Archives for the month of: June, 2025
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What Will You Do With The Moment You’ve Got?

June 25, 2025 //
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I’m sipping my coffee in the office, thinking about things that have nothing whatsoever to do with work. I’ve got surgery tomorrow (minor), and a day off for recovering after that. The weekend is ahead, but I’ll likely be at least somewhat impaired (due to the specifics of the surgery). Doesn’t really matter, I’m just letting my mind wander, thoughts drifting by like clouds on a summer day. “Nothing to see here.” I’m just enjoying my coffee and a few minutes before the day begins in earnest.

…Clear liquids only for the next 24 hours (I say that like it really matters, but I don’t guess it does)…

I breathe, exhale, and relax. The steady wush of the ventiliation in the background does not blot out the whine of my tinnitus. I notice it, but I let that go – it’s not “important” or relevant to the moment (or to most moments), it’s just an irritant (if I focus on it for too long). Pleasant enough beginning to the day, I guess. There’s nothing wrong here. The sky is gray with heavy summer storm clouds – no colorful sunrise. My back aches. I put that out of my mind, too, as much as I am able. There’s nothing much to be done about it.

I sit with those thoughts that linger, making room for gratitude and thoughts of my garden. I feel fortunate to have gotten to see “Golden Opportunity” bloom (for the first time since she was planted in 2021!), before the deer ate those flowers and every bit of tender new growth from that rose bush. Oh, sure, I fuss about it and it’s aggravating, but like many of life’s most useful lessons, if I make room in my experience to understand a bigger picture, and develop a more nuanced perspective, I could learn something that has lasting value. I sit thinking about what drives the deer to my garden each Spring and early summer, and what they don’t eat. I contemplate what I could potentially do to discourage them from eating my roses and tender salad greens without wrecking the aesthetic of the garden with a lot of ugly fencing. I look at pictures of my roses. The specific thoughts I think in this quiet time are less important than that I do take this time for myself, to “hear myself think”, each day. It is a means of building resilience, and also of ensuring that I feel appreciated and heard by the one person who has to listen to all of my chatter (and internal dialogue) – the woman in the mirror. Self-care matters. This is part of that.

I sigh to myself when I glance at the clock and notice the time. Of course. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Summer, The Art of Being

AI Slop Everywhere (but not here)

June 24, 2025 //
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Are you fed up with the deluge of “AI slop” being pushed at you on pretty nearly every platform you look to for information or entertainment, everywhere, all the time now? I know I am. AI “art” isn’t art. AI writing isn’t literature (nor, generally, is it worth reading at all). AI summaries of search results are highly prone to inaccuracies and are often quite ridiculous in spots, and sometimes unreadable. AI content is very often IP theft or plagiarism. It’s pretty awful. AI doesn’t catch its own mistakes; it can’t think, comprehend, or reason.

Hey, good news; there’s no AI here. I’m an actual real person. A human primate. My spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, poor syntax, and occasionally meaning-obscuring overuse of ellipses are 100% human and my own! I sit somewhere in some moment of self-reflection, and compose my actual thoughts, such as they are, using my own words, and I share them with you. Wow. My photos and images are generally my own (at least since I began bringing a camera along with me everywhere and viewing so much of my life through that lens). Music I link to isn’t mine, but I selected it myself, inspired by my experience, and chosen to enhance my writing in some way. I share my own art with you. My “unfiltered” take on life is offered up relatively fearlessly, too. I don’t need AI to do my thinking for me (and neither do you).

It is still possible to choose the content you consume with sufficient care to avoid AI slop, generally. (I block pages and content that are AI generated, once I recognize it – and I’m reliably seeking to determine that quickly. I’m not a fan.) I personally find garbage AI slop seriously cringe, and also don’t want to undermine the value of human content creation by encouraging that crap. I’m an artist. A writer. A photographer. It matters to me to differentiate between created works and “generated” works.

