Archives for the month of: December, 2018
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So What Am I Going to Do About It?

December 18, 2018 //
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I woke early this morning, ahead of the alarm clock. I showered. Made coffee. Greeted my Traveling Partner over the miracle convenience of the Internet. I am feeling pre-occupied with… things that matter. To me. I found myself revisiting yesterday’s blog post, somewhat pensively, and with a hint of lingering discontent.

(This is often an outcome, if one or another of my closest friends comments favorably on a new blog post; I interpret it to mean that I have made note of something I could benefit from considering further, myself.)

What does matter most? To me, I mean, right now, in this changing, evolving, experience of life and partnership? What small change(s) can I make to live more pleasantly, more comfortably, more efficiently, and with greater joy? What change(s) might make my experience of cohabitation easier on my current (or future) partner(s)? I’m not in any way a perfect person, or wholly completed project – not even at all.

The wheel keeps turning. This is a journey, not a “staying still”. lol I still have room to grow and to become! So… what matters most? To me. Right now. About this experience of life that I have, myself. What would I like to see differently each morning when I wake, and each evening as I retire for the night? What would be a more pleasant arrangement of things or experiences? Are there better ways to use my time, moment to moment to get there?

I ask it of myself, again; what matters most, right now?

I sip my coffee and give some thought to the details. I find myself having to own some things I’m less than satisfied with (living alone, there is literally no one else who could possibly be accountable for any of this! lol). My studio is pretty chronically messy… it’s as if the entire messy potential of being a human primate is carefully contained in this one space, here in my home, and it is… chaotic. Even unpleasantly so, depending on my state of mind. Does it really need to be let go like this? Can I make more order, find more balance, and still hold onto what make me, creatively, me? And what of the floors? I admit it, vacuuming isn’t my favorite chore, and this place has state-of-the-art dirt-hiding carpet most everywhere. Thinking about what I just said in that sentence, I’m pretty annoyed with myself. Yeah, okay, room for improvement right there, for sure. I can definitely do better. Fuck. Well. I find myself admitting that I’m disappointed that this thought exercise was so easy. LOL So human. Dusting? Needs doing. Aquarium? Needs cleaning. Huh. Yep. Room for improvement.

With the holiday weekend quickly approaching, there’s little time left for frantic deep cleaning… but that’s also an excuse. Handy the way those work. (And there’s no reason it would need to be frantic, anyway, that’s just pre-excuse emotional bullshit.) LOL I make a commitment to two specific chores for after work, based on my fairly firm, if very human, commitment to living beautifully. Both are pretty fundamental, and I feel irked to have let them go so long. I have the tools, I have the time, and finding the will to act is (often) the hardest part. Tedium is a tough challenge. lol It can be done! I give myself a moment of mental shade; I’ve been putting these off forever, without any particularly legitimate reason. No excuses. Tonight they get done. 🙂 I’ll start with the vacuuming. I suspect it has been “holding me back” from a number of other small things, and I now find myself eager to be at day’s end to tackle it. (I am definitely too considerate of my neighbors to be running a vacuum cleaner at 4:00 am!)

Another chance to live beautifully,and an opportunity to create the change I wish to see; it’s time to begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, The Big 5

What Matters Most?

December 17, 2018 //
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I know. I’ve asked before. Apparently, as a titular rhetorical question, I’ve asked it four previous times. Score one for repetition. lol

…Seriously, though, what matters most? I mean, to  you, in life, generally… what matters most? Does every step of your journey in life reflect those values? Are you making your choices based on what you, yourself, find matters most?

Here’s a weird thing that is a paradoxically easy win; your actions do reflect your values. Win and good, right? 😀 Well, before we all get to eager to embrace that lovely easy win, here’s the sticky bit; your actions reflect your actual values, not your stated values. If you say you dislike drama, but you constantly start shit, or invite drama, or complicate moments needlessly with assumption-making, projection, and negativity… clearly you value drama, regardless what you’ve said about it. :-\ Well… damn.

