Archives for the month of: April, 2019

Taking Breaks

April 30, 2019 //

I’m sipping my coffee and noticing, once again, that I seemed to have paused my daily writing. There’s a lot going on in my brain, new, unprocessed experiences and thinking, the simple joys of living with love and contentment… a spring garden. Life’s natural ebb and flow competing with (and kicking the ass of) rigorous habit. lol It is what it is.

…Funny… It feels very much like “progress” to accept it so comfortably. 🙂

So. Instead of attempting to bend reality to my whim, or force real life to comply with my favorite version of myself, I’m just going with it. At least for now. Until I’ve learned the lesson, and have words to put around it… at least, for now. 🙂

Each evening my head is filled with points I’d like to make. Ideas I’d like to share. Practices I find that work. Notions that feel significant. Correlations between this and that. By morning it has all dissipated, like the clouds of vapor that had wrapped them so prettily the night before. lol This, too, is what it is, and one characteristic of all of it is that it will pass. No stress required.

Each new day I begin again. Some of them will be mornings on which I write. Others, perhaps not so much. 😀 Each new beginning worthy, each new beginning… truly new. What will I do with the moments that follow? Unknown. Unknown, at least, until I live them.

I queue up my playlist. Put on my headphones. I start the day.

…My coffee is just now drinking temperature. The clock does not wait for “my” moment. It’s time, already, to begin again. 😉

Tags awake, aware, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, here now, I am my own cartographer, just be, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, perspective, practicing the practices, present, taking care of me, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Sometimes It’s the Small Stuff

April 25, 2019 //

This is a good cup of coffee. The morning is quiet, relaxed, and pleasant. I am, in general, physically comfortable. Nice start to the day, so far. 🙂 It’s enough.

My sleep quality has degraded somewhat, notably with considerably more dream activity, difficulty falling asleep, and waking ahead of the alarm. I consider it all of that for a moment or two, while I enjoy my coffee. It’s not all that rare or strange. After a pointless couple of moments of thought, I let it go. Too nice a morning to be spent ruminating over what is not strange. lol

I think about friends far away. I think about the long weekend coming up – my first planned time away from the new job since it started. My Traveling Partner and I celebrating anniversaries. It’s our 10-9-8; 10 years of a great friendship, 9 years as lovers, 8 years married. Wow. Nice milestone… although, admittedly, the “10” starts more as coworkers, and genial associates, becoming a close friendship a bit late in the year… LOL. I stretch it to fit because I’m just that eager to count it a decade with this human being who is so dear to me. 😀 (It’s my romantic anniversary narrative and I shall do the math as I please! LOL)

The lovely sunny weather yesterday has me thinking about the garden, and I’ll be out on the deck among the containers this weekend, putting things right after the landlord’s visit to give the deck a thorough pressure-washing. It wasn’t at all convenient, but the deck does look very nice, and I’m over being irked by the inconvenience. 🙂

Someone commented recently about my positive attitude. I remember laughing; I wasn’t always in this place, or so easily able to “be positive”. It is kind of a state of being at this point. Enough choices that favor a positive approach, enough choices to let bullshit go, to compliment authentically instead of give “negative feedback”, to help or support instead of tearing someone down, to politely refrain from mean humor even when I’m hurting so much it seems funny, to make the day-to-day attempt to be – in every interaction – respectful, considerate, compassionate, reciprocal, open, and mindful, has eventually resulted in a fairly enduring positivity, just generally. I didn’t really “see that coming”. It was, initially, mere compliance with a request that I “be” less negative. I started studying up on what that could mean, what it could “look like”, and what sorts of characteristics people perceived as “positive” demonstrate. I started changing choices. I adopted new practices. I explored different styles of humor, of conversation, evening making new choices about viewing material, reading material, even the clothes I wear… and over time, in small increments that felt entirely natural in the moment, I became… still me. Yep. I’m still me, from my insider perspective, only… I’m generally contented, generally pleasant (so I hear), generally positive, even notably inclined (per my associate yesterday) toward lifting others up, and explicitly supporting their personal and professional growth through positive reinforcement. 😀 Wow. Nice.

…Most mornings, all of that just comes out as contented coffee consumption and a few minutes of writing… I finish my coffee, my curiosity nudges me in the direction of reading those earliest posts, to look for “clues” or “signs” or “early indications of change”, a chance to study the actual mechanism of getting from “there” to “here”… only… yeah. I check the time. It’s already time to begin again. No turning back. 😉 There’s an entire life ahead of me to live. 🙂

Tags are you going my way?, be here now, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness for beginners, mindfulness matters, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Well This Sucks…

April 24, 2019 //

This morning I hurt. I woke with such a shitty headache, and neck pain. Did I sleep on my neck wrong? Maybe… I hurt. I know that.

Meditation? Sure. Still hurts. Stretching? Yoga? Yep. Hurts. Take something for that? Okay, fine. Still hurts. I put on my headphones and play the only song that makes sense right now. I scroll through the news, looking for a distraction. No luck, still hurts. Fucking hell. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I sip my coffee, and remind myself it’ll take time for the pain relief available through OTC measures to kick in. I start the song over. lol I remind myself to correct my posture, knowing that will also help. I remind myself that small incremental improvements eventually add up, and remind myself not to dismiss the seeming ineffectiveness of measures taken that seem to have little effect – again, it all adds up.

…Doesn’t it?…

I sip my coffee and consider the situation from a larger quality-of-life perspective; even those steps I take that don’t provide a “cure for pain” are genuinely improvements in overall quality of life, nonetheless. Why would I allow petty frustration with a headache put those out of reach based on a fairly subjective measure of their effectiveness (which is to say, immediate substantial pain relief of this fucking headache right here/now)?