Anyway. No AI here (aside from the one use of it on my About page when ChatGPT launched). Oh, I’m aware of the potential inherent in AI, and professionally I stay current with what AI tools are capable of, presently. I just don’t prefer (or need) to use AI to write. 😆

The world is a fucking mess, eh? It’d be easy to shrug off AI concerns as unimportant, considering everything else going on. If you’re in a safe place, be sure to go outside. Take healthy breaks. Enjoy a moment with a friend. Take a walk. Watch clouds scoot across the sky. Smell flowers. Try a new recipe. Read a book. Learn a skill. Sit in a beautiful garden. Make something. You can live an actual life and form thoughts about those experiences. AI can’t. Enjoy your moments. These mortal lifetimes are fleeting.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sit with my coffee, grateful for a new day, and a new opportunity to begin again. I watch the sun rise as the clock ticks on this mortal lifetime. My thoughts are my own, an idea I greatly enjoy.

… I notice the time… already a new moment… already a new beginning… What will I do with it?

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Neutrality Isn’t Neutral

June 23, 2025 //
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We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Eli Weisel, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986

There’s not a lot else to say about that, is there? There are definitely some topics, events, and circumstances that don’t leave room for “being neutral” or “staying out of it”, aren’t there? Genocide comes to mind as a good example. How can a rational, emotionally mature human being be for genocide, ever? Trying to rationalize heinous acts by redefining them doesn’t change the reality on the ground, does it? I’m sipping my coffee thinking about war, and genocide, and violence generally, yes and even the bullshit pettiness and poorly managed individual anger that can lead so many individual human beings to commit some of the most terrible acts imaginable against other human beings. We put so much effort into teaching children to read, to write, to do basic math – and so little into teaching critical thinking or emotional intelligence. There’s no requirement for human beings to be so cruel, greedy, cowardly, or dishonest – we work pretty fucking hard to develop those characteristics in our children, and to reinforce them in each other. I find that whole idea pretty grotesque, honestly. We could do better.

Are we standing on the precipice of WW3? Who decides whether global conflict has risen to that level? Who decides whether any particular conflict in the world in which one nation seems to be taking bold steps to completely wipe out the population of the other is clearly definable as a “genocide”? Why the hell would we ever try to rationalize, justify, or excuse such horrible acts? “They’re our ally, so what they’re doing is not genocide” is not a sound logical argument. I sigh to myself and sip my coffee. I keep expecting humanity to grow the fuck up and stop using conflict as a tool, if only because it is wasteful, costly, and lacks any really good return on investment. It’s unfortunate (even tragic) that human primates are such greedy fuckwits.

…I’m cranky over this shit, but there’s nothing much I can do about it beyond not being that, myself…

I’m back to the routine of work. It’s a Monday, and the day begins well in this corner of the world. Ordinary. But… I’m not oblivious to the goings on elsewhere. The pointless violent bullshit mayhem and nonsense going on elsewhere taints my pleasant morning and seeps into my awareness. I sigh again. My headache is manageable. My back pain isn’t noteworthy. The day is neither too hot nor too chilly. It’s not raining. There are no bombs dropping, here. Still, I’m cross about this shit, and I feel my chaos and damage loitering in the background. I was once a soldier on a battlefield. Another sigh. I don’t feel free to cry over it; I’ve got a week of work ahead of me, and only three days to do it. Busy life. Errands. Housekeeping. Making meals to feed my family. Tending my garden in spite of the fucking deer eating my damned roses (again). Putting away laundry. Catching up on work email. Staying on top of my task list and doing my damnedest not to forgot some important thing or another. It’s much. Right now it feels like “too much” and I am on the edge of fury – not because there’s anything wrong here, I just feel the weight of the world and my concerns about global conflict keep trying to spin up, causing my anxiety to flare up as latent anger.

I breathe, exhale, and relax – let all that go by an act of pure will, and try to begin again. I repeat this several times. It’s seems clear I’ll be having to work at managing this for awhile, since the asshats in Washington DC can’t seem to behave as rational adults. Fucking hell. War? Still? Really? I keep thinking we have what it takes to be better than this, then I remember the assorted bullies, grifters, and morons we’ve elected (time and again, honestly) – we have a long way to go. Stupid is just every-fucking-where. I’m so over it.

…But… I’m angry about it, not sad, not demoralized, not in a state of despair. I feel bitter. Cynical. Disappointed in humanity. Annoyed by greedy billionaires and politicians. Frustrated by our Dunning-Krueger government. And? It’s not something I can “fix” through some specific individual act. Hell, I can’t even prevent other seemingly intelligent people from supporting this craptacular boatload of bullshit. It’s all very irritating – and I am irritable as a result.