So. What matters most, to you, in life, generally… for real, based on your choices and your actions? Think that over.

How do you want to live? Are your choices taking you there? Do you envision a beautifully orderly, tidy, clean home, but live mired in chaos and filth? There are choices involved there; changing your choices, changes your environment. Do you envision a life of prosperity, comfort, and material convenience, but live paycheck to paycheck, feast or famine, living large in times of plenty, and wondering if the power will get cut off when things run a little lean? There are choices involved there too, and no, circumstance alone doesn’t cover “how you got there” or what is keeping you down (it’s actually even a fairly small part); you have choices regarding how you use resources in times of plenty that would certainly change how rough those leaner times feel. I’m just saying; we are each making choices, and our choices reflect our actual underlying values, far more than any words we say about the values we claim to hold.

So… what matters most?

What’s making you miserable? What are you doing to change that?

What’s holding you back? What are you doing to change that?

What’s frustrating you? What are you doing to change that?

Choices. Verbs. Actions. All yours – and the menu of available options is of necessity far more vast than can be easily taken in at a glance. Think it over. Consider the consequences of actions you might consider taking. Consider the actions you have taken, and the outcome you got. Put things in a larger context. Consider the impact on others. Look at a bigger picture. Gain perspective through contemplation and awareness.

Spend some quality time with your thoughts, non-judgmentally, practicing non-attachment, and wholly open to the possibility that the choices you have been making are part of what you are struggling with (the outcome of) right now. What could you choose differently? (The answer to this is rarely “nothing”, and it’s unlikely to be “nothing” right now.)

What matters most (to you)? What are you going to do about it?

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Handle With (Self)Care

December 16, 2018 //
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Yesterday got off to a lovely start, wobbled a bit with a moment of consequence stemming, most likely, from a miscommunication or misunderstanding. I got past it, but the day built on that with small details, snatches of over-heard conversations that had nothing to do with me, and a few interactions with strangers, that amounted to a busy, fairly purposeful, intended to be very fun day that turned out to be just filled with anxiety, and triggers. Well, shit.

By the time I crossed town to spend time with a dear friend I hadn’t hung out with in while, catch up, and see his “new place” (he’s been there a year), my hands were… sort of torn up. Yeah. I pick at my cuticles when stressed, and don’t realize I’m doing it, generally. “Nervous habit” doesn’t cover it, and managing it is impaired by my fucking TBI. So, by the end of the afternoon, my finger tips were bleeding in places, from torn cuticles, tugged at hang nails, and I was feeling both uncomfortable and self-conscious, on top of the anxiety.

I was also early. Shit.

I was sitting in a parking lot, just a shopping center away from my friend’s address, in a neighborhood I once called home. Familiar territory. I strolled through a couple specialty shops with Giftmas on my mind. I kept catching myself still tearing at my poor suffering innocent cuticles. I finally had a “fuck this dumb shit” moment, when I spotted the cheery neon “Open” sign of a nail salon right there. I looked at the time. We’d been firm, in our plans, on “not earlier than”, and even so, I had plenty of time yet ahead of me – I’d been planning to grab a bite. I was not at all hungry, though, and every ounce of my being was yearning for actual self-care. So… Nails? Nails. I mean… if they turned out to have a walk in opening, at all. It’s the weekend before the weekend of Giftmas! (What was I thinking??)

It had been awhile since I’d been to this nail salon. Could I do a ten minute wait, the receptionist asks me politely, glancing at my hands with a frown. The place was packed. She called one of the manicurists over, who asked to also see my hands. She looked at me sternly, and spoke to the receptionist in Vietnamese, and briskly returned to the sea of manicurists’ stations. The receptionist said, firmly, “please take a seat, 10 minutes” and hands me a quantity of color samples, “choose color”. She returns to the phone. Two or three women were waiting ahead of me, another came in with a scheduled appointment. All the stations were entirely full. No way this is going to be 10 minutes, I thought, rather stoically. Still, I felt that I was in the place I needed to be in the moment, taking care of an important bit of self-care; the worse my fingers were chewed on, ragged, and picked at, the worse they were going to become; it’s the snags that grab my attention in the background, when I’m “not looking”. It was becoming actually painful at that point.

