I feel rusty at writing at the moment. It’s only been three days since I last wrote here, but it feels too long. A post each day is what I’d like to have the time for, but work and other tasks interfere. I think I may need to find a way to hold my blogging mojo. While I usually do have something to write about and am passionate for writing, I find myself distracted by other concerns. I feel the need to commit to cutting out a lot of excess from my life and to catch up on important tasks I just haven’t found the time for yet. And in doing that I neglect writing. Potential posts pile up and before I know it I’m as behind in writing as I am on doing my taxes (that was planned for the first of this month), cleaning my apartment (that never ends, does it?) and finding time for those friends I don’t interact with as often as I should. What a mess this all becomes.

I wrote early this month about laying down patterns each month of this year. In January I began taking photos daily. This month I’ve been working on resistance training, which is coming along slowly. For March I’ve decided to make writing daily my focus. I’ll have to necessarily push to the side anything that is not vital to do it, but I’m sure it will be rewarding and helpful for a long term commitment to writing that I don’t imagine I’ll ever be able to dislodge from my heart, no matter how neglectful of that passion I may be.

Finding one’s place in the blogosphere can be challenging, especially if we want to have our content noticed by the world. Valleywag created a four sphere map of “Blogging Nirvana” from his understanding of audience reaction. Then various sites were placed onto the Venn diagram. Apple fell into lust and Digg under novelty. This left me wondering just where my site might fall. My best guess would be dancing around in novelty, stimulation and lust. What do you think?

I’m sitting in a chair that is not exactly inspiring. Here at my spartan desk I have a chair that folds up for easy storage. It’s functional and reasonably comfortable, but certainly far from ideal aesthetically and ergonomically.

I’ve been brainstorming for how to improve my environment for a while, and a chair has come to be central to this. I try to be writing at my desk as frequently as possible and have it as the spot where vision is drawn to in my room. This means I really do want something beautiful and functional. I have a very minimalist approach, so it should also be elegantly simple.

My inner design geek has me drawn to some fashionable and weird pieces that are outside my budget and the practical nature of my want for a new chair. An abstract shape chair, box lamp stools, cardboard chairs, scrabble seats, an omni, and other seductive pieces have all caught my attention.

Jon at Zaads offers four practical options (or is it 3, considering my budget?) in “The Four Best Ways to Sit at Your Computer“. He’s recommending an exercise ball, a kneeling chair, the Lotus Position and a treadmill. As much as I like keeping active, that last one is a no go. So that leaves three options to consider.

Of those three, the kneeling chair seems the least appealing for me. It’s visually nice, but for comfort and avoiding slouching, it’s not so great, and avioding knee damage might be tough under long term use.

Everyone from my fitness conscious dad to the folks at Google are using exercise balls for chairs now. Word is that it’s great for posture and very comfortable. Getting one the right height is the key, it seems. The added benefit of having the ball to use in stretching and other exercises would be wonderful.

I’m working on conditioning my legs to sit comfortably in a Lotus Pose. For a while now I’ve been meaning to do some Padmasana preparation exercises recommended by Erich Schiffmann for a long while, and the notion of using the position in both my meditation and my time at my computer is very appealing.

Unless I find a better option, I’ll likely end up getting an exercise ball (black, of course) for the short term and work on the Lotus Pose, picking up a proper meditation cushion before long. I’d love to hear suggestions, though, so let me know what you’ve found to work well.

Today, over at Integral Options Cafe, William brought my attention to “Polyamory in the News“. As he pointed out, polyamory is often viewed as very weird. The article and many opponents of the practice of polyamory become caught in a tangle.

Polyamory (from poly=multiple + amor=love) is a tricky subject, often because of a pre/trans fallacy. There are at least two approaches that accept polyamoury, one coming from “fuck you, I’ll sleep with anyone I want” and the other “these relationships we enter into are beneficial to us all and brimming with genuine love.” The two can easily be confused if one doesn’t know how to discern the difference in intent.

I experienced the feeling of and desire for polyamory with my first romantic and sexual stirrings. My first crush was on two best friends and ever since then my affections and tenderness were always twinned. Kira and Becky, Alicia and Jenna, and on my school crushes went. When I fell in love and had relationships later, I found that any love I felt did not diminish as I moved forward with new loves. Though the context changed, I have been blessed with loving friendships in the wake of romantic relationships. I thank my polyamorous tendencies for facilitating that, in part. Having an openness toward loving has become included as a vital aspect of my personality.

I’ve never actually practiced polyamory by having two intimate relationships at once, and it becomes a more challenging prospect as my moral understanding deepens. When we are taking into account everyone’s well being, stepping into multiple perspectives, avoiding harm and ensuring benefit for everyone is incredibly challenging. I have never been in a situation where I could say with certainty that being in relationships with two women would be best for us all, and so have remained, happily, in monogamy.

The openness to that happening remains. As Gary of Integral in Seattle pointed out in “Sacred Marriage“, higher levels of relationships are facilitating transformation and growth through intimacy. If the union of two people committed to that intimate evolution is so beautiful and beneficent it leaves us shattered in awe, what of more than two? Love becomes without boundary, and that includes both span (who we love) and depth (how deeply we love). Being in service of love then becomes about being skillful in how we act from love. I can only hope to be up to the challenge of love, however it arises.