Breathe.

Exhale.

Relax.

Begin again. Don’t take anything personally. Do your own best. Practice non-attachment. Results may vary. We become what we practice. There are verbs involved.

I sip my coffee and let it go. Again. The clock is ticking. We could do better. I can at least do better myself through my own actions and choices. That’s going to have to be enough to get by on, maybe for awhile. I’m not telling you what to do or how to think, or even making suggestions. I’m just sitting with my thoughts on a Monday morning, annoyed with what a shit show the world happens to be presently, and practicing some self-soothing, as much as I reasonably can, and hoping that maybe it helps me get over my irritable mood. There’s really nothing going on right here, now, that would lead me to be so fucking cranky. I can do better.

So, I do. Again. Breathe, exhale, relax. Let it go. Repeat as needed.

The sun rose red on this new day. I don’t know that it means anything, but it was quite a spectacular sight as I drove in to the office. It’s a new day. A new opportunity to be the person I most want to be. I’ll have to keep practicing.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anger, Anxiety, breathe, Frustration, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, War and News of War

I Have Mine, You Have Yours

June 22, 2025 //
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The morning sky is a featureless homogeneous soft gray. It rained during the night, and feels like it might rain again today at some point. My walk was quiet, and I spent the time mostly in my own head. I’ve got my own opinions about world events, and I know you have yours. No doubt we each think we’re right (or at least justified) about the opinions we hold. The smarter we each actually are, the more likely we’re also aware of how wrong we could be, or sensitive to how nuanced circumstances truly are.

Being human is funny that way; we’re each having our own experience. Each walking our own path. Each of us making the journey on our own terms, except where we’ve yielded our decision making power to some Other. We’ve got our own opinions, formed and informed by our own experiences, and our own circumstances, colored by our individual pattern of biases, assumptions, and superstitions. We’ve got our own dreams, our own goals, our own disappointments and inner demons. We are individuals capable of critical thinking, when we choose to think critically (a choice which is quite separate from the ability). We create the world we live in directly through our choices and our actions. We are, as a species, uniquely creative and incredibly intelligent, while also being willfully stupid and terribly destructive. The scale of our ability to destroy is likely to be our undoing; we lack the wisdom to be cautious and to approach threats to our survival with care. A large portion of the whole of humanity is thoroughly committed to profit and personal gain even at the cost of humanity’s demise. Weird.

Oak trees in a meadow, the largest of them have been here longer than I have.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. Warfare is stupid and pointlessly destructive. That’s my opinion. We could do better.

I sit with my thoughts and my opinions at the edge of this meadow, wishing human beings weren’t so completely shortsighted and criminally greedy. I sigh and try again to let that go. Fretting over things I can’t change about the decision making and opinions of other people is just about as pointless as things get. I definitely have better things to do with my time. Strange that people so eager to make war don’t seem aware that they could choose peace instead.

“Golden Opportunity” blooming on a rainy day.

I sit awhile wondering how it is we have not yet overcome the most basic flaws in our character as human primates and wonder why it is so many of us are so greedy for arbitrary representations of wealth. I hear the traffic in the distance. It’s a quiet morning, here. No bombs falling here. No drone attacks. No artillery fire. No landmines in these meadows. No trenches. No destruction. Americans tend to be some very NIMBY motherfuckers about such things; we fling our munitions at targets elsewhere in the world, and very few Americans have stared directly into the face of the God of War. To do so would force us to confront the cruelty, waste, and injustice of war, and to reckon with the body count. It is my opinion that most people who understand war and the cost in wasted resources and lost lives don’t so easily choose to inflict it on others. What do I even know about it, beyond my own experience, though? Maybe nothing.

I have seen war, up close and personal. I’d rather not go there again. Nothing is worth paying that price. Nothing. Humanity could do better. We make terrible choices.

A crow watching the tide come in.

It’s been a lovely week off. Now the weekend begins to end and the world is waiting. What next? Where does this path lead? Each moment is a blank page – what story will you write? What choices will you make? How will you (or I) make the world a better place for every creature who makes this muddy rock hurtling through space their home? We could… There are verbs involved, and our results will vary. I promise you one thing; war is not the way.