I sat quietly, breathing the fumes commonplace in nail salons and amused myself with thoughts of the Oracle of Delphi. Time passes.

A customer leaves. Then another. And another. 10 minutes passes quickly, and it really was all I had to wait. The next 45 minutes passed so gently, and I felt so cared for. Hell… I relaxed and allowed experiences – new experiences – I would not have known how to actually ask for, because I simply put myself (and my hands) in the care of someone expert.

On my way to be seated, I managed to actually break a nail – into the quick – but did not allow myself to tear it off. She fixed that. (I did not know that was a thing.) She put tiny tips on my chronically bitten to the quick pinky nails, making them appear utterly ordinary alongside the others. She looked carefully at where the worst damage was and as she trimmed and removed damaged bits, reminded me to moisturize my hands to limit snags and keep my cuticles supple. “More moisture.” She repeated it several times, over the course of the work she was doing, pointing out exactly where it matters most. Tense? She used a lavender massage lotion for the hand massage. I felt my stress melting away. I walked away with nearly indestructible (gel) nails for the holiday ahead, and feeling far more relaxed and comfortable with my body.

I had a great time hanging out with my friend. The day was, although busy, well-spent. I feel ready for the holiday ahead, and eager to spend that time with my Traveling Partner. Today, I’ve got a gentle day of housekeeping, and gift-wrapping, and a trip to the market planned. A nice Sunday. Laundry and cartoons? I think so. A good beginning on a new week.

I’ll go get started on that. 🙂 I won’t be changing the world in any noteworthy way, but maintaining the kindness, order, contentment, and sanity in my own wee corner at least serves to help, in some very small way. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Glad Tidings Can Come From Within

December 15, 2018 //
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Giftmas isn’t the wholly inclusive holiday we like to imagine it is (those of us who are deeply into it, I mean). There are a lot of people who suffer the winter holidays as they suffer winter itself; eager to put it behind them, and wishing to see the sun again. It’s complicated being human.

When we are told to “be happy”, it can make us feel ever so much more miserable that we seem unable to achieve that for ourselves.

When we have the religious values of one or many faiths thrust upon us repeatedly, for weeks, as secular human beings who don’t practice a faith at all, we may feel excluded from practicing community and culture, itself. We may feel invisible, and unappreciated, as human beings.

When we are bombarded with media marketing for luxury goods “on sale” that we can’t envision ever being able to afford at any price, it can make us feel like outsiders in our communities and our world – trapped.

When we hear “glad tidings” of “comfort and joy” on every radio station, every streaming service, every TV advertisement, and in every retail store or restaurant, while we grieve the loss of loved ones, it can make us feel very much as if the world doesn’t see us here at all.

The result is often that we punish ourselves with our misery, even to the point of feeling guilty or ashamed that we don’t “get it” or “enjoy all that”. That’s pretty shitty, and it’s not fun, and it is uncomfortable. Any of that. All of it.

I’m very merry at Giftmas, myself. In spite of not being a practicing Christian (see: “Giftmas”), in spite of many years of being not at all “happy”, in spite of having very little money in many years (and this one) to spend on gifts, charity, or feasting, in spite of grieving poignant painful losses: I am merry, each Giftmas. I even want to share how that can be a thing.

A good beginning.

There’s no money to splash around on luxurious lavish gifts and frippery this year (and nothing in the picture above required me to spend any money, this year; it’s built on what I already had, and have cared for, for a lifetime), instead, I’ll share “How to be Merry at Giftmas”. 😀 It’s a simple enough idea, in it’s most basic form; make it yours. That’s basically it, summarized. I know, I know, saying something super simple to communicate something nuanced is a bit of a cheat, intended to make it feel accessible, but sometimes missing the most important points. So. Ready? Merry Giftmas, Y’all! Here we go!

