Archives for category: Anxiety
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Start, Stop, Begin Again

December 1, 2025 //
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Sometimes things feel harder than they seem they should. Misinformation everywhere. The practical details of life getting more costly every week, every month. Paychecks don’t keep up with that unless you happen to be among the very affluent (and then it’s less that the paycheck keeps up than maybe you don’t need to notice the minutiae or count the pennies). (Remember pennies?) Balancing the load takes up a lot of mental bandwidth, even for folks who are very organized and pretty prepared. It’s exhausting.

…It’s okay to admit it when you’re tired…

My head aches. My arthritis pain is actually making me feel ill. I’m distracted from one priority task by the next ostensibly higher priority task. Subjectively, I feel like I “used to be better at juggling all of this”, but I’m not sure that’s literally true. I suspect I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed by the lingering artifacts of chaos that arrived ahead of me (to this job) or which defy attempts to bring order (the chaos and damage in my own head), or perhaps I am succumbing to the stress of watching the decline of democracy, in spite of my attempt to avoid spending potentially productive time on that bullshit. (It’s not bullshit because it isn’t real, it’s bullshit because it doesn’t need to be this way, and we somehow chose this shit in spite of being told what was coming if we did.)

I’m tired. Not because I’m working my ass off on some construction job site, or laboring on a factory floor, or in a fulfillment warehouse, or on my feet all day. Brain tired. Soul tired. It’s feeling too much like a hamster wheel, some days, and too little like living.

…This too will pass…

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I take a moment to scrounge in my handbag for another dose of Rx pain management, only to discover I’ve already taken that, and I’m already “maxed out” for a work day. Well, shit. I sigh to myself, finish the watered-down dregs of my morning coffee, knowing I’ll likely regret that later tonight. I pull myself upright, and pause to offer someone a compliment for work well done. I find giving others sincere encouragement or expressing gratitude for some task or service someone has provided often distracts me from the pain I’m in. Certainly it’s a better reaction to pain than sobbing or throwing a tantrum. I’d happily just sit somewhere gazing out a window, letting my mind empty itself of concerns, and even thoughts. Parking this fragile vessel and leaving her to idle for awhile would feel pretty good, but… I don’t have time.

…The clock is ticking…

It helps to have a break, and I’m glad I took one. It’s not enough, but it will do for the moment. I imagine the stern look on the face of the woman in the mirror, right now, she knows I could do a better job of taking care of myself than I often do. I make her a promise I probably won’t keep, and hope that she understands. It has to be enough… it’s the best I can do right now. Isn’t it?

…”No. Do better.” I imagine her answering, “You matter. You can at least take a proper fucking break…”

I sigh again, and get up from my desk to take a proper break. The sun is shining. I go outside and get some fresh air, and watch the squirrels play for a few minutes, and stretch. It’s chilly but not cold. The sunshine feels good. Now I feel ready to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anhedonia, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, War and News of War

Camera Settings (it’s a metaphor)

November 30, 2025 //
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I’m at the trailhead, waiting for the sun. I could walk in the predawn darkness, but this morning I choose to wait for a bit of light. Daybreak comes, and I sit with my thoughts a few minutes longer.

One morning, one moment, unique and brief.

I am thinking about how differently two individuals (any two) can view the same set of circumstances (any circumstances) or even a shared experience. We are each having our own experience. We each view the world through the lens of our own perspective, further altered by the filters of our expectations and past experiences. As with cameras, the differences in our “equipment” (our education, our economic situation, our individual values) make some difference, too, but our “camera settings” – the choices we make, how skillfully we adapt to new information, our critical thinking skills and willingness to apply those – often matter more. A lot more. An affluent person with a great degree who comes from “a good family” can still be a heartless dumbass carelessly wrecking other lives, which is to say, rather obviously, that the photographer matters more, to a point, than the camera does.

