Hildy

Our friend and fellow world-changer Hildy Gottlieb presented a workshop in Tucson. She mentioned The Usual Error and gave us photographic proof! Look on the whiteboard behind her head!

I (Pace) recently finished reading Hildy’s book, The Pollyanna Principles, and it feels like the connection paradigm applied to nonprofit organizations. (Sorry, “Community Benefit Organizations”, which I agree is a much better name for them.) It’s like reading something I could have written, except in a different context, and I’m working on a whole blog post just about this book. If you’re at all interested in changing the world through organizations that benefit the community, you probably want to get to know Hildy, because she’s awesome like that. She’s also on Twitter. (:

The Buddhist usual error

Speaking of the usual error, I came across the oldest reference to the usual error I’ve ever seen: a quote from the Buddha, who says “We see as we are.”

Lespreneur

We made the front page of Lespreneur, the magazine for lesbian entrepreneurs! Here’s the cover story.

Quiet Company

Do you like Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn? Do you like music? If so, check out this music video by Taylor Muse of Quiet Company. The song and the video are inspired by Ishmael, and it made me really happy.

Here’s the video: On Modern Men

Also, thank you to Green (who wrote the lovely poem we posted on Wednesday) for introducing us!

Being Out at Work

We wrote an article for Out In America on being out at work and how it can change the world.

Opening the Moneyflow

My friend Mark Silver is offering a year-long course called Opening the Moneyflow. It’s about a heart-centered approach to building or growing a business of your own. Many of you have asked that the two of us offer a course on how to start your own business in an ethical, non-slimy way that will change the world for the better. We’re not ready to offer that course yet, but in the meantime, we wholeheartedly recommend Mark Silver as our proxy. He’s the real deal: honest, authentic, knowledgeable, and just a super sweet guy. His earlier course, Heart of Money, certainly helped me a huge lot.

If you’re interested in starting or growing your own business in a heart-centered way, I suggest reading about it to see if it’s for you. Here’s an affiliate link and here’s a direct link if you prefer. (:

Last but certainly not least, we’re eagerly preparing for the launch of 52 Weeks to Awesome, our exciting new e-course that starts in January! Pre-registration opens on December 14th, and we’ll be telling you more about it as it draws near. Keep it in mind as a potential gift for friends — who couldn’t use a little more awesome in their lives? (:

To kick this off, we’ll be hosting a free, 52-minute How to Be Awesome teleclass on Monday, December 14th at 1pm Central, 2pm Eastern, 11am Pacific (here’s a time zone converter) – and if you join the Freak Revolution newsletter, we’ll remind you via email in plenty of time to sign up. We’ll give a brief overview of what we’ll cover in the course — the Basic Principles of Awesomeness.

Hope to see (or hear) you there! (:

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Brides the Day After
by Lynnivere

What are we if we are made of meat?
We paint our bodies with flowers and sighs
And every moment we are loving full force
               Our monkeyspheres and our families.
Love is the change we wish to see and be.

We are constantly recreating ourselves -
Our former selves created in our current image,
Striving for the noble goal that shares
               And bares our souls once more.
The self is always working.

The center of our creation is an ideal-
An ideology. We call this paradigm
Connection. Connected not like bricks
               Glued together but instead like flowers
Growing all up out of the same earth.

We refurbish words through alchemy,
Transfiguring slung mud into the fertile earth.
These words belong to us now -
               Words like Freak and Witch and Wedding.
We have made these words our own.

Our power is an intrinsic quality
Rooted in effective communication.
With our words we can do magic
               That heals, emboldens, and connects.
Our communication. Our connection. Our Love.

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It’s the fallow time, that dark quiet between Samhain and Yule, where the previous year has ended and the new year has yet to begin. My internal clock slows way down, which is natural but has interesting side effects. The early darkness often brings me a sense of restlessness and a kind of loneliness. And here, where it’s 85° but dark by 6pm, all these feelings are enhanced by feelings of dissonance – what the hell season is it, anyway? Gah.

So I wind up feeling down and motionless and stagnant.

Last Friday, my dear friend Timary taught me the first two steps in crochet so I can make my own insanely cute tiny little stuffed animals (aka amigurumi). I spent over an hour chaining and then another hour doing some other simple crochet thingie – and I loved it.

When I got home, I started crying. I realized that I’ve been overwhelmed with stagnation. I feel like I’m not learning or growing right now. I’m just kind of… living. Day to day, things are great. I love my life. But I feel a general lack of growth, all too common for me in this weird season.