I sigh to myself. You can lead a human being to knowledge but you cannot make them think.

I get to my feet and look down the trail. Moments are fleeting. It’s a good time to begin again. I’ll do my best to live well, to embrace joy, and encourage others, and to refrain from acts of destruction. I can, if nothing else, live my values authentically and avoid violence. I may not change the world for the better in any obvious way, but I can surely avoid making shit worse.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anger, breathe, Despair, Free Will, grief, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, War and News of War

Living Life

June 21, 2025 //
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It’s been lovely having a bit of a vacation. The clock keeps ticking. The wheel keeps turning. Eventually every pleasant vacation drops us off at the starting point to begin living life in “the usual way” (more or less). I’m not unhappy with that. The power of taking a break comes from the way (and amount) it deviates from the day-to-day. (This is why a “stay-cation” can still be a wonderful interlude that refreshes and recharges us.)

A familiar sight on a familiar trail.

A new beginning, a restart, a chance to set off on the journey with new perspective is one of the things I value each time I take a vacation (or even a break, or after a long weekend). If I’ve learned something new about myself, I take advantage of that new understanding in some way. If I’ve used the time to build a new habit or make a lifestyle change, I carry it forward into my everyday living. Practical. This approach can be so effective that I’ve even taken time off specifically to begin or end some behavior in order to focus on that change before resuming routine living, in order to “make it stick” more effectively.

I finish this morning’s walk just as the rain begins spattering the windshield. Of course it’s raining. I’m not even surprised. I felt it coming.

My arthritis has been griefing me all week. The amount of pain I’m in nearly every day is just fucking stupid, and unreasonable, and difficult to manage, and seems wholly “unfair”, and I mostly just don’t even complain about it or bring it up beyond the occasional mention (in my lived actual life), though I mention it relatively frequently here. It’s mostly pointless to say anything much about it. There’s nothing much anyone can do about it, and I’d rather not be defined by my pain or allow it to dictate the boundaries of my experience. Besides, everyone hurts sometimes, and we can only ever really understand our own pain. It’s truly difficult to understand the magnitude of someone else’s pain, and far too easy to dismiss it as being somehow less than our own. I’d rather not discuss it or argue the point; it’s not a competition. I think it sucks to be in pain, and I’m often cross about it while trying my best not to make it anyone else’s problem (especially my Traveling Partner); we’ve all got our own pain to deal with. If you’re in pain, I’m sorry to hear it, and I wish that it were in my power to ease your suffering.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. The rainy weather pretty reliably means more arthritis pain. I smile to myself, somewhat mirthlessly. I enjoy the rain so much! The spectacular mismatch between my delight in rainy days and the pain I’m in on rainy days is not lost on me. If I’m lucky, my delight and my joy in life may distract me from my pain for some little while.

Are you in pain? I get it. Please take care of yourself. Take it easy when you can (and when you must), and set healthy boundaries. Pain doesn’t have to become your whole world – you can choose differently (often)(sometimes). Your results may vary.

When I arrived.

Yesterday was a nice finish to my vacation days, although a storm blowing in from the sea ultimately chased me back to the car and got me headed home a little earlier than I’d planned. It was still quite a lovely day. It has been a supremely relaxing and restful week. I needed that more than I knew.

When I left.

I didn’t mind the storm. Like change, the weather simply is, and it’s not to be argued with. lol It was too blustery for plein air painting, and I didn’t really mind. I adapted to the conditions (easier than trying to argue with the weather). I enjoyed walking on the beach and exploring the tide pools. I took pictures of the rocks and waves and the storm moving in. I enjoyed returning home to see that a rose I had planted the year after we moved in had finally bloomed. (She took her sweet damned time with that, but she’s beautiful, and worth the wait.) The hollyhocks are blooming too, but colossal, and clearly “in the wrong spot” as planted. As with any garden, I learn with the seasons, and make changes based on what I learn along the way. (It’s a metaphor.)

“Golden Opportunity” blooming.

So… Here I am. Now. Being. Listening to the rain fall, and reflecting on the moment. My tinnitus is louder than the rain, but my pain is managed. Good enough. I’ve got things to do, and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being
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