Archives for category: Brain Injury
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Deal With It

May 7, 2023 //
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I watched a couple videos recently that “spoke to me”. One is a child coaching her Mom about treating people well – it’s a study in emotional intelligence. The other is a favorite content creator’s take on the way so many people make themselves miserable. I liked each of these for different reasons, but they both really resonated with me in some way, and I am sharing them with you – maybe you’ll find something of value in these, too? 🙂

I am sipping my coffee on a chilly Sunday morning in Spring. The weather looks nice. It was pleasant yesterday, too. My Traveling Partner and I hung out most of yesterday, talking over his gear as he packs for a trip away. I am simultaneously looking forward to a few days home alone, and also dreading the first moment my heart and soul realize he isn’t right here. lol I know I want (and need) the alone time, but… I will still miss him like crazy a lot. I’m not really looking forward to missing him; that bit hurts more than a little bit. I’ll be okay though – I’ll deal with it.

Sometimes the only thing we can do with or about a challenge in life is… deal with it. Cope. Accept something unpleasant or unavoidable. Change something within my power to make a change. Let it pass. Move along. Walk on. Breathe. Take action. Understand that results will likely vary. Demonstrate endurance and resilience. Adapt.

I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. Honestly, we could use a few days to miss each other – super helpful now and then, simply having the chance to reflect on the absence of someone dear, and be reminded how much we value their companionship, their humor, their touch, or other specific details that characterize our experience together.

I woke after a restless night. My Traveling Partner woke me a couple times during the night to ask me to roll over or change position. My snoring must have been pretty bad. I woke feeling relatively well-rested. I must have been clumsy and bumbling about making a racket in spite of myself; he woke shortly after I did, annoyed and not feeling well-rested at all. I made coffee for both of us, and made haste to the studio, to give him a chance to wake up and sort himself out without interference from me. Soon enough we’ll both forget these sorts of moments while we are missing each other and other sorts of moments we spend together. I’m grateful he’s thought of so many little things to make the time apart as low stress as possible. I smile, sip my coffee, and think nice thoughts at this human being I love so well, sipping his coffee in the other room on a chilly Spring morning.

…Camping season (for me) already…? It’s definitely feeling that way. The nights are warmer. The days are longer. The gear is ready. My partner is taking the truck for some solo camping this week. We’ve got a camping trip together planned for my birthday. I’m excited about that. 60 this year. It’s been 10 years of Evening Light. (Wow!) That’s worth celebrating. 😀

Another sip of this very good cup of coffee, and I start thinking about the day ahead. Sunday. Housekeeping mostly, I guess, and getting ready for the week ahead. I’ll have some alone time, but it’s also a work week. No point going to the co-work space; I’ll work from home this week. I’m looking forward to that too. Sunday is still laundry day, and grocery shopping if any needs to be done, and dishes, and taking out trash and recycling… routine household chores. Good day for it. I’ll get out into the garden for a while, too, I suppose. A merry and ordinary Sunday ahead…

…I suppose there’s nothing left to do but begin again…

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring

Brain Fog

May 4, 2023 //
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This morning I woke rather abruptly, uncertain of the time. Just at that moment, my silent alarm went off; the lights came up, and it was clearly “morning”. Time to get up, start a new day… just… give me a minute… I sat there for 2 or maybe 3 minutes before I moved at all. This is probably pretty routine for a lot of people. For me, not so routine – I usually get up when I wake, and start doing something, if only getting dressed and taking morning medication. This morning I was stricken with brain fog, and rather stupidly pre-occupied with a work matter that I can’t do a fucking thing about until later. Quite a bit later, actually. Shit.

My Traveling Partner was already up, himself. He is awake and preparing to go back to the service provider who installed the lift kit on our truck; they did it incorrectly, and the manufacturer of the lift kit has confirmed that. Time to have our service provider make it right. :-\ I don’t envy my partner’s mission, and I definitely get how it affects his mood, which is to say, relatively notably (he’s understandably pissed off). Sucks that this is where his day begins. (Also sucks that it is where our day ended yesterday evening, when he got the email from the lift kit manufacturer confirming the installation requirements.)

