Archives for the month of: June, 2016
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Like Dominoes

June 6, 2016 //
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Sometimes building a life feels a little bit like a fancy arrangement of dominoes or jenga; at some point my choices may reveal themselves to have been poor choices, much later, in some unexpected way, sending the pieces to follow crashing down, one after the other. Choices matter. Each day that I do my best, practice the practices that support my physical and emotional wellness, comfortably handle the details of adult life that require my attention, I build a better future for myself – one resting on a firm foundation. I’m still human. Sometimes I can see a ‘misplaced domino’, and the action needed to adjust or correct for circumstances is obvious – it’s just more verbs. (I wish that implied some assurance of ease, but it does not.) Yes, there are pretty nearly always verbs involved – and the choice to use them. To be. To do. Neither are passive processes.

I need to put the AC in a window. The summer heat nailed me to the floor two days in a row with the afternoon heat. Both days I knew it would be that hot. Both days I made choices to hang out with my traveling partner, and planned around the heat of the day to make traveling easiest – and postponing installing the AC for the year. Priorities in the moment were definitely about love, rather than physical comfort. lol 🙂 Still a mammal. Still a primate. Still a human being in love. The AC can wait… it doesn’t give me hugs, kisses, tenderness – or laugh at my terrible jokes. 😀 Still…comfort would be nice, too.

It’ll be another hot day today, not quite as hot, but hot – and the AC would be helpful. Today is a good day for some different, practical verbs. Love will likely appreciate being comfortable here at my place, too. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

One Moment of Many

June 4, 2016 //
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It’s a quiet dawn ahead of a hot day to come. The sun shines in my eyes and the light fills my studio; the day will get no cooler than this hour, now, and the windows are open to the cool morning air, the blinds raised to ensure ample freedom for uncertain breezes. The night didn’t cool off so much as it has been. Summer is here. I take my coffee iced this morning, and toast the rising summer sun with a smile – it’s well before 6:00 am, and full daylight.

I have “install the AC” on my calendar today… I still haven’t worked out which window I’ll put it in. The heat expected today is motivation to at least determine which window the AC will go in. lol

Iced coffee, birdsong, and a quiet summer day to enjoy without firm plans. It sounds nice. I’ll water the gardens before the heat of the day becomes unpleasant, and get my walk in before noon. There’s nothing exciting about any of this… except for the bit about how calm it is, how comfortable, how sustainably ordinary. I’m not meaning to brag, so I’ll make the point of saying it hasn’t ‘always’ been this way – there was a time when it was almost ‘never’ this way, and life seemed fairly pointless… or worse. I’m no longer merely enduring an unavoidable cycle of sleeping and waking, separated sometimes by nightmares, sometimes by despair. It’s a nice change.

Being here isn’t a given. Being content isn’t a passive thing. There are so many every day choices involved, and every day I take actions, and practice practices, to bring myself closer to being the woman I most want to be, living a beautiful life of sustainable contentment, comfortable with myself, and moving forward. Every day enjoyed is ended with a moment of delight and a bit of surprise that so much of it is in my hands, and of my own choosing – and much of it was, long before I understood that it could be.

Ready? Verbs!!

Ready? Verbs!!

Iced coffee goes down quickly…and summer days begin to warm up early. It’s already time to get to work watering the garden, and adjusting windows to continue the flow of cool air, and now to also limit the sun’s light reaching into the east-facing rooms. Time to put some verbs into action, and time to make some choices and begin the day. Today is a good day for verbs, for choices, and for a delightful summer day. I can’t change the weather, but I can change what I do about it. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Time Passes

June 3, 2016 //
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I woke a bit later than usual this morning. My traveling partner was already well into his first cup of coffee, and the ceramic drip cone sitting beside the sink had completely cooled off by the time I touched it, very soon after waking. It was a gentle pleasant morning hanging out together, no video, no music, just two human beings who delight in each other’s good company sharing coffee and conversation. There’s nothing to enhance, embellish, or interpret; the time we spend together is enough just as it is.

