#gratitudeNow: Frandom

Over the years that I’ve been an author, and we’ve been creating the podcast, my work has made me pretty well known in the ageplay and kink communities. I’m always leery to use the term “minor internet/kink celebrity” because of even the slightest whiff of Gilderoy Lockhart style self-aggrandizement. But it’s true, I do have fans.

I love hearing from people how the podcast has helped them, or how they enjoy my books. It’s super gratifying when a complete stranger, someone I’ve never met, and wouldn’t know otherwise, reaches out across the aether to let me know that my work has had meaning to them in their life.

Relatedly, I had the nicest thing happen to me about two weeks ago. I was hanging out on a discord server I like, “MDLB and Friends!” just chatting when I struck up a conversation with someone, Danny.

I told Danny about my secret project I’ve been working on, Project Longbottom. It’s a software tool, an app-as-a-service for age players. I’ve been working on it like crazy for several months now, and it actually just went into beta testing a few days ago.

We were chatting about it when Danny told me he was a fan of my work. He’s listened to the podcast for ages, and had recently bought and was actually in the middle of reading Concerning LIttleton when we were talking. He told me “I bought concerning littleton and started to read it, I just got to say how amazing it is.”

So we had this lovely conversation.

And just like that, he went from fan to friend.

We’ve become fast friends, me and Danny, and his lovely wife/mommy Steph too. They’re helping me to test Project Longbottom and their help has been of immense value to me.

I feel incredibly lucky to have good friends like these.

#gratitudeNow: Sounds like service

So this is an experiment.

I was getting ready to leave the house this morning, and had some house chores to do. Which gave me some ideas about service, and what it’s really like, now that I’m really doing it.

And gave me the idea to record myself, so I could do my chores and blog at the same time.

#gratitudeNow: Gravuncular

Stan and Ford, from Gravity Falls

So what do I have in common with these two guys?

Just like them, I’m a grunkle. That is, I’m a great-uncle.

Through my marriage to Missy, I’m the uncle of my nephews, A1 and A2. And A1, the older of the two nephews, has two awesome sons of his own, K. and S.

I’m very fond of all four boys. In one way or another, I’ve done the avuncular thing with three out of four. (And S. is pretty new on the planet, being a newborn, so I’ll get there soon enough.) I’ve given advice, brought them to college in my car, and gone swimming with them, to name three different activities with three different nephews.

This makes me happy in a way that really struck home to me today as I was driving into work, and talking to my girlfriend about it. I also raised my stepson, Turtle for many years, back when his mom and I were married, and we still are in one another’s lives.

When I think about those things, they help me connect to an important and complex truth about myself.

My relationship with my dad was problematic to say the least. He wasn’t around a lot when I was a young kid. I idolized him and saw him as a mythic figure because of the way he floated in and out of my life. He traveled a lot for his job, and as it turned out for some not so great reasons. When I was in high school, and college, it was revealed rather spectacularly to me that he was in fact a terrible man who had done, and continued to do terrible things, to my family, and many others. That really knocked me for a loop for a damn long time.

As an adult, I tend to shy away from many norms and conventions. When I hear “This is how everyone does x…” I tend to go the other way. That’s especially true about social norms around family obligations.

But, over the years, I’ve gone from my knee-jerk, “I’m not gonna do what everyone else does” position, to a more moderate one, where I opt-in to what works for me, and make things my own.

Which gets back to that truth thing I was talking about earlier. The truth is, I love my family, bio, marriage, kink, poly, all of it. And I interact with them in the ways that work for me. I’m really a very good uncle. (And such a modest one, at that!)

I’m happy to share what I know, donate my elbow grease and effort to help my nephews, I’m patient, loving, and kind with them. And they’re all great. I’ve watched A1 and A2 grow up to be spectacularly great men. A1 is a good husband, and a great dad. A2 is smart, motivated, and adventurous. He moved to a foreign country to be with the man he loves, and married him. I’m so happy about that, and about them. I love my great-nephews, and I’m glad to have them in my life.

If I could phone-call the me of 20 years ago, and tell him that two decades down the line, he’d become a step-parent, and a grunkle and be happy about both of those things, that me just wouldn’t have believed it. I was so angry and bitter at my dad for being terrible and the betrayal of his falling off the very unrealistic pedestal I had put him upon.

As an adult I see that I get to opt-in to my family relationships, in the manner which works for me. That’s beautiful, and I’m grateful for it.

#gratitudeNow: A royal tea

I got a surprise email today.

It was a note from the self-publishing house I use for my book “Auntie Eva’s Boarder.” They let me know about some sales back in October, and we’re sending me $12.42 in royalties.

This makes me happy. So far in 2019 I’ve sold 15 books, for around $92 in royalties. I’m not quitting my day job over those sorts of royalties anytime soon.

But that’s not at all the point. Total strangers bought these books, over at the Apple bookstore and through Lulu.com directly. People I don’t know and shall never meet. I don’t know why they bought them, don’t know how they came to decide.

Which, as an author is so validating to me. I view my writing somewhat like a baby bird. I get it just how I want it, and then I push it out of the nest, to fly away on its own.

AEB, as I call it sometimes, is my first book, which was originally published by Pink Flamingo Books, and then later republished by me thirteen years ago.

And it’s still chugging along, getting new readers. I can’t say enough how meaningful that is to me, that my work endures.

In my vanilla life during that time I’ve changed jobs about five times, houses too. I’ve had relationships come and go.

But these worlds I create, and the characters I fill them with, they remain.

I’m grateful for that.

#gratitudeNow: Burning that Midnight Oil

I’ve been hard at work on Project Longbottom for over a month now.

Did I mention that I’m really not a late-night person? I have to be particularly excited or invested in something to stay up working on it.

Plus, my commute home from the day job is particularly crappy these days.

None of that mattered tonight. I came home, excited to get coding, after a day of coding at the day job.

I dug in. What I was doing was adding a sort of CSS framework to a web application I’m building. I figured out some “persnickety crap™” that wound up looking pretty good, but not exactly right.

I was tired, but I decided to just spend a few more minutes on it. That turned into about 3 hours.

And a commit which touched 5 different files, and made a couple of hundred additions.

I love that I pushed through feeling tired, and made real tracks.

I’m so on fire with this thing!