’s one of my favorite people, for a number of reasons. For one, we both share a fiercely protective love for her sister. But for another, she’s very, very thoughtful. She’s the sort of person who puts together parties, buys thoughtful and funny presents, loves to show her love very demonstrably.

I’m a fan of that, and I’m a fan of her.

So her latest thoughtful thing, something she’s done once before, but I’m glad to see return, is that she turns what my little calls her underhouse into a movie theater for us.

She shows us a film on a big TV she has, serves snacks (ice cream cones tonight, yay!) and even prints tickets.

Have I mentioned how much I love her?