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What to Do About All of the Everything

September 30, 2016 //
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Yesterday was too much, a lot too much, and in a good way, which only made it more challenging to process and to wholly enjoy. Looking back on yesterday is still so intensely pleasing that it causes me some measure of actual anxiety, which is simultaneously somewhat amusing, and somewhat irritating, an emotional state of affairs usefully reminding me that I am… if not “unhinged”, potentially at least mildly at risk of having an unexpected emotional moment, inconveniently timed. I’ll be mindful of my humanity today, and treat myself well – gently, and with great compassion. I mean… I’ll make that a thing, in my awareness, and do my best. 🙂 Practices take practice.

Yesterday wasn’t so much fancy, or elaborately planned, or exotic; a party broke out at my place, unexpectedly awaiting my arrival home (surprise!), and to my great delight, all friends who are quite dear to me, my traveling partner, his son, a new personal device (my phone needed replacing, and the new one arrived), and although the din and the fun were exciting – and quite joyfully so – it was a lot to take. There was no place or time for meditation, or a few quiet minutes of conversation with my partner on “date night” – it was a celebration, though, among friends, and I had things I wanted to celebrate, for me, and so – party! Well-timed. Thoroughly enjoyed. I even managed to get to bed at an acceptable time to still get some rest, enough for a day’s work. Sipping my coffee this morning, I have no doubt I am loved, and fortunate to have a fair few good friends.

I sip my coffee. It’s different today. Quiet coffee. A fast efficient coffee maker stands on the counter. The process lacks the… ritual? The meditation. It lacks the meditation and formality of making a good pour over, but it is very quiet in the morning, with my traveling partner and son sleeping nearby. (The burr grinder is quite loud, and making a pour over at 5:00 am is a rude wake up call for those inclined to sleep, and the purchase was timed with sleeping visitors in mind.)

I fuss with the new phone a bit. Every iteration of new device is more… complicated. This one is lavish with options and features and things to sign into, to set up, and to configure. What a pain in the ass – and not something to delegate. Some human beings are very particular (looking your way, woman-in-the-mirror), and attempting to hand-off set up tasks results in aggravation later. This new device is “mine” right now in assigned phone number only; she lacks character, details, and quirks in the set up and configuration unique to my own needs. For one thing; I freaking detest audible notifications of most sorts, that annoying notification light is not welcome either, and I find haptic feedback buzzing my fingertips all the time damned creepy. All that stuff gets turned off on my devices, (I’ll check my phone when I please) and notifications get changed to options that neither irritate my nervous system, nor end up being unnoticeable (I just don’t ever seem to hear some ringtones).  So, it’s days ahead of periodically becoming fed up with some “feature” and “fixing it”, and moving on to the next when that next one bothers me.

Over time, an inanimate device becomes more personal to me. The result is a “phone” (a tiny super computer, really) that is part of who I am on a level that is probably quite inappropriate for my emotional health… it becomes harder and harder to let one go for the next one. This last grieved me – my damned phone almost seemed to “break up with me” in a very troubling way. (Usually, I let the phone go, not the other way around.) I doubt anyone noticed last night, as my old phone was being… de-personalized, when I shook my finger at her in passing and quietly said “I’m so over your bullshit. I’m done with you.” with tears in my eyes. It seemed a proper break up move, and I needed to let her go… It was still so very hard. I loved her.

Today is a good day to let the things go that don’t work – phones, stale metaphors, old leftovers, illusions, assumptions, a poor decision… There are things worthy of being dropped off along with the recycling and the trash. It’s a good day to walk on, from the last phone, the last job, old baggage, previous relationships – why carry all that with me? Sounds easy – it’s not that it isn’t as easy as it sounds; it takes practice, and verbs. Still… It is a new day, and I can begin again. New day… new phone… new camera (phone)… What does the moment hold?

New day. New camera. New settings. Begin again.

New day. New camera. New settings. Begin again.

 

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, grief, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being

Other Days, Other Choices

September 28, 2016 //
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I woke up feeling quite a bit better, but woke to the alarm. Infernal beeping. I dragged myself up on one elbow to find the alarm, and managed to shut it off, while also sweeping everything on my nightstand onto the floor. I sigh out loud, “Okay Wednesday,” I say softly into the darkness, “have it your way.” Turning on the light isn’t a complicated task, but I’m wobbly, unsteady, and a little dizzy. I didn’t sleep well for that last bit, and woke at an uncomfortably groggy point in my sleep cycle. I head for the shower, careening off the walls as I go, clumsy, uncoordinated…and unconcerned about it. I forget I have the option to slow down.

