Gratitude in Difficult Times

This has been a very difficult year for me and my family. I have seen communities torn apart by people who placed their personal grudges, agendas, and insecurities above the good of the society of which they are a part. I have watched people we thought were friends turn against us. I have dealt with people whose word is worthless.

As we come to the close of such a year, it might be easy to say that it is not a time for gratitude but bitterness. The temptation to do so is quite strong. Too often, when there is bad and good together, it is too easy to fixate on the bad. To let the evil overshadow the good.

This year has seen a lot of destruction in our world, but looked at another way, we could call it creative destruction.

When those whom you believe are your friends turn on you, at first, you begin to doubt all of your friends. Who will turn next? Then you begin to doubt yourself. What did I do to drive them away? Then your true friends reveal themselves. Not necessarily in some great action, but simply in their continued presence. When the deceivers have all left, those who remain are the true friends, and there are many of them. So many.

The Groton Rotary club is a wonderful group of people, and
I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to
share my time, energy, and resources with the great
projects they do for our community and the world.

During the darkest time, I had blocked or unfriended dozens of people on Facebook. I was fixated on what was lost until I noticed a curious thing. After so many had been purged from my connections, I looked at my list of friends and discovered that, not only was it not lower, it was in fact higher. Much higher. I have connected with hundreds of good people in the last year.

Furthermore, as the groups that we had built our lives around and contributed our support to proved to be rotten shells destined to
collapse, we found ourselves freed to find new communities, new groups, new good people to surround ourselves with, new true causes to give our support to.

From the first meeting I visited my new Toastmasters Club,
I treated as a member of the group, and I am deeply grateful
for their fast and sincere friendship.

As it turns out, they are not new. They have been here all along, but we had been dedicating our attention, our energy, our support elsewhere. Now, as things have become clearer, we have been able refocus our energy to places where it can do real good, where it will be appreciated, and where it will make us part of a community of good people who will make our lives richer for knowing them.

Some of the amazing local people I had the pleasure to work
with. Even the folks on the Yes side we're great people. We
may have disagreed, but we all agreed that we wanted what
was best for our town. It was refreshing for everyone to care
about the common good.

In the same way that you pull weeds from a garden to allow the beautiful flowers to grow, the trials and tribulations of 2018 have allowed us to weed out the places and people who sapped out energy and our strength and allowed us to grow and develop relationships with amazing, wonderful people who will make our lives so much richer.

I have so much to be grateful for. I am grateful for the wonderful community I have found at my church over the past year. I am grateful for the chance to become more involved in the good work of Rotary. I am grateful for the chance to have worked along so many of the best and brightest in local politics. I am grateful for the new friends I have met throughout this year.

My wonderful church family at Noank Baptist Church that I
have been blessed to become a part of this year. While I am
relatively new, they have welcomed me like a long lost
relative and I am eternally grateful.

So, I suppose I should also be grateful to one more group of people. I am grateful to the liars, the schemers, and the people with evil in their hearts who brought all this upon us. They allowed me to really appreciate all the good people who are around me. They allowed me to refocus my efforts onto communities that deserve the love of myself and my family. They have allowed me to find the flowers among the weeds.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, and take a moment between the turkey and the pie to be grateful for all the blessings that are around us.

P.S. I usually add the photos after I write an article. As I went to add the photos to this article, I realized that I didn't have room for all the wonderful groups. I am deeply thankful to the great folks at BVM that I work with, to various individuals I have met along the way, people in the fandom communities who are still doing the good work to bring fellowship and good times to those who wear the gears and dream of the rocket ships. I'm sure I'm leaving out someone, but, as A Halo Called Fred sings, "We Love You All!"

Touching Lives

One day, a boy was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by a storm. As he walked he came upon a man  who was throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.

Puzzled, the boy looked at the man and asked what he was doing. Without looking up from his task, the man simply replied, “I’m saving these starfish.”

The boy chuckled aloud, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”

The man picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the boy, said, “I made a difference to that one!”


Last night I got a message from someone I meet four years ago. She was working at an ice cream shop at the time, and, getting ice cream one day, I talked with her as I often do with people I meet. Turns out that she was just finishing high school and was getting interested in anime and conventions but didn't know where to start. At the time, I was running the Connecticon Info Desk Department, and I invited her to join my team and get to see the con from the center of it all.

We became friends and speak occasionally. Last night, she sent me a message in which she realized that when we met, she was just finishing high school, and now she has just graduated college. She said this:

"It seemed like such a small encounter, but your kindness to some random kid behind the counter stayed with me. You listened to me as i spouted off whatever high school angst I had and genuinely gave me advice and your time. Now I'm 22 and thinking about how incredible that was. You are the only stranger to ever be that kind to me."

