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Sipping Coffee, Waking Up

March 14, 2018 //
2

This morning, my pain, my tinnitus, the white noise of the furnace blowing through the vents, and the subtle anxiety in the background (as I begin “waiting around” for time to leave for yet another doctor’s appointment), are competing for my attention. My cognitive space feels very busy, but the quality of the content is poor. I sip my very excellent cup of coffee and stare forward into the void, more groggy than calm. There is no action to take in this specific moment aside from sipping coffee, and waking up.

I don’t think I did anything much last night. I’m fairly certain of it, since my recollection seems largely without content. Am I forgetting, or was it that completely uneventful? I wonder for a moment, then my attention wanders to more practical matters. I remind myself to take out the garbage. I consider whether I remembered to take my medication this morning. I notice that I am thirsty. I don’t do anything about any of those, I just sit quietly, sipping my coffee. Later, I’ll head to my appointment, then to the office, and I hope to just sort of slide comfortably into a very routine day from there… and I’d like to wake up. 🙂

The mountain as a metaphor for love; always there in the background, even when I don’t see it. Endlessly beautiful when I am in its presence.

…As I wake, I write a love note to my Traveling Partner, reminiscing fondly about morning coffees together. Another time, perhaps. 🙂 My brain immediately sneak attacks me from behind the calendar reminder about my appointment, and I am forced to face my mortality as tears spill down. What if the news at this appointment is… bad? I let the tears come. It would be hard to say good-bye to a life I am finally starting to learn to live truly well, to value, to appreciate, to experience fully. I’ll have to eventually though, as will we all. We don’t yet have the technology to stop mortality in its tracks. I sip my coffee, eyes stinging with tears, and a weird smile on my face. It’s not a happy one. I feel it from inside. I don’t know this smile. Bitter. Resolved. Hurting. Still standing. Still walking on. Still beginning again.

It was neither sunny nor warm, yesterday evening, but Spring doesn’t seem to care much about that.

…I’ll say this, with great conviction; if I have the opportunity, ever, to know with certainty that the end is imminent? I won’t be spending my last days, weeks, months in a fucking office.

I make a point to breathe, relax, and let that painfully poignant moment go. Emotional weather. I let the small storm pass like a spring shower. Brief and drenching, relieving in some hard to describe way, and I move on somehow refreshed. I’m certainly awake. I sip my… oh, shit. My coffee’s gone.

I can choose to embrace the dawn, or dwell in the evening light.

…It’s a good morning for a second coffee, and a second chance. It’s a good morning to begin again. I may not be able, in this one moment, to save the world… but I can save this one moment in my experience. 🙂 I get up and head for my meditation cushion, on my way to a second coffee. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, health, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Strange and (Self)Limited

February 8, 2018 //
0

What a peculiar few days (couple of weeks?) it has been. I haven’t done anything particularly noteworthy… I go to work. I return home. I meditate. I read. I do just enough yoga to continue to use all my joints. I do just enough housekeeping to stay mostly fairly tidy. I don’t feel mired in sorrow, or at all blue. I’m just dealing with more pain than usual. It takes a lot out of me. I feel less like going anywhere or doing anything, once I’ve managed to put a work day behind me. Weekends aren’t much different; more meditation, more reading, no work of the employment sort, lots more squirrels, still managing pain.

I miss my Traveling Partner, but I am glad I’ve taken the time to get rested. I’m even, generally, sleeping (mostly) through the nights, and getting to bed at an hour that ensures I’ve gotten adequate rest. It’s something. Right now, it’s enough. Clearly I’ve been needing the rest. I’ve even finally gotten entirely over all of whatever contagious crud has been going around. Other than the pain I am often in, I feel pretty good. 🙂

I sip my coffee. The weather seems already inclined to turn toward spring. I’ve begun carrying the new camera with me everywhere. I look ahead to the weekend, another on which I will be generally at home. I’ve brunch plans Saturday with a friend that will take me an hour across town – which, these days, hardly seems like a drive at all. lol I’ve got a ticket to a concert Saturday night. In between those, regularly planned time hanging out with another friend. Busy Saturday. Sunday looks like a good day for rest and laundry – or a hike! If the weather holds up, Sunday could be a lovely day to take the camera on her first outing into the trees down some near-ish trail. A plan begins to take shape.  😀

I smile into my coffee as I take a moment to recognize I’ve probably been quite slowed down just by the fact that it is winter – that’s a thing, it happens to all kinds of creatures, our seasonal clocks don’t all affect us the same way. I don’t consider myself someone with any sort of profound seasonal affective symptoms, but I am still a mammal, a primate, a living creature with circadian rhythms, and it is still winter. 🙂

…I’ve got a plan to begin again. This morning, that’s enough. 🙂

 

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Categories anhedonia, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, solo hiking, Spring

Not YOLO, But Yeah, Probably YOLO

January 24, 2018 //
0

The first time I heard “YOLO”, I remember being rather struck by it in a positive way, which was before I was fully aware how often it is attached to a level of foolhardiness or stupidity so vast as to be quite noteworthy, and… on purpose. Wild. Kinda scary. Definitely not at all what I might mean were I to observe that “you only live once“. Not at all. I’d be saying “live your life – truly live it, awake, and aware, and willful, you may not get another shot at this, so do your best”.

