Archives for category: 2024 Election

Well. January is almost behind us. One twelfth of the year, gone. By this point, many resolutions have failed, and a lot of people are losing (have lost?) the motivation to change that propelled their goal-setting. How about you? Are you still sticking to a plan, pursuing a goal, chasing a dream, or even slogging along at a practice that does not yet feel really settled and part of your day-to-day experience?

Me, I’d have to look back to see what I even thought about at that time when people are adopting some resolution for the new year. When I do, I find myself thinking about debt, and choosing change, the futility of most resolutions. I find myself recognizing that change is, and planning to make a reading list for the new year (which I didn’t get around to doing! LOL). Looking back on the month, I don’t feel any disappointment or regret – only a bit of astonishment at how busy it has seemed, and how quickly it passed.

…January already gone…

I sip my coffee, knock out the budget for another pay cycle. Exchange a few words with my Traveling Partner, who is already up for the day, himself. It is an ordinary Friday. Bills to pay. Grocery shopping to plan (and do). Prescriptions to pick up. Errands. Chores. Life. Ask me what I want to be doing today – I assure you it is not work. I’d so much rather put my feet up somewhere with mild temperatures and pleasant weather, a nice view of… something… and a well-made coffee, and simply be for awhile, at leisure, my time and my thoughts my own. No time pressure. No to-do list. No concerns. Just a sweet floral breeze, or the scent of the ocean blowing in from the shore, a cup of coffee and some solitude. I’d settle for a camp stove and an outdoor pour-over made from beans ground too long ago, surrounded by trees and playful chipmunks… or… here. Now. This moment isn’t that far off the mark. I’m sitting in a chain cafe, with my laptop open in front of me, enjoying my coffee with “an unseen friend” (that’s you). I smile to myself realizing how easily I could distance myself from contentment in this moment by yearning for some other rather similar moment that is not now. I chuckle to myself; a human being, being human. We can be pretty g’damned foolish.

So, I guess what I’m saying is – if that goal or resolution was really important to you, and you’ve already fallen to sloth or become distracted or lost focus…begin again. Just reset, and start over. Seriously. It’s your goal, you get to define success your way. You get to begin again, any time. Redefine the scope of your project. Change the timeline, change the milestones. Refine your approach. It’s yours to do your own way. You’re walking your path, not any other. Hell, maybe putting it down and reconsidering things completely is the correct next step for you? What is the end result you’re going for? How much work are you really willing to do?

…We become what we practice…

I sip my coffee listening to bad muzak, grateful that I’m not out in the darkness and the rain. (I do prefer to walk in daylight, sometimes circumstances present other opportunities. lol) Friday. The weekend is ahead. I haven’t made a lot of plans or anything – I’ve been making a point to get some rest each weekend, this year. It’s been worthwhile. I’ve made time to read – which I promised myself I would – and I’ve made time to play my favorite video game (I rarely play for long, and sometimes go many weeks without playing at all). I’ve spent more time in conversation with my Traveling Partner, and more time enjoying moments of solitude when the opportunity arose. I’m looking forward to camping weather returning, but seasons are what they are, and I don’t like camping in colder weather; sleeping on the ground aggravates my arthritis. S’ok, there are plenty of books to read and recipes to try while the weather is crappy.

It’s a good start to a rather ordinary day. I’m okay with that. I’m not seeking some spectacularly exciting life in which every day is a whirlwind of activity and drama. I’m happy when things are easy, and there’s very little friction or stress. I smile thinking about my elders, when I was growing up, and lazy summer afternoons relaxing with an iced tea or a cold beer on the screened in back porch, looking out over the hillside down to the creek, or gathering in the twilight to watch the fireflies come out. How is contentment not a goal for more people? Why are so many people working so hard to make their own experience more complicated, less easy? I don’t understand that, myself. I’m pretty nearly always looking for “easy”. lol

…I’m just saying, we can reach contentment through practice. Chasing happiness, on the other hand, is a losing race; that’s not how we find happiness. (I most often “find” happiness when it sneaks up on me through a moment of contentment.)