When we view the world, or even some brief moment, we bring our baggage with us. We see the world through the lens and filters of our individual experiences and understanding, making us prone to some pretty fucked up errors in thinking. You do, I promise you. I do, too. They do. We do. There are no exemptions and there is no escape. We can only do our individual best with that shit, making a point to be kind, considerate, thoughtful, and reasonable. We can make a point to listen deeply – a whole other huge endeavor that requires learning and practice (and is super worthwhile). We can ask clarifying questions – and hear (and accept) the answers. We can assume positive intent, and understand that generally speaking, most people are doing their everyday best, or think they are, without any desire to cause harm. We can refrain from taking shit personally (it mostly just isn’t). None of this is “easy”, at least not at first, but it can all be done willfully and with practice it becomes pretty natural.

It’s on my mind this morning because I’m human. I’m prone to seeing the world through my own eyes and overlooking how many other potentially also quite valid perspectives there are, which others may hold. There is often more than one “right answer” to life’s questions. Acceptable behavior is very context dependent. Two photographers at the same location, taking a picture of the same bird, will get two different pictures. It’s the same bird. Neither picture could be described as “wrong” or “incorrect”, they are pictures of some real, lived, moment. (Let’s leave AI images out of this discussion entirely, since delusions are their own thing, related but not what I’m going on about this morning.) The point I’m making is that for practical, cognitive, and contextual reasons, we really are each having our own experience.

It’s pointless to argue that someone’s feelings in some moment are “incorrect”; emotion is very subjective. It is unhelpful to reject someone’s understanding of circumstances, even in those instances when it seems obvious they’ve gotten some fact wrong. Most people cling to their own subjective flawed understanding of the world, even when provided with facts to the contrary. Human primates are limited that way. Yelling other information at a human primate trying to force a shared perspective doesn’t generally work very well, either. Even if you were to pass your camera over to another photographer, position them precisely where you stood to “see things from your perspective”, they would still get a different picture of the scene.

I don’t have an easy solution to offer on the many ways our individual perspectives complicate our interactions with other individuals. Communication is a lot of work. Building community and nurturing healthy relationships is a lot of work. People often don’t listen to each other, and when they do they often don’t accept what they hear (or don’t make good use of the information). People are emotional creatures who persist in trying to put reason and logic in charge, in spite of clear evidence that emotion arrives to every party before intellect does.

I guess one path forward is maybe practice those listening skills. Gratitude, kindness, and consideration are great steps on a path to “common decency”, too. Accepting that your way (or opinion, or choice of religion) is not the only way, is a stepping stone further on the path. Hell, your way – the path you choose – may not even be the best way. You don’t know enough as one human primate to make that determination; it’s a big world and the menu of The Strange Diner has a lot of options. There is a lot to learn and experience in life.

Tis the season

I sigh to myself, thinking about recent days and moments of conflict or stress. Looking back it often seems so obvious what different choices could have been made in the moment with better results. I focus my attention on my own behavior; it’s the part I can control, myself. I practice letting go of lingering hurt feelings, reframing experiences through a different lens, and examining my “filters” for fallacies and thinking errors. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I improve my perspective and my understanding through self-reflection. I practice the practices that have helped bring me so far, already. Non-attachment. Gratitude. Meditation. Letting small shit stay small. Savoring small wins and simple joys, and giving disappointment, resentment, and anger less room to live in my head.

Practice is more than a word. Practice is a verb. “Do the verbs”, I remind myself.

The sun rises. The day begins. I see my path stretching forward, between the oaks and along the meadow’s edge. I’ve got my camera, and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, joy, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

When It Gets Real

November 26, 2025 //
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I started my walk quite early. Before sunrise. Before dawn. Before daybreak even hinted at a new day beginning. I walked down the dark trail, the circle of light cast around me by my headlamp bobbing and shifting with my steps. Nothing much to see besides wet leaves and an occasional slug. It is warmer than recent mornings. I walk with my cardigan open, in spite of occasional raindrops.

For me, trail walking is a useful metaphor for following a path in life. It has everything I am likely to need to more deeply contemplate this very human journey as I walk. I’ve even got occasional obstacles along the way, as in life itself. I walk with my thoughts. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Over time, gratitude has become such a natural practice that I often find an attitude of presumed entitlement to be… boorish and crude, astonishing and distasteful.

I smile to myself as I walk. I’ve come a long way on this journey.

