Making Love Sustainable was named  as the best sex/relationship blog of 2011 by Intent readers this week.  I am honored and humbled simultaneously. Writing is kind of a lonely business;  I sit with my thoughts and do some quiet research while I wait for my ideas to coalesce into something meaningful that I can feel good about offering publicly. I find that web writing is a little like writing to yourself. You don’t really know if anyone is going to read it, so the writing itself has to bring the satisfaction of the effort. That may be one of the reasons that 90% of blogs end in a matter of months- the communicating effort is mostly fed from inside.

For me, writing about love, intimacy and relationships is my own form of  therapeutic recollection and a way of knowing myself that is unique. So it is catches me off guard when other people notice and appreciate what I am thinking about.  I have always longed for a larger voice and now ironically, I realize that the less I focus on  how far my thoughts reach, the further they seem to go.  This is the gift of humility- when you stop concerning yourself with how you are being seen, you get to see yourself clearly and others are magnetized by the purity of the intent.

In the same week,  our Good Clean Love personal lubricant, which we have been offering to our local HIV Alliance has been laboratory tested and found to be isomolar, which means that it is very close to the human molarity rate, which means that it doesn’t harm the most sensitive tissue in the body, like six of the most widely used lubricants were found to do. Intuitively I knew this because of how it felt. But again, public and scientific recognition is both reassuring and motivating.  The recent study performed by the University of Pittsburgh states the reasoning behind this claim, as presented at the 2010 Microbicides Conference by Charlene Duzzetti, PhD:   “What we saw was the gels that were hyperosmolar [the aqueous-based Astroglide, Elbow Grease, ID Glide, and K-Y Jelly] were actually damaging the epithelium of the rectal and cervical tissue.”

Lately I have been becoming discouraged with the challenges of working to grow a small business  in a market where I am competing against companies that have a million times the resources. It is hard to see the progress sometimes when you have so far to go. If gratitude has taught me anything this summer  it is that just doing good, and even good enough with what you have is enough to make a difference and occasionally, people notice. It is the collection of effort over time, not the size of the budget behind it that can move mountains. This is why gratitude is so important, because you can’t keep the courage and effort alive without the gratitude of knowing  your own good.

And if that isn’t enough,  even our regional business community is taking note- of the good we are manifesting and inviting us to participate  in some cool investor forums.  This month we will be presented as a finalist for the Tom Holce awards in Portland Oregon, at the Oregon Entreprenurs Network annual gala event.  Practicing gratitude is truly the parent of all other virtues because it opens a door to everything that is positive and says yes to our own good work.