This year, I think I’ll move through it by finding new things I can do, like amigurumi. I’m going to exercise, so I don’t feel so sluggish. I’ll read all those books in that huge pile on my nightstand. I’ll make sure to get more quality time with my friends, and to enjoy all the special things that only show up this time of year.

Celebrate, instead of dread. That’ll do it.

What about you; do you feel similarly? What do you do to move through it – and can I help?

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A summary of the conversation:

The Author writes a book containing revolutionary ideas. The Friend reads the book and recommends it to The Business Owner. The book changes the way The Business Owner runs his business, thereby changing the way his competitors do business, thereby changing the world.

How neat! Three different types of revolutionaries all working together!

Three Types of Revolutionaries:

1. The Artist

The Artist changes the world by creating revolutionary art, books, movies, music, blog posts — anything that can reach and inspire a large number of people.

In Quinn’s example, The Artists are authors: Paul Hawken and Daniel Quinn himself. In the Freak Revolution Manifesto, we talk about The Artist type of revolutionary on page 30.

2. The Friend

The Friend changes the world by connecting with a small number of people and sharing revolutionary ideas with them.

This is the type of revolutionary that Quinn says is the most important. And in the Freak Revolution Manifesto, it’s on page 27.

3. The Business Owner

The Business Owner changes the world by doing business in a revolutionary and effective way. This creates a larger change in the market, forcing competitors to revolutionize as well.

The Business Owner in Quinn’s example is Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, Inc. And we’ve talked about this type of revolutionary in our blog post “How can small businesses change the world without being evil?“.

4. You?

What other types of revolutionaries can you think of?

What type of revolutionary are you?

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Pace and Kyeli really wanted you here to share this day with them, and that’s profound. You see, Kyeli and Pace can’t legally get married in Texas. The state of Texas, like too many other states in this country, wants to pretend that their union doesn’t exist.

Well, that’s just too bad for Texas…

Look at what Pace and Kyeli have done. They’ve built a home. They’ve built a family. They’re raising a beautiful, amazing son. They’ve brought together a community of hundreds and hundreds of people. They spend their days teamed up together, encouraging people to communicate, to grow, to change the world.

They haven’t done this in darkness or in silence. They haven’t done this by hiding who they are. There’s no way they could have. They live their lives brightly, like shared beacons of possibility, showing others just how great things can be when you’re true to yourself, when you commit yourself to the things that you believe in, and when you treat those you care about with love.

And that’s where we come in. Just as surely as Kyeli and Pace have reached out to us, we’ve reached out to them, and we have an opportunity to keep reaching out to them. Marriage isn’t just the union of two people, it’s a union of the community. When a marriage is stronger, we’re stronger. When we’re stronger, the marriage is stronger.

We live in strange and, in many ways, strained times. We have more personal freedom than ever. We have vastly more options, and far fewer limits. We are a sea of individuals… and many of us are more alone than ever. Our families are smaller, our communities are more distant, and our neighbors are strangers. It’s confusing, it’s lonely, and it’s frightening. We can’t persist alone. We can’t thrive like that. But what we can do is open our eyes, and open our hearts to each other. We can search our own hearts, know our own selves, know our own wounds, our own scars, as well as our own capacity for love, for kindness, for forgiveness, for empathy. And as we do so, we can begin to look around us and see opportunities to connect. We can begin to see others, and we can begin to see what is beautiful within them. Not despite their fear or uncertainty, but including it. We can see others as complete humans, who may have sometimes walked a rocky path, but not without carrying love and hope and compassion within their hearts, just as we have.

We can open our hearts, and learn to accept ourselves, and as we do so, we can begin to invite others in. We can’t help but build community. And we can’t help but support those we love. Of course, ultimately the success of Pace and Kyeli’s marriage comes down to… Pace and Kyeli. Being an active participant in any committed relationship is a lot of work, and that’s all the more true of marriage. It’s an incredible amount of work… but that’s because it’s a path of growth. Growth is hard, and it’s intimidating. Being that close to another person requires a lot of patience, self- examination, and, sometimes, sacrifice.

And yet, that’s also the reward. You have to become stronger. You have to learn how to be giving, how to be loving, how to pay attention. You have to grow in your understanding of yourself — and others. But, just as you must do these things to be an active partner, you also have a partner. There will be someone there to care for you, to help you when you stumble, to team up with you to rise to new challenges, and to allow you to see yourself more clearly than you ever could on your own.