My brain was way too foggy to be a skillfully helpful and supportive human this morning. I felt wholly distracted (and not productively) by work shit. I felt impatient with my Traveling Partner’s continued focus on the truck, the lift kit, the annoyance that it was installed incorrectly. I earnestly wanted to “empty my mind” and just … be. The brain fog was not helping. I got my shit together (everything was already laid out and ready to go for the morning before I went to bed) and quickly left for the co-work space as I would on a morning when my Traveling Partner was not awake. I managed to hurt his feelings by doing so, instead of sitting down for coffee with him. Fuck.

…But if I had stayed? Things almost certainly would have gone sideways, sending me to the office crying, instead of just brain foggy. I know this fragile vessel well. I mean, I could be wrong, but I really didn’t want to find out the hard way…

Now I’m sipping coffee (office coffee – pretty dreadful), and trying my best to properly wake up to start the work day. I am less than ideally successful. The brain fog is … persistent.

In spite of waking up spontaneously and rather abruptly this morning, I feel as if I could so easily just go back to sleep… my mind wanders, distracted and lacking focus, and the brain fog prevents any particularly productive or useful thinking. I find myself, again and again, sitting quietly, fingers poised over the keyboard, motionless. Some days this might be the result of very much preferring to do my own thing, write, paint, hike – anything but work. That’s not the case this morning. It’s not a choice between working and not that has me stalled. It feels more like my brain just isn’t engaging fully in the new day, just… at all. lol Rough.

Today feel like it may be a battle just to put one foot in front of the other, or to process a task and move on to the next. Begin again? Who am I kidding? I’ve barely begun in the first place! LOL Fuuuuuck. So… now what?

…I guess I’ll just have to keep practicing…

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Healthy Living, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring

Scales, a Pendulum, or Dancing?

May 3, 2023 //
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I am sipping some iced tea with lemon. I didn’t make it. It is a canned commercial product. It’s okay. Mildly carbonated, which seems pretty unnecessary for iced tea, but it is available, it is cold, and it did not require me to make iced tea to have some. lol I am thinking about what that says about my desire for “ease” vs my desire for good quality of life. It seems the sort of thing worth thinking about.

As I made the drive in to the city this morning, I was also thinking. Mostly about “work life balance” and what that actually seems to mean, and what that can (or has)(or does) look like (for me). I have tended to mostly think about “work life balance” in terms of … a scale. Two opposites in equal measure, you know – balanced. It has not generally been the case that I have been able to make that work out quite that way. I mean… there are 7 days in a week. I work 5 of those, most of the time. The common assumption is 40 work hours in a week, divided more or less into 8-hour days (when we’re fortunate to enjoy working conditions that preserve an expectation of employee leisure being respected). That’s a pretty big chunk of our life time, so… where’s the “balance”?

Fairly often, in my own experience, any appearance of “work life balance” has been more like a pendulum swinging between extremes, some weeks mostly work, some weeks a bit more leisure than is typical, and back and forth pretty endlessly. There have been notable exceptions where the “routine” wasn’t routine at all, and finding any “balance” was more like a dance than a pendulum’s steady swing. In other cases, any hint of “work life balance” was purely linguistic, and not to be taken at all seriously by anyone involved. Those are commonly pretty toxic experiences, and I avoid those.

I continue to look for a better balance, though; more life, less work… it gets tricky when the conversation turns to pay. I definitely still want to get paid. LOL

I sip my tea and reflect. I think about how tricky it is to balance all the elements of a life well-lived… the living, the loving, the working, the resting… and I think about how often one or another detail feels “just right”, while literally everything else seems to be going to shit. lol How very human. Certainly it’s been those “just right” experiences that have often been what has “kept me going”, avoiding despair, keeping up practices, breathing through the emotions, and accepting that “this too will pass” – because it will, and it does, and it’s on to the next thing.

My Traveling Partner has got the truck set up for camping and off-roading and overland adventuring. Exciting. I’m expecting that any day now he will calmly advise me that he is going to “hit the road and check everything out” in preparation for camping together for my birthday. I’m super excited about the camping trip we have planned. I’m also excited to have a couple days home alone… by July we’ll have been in this little house for 3 years. I’ve never spent a night at home alone in all that time. I guess I’m fortunate to be able to say that, given the quality and good character of this love of ours. I’m still looking forward to it. 🙂

…And every time I think about being home alone, while my Traveling Partner travels, I miss him with an incredible ache in my heart that feels just a bit like… withdrawals. lol I’m pretty crazy about this particular other human being. Like a teenager with a first crush…

The minutes tick by. I sip my tea and think my thoughts. I breathe, exhale, relax… soon enough, I’ll also begin again. It’s a new day ahead. New options. New choices. New circumstances. There is room for improvement. Room for change and for growth. All it takes is a new beginning, and a handful of verbs.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Steps

May 2, 2023 //
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Take steps. Wherever you are in life, just keeping taking steps. Maintain momentum. Walk on. Begin again. 🙂

I am sipping my morning coffee, contemplating the weekend that is now behind me. What a lovely anniversary weekend. I enjoyed the time we spent together. I am grateful to have the partnership we do.