Throughout our daily travels, rushing here and there, doing this and that, we brush up against so many other lives. I didn't think twice about chatting with the person behind the counter. It comes naturally, but it made a difference to her. Everyday, we have dozens of opportunities to make someone's life better, if only in a small way, but that small thing could mean everything to the right person at the right time.

Probably without intention, her words came to me at a time when they had great impact. The past half year has been very difficult for me. I have been in a place where I had to wonder who were truly my friends and who were not. I came to doubt myself and my contributions to the world.

This message (as well as many others I have received recently) was a powerful reminder that I have left a lot of good behind me, and that I have much more good to do.

In the past few months, I have seen the best of people and I have seen the worst. I have seen people whose goodness is so strong that the world is a brighter place because they exist in it. I have seen people with such darkness that they cannot help but to destroy that which others enjoy. It made me question my faith in humanity. But I have seen far more of the former kind of person than the later.

I have seen so many people step forward both behind and in front of the scenes to be the light in the world. Some did so because they were brave. Some because they didn't know what they were getting into. But all of them because they saw what the right thing to do was, and they knew that it was their time to do it.

I started this year with about 1,675 friends on Facebook, and in the past six months, I have removed and blocked a considerable number of toxic people from that list. Today, after all of this, my list of friends stands at 1,701. I am deeply grateful for all the wonderful people I have been blessed to meet, both this year and before.

Not only can every single one of us change the world, but every single one of us does change the world every single day. The only question is whether you change it for the better.

Graturday - Great Professional Support

I work with a fantastic company called Best Version Media, and it is unique in a number of ways. Much of this comes of the fact that the founders realized that true success is not born of a single minded obsessive focus on money but from a desire to do good with an eye towards a strong business in the process. This is how a company that produces local print publications in the age of Facebook has been able to go from zero to $100,000,000 in annual revenues in ten short years.

What I am truly grateful for today, however, is the quality of character and compassion of the people I work with through this company. One of the pillars of the culture of BVM is that of a "compassionate heart." In short, it means that as a company we are encouraged to think of people as people and not simply a means to an end.

It manifests in the way that we think about our prospects and clients, desiring to do what is best for them rather than simply what is most profitable for us. It also manifests in the way that every single level of management and home office works with the publishers in the field.

I have worked for many sales organizations. While it varied somewhat from company to company, there was always a sense that your value as a person was tied to your most recent sales results. Best Version Media treats every single person on the team as a person of great value, regardless of the results they can achieve. When I hit a slump or when my head is not right, I know that I can be honest with those who are there to support me. I will find support, encouragement, and advice. I will not find judgement or snark.

I am blessed to work for a company of good, honest, humble people who seek nothing more than the betterment of their community and the people they work with, and for that, this Gratitude Saturday, I am sincerely grateful.

Graturday - Moms

One of the most underappreciated jobs in the world is that of mother. Teacher. Therapist. Coach. Peacemaker. Referee. Travel Agent. Logistician. These are just a few of the roles that come together in the role of mother.

My mother deserves the credit for a great deal of my moral development. She taught me the importance of considering the effect that every one of my actions would have upon others. While I have certainly not always been successful, I have always striven to live up to the standard she taught me of try to make the world a better place.

Both I and my daughter's mother (also known as my wife) love our daughter with all of our hearts, but Amy takes care of her in some ways that are unique and special to her. She connects with her on a level that only a mother can. She works with her on art and other skills which I personally lack. I am deeply grateful that I found such a good woman to be the mother of my much beloved child.

In general, on this Graturday (written one day late on the Sunday that is Mother's Day), I am thankful to all the mothers out there doing incredible, unrecognized but vital work to raise the best children that they can, and, in the process, making the world a better place.

Thank you to moms everywhere, and especially to my wife Amy, the best mom right here.

Graturday - Thankful for My Awesome Wife

In our lives, we have a series of increasingly important objectives. At the lowest level are simple things that do not matter in the grand scheme of things, like getting a blog post out every day or going up a level in a game. Then there are higher level objectives, like completing a task for work or maintaining a health regiment. Finally, there are the highest level objectives such as raising healthy and happy children and nourishing your marriage.

If your life is in good balance, your lower level objectives will not detract from and may even benefit your most important objectives. That work task may allow you to get to a better career position allowing for more money or schedule flexibility to spend with your family.

The higher objectives are often more theoretical while the lower objectives are often more tangible. It is easy to know if I have written my article for the day. It is harder to know if I have invested enough time and energy in my family.

That is why I believe that this Graturday (Saturday Gratitude) exercise is so important. It allows me to refocus each week on that which is truly important.