The magical Giftmas that almost wasn’t.

Start with where you are. Start with who you are. Your authentic self, your actual values, your own vision.

I grew up in the midst of violence, emotional, physical, sexual (and uncomfortably commonplace in the culture). Guns, alcohol, and rage just… every-fucking-where. Poverty. Trauma. Chaos. Fear. Learned helplessness. Abuse. Gas-lighting. Rather peculiarly, each year that I can clearly recall (sorry, head trauma, right?), it seemed as if “Christmas time” was some sort of surreal cease-fire in the household hostilities (and somehow, even out in the world). “Healing” wasn’t even on my radar yet; I still had an additional lifetime of further trauma, turmoil, and heartbreak ahead me, that I could not even see. (It’s likely that, in some measure, a great many of us do, actually, regardless where we stand right now. Sorry.) Something about the holidays stuck with me; the best bits, actually. Grand holidays meals when far away family arrived to join us at the table. Mornings of twinkle lights and brunch recipes untasted at any other time of  year. Gifts. Out of the pain, out of the chaos, for some weird reason, once a year we all sat down together and exchanged gifts. Gifts. We took from our own resources, to give of ourselves to each other. All of it amounted to an extraordinary departure of all of the routines. It seemed… magical.

I have come so far from this place.

My first “Christmas” as an adult, at 18, was… weird. I was in the Army. I was in advance training (and for fuck’s sake already married??), and I went “home” (to my parents house, at my new husband’s instance, even though I was deliberating estranging myself from them, for… reasons). It wasn’t much of a holiday. Uncomfortable, strained by the presence of a stranger (my new husband). I don’t actually recall it at all clearly; I was working too hard trying to live everyone else’s vision of what my life should look like to really make sense out of it, at all. It would have been… 1981?

My Giftmas stocking – and how I keep track of where I was each Giftmas. 😀

That was the missing puzzle piece; an understanding of what it takes to make a holiday, myself. See, that’s the thing; we have choices. The day, the season, the time, these are ours to make as we wish to experience them.

I re-created my vision of Giftmas that year, made it over based on my own vision of celebrating the winter holidays, and Yule, in accordance with my own understanding of the “meaning of the season”, which, speaking frankly, has nothing to do with gods or religions, and everything to do with community, charity, gratitude, love, and celebration. It’s winter. We’re all stretched a bit thin at the end of the year – it made sense to me that my Giftmas could be a celebration of sharing, fitting the cultural practices, and keeping all of what I love about the winter holidays, and letting go of all of what did not suit me, personally. I enjoy the merriment. I enjoy the moment to celebrate lost loved ones and honored departed, yes, and still be merry – there is no shame in our tears, or our joy. I love to give a friend some small thing, to say “thank you”, “I love you”, “you mean something to me”, or even just “I know it’s been hard this year”. We’re all in this together, each having our own experience, and each year we have this colossal near-global cross-cultural celebration that clearly extends well-beyond the reach of any one faith; it’s just not really at all about religion. Any religion. lol It’s about everything else, so joyously and so much that any religion within it’s sphere of influence wants a piece of that pie. Me too. So – I celebrate Giftmas. It’s an honest celebration of plenty-amidst-famine, and I celebrate lavishly and generously when I have a lot, and I celebrate joyously and heartily with whatever I’ve got when times are tough. I generally celebrate the season as commencing with the Thanksgiving meal – a season of gratitude and sharing – and I celebrate until I end the holiday season with New Year’s Day with my personal “One Hour” celebration (a contemplative time to explore the past, and plan for the future). It’s scalable sort of holiday, for me, that I can blow out of all reasonable proportion in times of plenty, and still enjoy with irrepressible joy in times of privation. That’s right. I think Giftmas lasts more than a month. LOL 😀

Actually, I take the long holiday season so seriously that I regularly give gifts randomly all through the season; nothing gives a beat down to a stressful moment like an authentic expression of value in the form of a small unexpected gift, or a moment over a holiday treat. 😀 Certainly, there is no legitimate reason to ration connection, presence, or joy. 😉

It’s okay to feel deeply. It’s very human. I even raise a glass to my Dad.