A shower, hot coffee, and yoga later and I feel alert, and definitely improved over yesterday. The interrupted restless sleep is taking its toll, though, and I frown wondering what I can do to get more better rest; I’m really starting to feel sleep deprived. I smile to myself; being aware of it is a big improvement.

Another coffee. Meditation. I considered not writing. This is all very practical uninteresting stuff, here, without much substance – a life being lived. Just one life. Just one set of choices. Very little drama. It doesn’t lend itself well to profundity or insight to feel so content, perhaps… I think I’d give up writing before I would give up contentment, and feel no resentment over the exchange at all. 🙂

Still…practices are what they are because they are ongoing. This is one such; a few minutes taken for/with myself, facing the woman in the mirror with frankness, and authenticity. Open to change. Checking out life’s menu for new options. Making my way in the world. So, I write a few words…

My thoughts are elsewhere this morning. My new phone will likely arrive today – that’s equal parts exciting and frightening, with a touch of inconvenient, just having to set it all up all over yet again. “Begin again” I say to myself, and I smile. It isn’t always an easy thing. It is, however, a thing.

Time to face the day…

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Sleepless Nights

Well, That’s Certainly Human

September 25, 2016 //
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Last night, late in the evening while hanging out with my traveling partner, I caught myself sniffling a bit. I shrugged it off and really thought nothing of it. Some minutes later, sniffling again, my traveling partner looks at me with a thoughtful expression and matter-of-factly notes “You got it. You got my cold.” I sort of brushed that off, hey – probably not? Maybe? Please? By the time we called the night over, I was sneezing.

This morning I woke too early, stuffy head, hearing muffled on one side, painful scratchy throat… I’m sick. Damn it. How tediously, grossly human. New job, new sickness? Nope, that’s for later, most likely; that one usually hits me about 3 weeks into a new call center job. lol I still have that to look forward to. This is more a souvenir of my traveling partner’s recent travels. Germs from afar! Like a present!  🙂 I’m still smiling, still laughing… probably spending much of the day in bed. I’ve still got work tomorrow. Shit. Sick at work in an open office environment is both unpleasant to endure, and likely to encourage the spread of this wicked whatever-the-fuck-it-is. I’m fortunate that I can simple grab my laptop and make haste for a smaller space in which to work, safely away from coworkers. I take a moment to feel grateful I spent yesterday on laundry and housekeeping.

This writing is interrupted regularly for dealing with the biological outcomes of being ill. I find myself wondering “why bother?” knowing I’m unlikely to get around to saying anything particularly meaningful. I frown at that thought, and wonder a bit morosely if I ever do; life filtered through the misery of sickness. lol I’m okay. It’s a cold. It sucks, but it’s very human.

I write a bunch more words, about nothing much at all. I delete them due to lack of substance. I write a bunch more words, about mundane details of life. I delete them, too, due to a perceived tone that seems subtly whiny, and carelessly inattentive to points of privilege I am fortunate to enjoy (a roof over my head, a secure place to sleep, potable hot and cold running water, indoor plumbing, a private bathroom, a well-stocked pantry, a fast internet connection… an internet connection, at all… there’s a lot that is easy to take for granted). I’m sick, and my writing reflects it. There are a lot of people who have a rough time of things in life. I’ve just got a head cold.

It is a head cold though, and having one feels miserable. Safe social practices make sense: hand-washing, covering coughs and sneezes, refraining from close contact, refraining from sharing utensils, food, or beverages, avoiding food prep tasks for other people’s meals, bleaching counters and surfaces – where possible, as I go. It’s not a lot, but these steps tend to slow the spread of illness. Even as sick as I am, I’ll take these steps as consistently as possible; being sick sucks, why would I spread that around? I “play it like a game” to stay mindful of good practices, since being sick also tends to cause a certain lack of fucks to give about pretty much everything else. I “win the game” if no one else I interact with catches the cold. 🙂

Today is a good day for exceptional self-care. Today is also a good day to be mindful that I’m ill, and that illness is contagious. Today is a good day for a large box of tissues, and a handful of practices, and a good book. 🙂

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Categories autumn, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching

Beyond the Obvious

September 24, 2016 //
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Morning came early today. 4:00 am on a Saturday seems earlier than necessary. I started the day with meditation, then yoga, quietly piecing together my self-care from the tattered remains of routines torn down by more spontaneous others. My traveling partner sleeps in his bedroom. His visiting son occupies another. I am awake, quietly, with my coffee, my laptop balanced in my lap, on a cushion.