I’ve changed a lot over the years. I don’t have much in common with the woman who left the Army at 30, bitter, damaged, and full of a poisonous diffuse rage waiting to find a target. Nor do I have much in common with the chaotic and bewildered young woman who joined up at 17, fairly certain she had no other reasonable prospects. I don’t have much in common with the woman who quit her job to paint full-time at 52, either. (She quickly discovered that although she loved to paint, she was pretty dreadful at the business of art, and returned to the workforce when her savings ran out.) I probably have a little more in common with some much younger past version of myself…13? 14? Idealistic, optimistic, hopeful, generally cheerful, eyes wide with wonder, and a head full of notions – now that’s a girl worth hanging out with for some giggles and good conversations!

Funny thing about that much younger version of me… she didn’t have many useful tools in her toolbox at that age, and her choices to “just walk away” when things got “too real” taught me a lot, although they were poorly considered, and fairly stupid decisions. Did abandoning everything and just walking away from my life ever fix anything? No, not generally, but once or twice it helped me turn a corner or make a clean break that legitimately served me well. It’s taking a sledgehammer to an annoying fly, though; imprecise, with far greater destructive potential than required. I still think about it, now and then, when life is at its most stressful… there’s freedom in walking on.

… Every morning, I lace up my boots and walk on. It’s a useful metaphor for change and for progress, and for following a path…

Do you ever think about just walking away from everything and everyone you know, and striking out on a completely new path? Do you consider how few and how small the practical changes actually need to be to thoroughly change your whole life as the effects ripple through the whole of your experience day-to-day? One small change, well-practiced over time, could be enough to change your experience of life, generally. That’s kind of a big deal… Useful.

…One step at a time down the path, I keep walking with my thoughts…

A brief rain shower passes by, enough to dampen my hair. I keep walking. I slip on slick leaves at the edge of a puddle, and slide a short distance before catching my balance. I keep walking. A steeper bit of trail slows me down a little, just where the pavement ends and the trail becomes muddy earth. I keep walking. I walk past vineyards and trees, and along the edge of a grassy bit of meadow, and along the bank of a creek. The trail is familiar, but there are new things to see most days – each moment and day are their own unique experience. Each walk, too, is its own experience, wherever it takes me. Wherever I take myself, this remains true, down any path I choose to follow; I am having my own experience, and I have the power to change it.

I’m grateful for the ability to walk these solitary miles with my thoughts. Grateful for the well maintained trails available to me. Grateful for the safe community and parks to walk through. Grateful, too, that I have the will to do the walking. It’s no small effort to go down the path, step after step, in darkness or daylight, morning after morning. I “treat myself” to a few moments sitting quietly at some stopping point to rest, reflect, and write. I’m grateful that I can, and that I do. Sometimes I still find myself thinking about “walking away from it all” when times are stressful and difficult, but I rarely act on flights of fancy, and a nice walk alone with my thoughts is generally enough to sort myself out and find acceptance and a suitable path forward.

Anxiety vexing me? Maybe a nice walk will help? Feeling angry and struggling to deal with it? How about a walk, and some time to reflect and gain perspective? Feeling blue or bitter? A lovely walk in the countryside could be just the thing to put me right. I prefer to walk away from a shitty situation… but the choice of trail or path I take doesn’t need to be some permanent departure from life, the world, or my circumstances. Sometimes I just need a bit of a break, a chance to reflect, and a walk outside in the fresh air.

G’damn, y’all, how fucking basic and mundane am I? I chuckle to myself, remembering a young woman of 14, and her daydreams of an adventurous adulthood filled with amazing experiences, lessons learned over time, and fantastic tales to tell. Sure, sure, I’ve seen some things, done some living and faced my share of struggles. I do manage to find some amusement in discovering that what I enjoy most is a stable, comfortable sort of ordinary lifestyle, without much excitement or drama. A pleasant walk and a good cup of coffee have turned out to be more meaningful and more worthwhile than an elegant fine dining experience, or some long-sought professional achievement. That realization drove a lot of my shift toward a focus on sufficiency and gratitude. Over time it has been profoundly helpful for soothing my stormy emotions, and improving my perspective on life, generally.

