#gratitudeNow: An Agency Position

So WeMinder’s been live for 42 days, not that I’m counting. (Of course I am.)

It’s gone pretty well so far. The number of subscribers is growing. I’ve had a few departures, found a few bugs I’m working on, and had some truly great things happen because of it.

There’s this thing I’ve become very, very aware of, related to having my own software company. I have a yet further, deeper understanding of the concept of agency.

Agency is one of those tricky meta-concepts. It means both “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power” as well as “an establishment engaged in doing business for another“.

Put more plainly, in a very real way I am WeMinder. It does things because I coded it to do them. It has customers because of my efforts (or lack thereof). It improves because I improve it. Any issues or problems it has, it has because of me. Any solutions to said problem are squarely on my shoulders and no one else’s.

That is a huge deal. It’s good in many ways, but it is also a profoundly difficult thing in some ways I wasn’t expecting too.

I remember over two decades ago, building my own Windows PC with a friend. We bought all the components at a couple of different places, including the case, the hard drive, the logic board, the memory. Over a weekend, we put it together, installed the OS, all that jazz.

When it booted up for the first time, I was so damn proud of myself. I had a fairly powerful computer, and had it for a fairly reasonable cost.

A few months later the damn thing started to have issues. I lamented to my friend Nullmoniker, who helped me build it, that the huge downside of what I’d done was that when it was super flaky at 10pm on a Sunday, there was no one I could call to help me, that I was on my own.

There are aspects to owning, to being WeMinder that are like that.

But, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve said for a while now that part of the process behind WeMinder’s evolution was that I had to emotionally mature as a person. There are aspects to being in relationships I understand so much better in my late 40’s, than I ever did before.

Today as I’m sitting here fixing a WeMinder bug, I realize that maturity thing has to do with being a technologist and a businessperson too. I see that one of the ways I’ve matured is that I’ve embraced the concept of practice.

When you begin a practice, you commit yourself to well… practicing it. You embrace the concept that you’re doing a thing, but that there isn’t any done per se. There’s always going to be a bug to fix, a feature to add, a place to promote the app, someone to tell, something to improve. The joy isn’t in being done with the whole thing. There is no done.

There’s only doing.

Which makes me laugh, because I’ve been studying that particular truth for a very long time now. And there’s no end to that in sight, thank goodness.

#gratitudeNow: Missy. Always Missy.

You know it’s been a while since I’ve said so on here, but my wife Missy is amazing.

She’s loving, supportive, really fun, and she gets me on a deep level that’s profound.

I feel incredibly seen by her, each and every day.

We’ve been together for about 15 years. One of the very best things about our relationship is that we’re both unapologetically enthusiastic about it. We love our love. We’re not blasé about it.

That manifests itself in a couple of really neat ways. We are the sort of couple that wears matching T-shirts. We find songs we like and share them with each other in a shared playlist. And we have text message exchanges like this one:

I send her an adorable cartoon drawing of a youngish looking man sitting on a bed, hugging and resting his face on the chest of a girl standing next to him. She says “I’m here” and his response is “❤️“

I tell Missy that the pic is us, and she tells me she loves it. In turn, I tell her I love that she loves it, and she tells me that she loves me.

We are unreservedly, unapologetically schmoopy. And we know each other for what we each are, and embrace it utterly.

I really am blessed to have her.

A story about some real people, in real trouble

If you want to learn more about Isolation Storytime, you can find them at https://isostorytime.com

And we're live....

So for a year now, I’ve been working on a secret project, a behavior chart app for people in discipline based relationships. It’s not a secret anymore.

It’s called WeMinder. And I released it today.

I’m very proud of it. WeMinder is the culmination of multiple decades of experience as a kinky person, and a year of very hard work.

The application consists of two big features.

There’s the chart, used by the top and the bottom to track the bottom’s good behaviors and misbehaviors. It’s also where the top records rewards and punishments.

Then there’s the mood thermometer, used by both partners to make sure that their feelings are known.

You can see more about that in a video over at the WeMinder blog.

I can’t wait for you to try it.

#gratitudeNow: I know... me

So a big part of my mindful practice is a focus on growth. Every single day of my life I consider who I am as a person, what I do, why I do it, and how.

I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. Sometimes I can be self-centered, sometimes oblivious. But I’m compassionate about it. I recognize that I’m a frail, imperfect human creature. Like everyone.

And that fills me with love and compassion for myself, and for every other person, too.

Which brings me to tonight.

So, I’m coding away on WeMinder, working like a demon trying to get the last 3% or so of it done before release. And I make this HUGE breakthrough, hit a big milestone. I save the code, commit it, and have a moment of blissful relief.

And I’m exhausted, so very tired. But I’m also keyed up. So I go online, to a discord I like, and chat a bit.

One of the chatters, someone I’ve never talked to before, asks “Can someone talk please?”

To which I responded, “Sure, for a few minutes.”

Then we got into it. I won’t get into details, because privacy. But he was nervous about something big, and worried how it was going to go.

I dropped some mindful taoism on him. Showed him one of my favorite zen story videos ever, and gave him my favorite zen piece of music ever.

And he was, absolutely, 100% soothed, and had his despair judo-flipped to a place of calm, enlightened, peace.

He thanked me.

But I’m just as thankful.

Because it’s in these moments that I can see myself for who I am. I can be incredibly hard on myself. I have a terrible case of the “type a’s”. I always think I can do more, be better, do it faster, improve. I so rarely allow myself rest, or imperfection.

But it’s after these sorts of experiences I can cut myself a break. Who am I? I’m the sort of guy who always manages to eke out a few minutes for people in need, and who recognizes that we’re all in this together.

I love who I am.