…I still have a fucking headache…

…Well, but on the other hand, there’s not much else to bitch about, just at the moment, life is pretty good. So. There’s that, right?

Maybe if I begin again…? I change up the music.

Tags be here now, be the change, begin again, choose wisely, cure for pain, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, meditation, mindfulness matters, perspective, practicing the practices, sufficiency, taking care of me, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring

A Moment in the Morning

April 23, 2019 //

I woke up bathed in sweat. Shaking. I woke up with wet hair, and a sensation of having “survived the night”. Oddly, I don’t recall much from my dreams. Under the circumstances, I am so okay with that. lol

I sip my coffee and over and over I work on “letting it go” and restarting my awareness of the day from a newer, later, more comfortable vantage point. It feels like effort. The effort is real, and I am slow to fully wake up, this morning. That’s okay, too. I have another sip of my coffee, grateful it is now almost cool enough to drink. I’m eager to start the work day and put more distance between my waking life and whatever was chasing me in my dreams. lol

I read a lot of articles about “mindfulness”. They’re split between articles about how “dangerous” or “potentially harmful” mindfulness can be (it is most assuredly potentially very effective), or what a waste of time it is – and often the discussion boils down to the very fact that it is effective being a cause for concern – because it may actually do something for you, and yeah, maybe you don’t get to determine specifically what that result looks like – or how over-hyped it is, and why you shouldn’t waste your money, because you could totally do it for free.

Mindfulness is effective.

Mindfulness practices can be undertaken at no financial cost.

There. Simple. Well, but… also… mindfulness is only effective at the things that mindfulness can do or bring to an experience. If we’re looking for something else/different out of it, well… We’re unlikely to get anything but what it is. If we’ve been walking in our sleep all our lives, or living on autopilot with our emotions frozen, taking those first exploratory steps down a mindfulness path? Scary. Emotional. Potentially not at all what we expected. It doesn’t equip us to ignore our truths or hide from our pain, for sure. It rests heavily on the adage that “the way out is through”. If you are approaching mindfulness hoping for blissful avoidance and a glossy cover-style zen outlook on life, you’re probably missing the point. 😉 It’s work. There are verbs involved. It isn’t always emotionally easy, at all.

Mindfulness practices – contemplative practices of any sort, really, I’d expect – do not have to cost money. The exception? What if you know nothing, and need a guide? Someone to “show you how”? Well, that’s where it could become costly. Do you read a book? That’s not too expensive, right there, but it’s hard to ask questions and get an answer. Do you take a class? See a specialist? Go on a luxury retreat? Buy color-coordinated accessories? Remodel your house to include a meditation space? Have a landscaper build you a temple and meditation garden? See what I mean? It doesn’t have to cost anything. That doesn’t mean you, personally, won’t be tempted into spending plenty, based partly on marketing by companies, and partly on what you think a mindfulness practice “looks like”. You have choices.

Speaking of choices… this coffee has gone cold. I’d love to choose to have another leisurely cup, take the morning quite slow, meditate a while, and relax. It is, however, a work day of another sort, and it’s time to begin again. 🙂

Tags be here now, be love, be the change, being and becoming, choices, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, listening deeply, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness for beginners, mindfulness matters, paying the price, perspective, practicing the practices, price tag, sufficiency, taking care of me, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Yes, Even Letting That Go, Too

April 22, 2019 //

My coffee is delicious this morning, for those values of deliciousness to which coffee drinkers refer, when we suggest our coffee is delicious, obviously; it may still taste terrible for the non-coffee-drinker. lol It’s hot, though, and well-brewed, with care, and I am enjoying it. The weekend is already over. A new work week already exists as the immediate future. The weekend was lovely; time spent with friends, time spent with each other, savoring existence.

At some point, the phone rang (more common now, than when we had social media). First mine; an unidentified number from Mauritania. Since I don’t know anyone there, or do business with any companies there, I dismissed the call without answering it; walking away from drama, inconvenience, or unpleasantness, that I recognize, is pretty easy. I do it all the time. 🙂 The second ring was a friend, the phone was my partner’s, and the call was to bring up other drama, somewhere else, based on shit-talking other people, and those other people being people prone to talking shit, and this friend being the unfortunate recipient of shit-having-been-talked, he reached out to share the experience, and the shit he had heard. Unexpected OPD. Other People’s Drama is bad enough, but yeah, it’s even less pleasant and more, sort of, well… “sticky” when OPD becomes “personal”. It’s hard not to get emotionally invested when feeling attacked. It’s hard to “let that shit go” and remain mindful that even when it feels so personal, it really isn’t, at all. People talking shit are generally pretty well mired in their own chaos and damage, drowning in their own bullshit, and using the “theater of distraction” to pass the time in hell. It’s not about me.

I shrug that shit off, and walk on. It does make it easier to tell who my friends are, there’s that. lol 🙂

It was a small, tiny, and insignificant moment out of a delightful weekend. I’m glad we let it go and moved on with what matters most. 🙂

Now there’s the work week ahead, and I find myself, for just a moment, getting wrapped up in some other flavor or version of drama – office politics. I chuckle and let that go, too. There is no value or purpose in letting those details become the focus of my work (neither the tasks themselves, nor the characteristics of the days). Letting that go isn’t so hard; I focus on the questions, not the certainty of my answers. Disagreements, in theory, are not personal; we’re all working toward the same goals. I take that as a given, and practice assuming positive intent, and in doing so, all my relationships improve.

…It does take some practice. We become what we practice. I finish my coffee, notice the time, and begin again. 🙂

Tags anxiety, are you going my way?, be here now, be love, be the change, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, experience, let it go, let it go let it go let it go, listening deeply, mindfulness matters, OPD, OPD free zone, perspective, practicing the practices, relationships, sufficiency, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, walk a better path, walk on, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Anxiety, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5