This morning I’m also thinking about change and uncertainty and managing chaos. All the practicing of practices doesn’t get me out from under the challenges of being a human primate. So… there’s that, too. lol

I breathe, exhale, relax, and repeat. I sit quietly with my coffee, reflecting, and simply being. Steps? A good first step, in a lot of circumstances, is this simple exercise. Breathing. Sitting quietly and just breathing. Start there. 🙂

A lot of what works is pretty simple stuff – it just needs doing. Verbs. Results vary. Practice? Yep. Both noun and verb, that one. lol I keep practicing. It paid off this weekend, more than once. It was a good weekend.

I smile when I think of my Traveling Partner, then begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

In Search of the Frictionless Experience

May 1, 2023 //
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It’s our anniversary today. 12 years. Lovely day for it. Not a sunny day, but the weather isn’t bad. The stormy looking clouds scooting past overhead create some beautiful views. No rain so far.

My Traveling Partner was still sleeping when I left the house early-ish this morning. I got a pleasant walk in, and ran a couple errands. I headed home when I got his ping letting me know he was awake. Efficient. One of those errands was picking up a new “spa frog” for the hot tub, and by lunch time, my partner had the chemistry adjusted and ready for soaking. Damn that felt soooo good, too. My aching back was enormously grateful.

Gratitude is definitely something filling my heart today. Gratitude and love. This relationship is pretty mind-blowing and characterized by love, loving, and mutual regard. I adore this particular human being rather a lot. Perhaps, I sometimes think, too much…? Love is the good stuff, though, isn’t it? 🙂 Hard to argue that it isn’t. I smile and think of his arms around me. Our experience of love isn’t “perfect”; we’re both human beings, and we’ve both reached where we are in life by wading through rather a lot of pointless crap, bad decision-making, and individual trauma, so… yeah… we’ve each got our baggage and our “issues”. Still… I never lose sight of how very much this human being loves me, and what a delightful return-on-investment (because I love him) this love is. We’re happy – for most values of “happy”.

…12 years…

Today we’re also, in addition to celebrating our anniversary, waiting on packages. This is a less successful or satisfying endeavor than simply loving each other, unfortunately (seems like it should require quite a lot less work all around). Packages that should have been delivered, based on expectation-setting by shippers, Friday. Weather? Nope. It’s a pretty mild spring most places. Civil disorder? Not on that level (yet) in this country (generally). With regard to at least one package, it actually looks like just maybe it’s in the process of being stolen. This is seriously aggravating. The tracking tools available these days certainly make easier to spot sketchy weird bullshit, though.

My partner finally gets a support call through to an actual human being, who agrees the particulars look exceedingly questionable. They start doing whatever is to be done to track down it’s location in the physical world. What a bunch of bullshit. Of course, the stress of dealing with it harshes the mellow of a lovely day. I step away (here, now) long enough to get enough distance from the blast of frustration and ire to (hopefully) avoid being triggered by it. So far, so good.

I think about this love of ours, and the future camping fun we’re already planning to enjoy together. That’s part of today’s frustration; the items we’re waiting on are a handful of basic essentials that we need for safe (enjoyable) off-roading, and efficient management/storage of our gear. I know my Traveling Partner is eager to take the truck out and get it off-road for a few days, looking for some great camping spots to enjoy together on my birthday (and beyond). I understand the maddening frustration of packages that don’t come when promised, or arrive damaged, or… just don’t arrive. (Just gonna say it; Amazon’s services have less and less actual value as time passes, and I no longer use them as my “go to” when I am shopping online. Between the shipping disappointments – which are numerous – and the knock-offs or scam products mixed in with legit listings, it’s just not worth the hassles, or the price.)

I smile, thinking of my partner. Thinking of spending time together in the truck, on the road, out in the woods, out on a trail… fuck I love this guy. It’s the kind of love that makes it so worthwhile to do my best to be the woman I most want to be.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Washington Trails
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