Archives for the month of: April, 2016

…I woke this morning feeling especially appreciate of leisure time in the mornings, very aware that the future may be built on a different routine. My anxiety comes and goes, in general, and seems more or less well-managed, though I’d be more than happy to dispense with it entirely and simply be. I’m still working on that one.

I sat down at my desk with some thoughts in mind, and a very good cup of coffee, and was immediately thwarted by The Grand Distraction – no, not Facebook, but close; Google. Yep. Google politely advised me that I had exceeded my storage limit between going to bed and waking up… (wth??) and I was sternly warned by an alarming red font, bold, and highlighted, that I was at risk of not being able to send or receive email!

Now, realistically, that’s not much of a legitimate crisis, and could have been managed at some point other than ‘now’ – but I am not wired that way, and all the practice over many years has not yet changed my lack of impulse control in some areas much at all… I immediately went into overdrive, deleting redundant files, cached images, copies of copies, archives duplicated elsewhere, saved folders of unsorted zipped images… until…at last… Google grudgingly admitted I am once again under my limit. It was not all that mysterious; I had the benefit of “50 Gigs of free storage with the purchase of a…”, and recently relied upon that to copy precious files while my OS was updated – just in case – and entirely overlooked deleting those copies, and then… last night… my “50 Gigs of free storage [for one year]…” expired. Check the fine print. 🙂

Life is full of fine print. Be sure to read it. 🙂

Much of my leisurely morning is… gone. Filled. Used up. Completed. It is in the past, already. I’m pretty certain I didn’t put the time to the best possible use – or the most fulfilling. I’m irked with Google over it, although it is hardly their issue that I still react as often as I respond to life’s small challenges. There’s a lesson worth studying there.

Today is an ordinary enough work day. My last day at my current job will be Friday. Feels a bit strange to simply say so. Choosing to make this change is more than a little scary, too. I want to feel more certain that I am doing ‘the right thing’… but… there are more than a few ‘right things’ I could choose to do, each very dependent on how I view the circumstances, the options, the opportunities, and what matters most.  What does matter most? Is it healthcare – or cash flow? Is it contentment – or financial gain? Is it fulfillment – or being prepared for retirement? Is it meeting my own needs over time – or providing for my family now? Is it “always” a choice?  (Quick answer – no; most uses of ‘always’ or ‘never’ can be safely assumed to be hyperbole, resulting in logical fallacy, being immediately ‘not true’ because it takes just one exception to disprove them. Still…always a best practice to test your assumptions. There. Enjoy that.)

Life goes on about its business in a mostly very usual way, in spite of the fierce storm of change so imminent on my horizon. I find myself generally fairly calm, hopeful that ‘it all works out’… getting enough leisure to take care of me, finding out my health concerns may be more easily addressed than I feared perhaps, then conveniently falling into a dream job well before cash reserves run out… I know one thing – there are verbs involved.

Although it was a busy day, there was time for the garden. "Baby Love" blooms first this year.

Although it was a busy day, there was time for the garden. “Baby Love” blooms first this year.

Today is a good day to recognize that change is, and to enjoy ‘now’.

I have appointments today, and timing matters. I reserved a car for the day to simplify things, and knowing I have some baggage around ‘time’ (and timing), I made sure to consider possible twists and complications, and allowed myself what seemed sufficient time.

I woke on time this morning, and quickly departed to pick up the car… The bus I planned to take to the transit center didn’t come. I stood patiently waiting for the next one; I knew I had enough time.

I got to the transit center just prior to the start of my car reservation feeling pretty splendid that I didn’t get stressed out about the bus… No car. I mean, no cars at all, anywhere in the car-share lot. Not good. Timing… I take a deep breath, remind myself I planned for all manner of contingencies, and even allowed myself time to write for a moment, later… (spoiler alert – I’m writing!) I call the car-share service, and they admit that indeed it looks like the car I reserved has not yet been returned (um… I know this…). They phone the person who has the car, and let me know that although that person is not answering their phone, the car ‘is now in motion’. They adjust my reservation and give me a bit of a discount for the inconvenience. I breathe. I wait. The person arrives with the car and drops it off without a word of courtesy or regret. I am reminded of the ‘state the world is in’ and I am not puzzled why. I head on home to shower, dress – and omg, have coffee!

I find myself comfortably back on track, and wondering how many such circumstances over the course of an adult lifetime were needlessly complicated (and matters of time and timing significantly worsened) by having some crazy freak out over being a few minutes later than planned, or some sequence of events being not entirely in the sequence intended, or just having some plan fall completely to pieces resulting in a thoroughly unscripted, spontaneous, wildly different experience? So far, this morning is just fine, complications and all.

I look myself over in the mirror, dressed for the day, feeling myself on the edge of finding fault with all sorts of details that seemed not only satisfactory at some other point, but in some cases actually fulfilling and a bit… awesome. Funny how the bit of stress over time feeds so much discontent, later, and about things so unrelated to time, or each other. It’s something to consider another time.