Have I told you I love electric violin? I do, and the fact I spent the night with a woman who plays one has nothing to do with it.

It took me a while to get it, but I’ve finally been listening to DreamCypher, The Crüxshadows newest release. I was in love with their last studio album, Ethernaut, and the band has cemented their place in my heart with this one. Emotive, mythic darkwave, it’s the sort of music I can let myself seep into at any time.

The arrangements are superb, and, as I alluded to at the start, I’m especially fond of Rachel’s electric violin work. The lyrics are often anthemic, and reference various myths, something that drew me to this music from the start. There’s a power in dragging myths into higher contexts.

I want to invite you to become a bit more intimate when you leave comments across the blogosphere. A quick, simple and elegant way to do this is to use an avatar when commenting. This adds a personal touch to comments, letting writers and readers recognize the person behind a comment. It’s nice when familiar faces stop by my website and actually have their familiar faces show.

The most popular service for avatars is Gravatar (short for globally recognized avatar), which has just relaunched as much easier and useful. All you have to do is sign up with your e-mail address, upload a photo (the site will crop and resize it for you), give it a rating (G, PG, R, X), and select it. Now, whenever you leave a comment on a site that supports Gravatars, your image will appear by your comment.

On my site I also use MyBlogLog, a blog community site, to assign avatars to comments. If you’re a member there, your avatar will appear by comments you make, as well as showing up in my recent readers sidebar.
You can have an avatar that will follow you around the blogosphere in just a couple minutes, so I hope you’ll give it a shot.

Blog hosts and those of us who have blogs we maintain ourselves often have to add avatar support. I use Word Press for my blogging softwars, and there’s a slick plugin, MyAvatars, that lets us use both Gravatars and MyBlogLog. I think it does add a lot to the blogging experience, so I hope to see it become increasingly common to see avatars working across different blog platforms.

Saturday was Gala‘s International Dress Up Day and I scrabled to get a look together for the Live song “They Stood Up For Love“, as the theme was “dress up as your favourite song”, and that’s the one I picked. I didn’t have a lot of time as I worked in the evening, had worked into the morning and had to fit sleep and errands into the mix. For a half hour effort, it turned out fair, but next time I’ll do some more preparation.

I’ll run down the props, clothing and such, for anyone interested. I wore shiny, patterned Thai fisherman’s pants, my custom (heart) integral shirt, the padlock choker and tiger’s eye and wooden malas Gwen gave me. The props are a toy cap gun with its barrel filled by a plastic flower and a cinnamon, clove and nutmeg candle. All told, it was an easy and quick setup.

Gala has already shared her fantastic International Dress Up Day “love casualty” adventures, but will be posting photos and stories from others soon. I’m looking forward to seeing what was created.

On Valentine’s Day I spent the evening with Gwen. She prepared a wonderful meal and we shared a cozy and wonderful night together. It was the first Valentine’s Day I’d spent with someone I was in love with for several years, and was a nice change. I can’t imagine the two of us having a better night, honestly.

That night she gave me gifts of cookies, an Om and hearts pillow, and a fantastic punk padlock heart choker from Pixel Girl Shop. The choker has a working lock and key and looks fantastic.

I’m still brainstorming for International Dress-Up Day, but I’ve pretty much settled on “They Stood Up For Love“. This is largely because I want to use the choker and am envisioning some sort of soldier of love.

Stay fed to see how I.D.U.D. turns out.

Gala of GalaDarling.com has conjured a dramatic new day, one bringing dress-up out from its usual hiding spots of childhood, stage, diplomacy and Hallowe’en and showcasing it with a theme. Who better to lead the way with a tagline of “dress up, leave a false name, be legendary“?

The first annual International Dress-Up Day will have us dressing as our favourite songs. This leaves me in a challenging spot, as I have a terrible time selecting one favourite song. I’ll likely have to settle for picking one of my favourites that I can come up with a suitable visual representation for.

Tomorrow is the day to become a song. Until then you can whet your appetite for dressing up by taking in the gems at GalaDarling. Meanwhile, I’ll be weighing the possibilities to come from “They Stood Up For Love“, “Where the River Flows” and “No Cities Left“.

Oh, and be sure to let Gala help with your next party by checking out How To Throw A Fantastic Party.

Ti voglio.

Romance is inescapable today. And eroticism too. We might be dreaming in infrared, or dreaming of a girl under a corset umbrella in a downpour. Reading with a bookwormish beauty might be more our style. Practicing the art of intimacy with our lovers or remembering our first stumble and crushes are both options. But love and its imitators are falling on us today.

A couple years ago I created a series of one sentence freezes of romance. Romance 13 was the last compilation of them, and I think it’s a good time to look back at those visions.

Even Comic Vine is in on the romance today. Its Super Hero Dating Quiz let me know that I’d find good matches in Mary Jane and X-23.

more »

William over at IOC has shared his favourite love song, Live’s “The Dolphin’s Cry”, and I’m going to catch the wave of love and deliver mine. It happens to also be a Live song from the very same album, The Distance to Here. Here is “Dance With You“.

Happy Valentine’s Day!