It’s not easy work, but it’s some of the only work truly worth doing.

This was written and read by our very dear friend Nathan Winant, who officiated at our wedding. We were both completely blown away by the depth and beauty of this, and it really set the tone for the rest of the ceremony. Thank you, Nathan.

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We were up until 4am last night and the night before, so we’re taking the day off of blogging today — we’re collapsing, recuperating, and enjoying each other. We’ll post about the wedding soon, but for now, here are a couple of pictures to hold you over. Thanks for these pictures, Toby!

Without further ado, here’s each of us walking down the aisle accompanied by our respective moms.

Kyeli and her mom

Pace and her mom

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It’s a gorgeous day for a wedding — which, incidentally, starts in twenty minutes or so. Pace Smith and Kyeli Smith are getting married at 2:12pm this afternoon at their awesome house in Austin Texas, and you can “be here” too, if you want to follow along. I’ll be liveblogging the wedding the way I would usually liveblog a conference (I don’t know whose idea this was, but I am SO diggin’ it).

This means that you can refresh this page and read all the bits and pieces as they happen.

Glorious, huh?

Important points:
* I will be tweeting from Pace’s Twitter account.
* Video and later, photos will go up in my Flickrstream.
* All you need to do is refresh to see the latest bits of text — and feel free to comment profusely!

More coming soon!

The yard behind the house is filled with chairs and the sun is shining. Nathan is ringing a gong. This probably means that something awesome is starting. “Everyone! Please be seated” he says to everyone, already seated “…and silence your cell phones.” Of course!

A beautiful woman whose name I don’t know comes to the front: “By the earth, which is her body. By the air, which is her vital breath. By the fire of her bright spirit. And by the living waters of her womb. By all the powers above and all the powers below and all the powers that gather in between, the circle is cast. We are between the worlds. What happens between the worlds changes us and all the worlds. So mote it be.”

Whatever this song is, I love it. I see bridesmaids walking around the edge of the fence, coming around to the back. They’re all in shades of blue, so pretty!

A girl scatters lavender flower petals in front and Kyeli is walking around back with her mother. She’s dressed in gorgeous white, with blue in her hair and huge yellow flowers! There are blue ribbons. She’s smiling.

Whoever picked the wedding music ROCKS. Do you think we can get them to give us the playlist to post here? ;}

Pace is walking around back now, coming towards the front. She’s bouncing to the cutest Japanese techno song EVER. She’s in white and she’s grinning and she has pink flowers. She’s so pretty! Her dress is all white with a bright pink ribbon tying up the back. I love it!

Pace and Kyeli are facing each other. Pace is reading something in another language — maybe more than one language. Kyeli is saying something that sounds like a story. “You not only disturb me, she said. You shatter my entire existence.”

Nathan is officiating in a black Utilikilt. He says: “We join Pace and Kyeli for their joyous… illegal wedding ceremony.” Gleeful laughter from those attending. He says, this isn’t legal in Texas — and that’s TOO BAD FOR TEXAS. Look what Pace and Kyeli have done. They’ve built a family, they spend their time encouraging people to grow and change the world. They haven’t done this by hiding who they are. They live their lives brightly, like shared beacons…”

“Just as surely as Pace and Kyeli have reached out to us, we have an opportunity to reach out to them. Marriage isn’t just the union of two people. It’s the union of the community.”

“It’s confusing and lonely to be isolated the way many of us find ourselves. We can’t persist alone, we can’t thrive like that. What we can do is open our eyes and open our hearts to others. We can search our own hearts, know our own selves, know our capacity for love, kindness, forgiveness, empathy…”

“We can look around us and see opportunities to connect. We can see others not despite their fear and uncertainty, but including it. Seeing them as whole humans who may have sometimes walked a rocky path but not without carrying love, hope, and compassion in our hearts — just as we have.”

There are bamboo wind chimes hanging from the edge of the porch. There’s a gentle breeze and it smells like grass and incense and happy people.

I can’t see Kyeli’s face, but I can see Pace’s. Marty has snuck around to the other side to take video!

“This cord symbolizes Pace and Kyeli’s intent to join together today…”

There’s a professional photographer getting much better pictures than I would have gotten — so I am paying attention to text! Kyeli is saying, “You really see me. You really understand me. And when you don’t, you figure me out. You nourish me, you challenge me, you give me space to grow in my own way. My heart knows your heart, and in that knowledge I find peace and love.” Her voice is breaking and they’re TOTALLY in tears, still beaming.