Don’t like where you’re sitting? Choose change. Make a choice, do the verbs. It’s your journey, you choose the route. On the other hand, if you are content where you are, comfortable with your life as it is, okay with your circumstances just as they are, then enjoy that without guilt or shame or awkwardness! Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to work harder to get to a goal you don’t personally value. No one has that kind of time to waste – our mortal lives are all too brief.

What a fucking year this is, already. I sigh to myself and let that go. I’m okay. No bombs dropping here, and I’m grateful. No masked ICE thugs in the parking lot here and I’m grateful for that too, although it is dismaying that I would even have to think about it. Work is work – and I’m grateful to have the job I do. Could be worse. Generally speaking, things are pretty good. I’m grateful for this moment of contentment, and this hot coffee, and the partner I will go home to later on, and the little house we share, and the modern conveniences we are fortunate to enjoy. It is enough.

I look at the clock. I’ll have time to get a walk around the muddy “fitness track” near the library after daybreak, before work. Convenient. That, too, is enough, and it’s time to begin again. 😀

I slept poorly. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I slept well and deeply until sometime after 02:00. My Traveling Partner was awake, in the other room, coughing. The coughing woke me. I went back to sleep, but from that point my sleep was shallow and interrupted, and I didn’t get much rest. I’m not even bitching, I’m just mentioning it as I sip my morning coffee and try to sort my thoughts into some kind of coherent bit of consciousness. I’m not “groggy”, exactly, just…disconnected and stupid. I’m feeling cross and out of sorts, and the morning is off to a somewhat poor start, but only because of the state of being in which I find myself. In the most practical ways, it is an ordinary Monday morning.

The font and type size look weird to me in the visual editor this morning, and I fuss with trying to figure out if they are actually different somehow, or if I “never noticed before”. There seems to be a lot of that kind of misleading bullshit going on these days; changes being made without notice to users on all sorts of apps and platforms. Updates pushing new integrated AI in a coercive involuntary way. Updates that impair user freedom and control over purchased hardware and software. Other similar shenanigans seeking to harvest just a bit more data (or money) from users. Having the cognitive quirks that I do, I definitely do notice. I dislike that I find myself trying to talk myself out of seeing what I think I’m seeing. That irritates me. I let it go altogether, because in this instance it does not matter at all that the font looks like a different one, and the type size appears smaller and more compact.

I sigh to myself. I’m vexed by pain this morning, on top of fatigue (they are ultimate related; I am less able to manage my pain when I am fatigued, and likely to feel it more intensely). I sit more upright, hoping that good posture will give me some relief.

…G’damn I’m in a shitty mood this morning…

I have The Clash “Know Your Rights” stuck in my head. In spite of making committed efforts to stay away from “the news”, I can’t help knowing that the masked government thugs besieging Minnesota have murdered another citizen, an American, a patriot, a legal-to-carry gun owner with his “paperwork in order”. His apparent crime? Well, apparently that’s not a requirement anymore, at all. The assault on our rights grows, and if it weren’t so incredibly terrifying (and depressing) I might find some measure of humor in the fact that this shit is coming from a Republican administration. It’s not about Republican and Democrat, it never has been, it is about power and greed on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes the scales tip briefly in favor of “the people”. Don’t expect it to last when it happens.

…Oh, yeah, really dreadful mood…

I cue up my playlist for trying times. I add a couple more tracks to it. I definitely don’t want to listen to pop songs or muzak this morning. My heart aches for fallen heroes, and those among us willing to speak truth to power – and pay the price. Dark days, America. Get your shit together before you lose everything.