I sat for some time, smiling, after my partner left to get on with his day, and his weekend. We will, perhaps, see each other Sunday. I don’t get emotionally invested in that planned eventuality; life is unpredictable about following my plans. I take my second coffee into the studio and write, sketch, paint…it’s too hot outside [for me] [these days] [today] already, and spending the day creatively suits my [currently] care-free nature. Impermanence. Change is. Am I finally learning to exist on the currents of change instead of fighting to swim against them until I am exhausted and swept away?

Today is a good day for contemplation. My birthday is coming. I don’t exactly ‘make a big deal about it’, but I do enjoy celebrating in some small way. I don’t have anything particular on my mind celebration-wise. 53? It’s not a noteworthy benchmark to me. I struggle to answer the question “what do I want to do on/for my birthday?” I’ve no idea. Enjoy it. That’s the best answer I have, for now… It’s a serviceable enough answer, I suppose. 🙂

The rest of this lovely sunny summer day I’ll spend in the studio, with the hum of the floor fan keeping me company, and reminding me of other summer days. I think about my birthday… I suppose if I “don’t know what I want” I must have enough. 🙂

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Categories art and the artist, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness

The Rain Falls Softly

June 2, 2016 //
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Yesterday felt like a summer day. This morning a soft rain falls on a gray dawn, and the cool rain-fresh air fills the apartment. There will be no pastel sun rise this morning, only this soft rain falling, the sound of birdsong, and flat gray sky over the varied greens of lawn, meadow, and marsh beyond. I’m okay with that, it’s a lovely morning, and we need the rain. Storms pass. There are other days to fill with sunshine. 🙂

Storms pass.

I try not to let the weather slow me down. 🙂

I sip my coffee. It will be another hour before I lace up my boots and walk the rainy path through the park. I consider going the opposite direction than the path I typically take. Being comfortable with change seems  healthy. This week has felt both productive and leisurely – relaxed without being effortless, focused and purposeful without being obligation and drudgery. I have enjoyed my time, and my self.

Today my ‘to do list’ is focused on tying up loose ends of a variety of sorts, mostly basic housekeeping. I have a date with my traveling partner tonight, and I like to be able to set aside the housekeeping entirely while he is here and simply enjoy him, without a lot of fuss and bother.  One task (hanging drapes in the studio) has been carried forward from other lists on other days for some time now… I’ve been irked to see myself procrastinate on this detail of the moving in. This morning I notice again why I have put it off; it will require me to move my desk. I’ve no objection, it just makes hanging the drapes a project of a couple hours work, instead of a couple minutes, and overcoming the inertia caused by being content with my desk as it is, and the view out the window beyond as well, it’s hard to bother. (Once summer comes, I’ll be quite annoyed if I have still not hung the drapes; my studio is the warmest room in the house, and challenging to cool because the sun hits the window for a large portion of the day.) Hanging the drapes has value, although it isn’t my highest priority day-to-day. I could treat myself poorly over the continued procrastination on this task… I don’t. It’s simply not that big a deal. I let it go.

My sleep cycle has been thrown off a bit due to late nights in the charming company of my partner recently. I’m not complaining – totally worth it – I’m hoping, however, to rebuild good sleep habits before I go back to work. I woke this morning at 3:00 am, feeling that I’d slept through the night (but only about 5 hours), and when I tried to rise, was so groggy with fatigue there was no wiser choice than to return immediately to bed, but I slept quite restlessly and wakefully after that. Once or twice, now and then, this isn’t any sort of problem, but over time my emotional resilience and general well-being degrade if I don’t get enough sleep. (For me, ‘enough sleep’ tends to be a very routine 7.5-9 hours of more or less continuous sleep ‘through the night’, on whatever shift or hours I am living.) Good sleep requires practice. Yes, I’m serious – and practicing good sleep practices is another bunch of verbs. There are any number of informative articles about good sleep hygiene.

