It’s been a lovely relaxed weekend, filled with unexpected moments of delight and love. Pleasant. Restful. Even productive. I’ve enjoyed each lovely loving moment without reservations. I’ve found purpose and growth in the handful of moments that were less than ideally delightful. Hell, no hard feelings, either; it is probably an unreasonable fantasy (and an unsustainable reality, at best, and only occasionally, if ever) to contemplate a life of endless contentment and joy. Rain falls. Humans are human. 🙂 I value the opportunities to grow and to be more the woman I most want to be, although, sometimes, in spite of how the information reaches me.
It was a rainy autumn weekend, and I’ve no reason to complain about that.
Several times this weekend I’ve taken a moment to reflect on where I am, and where I seem headed, relative to where I began, and who I have been. It’s been an interesting journey.
The wintry wood beyond the deck inspires me to paint scenes of winter. Shades of gray. Whites. Blacks. Winter days. Winter nights. I let my mind wander, thoughts of paintings to come. 🙂
I woke during the night, several times. I managed to get enough rest, I think, in spite of that. It took a bit longer than usual to fully wake up. Still… it’s a new day, and I’m awake now, and working through the interlude between the first and second coffees of my morning. Pretty routine stuff.
How about that election, eh? Nothing more really needs to be said about that, I think, at least not by me.
At one point, while I was up during the wee hours, I stood in the darkness at the door to the deck, standing in the chill of an autumn night, door open to the smell of forest and creek, listening to peeping frogs and insects, and a nearby owl. I gazed up at the stars for rather a while, before I returned to bed, and to sleep. It was quite a lovely moment, well-spent. It required nothing of me beyond my presence, and it was “enough”. I felt somehow nourished by the autumn-scented stillness, standing there in the dark.
Another time, I woke, and contentedly wandered the house. No purpose to my quiet footsteps, aside from enjoying being wrapped in this pleasant little dwelling, feeling safe and loved, there in the darkness.
Another time, I just woke up to pee was all, and having done so returned to sleep quite easily.
I didn’t give myself any grief over my wakefulness. There wasn’t any stress associated with it. I simply woke, now and then, for some minutes, and returned to sleep afterward. No harm. No injury. No particular inconvenience. I may not have mentioned it at all, if I hadn’t happened to take a look at my blog to answer a question about a date in the past, out of curiosity, and noticed I have not written in some days. lol Sleep (or lack thereof) seems the sort of thing I’d write about, as much as anything. So, I did. 😀
I look at the time. I notice, again, that my coffee is gone. Time to begin again, I think, and why not start with another cup of coffee?
I slept poorly. I slept very little. I woke to the alarm, set for the latest acceptable time to wake before a work day. I made coffee…
…Pretty much all down hill from there, so far. “It is what it is.” I’m in pain. I’m slowed way down with fatigue. I’m cross… with pretty much the world, and everything in it. I’m easily frustrated. Easily angered.
…Did I mention the crossness?
I sat down to work with zero enthusiasm. It’s a very human experience. I’m glad the week is at its end; I’m over it, for sure.
Nothing much sounds any good right now. No solutions that I could consider seem worth considering. If it were solely my own choice, I’d log into a video game and kill monsters for a while, because honestly, that’s what I want to do more than anything else right now; kill monsters. Monster-slaying being generally discouraged “in real life” (most particularly considering by far the vast majority of the monsters most of us face will be in human form, and that would be murder, which is totally not allowed), video games are the near-at-hand proxy.
…I’ve got work…
Yeah. So. I’m in a shit mood, and I’m in pain, and I’d very much like to be left entirely alone right now. The world intrudes. Every minute I have to interact with another person, right now, is an irritant. I’d just fucking go back to bed, if that were an option. Hell, I don’t even want to be around me, right now. Not fun. Less than my ideal best self, for real, y’all.
Work is work. I remind myself I get paid for being a reasonable facsimile of my most professional “best self” for the purposes of completing the work day (and week). I eye my calendar with distaste. Meetings. With people. I look them over with care. Who am I having to meet with? Can it be rescheduled without consequences that ripple into the weeks ahead? Can the underlying need be met without having a meeting at all? Was I invited to meetings I don’t need to be part of? Are there optional meetings that I can simply opt out of without concern? I reschedule what I can. I opt out of those that I don’t need to be part of or have no obligations to. The day still looks unpleasantly full. I frown at my calendar. I frown at my coffee. I frown at the shade still drawn, obscuring the sky beyond the window.
I sip my cold coffee, and allow work to distract me from being pissed off about having to work “on such a completely shit day” (it isn’t, actually). I take a deep breath with each new interaction with a colleague, making a point of being “pleasantly neutral” as much as I can be, seeking to avoid reactions that become over-reactions. Bad moods can be “contagious”. I’d like to avoid sharing this around.
My head aches with fighting off tears; there is no room on my calendar for crying, today. My back aches from the general nuisances of aging, and my arthritis. My cold coffee is gone. Finished. Consumed. I’d like to have another, but don’t really want to interact with my Traveling Partner. (Yep, I’m in that shitty of a mood, this morning, and disinclined to “make shit worse”.) I’ve forgotten my water bottle, too. So… it’s just me and the work in front of me, in this quiet room, alone.