My phone rings. Unexpected at 05:30. I answer it reflexively; I have been caregiving for a couple of years, and any time I step away from the house, I feel uneasy and alert for some need that may arise that requires me to hasten home. The voice is familiar, but I don’t place it immediately. An old friend from my years on active duty, calling to let me know he’s reached a breaking point, himself, an just… can’t. My heart pounds. (G’damn, surely he’s not calling me to tell me he’s going to end his life? I don’t think I could bear it.) No, it’s not that bad, but it’s a big enough deal that he wanted to tell someone, and somehow that someone is me. He’s moving to New Zealand. “As far as I could go away from here, before someone burns it all down,” he says. He asks me if I think he’s overreacting? I don’t think he’s overreacting at all. I might do something similar if my circumstances permitted it, and just yesterday my Traveling Partner and I were talking about maybe selling our lovely cozy home and going…somewhere else. Quieter? Fewer neighbors? More space? All of that, and a few other things besides. Maybe we will… I find myself wondering how many citizens have emigrated out of the United States since the first Trump presidency, and whether that has accelerated since he was re-elected?

My work trip to San Francisco unraveled, doesn’t much matter why, and I’m not alone in it. The winter storms have thrown transportation into chaos. Can we agree that a late January travel date for a work event was predictably short-sighted? lol

I’m realizing it is likely to be the sort of day on which I am prone to discontent and finding fault. That’s not going to be a particularly pleasant experience. I sigh to myself and ask the question “are you going to stew in it, or are you going to make a change?” It’s an important question and wants an answer. I feel myself set my jaw, full of resistance and irritation, like a kid asked to clean their room on a beautiful day. I don’t want to have to be bothered with being accountable for where I am with my experience, right now. I’d rather be peeved and pick at my grievances as if they are wounds. Ridiculous. Now I am both the woman in a bad mood, and the woman irritated by a woman choosing to be in a bad mood. lol Layers of irritability. It’s pretty silly, but acknowledging that isn’t getting me off the hook for the work involved in changing it – or the choices or practices required to do so. My black mood feels justifiable and vindicated…but it’s honestly just a bad mood. I’m in pain and I didn’t sleep well. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that.

Another sigh. Another sip of coffee. I ask myself where would I be and what might I be doing if I had the means to go anywhere at all and do anything I cared to do? Moments fill my recollection; morning coffee on the shore, or near a beach, or out among the trees in some silent ancient forest, or a quiet cafe in the 1st arrondissement in Paris… I like to enjoy my coffee with a bit of a view and some solitude in the morning. In that sense, generally speaking, I’m pretty much already doing that thing, eh? I sip my coffee grateful for the moment of perspective, even feeling a tiny bit less cross. I guess that’s progress.

When what we’re doing doesn’t work, doing something different just might. I think about that, and enjoy my coffee before the work day. Soon enough, I’ll begin again. It’s not world-changing stuff, but if I can improve this experience in some small way, that’s still an improvement.

I woke earlier than I had hoped. It is a colder morning than forecast. My Traveling Partner is awake, coughing in the living room. I blow him a kiss as I leave the house, realizing moments later I could have actually kissed him. He sends me his love in the form of cute “stickers” in a message as I pull out of the coffee stand with a hot cup of coffee, ready to head up the highway. I reply with a couple cute stickers back, and find myself hopeful that he may be able to get a little more sleep.

Daybreak on the horizon.

It’s 22°F (-5.5°C)  as daybreak touches the horizon. Cold. Properly wintry. I sit in the warm car, with my coffee and my thoughts, waiting for the sun. I feel fairly certain the sunrise will bring the temperature up. It’ll still be a cold walk, and I’m already looking forward to a warming luxurious hot shower after I return home, but it’ll be better than walking in the dark on such an icy morning.

I saw a shooting star as I drove up the highway this morning. Yes, I made a wish on it. No, I don’t think making wishes on stars is actually something that works. lol What did I wish for? You’d laugh if I told you.

…What a weird scary world we’ve created…

I sigh to myself and turn my gaze back to the western horizon, now a streak of dirty orange with some blue-ish sky above it. The outline of Mt Hood becomes visible. The oaks that dot the meadow begin to take shape. There is comfort in real things in this real lived moment. I take refuge from my anxiety in this gentle “now”. Nothing much going on right here; a woman in a car at a trailhead, watching the sun rise. Pretty peaceful calm stuff. I have high hopes for a pleasant day ahead.