I stretch. Sip my coffee. Consider the day. Wonder why I wrote this blog post, which suddenly seems fairly mundane and somewhat uninteresting. I think about nice days, pleasant conversations, and easy moments; most of those are fairly mundane, and uninteresting to write about too, but they are experiences I enjoy greatly, and cherish. I think ahead to a romantic evening, and smile; my fingers and toes match (mani-pedi), and after I finish the laundry I’ll have favorite comfortable cute clothes laid out, ready to put on after my shower. It’s not so much ‘vanity’ as that I am a mammal, a human primate, and ‘sexy’ feels good. (Like a lot of things, practice, verbs, results vary; some of my challenges occasionally put me at risk of being slack on self-care details, and practicing good self-care is worth reinforcing.) I am eagerly putting effort into being ready to spend time with my partner; he’s absolutely worth the best I have to offer. There’s no stress to it, and the effort isn’t about being ‘good enough’ or being someone I am not; I make different choices in life, now. Self-acceptance, being comfortable in my own skin, and personal growth (and the effort to use the verbs) don’t seem to be mutually exclusive… I find it entirely okay to work at being me with greater skill. 😀 Today is a good day for that, gray skies and all.

Today is a good day to celebrate Love. (Most days are.)

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Coffee With the Woman in the Mirror

June 1, 2016 //
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I woke feeling groggy, content, and fairly…merry. That’s a good word for it. I feel good. I feel ‘right’ – as in comfortable in my skin, content with life, and okay with ‘things generally’ just at the moment. It’s a pleasant state of being. The morning is quiet, other than birdsong, and my coffee is good. I have indoor plumbing, the rent is paid, there’s food in the pantry, and clean running water. Pretty fucking luxurious compared to some of the alternatives (a quick search of the term “refugee” proves the point). I sip my coffee and make time to really appreciate how good my life is right now. I am aware of impermanence.

Is the cup half empty? Is it half full? Does it matter that it can be filled, or emptied... if the contents are enough just as they are?

Is the cup half empty? Is it half full? Does it matter that it can be filled, or emptied… if the contents are enough just as they are?

Some people reading this blog may not have a comfortable life. Some people reading this blog may have a far more lavish lifestyle than I do. In any category of quality of life economically, some people may be struggling to survive, despairing, or merely enduring their days, and others living their lives in a state of contentment, acceptance, or serenity. It’s not about money. I find myself wondering what role our circumstances really play in our emotional lives? Could I ‘hold this position’ and live in relative contentment and ease in a state of enduring privation, poverty, violence, or illness? If circumstances changed abruptly – and they do – would I lose ground equally suddenly? I have come so far with myself. I think of the woman I once was…the woman I am now…the human being I hope to become… What of suffering and loss? What of change? Can I hold my own in the world more comfortably now, without this gentle space that is mine only by virtue of a contract and steady payment? Would I practice good practices and take good care of this fragile vessel if life’s circumstances seemed to demand different sacrifices of me? More than I have to offer? Would I be able to yield to change, to ‘be like water‘ – or would I be broken on the wheel as it turns? Is the ease I so often have now something I have built?… something I have taken from the world?… or is it mere circumstance and coincidence, enjoyable but not sustainable? Can it be taken from me? Thoughts over coffee – and lacking any substance whatever that I do not give them myself. 🙂 Sometimes it’s good to ask the questions, see the words, and accept that doubt is, and fear is, and uncertainty most definitely is – then move along and enjoy the day, because it too is… and it is now.

Where does the path I choose lead?

Where does the path I choose lead?

A couple years ago, when I was re-evaluating life, and my values, and working out my Big 5 relationship values (Respect, Consideration, Reciprocity, Compassion, and Openness), I also made the decision to build my life on sustainable, practical, basics: perspective, mindfulness, and sufficiency. It meant making some changes. It requires continuous practicing of practices, and there is no ‘achievement’ at the end of some process of mastery. I am living my life, and practicing practices – living is a verb, and there are a lot of verbs involved in making a life. Choices. There’s power in choice when we awaken to it – and it can’t easily be taken from us unless we give it away. Despair and anxiety are liars; choice is. Every day of each life there are choices, and change available for the taking. That’s… powerful.

One day I will not wake to begin again... It's how mortality works. There is much to savor in each waking moment, and less to struggle with than I sometimes choose.

I am mortal; one day I will not wake to begin again… It’s how mortality works. There is much to savor in each waking moment, and less to struggle with than I sometimes choose.

It’s a lovely quiet morning. The sunshine reaches the studio window. I close the blinds to keep the apartment cool. I sip my coffee. I make my list of things to do today, and consider it. One day, in a life that is mine, filled with opportunities to choose. Isn’t this enough? 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words
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