It does take practice. Sometimes there are poignant moments. I’ve shed many tears either putting up, or taking down, the holiday tree; every ornament has real meaning for me. Gathered with care over many years, each is like a tiny memory box, bringing back floods of emotion, and memories untapped any other time of year (not all of them are pleasant, and I often remind myself that the way out  is through). I have reflected on so many holidays, and taken from them what worked for me. This is the secret sauce, and the source of merriment; this holiday is mine.

Like our lives, a celebration is built on so many things. Yeah, there are verbs involved.

Merry Giftmas, friends and readers and friends who are readers, and humans I don’t know at all. Make of it what you will. May the season show you magic and wonder – and may you be the creator of magic and wonder in someone else’s holiday. May the year ahead show us each the path to being the human being we most want to be, and may the journey to become that person be enlightening, and maybe not to terribly difficult. 😉

Are you having a rough holiday season this year? Please – oh please, dear one, please begin again! ❤

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Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, inspiration, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

Peculiarly Physical

December 14, 2018 //
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The morning seems peculiarly physical as experiences go. My hair feels very soft. My coffee? This morning, the heat seems more noteworthy than the flavor of it, and I appreciate the warmth of the mug in my hands, in the chill of the morning. The headache, the arthritis pain, these too, are physical experiences. I notice the “taste of sleep” in my mouth, and remind myself to brush my teeth.

I don’t feel particularly emotional, at all. I am. I feel. This moment now, right here, is what it is. Is there more? Well, sure, but here, right now, this is enough. Later I will go to work. Do the things that provide the resources to continue on to do other things that make it easier to live a beautiful life of contentment, emotional safety, and modest comfort. I’ll go to a job. I’ll return home. I’ll do some chores. There are verbs involved (and just as many, regardless whether I am taking care of emotional needs, or physical ones).

This shit isn’t magic, People; there is will and decision-making involved, and even that won’t get many people to their goals. There is effort, commitment, and actual real work that has to back up our choices. Don’t like dishes in the sink? Do the fucking dishes. It’s that kind of basic stuff we so often get stuck on, isn’t it? Let something go in one moment, end up pissed off and fixated on it in some other moment. lol Stop letting shit just go. Build the life you most want to live – starting with your choices, and followed by your actions, and repeated in endless iterations until you stand contentedly in the midst of the life you have chosen to live.

Where you find yourself in life largely depends on the choices you make along the way.

It’s really that easy.

It’s also really really that hard.

It’s also your choice whether it is easy or hard; it won’t be without effort.

It gets way more challenging when it’s not just one person, living alone in a house, I get that. I hear you. When we share our space, explicit expectation-setting becomes critical, as well as quickly making it apparent how important shared goals, values, and willingness to work can be. I could not comfortably live in a house full of people and be the only person doing the fucking dishes, or cleaning the bathroom. There’d definitely be some fucking… “clear expectation-setting”, and it might get uncomfortably frank. (Easily summarized as “I’m not your fucking maid”.)

A lot of people enjoy a beautiful well-kept comfortably luxurious environment – it’s lovely to live that way – but the set of “all people who enjoy living beautifully” and the set of “all people willing to do the work to live beautifully” is not two identical sets of people, at all. That gets awkward fast if just one person willing to work for it is overwhelmed by the lack of consideration, or investment, or will, or ability, of several other people – who may only be willing to live that way, not put in the time, effort, or resources. Harsh.