So, today, I am thankful for my wife Amy and her patience with me. She does a great deal to support me, and I do not always appreciate that enough, and so I am doing so right here and now. She has been there for me in good times, and she has been there for me when I have done some dumb things.

There are many qualities a wife can have, but loyalty is the most important. The fact that I know I can trust her no matter what means more to mean than anything else. When you know that your wife it beside you, it becomes much easier to face whatever comes before you.

Thank you Amy Whitehouse for being the best wife ever.

Placing Your Thumb In Front of the Sun

Have you ever looked straight at the sun? If not, don't, it's bad for your eyes. but when you look directly at the sun, your entire field of view is filled with that one blinding light. You can't see anything else: not the stars or the blue sky or the clouds or the moon or the plane flying by.

This is what staring into the sun looks like. Don't try this
at home, kids.

What happens when you block that single source of blinding light? Something as small as your thumb can do it. Suddenly, you see everything else. You see that the thing that was causing you pain was a small part of the sky, and you can now see all the beauty around it.

Gratitude is kind of like that. It is very easy to be distracted by a small number of negative things, painful things, difficult things, and to not notice all the tremendous blessings that we have.

This became clear to me after I posted this article. In it, I describe some things that people have said recently which were particularly hurtful. The response I got over the next few days really put things into focus. There are maybe 5 or 6 occasions recently on which people whom I thought were friends surprised me by choosing to listen to rumors rather than believe me, but five times as many people reached out to me one way or another to express support, and hundreds have expressed support over the past couple months, and that is really where my focus should be.

I am deeply grateful that I have such a wide array of amazing people around me: Many wonderful people whom I have known for quite some time, and a surprising number of new friends whom I have only met since this crisis began, and who saw what I did and appreciate it.

But that's not all I have to be thankful for.

• I am generally healthy and active.
• I have the ability to support myself and my family in a reasonable lifestyle.
• I have a wonderful daughter who is absolutely brilliant and beautiful. 
• I have a great wife who supports me in many ways. 
• I work with a company of some of the best people I have ever met. 
• I have an excellent game store right around the corner from me.
• I am well respected in my local community for the work I have done here.

So, really, things are pretty good. What do you have to be most grateful for? Feel free to share in the comments!

On Gratitude

Gratitude is a deconstructed element of faith. Some of the happiest people that you will ever meet have a profound and and deep faith in some form of God. I don't mean the people who wave the Bible around and tell you why you're a sinner. I mean those people who just seem very serine all the time no matter what is happening; as if they have read the last page of the novel and they know how all of this will turn out.

A life of Gratitude is a key part of this serenity. Anytime something happens in your life, your emotional reaction to it is only loosely connected to how good or bad it is in reality. If you get a promotion and a raise at work, you can see it as a very exciting thing or you can see it as a whole lot of extra work with only a little more money. If you lose your job, you can see it as a disaster or you can see it as an opportunity to find something better.

Gratitude is crucial to being able to control the difference for yourself. Being grateful is not just something that "good people" do because they should. Gratefulness is something that you do because it is good for you.

I mention faith because most people have encountered faithful people who give thanks to God no matter what happens. If they are starving in the woods, and have nothing left but a handful of trail mix, they will give thanks to God for that trail mix. What would most of us do? Probably be upset that we're out of food and about to starve.

But think about the difference this could have in your life. How many blessings do you have every day that you don't even think about.

• If you are reading this, you are blessed to have access to the Internet, giving you access to all the assembled knowledge of mankind. 
• You either have your eyesight, or some other method to read. 
• If you live in America or another developed country, you live in relative security with a level of technology that was science fiction just 20 years ago. 
• If you are able to work then you have health that allows you to do so.

But what about when bad things happen. How can you be thankful for that. Let's say you lose your job. It is reasonable to be angry or anxious, but the anger and anxiety will pass more quickly if you can get to a place of gratitude. What might you have to be grateful for?

• You are now free to find a new and better opportunity.
• You gained certain skills and experiences which are now yours to capitalize on.
• You may have friends and connections through the last job.

Many of us go through our lives in fear and anger. Upset about this and worried about that, but what if, instead of looking at everything that might go wrong or has gone wrong, we look at what has gone right? Think about how that would change your average day. 

Think about the posts you make on social media. Are they negative or positive. What if you made just one more every day that expressed gratitude for something? What if you made an effort to thank someone every day for something they had done in your life? Imagine the difference this slight change might make.

I write this article aspirationally. I often find myself focusing on what I have lost rather than what I have, and it does not bring joy. Perhaps, starting today, we can start down this road of gratitude together. I can start by thanking you for reading this article.