“To give you space to be who you are, no matter who you are.”

“And that no random shoes that we may come across shall bring about the end of our relationship, be they single or in pairs.” Okay, lots of people laughed at that one. Did I hear wrong?

“The moment I met you Kyeli, I thought that you were really hot…” Pace is saying her vows, now. The audience giggles. “Today, I see your heart. I see kindness. I see honesty, generosity, a yearning for growth, a longing for peace. And I see love. I love you, Kyeli. I love you with all my heart, and I accept you as you are — all that you are.”

And then she said the shoes thing again. Someone is going to have to explain the shoe thing to me, so mote it be.

Nathan: “As you have poured these waters together, so too have you mingled your lives.” He continues: Amethyst has long held spiritual significance for Pace and Kyeli, which is why they have chosen it for their rings, to symbolize ongoing commitment and love.

The camera is clicking as they take out the rings. Kyeli is wearing these super spiffy white knit arm warmers with her gown, they look spectacular.

“You have made this commitment to each other in community and with the blessing of the divine. Do you, Kyeli, take Pace to be your unlawfully wedded wife?” “I do.” “Do you, Pace, take Kyeli to be your unlawfully wedded wife?” “I do.”

Nathan’s voice gets louder and more powerful, and he goes on: “By the power vested in me by the Universal Life Church and in blatant defiance of the state of Texas, I now pronounce you… WIFE… AND WIFE!” CHEERING! “Make with the kissing!”

We all milled around the back yard for awhile, eating and talking. Then Pace and Kyeli returned — “Ahem, AHEM! Ladies and gentlemen… PACE… AND KYELI!” — and had their beautiful first dance! I scrambled around the internet looking for a way to upload their wedding mix, and didn’t find anything that wouldn’t be far more illegal than the wedding. So I’m saving that bit for later!

Toast, toast! Kellan is toasting, and I hope he won’t be upset if I spelled his name wrong. ^_^

“…They’re already married, but they finally get to put together the ceremony they’ve always wanted. (They’re famous revolutionaries, you know.)” There’s all this emotion in his voice.

“I continue to learn from them. They inspire me to improve myself and my marriage. They bring hope to the institution of marriage — it makes me very happy that they have each other.”

Amanda is toasting now, too. “I’ve been in their living room while they were fighting, and it’s beautiful. They really do practice what they preach. I know that this will work. It’s beautiful.” Clapping and clapping!

Green: “This is a poem that I wrote about a week ago. I really wanted to create something that would share what I have learned from these amazing and wonderful ladies…” And she reads her awesome poem.

Kyeli: “And now we’re gonna make with the cake!”

Kyeli explains the shoe thing, while someone gets a knife to cut the cake! “Very early on in our relationship we were having some trouble and we had gone for a walk.” They’re using dinosaurs to illustrate. “And we came upon a lone shoe in a field. Gasp! Oh no! The full moon hit this shoe, hit the shiny bits, and Pace said, ‘OH NO! A SHOE! OUR RELATIONSHIP IS DOOMED!’ And I said, A shoe? A SHOE is going to doom our relationship? And we decided not to let the shoe destroy our relationship, and indeed, not to let ANY shoe destroy our relationship.” Cheering!

If you’re a member of the Freak Revolution Coffee House, you can join us in this great thread started by David to wish the brides well!

The cake, made by the lovely Michael and Gemma of Curious Confections:

The bouquets!

And a lot of bubbles…!

Thank you so much for joining us over the glorious intarwubs! Please take a moment to wish the happy brides well in the comments. ^_^

Peace out. ;}

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Tomorrow!

Since yesterday, friends and family galore have been flying in and driving in and generally showing up to be part of our 6-day Wedding Extravaganza. We have 100 people, all told, loved ones from near and far.

If you couldn’t make it (or didn’t get an invite) – no worries! Megan will be live-blogging it, so keep hitting refresh on our blog during the wedding (starting at 2:12pm Central on Saturday) to virtually be here with us. We wanted to invite every single one of you to be here in person, but with a little venue and an even littler budget, we couldn’t. Rest assured, you’re all in our hearts. (If you want to give us wedding presents, we’d be delighted if you’d donate to our honeymoon fund! Woo, Ireland!)

So, anyway, why am I bothering you on this fine November morning?

Here’s why.

Two years ago, I would never have believed that I could have a faery-tale wedding. In about 30 hours, it’s happening.