Do your part. Whatever that is. Do it. Anything less makes a person just another “taker”, more often than people want to admit about themselves. Fucking hell, at least offer to help and really mean it. Be aware of the potential for resentment in your relationships, if you allow someone to carry more than their fair share of the work involved. Be willing to look in the mirror honestly; are you part of the solution, or are you holding things up, or worse – are you part of making extra work for everyone else?

I’m sitting here, comfortable at home, sipping an excellent coffee, prepared in a clean kitchen. Those things are what they are because I do the work involved. This morning, I am smiling, because my Traveling Partner, when he is here, also does the work involved, ensuring that I am not treated as a servant, or overloaded with housekeeping, or feeling resentful over “doing everything around here” when he is here at home. It’s quite a lovely partnership in that regard. There are no dishes on my counter. 🙂 I’m not working any harder – and maybe, actually, a little less hard than I ordinarily would; I have help. Instead of gaining the stank and mess and workload involved in picking up after more people, I gain the extra time to enjoy life implied by having help with all the work, because I’m not alone here right now. It’s lovely. 🙂

It’s also not perfect. I don’t have that kind of energy or time, and yeah; there are very human details and a touch of untidiness here and there. I’m comfortable, and content with my choices. 🙂

I’m not meaning to be critical of your lifestyle – that’s not my point. Live as you wish. If you wish to live well, to live beautifully, though? There are verbs involved. There’s work to be done. If that beautiful life you seek is in the context of shared cohabitation in some form, it’ll be much easier if every-fucking-body does their part. No kidding. Everyone who uses the kitchen? Well, if they are all committed to cleaning as they go? The kitchen stays clean. Same with the bathroom – you use it? You help with cleaning it. Do you walk on the floors? I guess you’ll also be taking a turn vacuuming, and helping out by not dragging in mud and dirt from outside. Your dog, cat, other? You’re making sure, full-time, on the regular, that their waste is managed – promptly, and hygienically? It gets gross fast, if you’re not. Seriously – it’s a lot of work. All of it. It’s still got to be done, if the choice in life you want to make is to live well and beautifully. It’s one of life’s non-negotiables, actually.

This is not a dichotomy. It’s a not a single choice between live in filth and live beautifully. There’s a whole lot of choices here. Maybe you and your housemates really just don’t care about dishes at all, but the condition of the floors is a real quality of life headache? Maybe everyone really wants a sparkling clean bathroom, but the general tidiness around and about is less of a big deal? It’s something to discuss explicitly; what is the shared vision? And what is to be done if there’s just definitely that one person who wants to enjoy it all but has no interest in helping out? May I suggest that they be directed to relocate? No kidding, I don’t think I have another solution for that, unless pure resentful rage and constant very direct bitching until they move out counts. I’m sorry. I legitimately wish I knew how to get people to be more committed and helpful at home about quality of life matters that matter to other people.

Isn’t that a challenge that occurs in life, just… a lot? Lack of will. Lack of consideration. Lack of interest in doing the work. I mean, I go through it too. How many years did I waste in therapy because I kept looking for someone or something to blame for my pain, rather than allowing myself to simply accept that, being in pain, I needed to make some changes to ease it? The verbs were mine, all along. lol

How do you want to live your life? What does your vision of comfort and contentment look like? Are you doing the things it takes to have that experience? Maybe, just maybe, you could. Start small. Change one bad habit, because the outcome matters to you, every day. Keep at it. Fail and start over. Improve over time. Move on to another less than ideal habit or practice. Make a change. Repeat. We’re closing in on a whole new year – are you even well-informed about what you would do differently if it were entirely up to you? What would your life look like, if every detail were as you wish to see it? Is your vision truly your own? Is it practical and achievable? Can it be scaled back to get started in a more achievable way, if it is so exceedingly lavish as to be wholly impractical and unachievable right now? I’m just saying; more of this is within your control than you may realize.

…And it’s a wonderful time to begin again. How will you live your life? What is the change you wish to see in your world, right there at home? 🙂

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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