The evening ended oddly. A wrong note in a beautiful symphony. A terse “you’re just wrong” interrupting an explanation, and an abrupt good-night hug and the evening was over. Human primates, still primates. In the moment, it felt dismissive and rude to be treated with disrespect, however inconsequential the detail. This morning I’m inclined to let it go; my traveling partner is as human as anyone. It was a moment, and the moment has passed. That it lingers in my recollection is more a matter of needing to take care to ensure that my hurt feelings don’t fester, and that I take time to acknowledge them, myself, and treat myself with respect and kindness. Emotional self-sufficiency for the win. 🙂

As with any choice, there are verbs involved.

As with any choice, there are verbs involved.

The kindest people are capable of being unkind. The most peaceful people have the potential to be provoked into a moment of violence. The loftiest of goals is only a daydream, without actions. Our most heartfelt beliefs have no substance that we don’t give them ourselves; reality does not care what we believe. The people who profess their love for us are also most likely to hurt us, most often and most deeply. We are most easily hurt by those who matter most to us. I sip my coffee and consider these assumptions. They are part of who I am. I accept them, generally, as fact. Are they? Experience suggests they are, and I’ve learned hard lessons that tend to reinforce these ideas as true in my own life. Still… I don’t know that these are factual statements, only that they are statements that tend to express some experience I have had, myself, as clearly as I am able to express it.

Learning to comfortably accept that we are each having our own experience has also been a journey to understanding that our ability to empathize, to understand, to “relate” to each other builds on a peculiar thing; the tendency to assume shared qualities of mind, of thinking, of values, and of experience in those with whom we share life, which is in no way actually assured. We really are each having our own experience. There is no reason to assume you know what I know, that you have lived what I have lived. We are tempted into it by the vast quantity of shared and common experiences we do have… but there is so much more to each of who we are than what we tend to assume about each other, or perhaps even ourselves. There’s a limited amount of “we”, really, and it isn’t always quite where I think it is, myself. Oddly, we are also so much more similar than we tend to think of ourselves… it’s… complicated.

In context, the larger context of a lifetime, a moment of impatience or rudeness is minutiae, hardly worth a second thought. 🙂

It's hard to unsay the words.

It’s hard to unsay the words.

The sky is just beginning to lighten. Occasionally I hear stirring in another room. A cough. A shuffle. A bump. Living creatures, living. Outside, too, life; ducks on the marsh call back and forth, disturbed by passing runners, and songbirds are commencing their morning announcements. Life. I sip my coffee and wonder what the day holds.

This here, this now, this is enough.

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Categories autumn, Free Will, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

It’s That Easy

September 23, 2016 //
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It’s amusing to me, this morning, that it took the better part of six months to stop reliably waking up before 5 am, even without my alarm set. One week of work, and this morning is a day off… and I comfortably and easily wake precisely at 5 am. No alarm. I could be sleeping in… only… I am no longer sleeping.

dododo

It’s always “now”, and the day begins.

An unreliable rain is falling. I’m sure it means to be a rainy morning for the effort the sky seems to be making, but so far it seems only a few moments of rain, and at best just a brief pattering of raindrops on the flue cover, before giving up. A half-hearted sort of rain. I’ve planned to be camping this weekend, with my traveling partner and son. My traveling partner was quite ill yesterday, and it seems unlikely he’ll be over it for a weekend of camping in the rain and chill of autumn approaching. I don’t yet know what the weekend really holds. It’s still quite dark outside.

I could expect to sleep in, and let the morning be wrecked out of frustrated expectations. I’d rather just get up, make some coffee, and enjoy the morning as it is, and so I make that a choice.

I could be invested in planning details of the camping trip that may or may not happen, and become irritable over plans not coming to fruition, or any number of life’s reroutes along the journey. I could be annoyed by the rain. I could be disappointed by my partner coming down sick, and become irritable over how inconsiderate I would also then feel. I’d rather simply enjoy the day, as it unfolds, maybe camping – prepared for it – maybe not – prepared for that, too, and enjoy life’s journey as it is. This too is a choice.

I could choose differently. Moment-to-moment, my will is my own – most particularly when I make it so. More verbs. Choose. 🙂 Today is a good day to choose wisely, to choose joy, and to choose contentment. These are choices, my choices. What will you choose? 🙂

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Categories autumn, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being
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