Archives for category: Allegories

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. 🙂

What’s leaning on you? What are you doing to get some relief? (It’s just a question.)

This morning I woke so slowly and so deliciously at ease that I didn’t really notice the transition from dreaming to thinking, from sleeping to waking; I simply realized at some point that I was, indeed, actually awake, and had been for some unnoticed, unmeasured time. I got up with more than usual ease and freedom of movement, too. I moved gently through the usual details of mornings: a shower, yoga, that first delicious hot cup of coffee, and catching up on the world a bit.

I feel… “relieved”.

I followed up with meditation, sitting contentedly in the open patio doorway, gazing out into the trees and my small container garden, as a soft rain fell. It’s hard to imagine a more delightfully contented moment.

I enjoy the soft rain after the scorching days of summer.

Much of the day, today, is being spent writing letters and calling legislators about issues that matter to me, mostly labor and wage stuff, quality of life concerns, universal healthcare, and judicial reform. I take some time for me, too; this right here and now me, the woman in the mirror – I’ve got some needs of my own, that are on my mind (wellness and quality of life concerns). I check out a Tai Chi studio online… I plan my weekend hikes.

Sometimes it is hard to really relax and completely recharge with just two days of weekend. This weekend I’ve got 4 days to work with. It’s quite wonderful.

I take a sip of what is left of my now cold coffee. There’s definitely time to enjoy another cup. I smile at the thought of my sparkling clean kitchen, and think happy thoughts about how supportive and helpful my Traveling Partner is, and how wonderful love is, just generally. Having a little help now and then can make so much difference! I remind myself gently that it is also helpful to ask for it when I need it, instead of letting myself fall behind.

Self-care takes a lot of forms. Like yoga, dance, flow practices, or martial arts, self-care has so many varied forms and combinations of supportive practices, it would seem possible that any one of us could assemble a system of practices that work ideally well for this one particular singular unique human primate that we are… It’s a damned big menu, though, and the variety itself can overwhelm and confuse. One thing at a time then? Why not? Pick up a practice. Practice it “awhile” – days, weeks, months, whatever it takes to determine with reliable certainty whether it is “for you” – let it go, if it isn’t. Keep it up, if it is. Either way, there’s no avoiding those verbs. We become what we practice. Incremental change over time can be so damned slow, but… it does happen. With practice. With repetition. With study. Each day a new beginning, and ample opportunity to fail, to be mistaken, to get it wrong, to re-do something, to try again – to become the human being we most want to be.

There are no short cuts.

It’s time. Make the most of the opportunity. ❤

Is it becoming more common to be less specific? I understand the general concept of “vague-booking”; we post a generalization of our experience in order to share an emotional experience without creating drama for ourselves or some specific other individual. I mean, I think generally our intention there is good, but… the meta message we end up communicating is incredibly easy to agree with… even if we are, in fact, entirely in the wrong in the context of our circumstances and decision-making. More than once, I have found, after-the-fact, that I’ve appeared to “agree with” something fairly terrible, when actually, I had no idea what had actually gone on… I only read the vague post about it, which, lacking context, seemed easy to agree with. Awkward.

…On the other hand, I also dislike drama, and tend to do some vague-booking chasing down the meta-learning available to me in every day experiences. 🙂 There’s a balance that I look for, and I hope (and attempt) not to be “agreed with” in error by people I know would object, if only they knew what was “really going on”. See, there’s the thing, right? If I’ve been so vague that it is not possible at all to ascertain what is “really going on”, then my vague-booking could actually be misleading to the point of deception, and that’s not at all what I’m about as a human being. So. There’s that.

This is where my morning begins. Thoughts about vague-booking over coffee. 🙂

The semantic and logical distance one must cover to get from “vague-booking” to this blog isn’t really very far. I use my real actual life to “sort myself out”, finding meta messages and simple learning in even some fairly complex nuanced circumstances. Sometimes that requires a bit of over-simplification. Sometimes, kind of a lot actually, I have to “sanitize” the details to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, or undermining their individual privacy (or mine) – vague happens. Vague is a craft. The point is not to mislead, but to craft a sharable narrative that illustrates a point, supports a useful practice, offers perspective or reassurance, or even merely entertains; the mundane details would often get in the way of one or more of those goals, and may even be irrelevant.

Being skillfully vague sometimes allows me to understand circumstances more easily without feeling as hurt by them. That’s also a thing. 🙂

I’m admittedly uncomfortable when I see vague-booking used to amass allies to a cause or to seek agreement with an opinion or “side” of things, though, because the lack of specificity in that instance can create false alliances so easily, or result in a feeling of betrayal once people understand more about what they’ve agreed to, or with. It’s an emotional dirty trick to use vague-booking specifically to “sound like the good guy”, in the face of strong evidence that indeed you may be the bad guy. Just saying. Approval-seeking behavior from super-villains isn’t something to encourage. It’s pretty easy, though, to get our friends – particularly far away friends – to agree we’ve been treated terribly, if they never actually know the context, the origin, the circumstances, or the participants, and only ever read how hurt we are, separated from our own actions, and the details of the experience.

Words over coffee… I’m not sure I’ve gotten anywhere with this, this morning… not really. Like the topic, itself, the outcome is vague.

I guess I’ll begin again. 😉