We don’t have a lot of money.

We don’t have a lot of time.

We don’t have a lot of knowledge about weddings.

We don’t even live in a state that will recognize our marriage.

But Pace and I both wanted a faery-tale wedding. We wanted the whole shebang, from fancy dresses to flower girls to a glorious cake. We didn’t want to put it off til we had all the things we didn’t have.

It was our dream, and we made it come true.

It hasn’t been easy. It’s been downright terrifying at times, in fact. (Like a venue change less than a week before the event! Yikes!) But it’s happening – tomorrow – and we’re both incredibly happy and in love and super excited. (I doubt we’ll get much sleep tonight!)

All too often, obstacles are things we subconsciously put in our own path, to keep us safe in the feeling that we can’t do the things we most want – not because we’re stupid or assholes or whatever, but because we simply can’t.

But what if you could? What then?

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I have been living in this skin for nearly 33 years, and I have never really looked at myself. Too fat, too scared, too ugly, too afraid of what I’d find.

Yesterday, I did. I stopped hiding from myself. I took out my mirror and my camera and photographed the miracle I call home, this body I find myself growing to know – and more, to love.

And here I am.

Curled up on the couch; I love sitting like this.

My breasts and arm.

My non-striped, boot-ill-fitting legs.

And my face. Just my face, just as I look all the time. Messy hair, not posed, not faking a smile, not using the ever-so-flattering-and-popular MySpace angle.

Just me.

I am awed by my body. Such a perfect flawless machine, such a beautiful vessel for spirit. My heart beats, my lungs fill and empty, my muscles respond. I blink. I eat and I poop. I cast circle, moving without thinking, letting magick fill my body.

My body.

So long neglected, so long unheard. So long have I feared and hated it, tried to squish it into the One True Shape™, betrayed it, and generally been utterly horrible to it.

Now, I will love it. Now, I will learn to work in harmony with my body, to more fully integrate, to stop punishing myself for not fitting into mainstream in yet another way. I don’t beat myself up for being gay or for being a Witch, so no more beating myself up for being fat.

It’s like a rhinoceros trying to be a unicorn. No matter how hard she diets or runs on a treadmill, it won’t work; she’ll always be the shape she is – and that’s perfect for a rhino.

My shape is perfect for me. Now, in this moment and in every moment, my shape is perfect.

And so is yours.

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Samhain is the end of the old year and the beginning of the new; a perfect time for reflection and introspection. This post is different from all the other posts in our blog; it’s a glimpse into the whole of our year, not just the bloggy or businessy bits. I don’t give a lot of context here, so feel free to ask if you wish.

In November, in fact through all of November, December, and January, I was vegan. We began our Communication for the Holidays telecourse, which ran all the way up to Yule. It went well! We chose the subtitle for The Usual Error: “Why We Don’t Understand Each Other and 34 Ways to Make It Better”. I dealt with my depression by making a habit of happiness. Kyeli and I celebrated our 4th anniversary of being together, Marty finished the cover art for The Usual Error, and Megan finished the design.

In December, at long last, after three years of work, we published The Usual Error. This was when we published the limited edition: the one with the orange cover. We sold all 100 of the limited edition copies within 4 days! I helped organize the Triiibes Blog Project. Kyeli’s grandfather died. I went to Dallas to be there for her during the funeral, and there was some Conservatives vs. Lesbians drama. We came home and put together a fun Yule quest for Dru, and I arranged an elaborate multi-step Yule quest for Kyeli. This is also when Dru started going to counseling.

In January, I joined the Kitchen Table, Havi stayed with us for a few days, we celebrated Dru’s 11th birthday, Dru started his first semester of co-op (school for unschoolers), and we published the unlimited edition of The Usual Error (the one with the blue cover) on Amazon. We started sharing chapters from The Usual Error on our blog, one per week. I wrote down everything I learned about self-publishing. The heartspace side of me and the headspace side of me had a beautiful conversation. Kyeli and I took Iron Pentacle class with Kira and Helix, learned and grew a lot, and shared a lot of what we learned.

In February, we tried a 30-day trial of eating only raw food. It failed spectacularly for many reasons, one of which was that our 30-day trial overlapped our move from our apartment to The Chalk. Other than Heather and Stuart’s wedding (at which we gave a blessing of communication), that pretty much consumed our February. Oi.