I try, every day, to take my own best advice. Sometimes I even succeed.

I am enjoying a relaxed quiet evening, but it isn’t “everything”. I plan the weekend, making sure my needs over time are considered ahead of the needs of the moment (which often aren’t truly needs at all, but instead some distraction or alluring momentary fancy). I smile when I realize how excited I am to have two days in a row to sleep in, and no driving. I feel that twist, and become a pang of regret and loneliness; I won’t see my Traveling Partner this weekend. I do need some real down time, though, a chance to rest, and a chance to take care of this space I live in, and some time to finish moving into my studio, so that days I am inspired to paint are as effortless as days I am inspired to write. These are things I need. 🙂

My mind wanders to that dark corner labeled “all the shit you forgot to take care of”, and instead of a panic attack, I find myself just sort of mentally “tidying up”, letting myself consider a large number of very assorted sorts of loose-end-y kinds of things I am prone to forgetting, just generally. I moved in July. Did I account for 100% of everything? Did I pack something, forget about it, and continue to overlook it because I don’t recall it even exists? So many distracting weekends away. How does a person rediscover what they have entirely forgotten, when that is a needful thing? That’s only sort of rhetorical; I do manage it, but I couldn’t explain in a million years quite how, and it’s very hit or miss. So… I guess I only sort of manage it. LOL Nice that such things don’t set off a storm of anxiety these days. The fear made it terribly difficult to catch things up, fix them, or complete them, or address whatever had or might go wrong with any skill. Now it generally just feels like another thing that needs doing, and once done, I’m done with it completely. I check off a few things, an address or two to update, things like that.

Strange night. I’m in a lot of pain, and the headache is just… extra. I’m managing a good mood in spite of that.  I’m still smiling from a few minutes of chat with my Traveling Partner. It’s a nice evening. It’s… a nice life. I frown, remembering how my every day moments “now” had been so thoroughly tainted by past events… when did that change? Will it stay like this? I feel the weight of my frown become stress in my shoulders and pause, breathe deeply, and sit more erect as I exhale. I’m okay right now. Right now isn’t something that needs troubleshooting. Right now I’m okay, and that’s enough. 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Taking a Moment for the Mountain

January 23, 2018 //
2

Mt McLoughlin, Oregon

I am sitting quietly, looking over the most recent pictures from the most recent trip of the most recent weekend. I’m feeling a bit “homesick”, though my home isn’t yet there, and the future is an unknown. I love the sight of the mountain.

Better than television.

I spend time considering whether I will be fit enough for the hike to the summit this year. It’s a hike I think I’d like to take. It seems the sort of thing for terrifically early in the morning on a long long summer day. My thoughts wander with the pictures.

From just a couple weeks ago.

I hurt a great deal tonight, but I’ve got another doctor’s appointment coming up. Fuck middle age. Fuck aging. Fuck pain. lol I guess I’m fortunate to get to find out how fucked aging is, though. The current alternatives are seriously limited. It’s just harder to enjoy my experience filtered through pain; pain narrows my focus, and shrinks my world. Through discomfort I find myself losing perspective. I’m not mad about it, and I’m not giving myself any shit over it, just aware that I hurt enough to be more focused on that, than not, and likely to be cross or short with people, and maybe a little stupid here or there, just being distracted by pain.

I know the drill. I sigh as I sort it out in my head. Some yoga. Physical therapy. Strength training. A big drink of water. A leisurely hot shower. It’s not a cure for pain, but I’ll feel better – and in treating myself well, taking care of me the best I am able to, and feeling even a bit better, I’ll regain some perspective, and enjoy this experience more.

…I’ll probably still be homesick for the mountain. lol 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

I’m Not Keeping Score

January 19, 2018 //
0

It’s not about a point system. There’s no goal post. This is not a competition at all. I am, however, quite tired. Enough that my thoughts trail off and become juxtaposed one with another, surreal, nonsensical, amusing – better than nightmares. I dislike nightmares. I still have nightmares.

I woke during the night after a nightmare. Work bullshit, less frightening than other sorts of things, still it shook me up to wake up from mocking laughter and feel so small and alone in the dark. I got up. I got up and took care of myself. Some meditation. A drink of water. A couple minutes of pleasant conversation with a friend. I didn’t get hung up on the nightmares, and returned to sleep sometime later. This happened a couple times. My sleep was of poor quality. Today, as a result, I am tired. It happens. It’s a real thing, people know about it.

I’ve spent a gentle evening of quiet, and already I have forgotten what it was I was doing… sitting? Standing. Some meditation. What else? It doesn’t matter too much. Yep. I’m tired. One lovely thing about being an adult? I totally do not care at all that it is only 9:56 pm (hell, that’s a decently adult time for bed right there. lol) – I’m tired now, so now I will sleep. That seems just fine, certainly it does no harm.

Tomorrow is soon enough to begin again. Isn’t it generally?

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter
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