My Birthday

Grubbs is 50 today, and, coincidentally, so am I. I celebrated the morning by greeting it in my birthday suit in my backyard. Jim is taking me to Catalina Island (it's free to ride the boat from Long Beach on your birthday). It will be low key. Walk around the island, go on an island tour, glass-bottom boat ride....

Instead of reflecting on the past, I'm going to look forward. I resolve that in 2016 I will have completed The Furry Book, and it will be most excellent :-3 This isn't a book about the history of furry, if you were wondering. No, I call it a GUIDE to the fandom for both furries and non-furries (mundanes, if you will). I'm conducting interviews with both well-known and not-so-known furries, and it will be well-illustrated with interesting photographs and, perhaps, some drawings.

I will continue to learn how to play the piano, and I hope sometime in 2016 to find a good, used upright for the living room (keyboards are nice, but nothing like a real piano).

I will continue to improve my nest--aka, my house in the valley. But I will not make the mistake again that a house is the center of one's universe. Home is not a building, it is a state of mind.

I will continue to write the "Ask Papabear" column. Might even put together a "best of" collection and see if that sells.

I will continue to be a friend to furries.

I will come to peace with my spirituality and my place in the universe.

Nothing is permanent in life. That is the one biggest lesson I have learned in the past 10 years since discovering that I was gay and having my world turned upside down. I now embrace the present and focus on the pleasures of each moment as I experience it.

I've also learned that there is no joy in the acquisition of things. My biggest joy in life comes from helping others and loving others.

I love you people.

Blessed Be