My head aches ferociously this morning. I take some medication and hope for relief. The cold hasn’t yet had its opportunity to seep into my bones, and my arthritis is not yet vexing me. That’s something, anyway. It’s enough and I’m grateful. My pain may be less manageable by the end of the day, but for now, I’m feeling pretty fortunate. Other than the cold, it’s a lovely morning to walk the trail here.

…I think about maybe getting my nails done before I head to San Francisco this week for work. It’s a definite maybe. 😂 I mean, I’d like to, but I’m reluctant to spend the money. It seems pretty frivolous… Choices.

Dawn comes.

The gate into the main parking area opens with a screech. I move the car closer to the access point for the year-round trail. I add my scarf, hat, and oversized fleece to my layers and put my gloves and cane handily within reach. I won’t want to stop long this morning, so I finish this now, before I set off down the trail. The colorful sunrise is a beautiful backdrop to the oaks.

I take my time enjoying the sunrise.

As the first light of day begins to touch the treetops, the frosted meadow grass sparkles. The hint of white suggests snow from a distance, but there’s been none of that. I’m selfishly grateful, but dismayed when I also think about summer ahead, crops, and the possibility of wild fires. Being good stewards of this one planet that is our home has not been easy for human primates; we tend towards self-serving greed and shortsightedness. We could do better.

Daylight. Across the highway I can see the lowland farm fields that in previous years have reliably become a shallow seasonal lake favored by migrating birds each winter. This morning it is a grassy field, mown short, covered in frost. G’damn I hope the planet recovers from the damage we have done (with or without us). I’d like to be around to see that.

Walking my own mile. Where does this path lead?

I sigh to myself, and begin again.

My sleep was poor last night. Frequently interrupted by one noise or another, but also sometimes just because I simply woke up for no obvious reason. It’s fine. I’ve had a problematic relationship with sleep all my life. I finally woke at a time sufficiently close to the time I generally get up that I went ahead and got up. Would it be coffee or walking? The forecast suggests coffee – another freezing morning. I dress and head out, hoping that I avoided waking anyone, and grateful that in spite of my restless night I’m not feeling groggy.

Each time I woke during the night, I’d turn over or shift the covers or fluff my pillow seeking new comfort, eventually returning to sleep (once waking from a deep sleep surprised to find myself waking; I had been dreaming I was awake, laying there in the darkness lol). I wasn’t stressed or anxious over being wakeful, it happens. Insomnia lost a lot of its power over me when I stopped being anxious about the insomnia itself, or the lost hours of sleep. (Now and then, if wakefulness overtakes me more thoroughly, I just get up, read or write or paint or meditate for awhile, but last night wasn’t that kind of night.) I woke often, returned to sleep eventually, and repeated that experience several times during the night, about every 90 minutes or so. I’m okay for most values of okay, in spite of that. I couldn’t get by on this kind of shitty sleep indefinitely (although I have in years past). I may be tired to the point of being fairly dull or actually stupid later today; I remind myself to get important cognitively dense tasks and work requiring focus knocked out early in the day.

Perspective is a big deal; the spiders in life are not actually as big as they sometimes look.

