Archives for category: Allegories

That was my first thought when I got home last night; this looks like the end of summer. A soft rain was falling, and the deck was littered with fallen leaves. I turned off the A/C, probably for the year; an open window will be adequate from this point, most likely.

…I think to check the weather. My assumptions, my internal narrative, my recollections of prior years… none of these rise to the level of “facts”; I check the weather, this morning. My musings on an autumn-feeling evening are not relevant to my experience of what the weather may be on a late summer morning. There is rain in the forecast, and a high of 68. Yep. That’s autumn. 😀

It’s time for change.

The seasons are changing. The wheel continues to turn. There’s no avoiding evolving without actually quitting the journey entirely. We’re aren’t really made for standing still.

I take a deep breathe, and glance at the clock. I finish my almond milk chai latte with lingering amusement that I woke too lazy to make a cup of coffee. I don’t have to settle for that, with myself. I shrug and smile into the pre-dawn darkness.

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

The last day or two have been strangely filled with the sound of breaking habits and routines. Again this morning, coffee holds no appeal. I have chai tea instead. With almond milk. My shower is cool, almost cold, and I take it before I do much of anything else, instead of after yoga or dumbbells. I put my shoes on as soon as I got dressed, instead of just before I leave. My TBI seems to be “whispering at me” through the fatigue and distractions; habits breaking everywhere, because that’s what does seem to happen with me under these circumstances.

I whisper back to the woman in the mirror, “keep it together, you’ve got this – now wear is your work badge, and why is it not hanging on the hook where it belongs? damn.” So human.

I remind myself to “stay on the path”. I go through the motions of the other usual morning things, check the clock, notice it is almost time to leave for work (already??) and I hadn’t written a word, or even scrolled through my feed (who are you??). It’s okay. It’s just my version of spontaneity. LOL I’m fine, just… a bit stressed, managing my anxiety, and living life pulled in more directions than I typically prefer. I take a healthy calming breath, and let it go.

It’s a Friday. Here’s a weekend ahead of me. It’s time to begin again.

Well, damn. It’s Tuesday, after a long weekend with a Monday off. Shit. It’s time to be getting back to the grind. No fun little emoji for this one; there’s real effort involved. lol

I sip my coffee purposefully, and still smiling. It was a lovely weekend. Right down to the discovery that the tires I had to buy (on Labor Day, when very nearly every tire place, specifically, is apparently closed), actually provided a noteworthy improvement in handling, and an obvious reduction in noise, and may even be improving my gas mileage. Ideally, I would not have had to buy a set of tires for the car until much closer to winter weather… but… buying them sooner also got me a better deal. 😀 So… there’s that.

I spent time in the company of a friend on the other side of town (a former colleague, and collector of my art work), catching up, and repairing a painting that is dear to us both. It was totally worth the drive across town and back. Friendship nearly always is, which makes it worth mentioning. 🙂

It wasn’t a fancy weekend. I didn’t spend much money (other than the tires). I did a couple lovely day hikes, took some pictures, took a class, and mostly spent my time in the company of the woman in the mirror, getting deeply rested, and taking time for me. It was so worth it.

The weekend begins and ends with stray sunflowers, planted by squirrels or chipmunks. 🙂

I’m ready to begin again. 😀

Yesterday was lovely. Relaxed. Relaxing. Spent in a leisurely way on leisure activities, generally. Most of the weekend has been, actually. Each time something specifically not leisure got my attention, I put it to rest pretty firmly. I let my sleep cycle be whatever it was, too; naps are wonderful. Naps leading to long nights of delicious slumber are pretty spectacular, too. Any worries that my early morning weekday routine might get broken was “put to rest” (lol) this morning, when I woke, well-rested, at 2:47 am. Close enough to 3:00 am… and 3:00 am is close enough to 4:00 am. Today is the last day of my long weekend, and I woke quite naturally fairly close to the ludicrous early hour I typically wake. 😀 Splendid.

…Amusingly enough, I crashed hard last night sometime around 6:00 pm. I woke at 11:00 pm and considered getting up… instead, I went back to bad and slept deeply for several more hours. Hikes every day. Yoga. Taking up Qigong. Walking more. I’ve been putting in some time and attention on getting my activity level up where it needs to be to reach my fitness goals. Exerting the effort amounts to work, work leads to fatigue, fatigue requires rest, the need to rest results in feeling tired, which leads to sleep…and I do enjoy quality sleep. A weekend well spent. 😀

I have had opportunities to explore pretty much all the hours of the day over this weekend. Afternoon and mid-morning napping fairly reliably leads to wakefulness in the wee hours of morning, or late into the evening. I’ve spent them meditating, writing, reading… I’ve spent the hours of my days quite well. It’s lovely to look back on.

From my vantage point this morning, it feels I have gotten back on track on any number of little things that matter to me. I’m waiting on one more; I tinkered with my old Gear Fit2 fitness tracker and managed to bring it back to life. I woke this morning to a 100% charge on it (it hadn’t been taking a charge for a long while, then I forgot all about it in a drawer). Ah, but of course; updates. Well, shit. I’ve been looking at this 56% completed status for a while now… Will it? Won’t it? I try not to watch it. lol

Feeling “ready” to get back on track is a different place to be than yearning for it, or planning on it, or figuring I ought to do something about… something. Real readiness almost seems to handle business without any input from me; the inputs are implicit, and already exist, everything is down to verbs now. Readiness doesn’t hesitate over a fucking verb. 😉 I’m eager to see where this leads. Incremental change over time sometimes feels so slow. Mostly, actually. Painfully slow. Discouragingly slow. There are, though, occasional steps forward that feel a bit bigger – like suddenly lurching forward and finding oneself several steps ahead, upon returning to a more natural gait… or… like falling. Or jumping. Springing forward unexpectedly, and resuming the slow steady pace from a different starting point. It feels good, and in spite of hesitating to trust it and fully embrace it, it feels like real progress.