In March, we shifted the focus of our business (which was, at the time, PaceAndKyeli.com) from communication coaching to alternative relationship coaching. Not long thereafter, we had our first paid relationship coaching call! We first heard about the tapestry thing, the you-never-make-a-mistake thing, and I took a couple of slices out of my stress pie. We went to SXSW, saw a Jonathan Coulton concert, and hung out with Naomi and oodles upon oodles of other lovely and amazing people. We went to Sea World where Dru fell in love with the orcas and decided he wanted to be an orca trainer, we went to Houston to see Kyeli’s grandmother’s house before they tore it down, and there was a fist-sized hailstorm that totalled our car. (Kyeli stopped me from rushing outside to bring the car into the garage. Thanks, hon, I could have been brained!) And we celebrated Kyeli’s birthday! Yay! I got her a very slow shoe.

In April, we started posting Freaky Thursday and Revolutionary Tuesday video entries on the blog, as lead-up to a big announcement. This and the preparation for the big thing took up most of our time.

In May, Kyeli and I celebrated Beltane by playing Chuzzle on the moon! We were afraid our website had been hacked into sending spam, but it turned out to be just SMTP header spoofing. We had lunch with my friend Nick right before he moved to Portland (like everyone else we know). On May 11th, we dropped everything to follow our hearts. We completely redesigned our business and our website so we could lead the Freak Revolution. In less earth-shattering news, I got to Inbox Zero for the first time in 14 years. Oh, and we went to A-kon!

In June, we launched the Freak Revolution Coffee House (our forum), we were mentioned on ishmael.org, we switched to a cash-based system for managing our personal finances, and there was the big hullaballoo about politics.

In July, I finished the Heart of Money course. Since then, our financial situation has been about eighty billion times less stressful for me, and that’s not even mentioning the life-changing spiritual epiphany. Other than that, our life consisted mainly of working like crazy behind the scenes on the Freak Revolution Manifesto. This was also the month that Kyeli got overwhelmed and had a retreat, I got overwhelmed and had an emergency retreat, and Dru quit Aikido.

In August, we continued to work like crazy behind the scenes on the Freak Revolution Manifesto. My team at my day job came in first at the scavenger hunt, a long-term loan was finally repaid in full, and Kyeli and I had the “Pace, don’t smush yourself” conversation. I wrote a guest post for Copyblogger, defended closed-mindedness, and Kyeli broke her foot.

In September, we finally finished posting all 34 chapters of The Usual Error and released the entire e-book for free. I finally passed Paranoia Survivor, a very fast DDR song that I’ve been trying to pass for what, 4 years now? I ranted about how one person could have saved $450,000 from scammers, and hurt a good friend’s feelings. I finally got my updated passport that actually says I’m female, we went to the hot air balloon festival in Dallas, and our pseudo-nephew Eli was born. We saw Wicked, and pronounced it The Official Musical of the Freak Revolution! We started getting excited leading up to the manifesto release, and the Freak Revolution Manifesto launched on September 28th! Amanda won the Change the World in One Minute contest.

In October, we celebrated the ongoing success of the Freak Revolution Manifesto! We asked for feedback about the contest, and responded to it. Kyeli’s foot got better, her cousin Nicole died, we met Destry, I had a great 30-second birthday, and our good friends Bre and Amit got married, at which Kyeli gave a speech comprised of 80% Beatles lyrics. Kyeli and I spent a superb weekend with our dear friend Lynnivere in the boonies of East Texas, and we released the Usual Error audiobook.

In 2009 we enjoyed Full Moon, Star Trek: The Next Generation (seasons 1-3), and Poirot. We played Aquaria, Dokapon Kingdom, Persona 4, Trilby, Tales of Symphonia, Machinarium, and we were judges for IFComp 2009. I re-read all the Miles Vorkosigan books. We played a full year of our Mage game, Kyeli and I roleplayed two Risus murder mystery mini-campaigns with each other, and we played our first family Risus game, the Catoblepas campaign. (That was Dru’s first time participating in a roleplaying game.)

2009 was a year of growth. Growth in our business (which went through quite a few twists and turns, learning at each step), growth in our relationship (continuing to heal from our codependent past to create a more and more healthy interdependent future), and growth in spirituality (I began to practice Remembrance, and learned the value of humility and service).

As the old year closes and the new year opens, I open myself to the growth the new year has to offer.

I open myself to change.

I open myself to new challenges.

I open myself to joy.

I open myself to peace.

I open myself to comfort.

I open myself to love.

I open myself.

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