The restless night causes me less concern that this feeling lately that I “just don’t want to be part of any of this”, and a latent yearning to “walk away” from “all of it”. I know myself pretty well. There’s nothing specifically “wrong” such that resolving that would clear up this feeling, it’s more to do with just not being easily able to get a particular need met well in a way that satisfies it (a need for solitude and a break from emotional labor). I struggle to escape awareness of all the madness going on in the world, and every day there’s some new bit of unbelievable petty unfathomable craziness from the demented elder cohort leading the nation (the cruelty of this adminstration is astonishing and revolting). It stresses me out even to the minmal degree news reaches me at all. (I’m really trying to avoid it for my own sanity.) I’m still – to an extent – in a caregiving role, and present circumstances being what they are (economically, financially, socially…) I can’t just drop everything and check-in to a beachfront hotel, turn my notifications off for a a long weekend, and just paint, and write, and be alone. (In 2023, I could get an off-season room on the coast for $40-$50 per night, right on the beach. Now even off-season rooms are $200 per night at old rundown motels on the other side of the highway, with no view or beach access.) It’s definitely too cold (for me) for camping, too. The time is not now. I’m tied to this experience by the requirements of work and life, the limitations of my circumstances, and I’m reluctant to tell people I care about to fuck off (for awhile) and just leave me alone. I want very much to meet my need for solitude without causing anyone pain or suffering or hurt feelings (creating chaos and drama while seeking to escape chaos and drama defeats the purpose entirely). Anyway, I’m painfully aware that regardless, I’d be dragging my baggage with me, and it is in fact something within myself that I’m seeking to evade, escape, or “fix”. Reliably. I sigh at the inner recognition and acknowledgement. So… what to do about it, though? I sip my coffee and reflect on that awhile.

As with any choice, there are verbs involved.

I find myself feeling sympathetic towards the Anxious Adventurer – this “self-awareness”, and “self-reflection” stuff isn’t without its challenges, and this human journey that is so much about self-discovery and growth is not an easy one. We are each having our own experience on a journey without a map.

Walk your own path, choose your own verbs, and build your own practices.

It is Friday. The weekend is ahead. I breathe, exhale, and relax. A week of working from my employer’s San Francisco office follows the weekend (I fly down Tuesday, return home Friday night). I smile at myself for the tempting thought that I might get some solitary time, if only in the very early morning and in the evenings after work, while I am in San Francisco, but it didn’t work out that way last time at all. The opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a shared space resulted in longer work hours, and no time alone of note. The company puts us up in a comfortable clean hotel, and I’m grateful for that. I will probably sleep well, but I don’t expect much solitary time, or leisure unless I make a point to carve out time for myself and set very firm boundaries. I smirk at myself knowingly; it’s a coin toss. That’s why I keep practicing; I clearly need the practice. lol

Perspective is sometimes about the view from a singular moment. If I stand somewhere else, doesn’t my perspective change? 🙂

I sigh to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”. Life is pretty good, most of the time. Hell, I may not have slept well, but the morning is not as cold as forecast, my headache isn’t bad, my arthritis pain is well-managed – I feel okay. Things could be worse. A lot worse. I’m bitching that I don’t have everything, and can’t satisfy every need I have or soothe every emotion I feel. Shit, we’ve all got problems, right? This journey isn’t effortless or infinitely pleasant, and our “second dart suffering” is the larger share of our suffering for much of our mortal life – and we can make choices that reduce that a lot. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and make a point to let go from clinging to my suffering. In this moment, here, now, things are pretty much fine. Good coffee. Warm cafe. Pleasant music in the background. A weekend just a few hours away. Less than usual physical pain. What is there to suffer over, really? I mean, right here, right now? I’m among the very fortunate; I have a paying job, a cozy home, medical care, potable drinking water, and there are not bombs dropping here, nor am I at high risk of being assaulted or kidnapped by the government thugs roaming our communities in masked packs. Viewed that way, it’s more than a little annoying and self-indulgent to sit here with my hot coffee on a cold day bitching about not being able to get away (from my pleasant life)! I chuckle softly to myself; I am a human being, being quite human.

My coffee has gone cold. Tepid, at least. I don’t really care; I notice and move on. The clock keeps ticking. The music plays on. Daybreak will soon touch the horizon. The pings on my consciousness of various notifications start piling up. Seems like a good moment to begin again. I wonder where this path leads?

Once we choose our path, we’ve still got to walk it. The journey is the destination. 🙂

I’m sipping coffee in the local chain coffee place close to the university library, where I most often work, these days. Work is later. For now, I’m just sipping coffee, and listening to the soft murmur of baristas going about their morning stocking and coffee making, and the sounds of the weird eclectic muzak that plays here. The playlist makes no sense to me, and follows no theme or genre, but it does repeat and I’ve become sufficiently familiar with it over a handful of weeks to easily tune it out.