Today is turning out to be a less than pleasant day. I mean… it could be worse. I already voted, and it is not a headache to do that in Oregon. So… there’s that. Win? It’s something, at least. I make a point of being aware of the small win. In many other respects today is mostly fairly shitty.
…Well… a whole bunch of the moments are annoying, unpleasant, frustrating, ineffective uses of time, or wasted in a cascade of interruptions when I am struggling to concentrate. I slept badly. It’s been downhill from the moment I woke, although I’m certain that I had choices that could have been chosen rather differently, potentially with better outcomes.
This headache, though. This arthritis pain. Fatigue. Lack of focus. The sensation that I “can’t hear myself think”. A feeling of “falling behind”. The lack of sleep is just the sprinkles on the icing of a relatively crappy day.
…Crappy days are a thing. Everyone gets a few. I try not to take it personally. I try to refrain from allowing my shitty mood to become weaponized. I try not to allow myself to pass on the shitty experience to anyone else.
The work day is almost over. It really hasn’t been “personal”, at all. I’m tired and I’m in pain – that pretty reliably has significant potential to be rendered as “a shitty day”. I imagine shrugging it off, and find myself simultaneously amused and annoyed that the text editor in WordPress does not have a default menu of emoji for day-to-day use, and chuckle to myself when I realize how much I actually do use emoji instead of written word – even at work. Wow. How 21st century am I?
…I guess I’m at least 21st century enough to have a solid grasp of the practices involved in emotional wellness, resilience, and bouncing back from a shitty moment… I know how to begin again. 😉
Sipping coffee between housework tasks. It’s a rather ordinary sunny, chilly, autumn Sunday. I hear my Traveling Partner working on a project in his woodshop. Lovely day. I mean… lovely day right here. Your results, based on a quick look at this morning’s news headlines, may vary.
It’s a beautiful day to make good choices, and to be that person we most want to be.
…What a mess we’ve made… I mean… as a nation, a society… a species. Just saying. We could do better.
So… the U.S. election is in progress. “Election Day” is just a couple days away. I hope you are not imagining any great ease in national tension based on some particular outcome…? It’s unfortunate that we’ve allowed our political discourse to degrade to false dichotomies and ad hominem attacks. Growing and maintaining a society built on equality, rights, and freedoms shared by all requires a more subtle understanding than that, it would seem. We have, by that measure, failed entirely. It’s sad to observe the increasing racial tensions in so many cities, and hate-filled rhetoric becoming so commonplace, everywhere.
Full disclosure? I’m neither a republican nor a democrat. Nope, not “green party” or libertarian, either. (Nor communist, socialist, fascist, or other organized party affiliation of any brand.) I’ve still got a stake in how things turn out; I’m American. I live here. I shop here. I work here. I earn here. I invest here. I hike and camp here. I enjoy the local roads and infrastructure here. I vote here. This particular election season I voted as early as I could. I think our method of voting is fairly horrible, and doesn’t have much potential for any outcome other than degrading into a two-party system (or system in which only two parties have a legitimate chance at a win). Our government is implicitly institutionally racist – it’s also implicitly and institutionally sexist, and extremely so. I dislike both those things. I vote specifically against those conditions, and I look for opportunities to do so.
Feeling down about the election this year? I encourage you to (re)watch South Park season 8, episode 8, “Douche and Turd”. Definitely. If you’re looking for something more… hopeful… I recommend CGP Gray (on YouTude) episodes from his Politics in the Animal Kingdom work. There are better ways available to us. We’d only have to decide to do differently.
…Honestly, I don’t understand why we have not yet embraced – fully embraced, for real – direct democracy. Legitimate actual democracy. We certainly have the technology to build a secure system for online voting, already. (Do you doubt that is true? I direct your attention to the various online banks and similar systems, as well as your basic banking ATM. Also… the NSA. We don’t lack adequate encryption methods for secure online voting. That’s one challenge we don’t face at this point in time.) We already know the electoral college has nothing whatsoever to do with a democratic election, and is an artifact of another time. (I sound like I am on the edge of ranting. My apologies. You don’t need that from me, of all people. I’m simply continue to be astonished at the lengths parties will seem to go to, in order to restrict people from being able to vote at all. It rather undermines the very concept of democracy.) That’s what sours me most on “this great nation”, I think, we call ourselves a democracy, but we don’t actually mean it “for real”. We very much prefer that our democracy return only results that we personally favor, however harmful or distasteful to the majority. 😦
Please at least just fucking vote, okay? Not a joke vote. Not a “protest vote”. Really vote. Maybe it “doesn’t matter” to you in any way you acknowledge – but it matters to the lives, the literallives, of so many other people… please? Vote. And… just saying… if you’re going to vote at all, why not also make your choices based on outcomes that will truly serve the largest number of Americans in the best possible ways? All Americans. Even the ones you don’t like, personally. 🙂 Instead of focusing on an assortment of party platforms that were chosen to serve those in power (or the special interests they have obligated themselves to), just put your vote on what will serve Americans – all Americans – the best possible way, resulting in the best possible quality of life for every one of us – and not at the expense of other Americans, or even other nations. It’s not a zero sum game. It’s not a fucking pie. It’s time we all changed our thinking to get better results for the survival of humankind. It’s not about the money.
It’s time to begin again. Let’s start with what we’re voting for.
Evening Light 