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!"

Drink More Bad Coffee

What comes out of this is hot,
brown, caffeinated, and strong.

Today, I had the pleasure of volunteering with the wonderful people at my church as we hosted a fantastic Holiday Bazaar. I was helping out in the kitchen, and there was one of those coffee urns that you often find at church events. These coffee urns are excellent devices for creating coffee when quantity is paramount and quality is irrelevant. What comes out of it is a powerful concoction which is good for keeping you going, although there are differing opinions as to whether it is due to the caffeine or the bitterness.

As I tasted the distinctive flavor of urn coffee, I realized that I have very positive associations with bad coffee. Convention staff dens, all night game parties, intense campaigns, and other memorable events are often powered by the dark fuel that comes from these arcane machines.

Some of my best times have been working long and late running a convention or another event, working on an intense project with a team, or something else which brings people together, and the coffee urn has been a part of many such events.

The best times are naturally times spent with others, and the coffee urn, by its very nature, is a tool that only comes out for groups. Most people don't need a 55 cup coffee maker for personal home use.

So I suppose it makes sense that I would have such positive associations with the strong, bitter, slightly burned flavor of cheap beans brewed into a strong and bitter concoction.

As I drank the coffee, I came to realize that I should seek more opportunities to drink such bad coffee, because the bad coffee comes with good people, exciting times, and good causes.

I'm going to try to find some more places to drink bad coffee while doing good things.

At least it's not as bad as the pale
brown water that issues from this
machine.

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.

2018: Looking Forward More than Back

I have had two separate incidents in the past week that got me looking backwards. The way I often do it is look year by year. 2006 was the year that I seemed to achieve everything I was hoping for. 2007 was the year I lost it all. It's not a good thing to do, but I find myself doing it. Year by year I summarize my life, lamenting what is lost and feeling that some of my best days are back there.

One reason my best days are ahead.

But are they? I am poised to have my most lucrative year in 2018, making more than I've ever made financially. I have a brilliant young daughter who is developing spectacularly, and a wonderfully supportive wife. I am finding my place in my community, making connections socially, professionally, and politically. I'm even an elected official.

So, I decided to take my usually backward facing process and point it forward. With the predictability
that working with BVM brings me, I can actually map out year by year what things might look like going forward.

If 2017 was the year of taxiing to the right runway and applying the throttle, 2018 will be the year of climbing into the air. I will be in a position to serve my community as I never have before, both through my role on the RTM and through Groton Mystic Neighbors. When the magazine gets to print, it will provide a resource for Mystic like nothing else that exists. It will still be a lot of work to get it up and going, but it will be the more engaging next stage.

2019 will be the year of taking things to the next level. With Groton Mystic Neighbors being a significant part of the community, I'll be able to focus more on service, taking a larger role in Rotary, possibly doing more for the town officially, and maybe being involved in other organizations. I will also be able to rededicate more energy into ConCardia.

2020 will be the year that Rowan turns 6. Much will depend on what she needs as she enters school, but I will be in a position to have the resources to provide her whatever she might need, whether it's more of my time or money for a private school or anything else. She will also be old enough to start to understand some of the exciting things her parents are involved in and start to learn about them.

Of course, there is an old saying that if you want to make God laugh, make plans, and long term plans even more so. However, I am in a position to plan like I have never been before. While it lacks the excitement of the unknown that I enjoyed in my youth, it replaces the unpredictable hope with a steady confidence which serves me much better at this point in my life.

Happy New Year, and may 2018 be our best yet.

Life Begins at 34

For much of my 20s, I had an overwhelming sense of running out of time. I needed to do something spectacular and make something of myself before time ran out.

During my 20s, I started a game store, a Rocky Horror cast, a sci-fi convention: all excellent things but nothing that I could really point at and say "that was my great accomplishment". Around the time I turned 30, I was at Wicked Faire and had the pleasure of meeting Terrance Zdunich, the creator of Repo: the Genetic Opera. I was talking to him about the fact that I was turning 30 and felt like I had not been able to accomplish much. Terrance pointed out to me that when he turned 30, he had not started working on creating the movie version of Repo, likely the accomplishment he will be most remembered for.

I was made to think of this again yesterday when I attended my step grandmother's memorial service. She had lived in Newton, Massachusetts for over 60 years. She was much beloved by many people, having done a great deal for them. She moved to Newton in 1948, and since then had touched a great many people, either through her work as a teacher of reading or simply by being an amazing and caring person.

I was amazed by things I heard about her that I had never known, and I worried that so much time had passed me by as I was still forced to move from here to there by the forces of my life. Suddenly, it hit me that she had been born in 1914, which meant that she arrived in Newton at age 34.

I turned 34 this week. Perhaps there is still plenty of time to make my mark. And maybe, just maybe, I have already begun.