It’s a cold morning. It is, in fact, freezing. Too cold for walking in the dark on an icy trail overhung with branches that were recently rain-sodden and are now freezing – and potentially at risk of breaking and falling to the ground unexpectedly. I’ll walk later, sometime after the sun is up and warming things a bit.

I mindlessly run my fingers through my hair, which only has the result of making the static electricity in my hair very obvious, lifting stray strands and creating an uncomfortable sensation as my fingers tangle in the hair and the static. I carefully un-muss my hair. The combination of dry cold air, layers of sweaters, and all this hair, adds up to quite a bit of static and things clinging here and there, or being shocked when I touch some door knob. Winter. The static is a distraction. It’s not important at all.

Somewhere far away (Davos), millionaires and billionaires are patting themselves on the backs for what awesome human beings they are, while they enjoy expensive luxuries and plan how to make themselves even more prosperous in the future. Does any real-world good ever come out of billionaires and power-seekers cavorting and collaborating in private meetings in luxury hotels, making plans for the many millions who have no direct input to the goings on? I’m asking because I don’t know. I somehow doubt it. It would require a legitimate desire to improve the lives of others alongside a genuine willingness to bear the cost of doing so. I somehow doubt that sort of equity and change minded thinking is commonplace among those who have the means and connections to rate an invitation. A person does not acquire vast wealth with that kind of thinking. They can afford to pretend that they got where they are without help, on their own, without exploiting the good will, effort, and desperation, of others. Am I bitter? Not exactly, I’m just over pretending such things have real value to people living ordinary lives, or that wealth hoarding is any sort of virtue.

…The World Economic Forum probably had a lot of promise as proposed (maybe it still does), but how rich does an individual have to be to comfortably afford annual membership (something like $50k per year) and attendance at the event in Davos each year (another $20k or so, I’ve read)? Just some perspective; a lot of regular people are canceling various subscription services these days because they just can’t afford them, or having to choose between bills and medical care. They won’t be represented at Davos.

I sigh to myself. Greed is probably the human character trait I find most vile – and sadly very common. It’s not personal, though, and billionaires frolicking in Davos have more or less nothing at all to do with me, here, now. I don’t even grudge them a good time on the slopes, or a lovely time catching up with their peers and colleagues over a coffee in some pleasant Swiss cafe. Such events generate a lot of click-bait, sound bites, podcast discussions, and celebrity photos, but beyond that, what does it have to do with me? I chuckle over my coffee, and let my thoughts move on.

I once took a tour that stopped in Switzerland when I was a young soldier stationed in Germany. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to see some of Europe, then. The modest costs I often complained about (soldiers are not paid well) were so worth it!

…And my thoughts move on…

I contemplate my general good fortune in life, and who I have been, and who I have become over time.

…And on…

I think about times I’ve traveled here or there over the years, sampling cultures in other countries, seeing sights, enjoying a chance to touch history – the Rodin Museum, the Louvre, and the Museum D’Orsay in Paris, Holocaust memorials in Germany and Czechia, an open air market in Mexico, the underground city in Montreal, the deserts of Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq, the beauty of Azores, the Cotswolds, Bavaria, and around and about all over the US. I’ve been fortunate to see so much of the world.

…And on…

My thoughts shift gears from places to people, and I think of the friends I’ve enjoyed sharing the journey with over the years. Some were lasting friendships that continue, some that were more fleeting moments to connect and share and then move on as paths diverged.

…And on…

It’s a nice morning to let my mind wander. I’m content with that, this morning. There is no reason to hurry through my coffee or wring more out of this fragile vessel than this moment here, now, requires. The clock ticks on. I smile, filling up on gratitude. Life hasn’t been without it’s hazards or challenges. There have been hard times, maybe there will be again. The company we keep on life’s journey probably matters a lot more than where our journey takes us. I sit thinking about that awhile.

The people matter most; how we treat each other is how we treat the world.

Soon it will be time to begin again.

…the new year is a blank page…