These are only feelings; there are still verbs involved. My results may still vary. My journey remains my own. My choices continue to matter.

I’ve still got to walk my own path.

56%? Shit. Still? Well… it’s more than half way. 🙂 As starting points go, it has promise. What if it’s just stuck and can’t go further? Well… I guess a factory reset, another attempt at the updates, and see where that takes me. Seems a good approach. Why would I give up entirely in the face of real progress, even when faced with a set back? Well… I wouldn’t. 🙂 I’ll most definitely be mildly frustrated if, after even that effort, my fitness tracker is no kidding just dead; it would mean shopping for another, and honestly, it’s a bad time for that – I just bought a car, and need to be very careful with money until I’m sure I’ve got my budget back on track. Wholesome adulting. I mean… the thing that brings a budget successfully to life isn’t the budget or the planning or the review of all the details and the careful documentation – it’s the choices I make that are rooted in that planning and decision-making. If I just do the planning and don’t live out the plan using my choices and actions? It’s just time spent on a spreadsheet, without any meaning. Busy work. The same thing that fails new year’s resolutions for most people is exactly the same thing that fails so many budgets; the simple failure to make those choices in the moment, in real life.

So many choices. So many verbs.

So much to “track” as an adult… so much to manage… so much to do… so much to care for and about… I am feeling particularly grateful to feel so well-rested. Small things stay small, freeing me to consider bigger things without any particular stress. 🙂

Then, there’s always technical support… sometimes, help is good to have. 🙂 After staring at “56%” for nearly an hour, through the entire process of waking for the day, making coffee, meditating, writing… I checked for online solutions. Read a support article. Noticing nothing seemed quite on point for the issue at hand occurred just at the same time that the Live Chat prompt popped on my screen. Sure. Why not? Precisely 7 minutes later… the update is completed. The device functions once more. 🙂 So basic: ask for help when you need help. 😀

Feeling good on a Monday; I feel very much that I’m “back on track”. If nothing else, I am, at least, back on tracker. 😉 It makes a great beginning.

I don’t honestly feel at all like sleeping on the ground, or dealing with overnight chill, or having to use vault toilets or a hole in the ground… or… any of the things that go along with camping, really. Not this weekend. I do, however, very much feel like hiking a few miles alone with my thoughts. 🙂 It’s nice having the car. It’s nicer that it is my own, and of the sort far more appropriate to trail heads and rougher roads than the luxury sedan I’d been driving. (None of that diminishes my gratitude for having the use of my partner’s car for a year; I needed it, he was right.) The weekend is my own, and I’ll go where I please, travel the roads I like, and find the miles that suit me most to wander.

I sip my coffee and consider my rather lengthy list of hikes I’d like to take. I decide I’d rather not drive more than an hour this morning, having slept a bit later than I expected to, and also wanting to go to the Farmer’s Market this morning. My smile becomes a grin contemplating the luxury of being able, if I chose, to also just get in the car and drive down to my Traveling Partner’s location, and visit him there. Any time. There is nothing to stop me doing so, and no one to whom I must answer. That feels amazing. I sit with the feeling and the awareness awhile longer; I haven’t always truly had the freedom to be accountable primarily to myself, only, and it’s an intoxicating level of adult freedom.

This is a weekend of choices. One of those is that I chose to invest in my longer-term emotional and physical wellness by making this particular weekend mostly about self-care, also. Yesterday was spent advocating for important social issues as a citizen, and getting ample rest as a human being. Today? Today I want to get out into the trees, put some miles behind me, take some pictures, find some solitude and relief from the din and background noise of the world. Tomorrow, too. Even Monday (after my first Qigong class, fairly early in the morning). Something about the car I’d been driving was keeping me from hiking in some subtle way. (I think perhaps my reluctance to leave a largish luxury car parked at a trailhead and at risk of break-ins, when it wasn’t even my own car, was a bit of baggage I didn’t manage well.) The Mazda fairly begs to be left-along-the-side-of-the-road-back-soon-I-promise at every trail head I spot on every drive I take. lol I literally want to just park it, however abruptly, hop out and walk down each unexpected mystery trail just to see where they lead. 😀 This bodes well for future fitness, and I’m not inclined to fight it – I just want to get out there, and explore the world on foot, with a significant lack of human companionship.

New beginnings aren’t just an assortment of lovely sunrises, or yet another work shift, or one more morning waking from one more night of sleep; there are opportunities here for growth, change, and transcendence. These are chances to work through past pain, to set down more baggage and walk on – both metaphorically, and for real. What was yesterday about? Can I do better today? What choices does that take? How does this particular morning hold the potential to see me become more the person I most want to be at the end of this particular day? It’s a process filled with verbs, and my results vary. Still, I get as many chances to begin again as there are sunrises – or moments. There are choices involved.

I’m ready. It’s time to grab a map. 🙂