None of this is to say that my way is the way, or that this path must also be your path. We’re each having our own experience. Making our own choices. Walking our own paths.

The rain begins to fall more steadily. I pull my rain poncho from my pocket and pull it over my head. Daybreak comes with the rain. I get to my feet in the gloomy half-light of dawn. It’s time to begin again, and this path won’t walk itself.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anger, Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, grief, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, War and News of War, Words

The Secret to Better Sleep

November 23, 2025 //
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Well…a secret to better sleep, anyway, there are others. Sleep hygiene is tricky. The modern world has a lot of distractions, and a single day sometimes seems too short to fit everything in it. Sleep difficulties can become sleep disorders over time, and there are many of those, each with their own characteristics and common causes.

Over a lifetime, I’ve experienced many sleep disturbances: nightmares, insomnia, sleep paralysis, night terrors, “exploding head” dreams, somnambulance, talking in my sleep, paradoxical insomnia, hypnagogia, apnea… That’s not an exhaustive list. I have a difficult relationship with sleep, and always have. These experiences aren’t limited to my adult lifetime, some have been characteristics of my sleep since early childhood. Some don’t trouble me anymore at all. Some linger as occasional occurrences. Here’s the thing, though, I mostly sleep pretty well, generally, these days. Yes, there’s actually “a trick to it”, one single small change that made a really big difference.

I’m not going to drown you in words making you wait for me to share this incredibly useful practical change that did so much to help me get better, healthier sleep. No subscription. No course to purchase. Also no promise offered nor guarantee being made, I just know this one detail has made all the difference (for me). I reset my expectations about sleep, and I stopped being stressed out and frustrated over not sleeping.

… That’s it.

Like a small town on along the highway, if you blinked you may have missed it. What was the change I made? No kidding, I changed my relationship with, and expectations of, sleep. That has been the thing that has done the most to improve my sleep. I still have occasional (sometimes frequent) sleep disturbances, but they rarely amount to a “disorder” these days, and they rarely last long or recur endlessly. See, it was the frustration, stress, and anxiety over not sleeping that resulted in the worst adverse effects of impaired sleep over time, not the impaired sleep itself. The emotional reaction to not sleeping restfully caused more problems than occasional failures to sleep ever could.

Seriously. It isn’t that noise keeping you awake, or the light, or the ticking of the clock, or that other person’s breathing. More often than not, it’s the stressed, frustrated, angry emotional response to not sleeping. The more vexed by our wakefulness we become, the worse our difficulty getting back to sleep. That’s been my experience, anyway. Take it for what it is; subjective experience, and a sample size of one.

I’m not saying changing one’s perspective on something as vexing as poor sleep is easy, or that it takes less practice than any other willful change. It takes practice, and commitment, and repetition, and I failed a lot and endured many annoying, sleepless, restless nights getting from “there, then” to here, now. It’s a huge improvement, though. The stress and frustration, anger, and despair over not sleeping was doing a lot more damage to my overall wellness and quality of life than my impaired sleep was, though. So…

Now, when I am wakeful, I turn on soft lighting unlikely to rouse me, and read awhile (taking care to choose reading material unlikely to cause excitement, itself), or get up briefly for a drink of water, and some meditation. Nightmares? I let myself wake in my familiar safe environment and soothe myself with a bit of meditation and return to sleep after my nightmares fade. I accept that I have some sleep challenges, and refrain from worsening those with aggressively anxious or frustrated rumination, obsessive blame-laying, or defeated self-talk. The acceptance itself is a useful tool. I’ve stopped trying to force my sleep pattern to comply with some notion of what sleep should look like, and I allow myself to sleep as suits me best. Does that “fix” my insomnia? No, but it doesn’t bother me when I wake during the night, or struggle to fall asleep. I just go with it. The result being that I am more likely to fall back to sleep fairly quickly – and on those occasions when I don’t, I’m not beginning my day in a negative emotional state on top of being tired.