Oh, right… time. It’s time. Today is a good day to give myself plenty of time – and patience. Today is a good day to be enough. 🙂

I woke ‘too early’ this morning – meaning, I really wanted to sleep later, and felt unready to be awake. It’s a weekend day, so I went back to bed. I didn’t really sleep any later, but I indulged myself in the sensuous luxury of waking up quite slowly. Worth it. When I finally got up, I felt rested, and mostly comfortable. My back aches ferociously, but for now it remains quite manageable.

My thoughts are a jumble of future considerations, past concerns, and ‘what to do with today?’ thoughts. I smile at the question; it is a Sunday, and Sunday’s mostly take care of themselves, being [for me] a day for housekeeping (both in my home, and in my thinking), and for self-care. I already have a list of things I’d like to get done today, with laundry at the top. It is a day for practical things.

The titular pain is an obvious thing and, as much as I can, I refuse to allow it to call my shots on this lovely morning; there is a life to be lived, and I’d very much prefer to live it without regard to pain. It isn’t always easy, and the good self-care practices that build and maintain emotional resilience day-to-day are surprisingly effective also at minimizing the emotional consequences of living with pain. I keep practicing. Today will be a good day for meditation, and for those yoga poses that I am still permitted by my doctor (while we sort out what is going on with my health).

The titular mixed emotions are… life. I sometimes have a more than necessarily complicated time of things with my emotional life, partly a byproduct of my TBI, partly a byproduct of my PTSD, and partly…well… I’m human. 🙂 We are creatures of both emotion and reason – and emotion generally leads. Having made a firm decision regarding my professional life, and thrown some verbs into the mix, I am investing time in considering my future choices, needs, and opportunities quite deeply. It’s not always comfortable. I am flawed… human… and hopeful. I don’t know where the journey is taking me, but I am very much on the way… somewhere. 🙂

However straight and obvious life's path seems at a glance... I can't quite see where it leads.

However straight and obvious life’s path seems at a glance… I can’t quite see where it leads.

Today is a good day for practices, and patience. Today is a good day for self-care, and consideration for others. Today is a good day to change this small bit of the world right here, and look to the horizon to see the world changing in the distance.

I am sipping a delicately fragrant cup of tea this morning, and lingering over the recollection of a lovely moment with my traveling partner last night. He put on a love song with a beautiful tender video for our shared enjoyment. It was a simple connected romantic moment, and very much worth remembering. This morning, with headphones on, I listen to it again…then play a favorite that makes me think of loving him. Suddenly, it is a morning filled with music – love songs, mostly, and uplifting songs of pure joy. “Love songs” to life and self – don’t those matter just as much? Sure – that’s part of the point; I matter. To me. No argument, defense, or justification required.

I find my way back to romantic love songs, of course, it’s that sort of morning. 🙂 I “miss” my traveling partner as fervently and with as much yearning as if he were away, instead of sleeping in another room. Sometimes love is funny that way. I let him sleep; I love him such that it matters more that he rest well than to risk waking him with a touch or a kiss. I’ll see him later today.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

Today is a good day to be love.

This morning is quiet. The noise of the trains coming and going in the distance seems muted. The traffic on the nearby busy street is still infrequent, and hushed. The loudest sounds this morning are my fingers on the keyboard, and the occasional clatter of raindrops spattering window panes and eaves. I am in a manageable amount of pain.

Change is a thing. I find myself embracing it willfully, constructively, and using that profound power of choice to craft something of my life that suits me better. It is a process that is both incredibly exciting, and indescribably nerve-wracking. My anxiety comes and goes, and between anxious moments I feel… alive.  I noticed quickly that my anxiety most commonly surfaces in the context of taking action in my own favor in any way that doesn’t seem to ‘fit the mold’ I’ve been nudged into over a lifetime. From my perspective, that makes the anxiety itself quite suspect, and I look upon it now as ‘baggage’, more than as any legitimate warning of danger or risk. When it surfaces again, I make a point of ‘letting it go’. Yes, it comes back, and sometimes quite quickly – I repeat the process, letting it go, soothing myself with meditation or intellectual engagement in some other area of interest. It dissipates. It returns later. It is a process. Surely it will take at least as many repetitions of letting go of the anxiety to teach myself the lesson that the anxiety itself is the illusion, the baggage, the issue… didn’t it take many such repetitions to build the experience of chronic disordered anxiety in the first place? 🙂

What better time than now?

What better time than now?

I heard birds singing outside my window. The sky is light now. I hear more of the steady distant roar of commuter traffic, and the wail of the train seems louder, too, as if to make a point of getting the attention of sleepy morning professionals hurry in to the office. I remind myself to get some real down time very soon – maybe a couple of weeks off between jobs, or a weekend camping out in the trees now that the weather is sufficiently mild [for my own needs]?

Today is a good day for choices, for beginnings, for next steps and new things. Today is a good day to change my world.