I sit quietly at the trailhead, thinking my thoughts and grateful for the pretty good sleep I enjoyed last night. Did I sleep through the night? No. I rarely do, but I wasn’t awake long, and sleep returned relatively quickly. It took a long time for me to learn that the stress over poor sleep was doing more damage to my sleep than the poor sleep itself would do. It took even longer to really accept how true that was and do something useful with that information. Along the way, my sleep improved, quite a lot, because I also made a point to learn and practice good sleep hygiene, generally. All the many practices I practice intended to improve my emotional wellness and physical health have also helped improve my sleep.

I guess what I’m saying is that changing my response to poor sleep in the moment has done more to improve the quality of my sleep than any one other change.

I sit with that thought awhile. I’m happy to share it without monetary gain, and I hope you find it useful if you struggle with poor sleep. There are still verbs involved, and you’ll have to do the work of making a change on your own. I can’t really help with that. I hope you do though, and I hope you get the rest you need to be and become the person you most want to be. We’re all more pleasant and capable when we get the rest we need.

Another day, another chance to begin again.

Daybreak comes. It is a gray and wintry looking autumn morning. The oaks have lost most of their leaves. The surface of the marsh ponds is still and dark. The sky is a featureless wash of gray-blue. The path stretches ahead, disappearing around a bend. I breathe in the chilly autumn air; no scents of flowers now, only the autumn damp, and a hint of rain to come. I exhale, letting lingering background worries go with my exhalation, dissipating with the cloud of my breath. Lovely morning. A good morning to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, Words

Don’t You Know It’s Dark Outside?

November 22, 2025 //
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I slept in a little, this morning, a rare and delightful experience for me. I woke rested and eager to begin the day.

My Traveling Partner is awake and greets me happily. There’s so much love in his eyes and his words. He playfully quotes song lyrics to me in lieu of conversation. He knows I won’t assume any ill intention (the lyrics are fron a song with a vaguely threatening tone). Neither of us is a jealous sort of person. We both find jealousy toxic and destructive. We enjoy word play, and have a lot of fun in using song lyrics in conversation; it’s amusing when we spot it, and often just as funny when we don’t. I feel wrapped in his love as I leave the house, and the chilly morning doesn’t dampen my good cheer – I know I’ll come home to the warmth of my Partner’s love.

One dark and foggy autumn morning.

It’s enough later in the morning that it’s almost daybreak when I get to the trailhead. I decide to write a bit and wait for the sun. It is Saturday, and it is my weekend.

I find myself noticing that I’m feeling somewhat nauseous. This early in the morning, nausea on an empty stomach (for me) is pretty rare. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly and thoroughly and begin doing a “body scan”, making a point to be present in my physical experience and aware of all the many feelings and sensations. I quickly determine my nausea is most likely a byproduct of pain, nothing more (or less) serious than that. I’ve already taken my morning medications, but they haven’t yet had time to reach peak effectiveness. I sigh to myself, and stretch, change my posture, continue breathing, and hoping the pain eases shortly. I’ve got an appointment later that may be helpful.

I sigh quietly, feeling mostly pretty contented and merry while I wait for the sun. Could be worse. This is just physical pain, and although it is pretty bad this morning, my anxiety of the past several days is greatly diminished, somehow making the pain both more obvious and less significant. Meaning to say, I guess, context matters and perspective is useful.

What does “enough” look like?

Dawn comes, gray and foggy. It’s a spooky sort of misty autumn morning, chilly but not freezing. I can see the trail quite easily, and I’ll have it to myself; I am alone here. Quite alone. I embrace the solitude and joyfully seek it out. I know it’s not the sort of thing that suits everyone. I even recognize that my enduring fondness for time alone is a reflection of past trauma; I feel safe and at peace alone, less anxious, unconcerned about the expectations, needs, and experiences of other people. It’s just me and this trail right here, now. Sure, I often (sometimes quite quickly) find myself missing the charm and companionship of my Traveling Partner, but he is understanding and encouraging of self-care, and knows how much this solitary time nurtures me. Self-reflection is a healthy practice, and I enjoy walking with my thoughts.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. After a few minutes of meditation, I grab my hat and my cane, and wrap my scarf around my neck. Already time to begin again… the trail leads into the marsh, disappearing into the fog. I get to my feet, ready to follow it where it leads.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Words
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