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Yesterday and Today

April 22, 2017 //
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Yesterday quickly descended into further emotional distance, and definite anhedonia. I found myself asking “the” question, too: “Am I depressed?” It had crept over me fairly slowly, then finished with a slam – the house I was going to go see, out in the countryside, went pending right about when I got in to the office. I was bummed.

There are sunny mornings.

This particular source of frustration comes up pretty regularly, and house-hunting is becoming a big downer, mostly because frustration is my kryptonite, and also because the process itself brings me into regular contact with an industry built on corruption, with little in the way of healthy pro-consumer regulation. (Seriously, I’d be pretty appalled to walk into, say, Ross and pick out a pair of jeans, carry those to the register, and have some other customer take them out of my hand, step in front of me in line, and firmly tell the cashier “I’m willing to pay more than you are charging for these, so they’re mine.” That’s hard to deal with over and over again.) I just want to go home. No, I mean, seriously, for me the entire process of house-hunting is 100% only intended to let me “go home” – to a home that is mine, that I can count on, that I can make my own and improve or change, and make more secure and comfy and safe. Having to throw regular exposure to frustration into my day-to-day experience by choice (particularly over something so heartfelt) is … yeah. Hard. Icky. Discouraging.

There are mornings that seem strangely gray.

I reached out to my Traveling Partner and let him know my weekend was upended and as a result quite unplanned. I was mostly venting, and not reaching out to change his plans. He understood – and we miss each other regardless of our plans. He suggested coming to hang out, if that sounded good to me. I was still struggling with anhedonia; nothing sounded good at all.  He helpfully prompted me to consider my experience through another perspective; my physical health. Recognizing my pain management challenges, my poor quality sleep, and the basic frustration of  house-hunting and how that affects my mood, generally, put me in a better place for the day, and I even found my to making new plans that really suited where my heart is, combining some hang out time with scouting other areas for livability, that might be good choices for future house-hunting.

Each moment, however similar seeming in some detail or another is entirely its own experience.

I committed to sleeping in today, and I did – I woke at 6:30 am feeling fairly rested. A leisurely shower felt delightful. My coffee is hot, and I feel fairly chill and merry this morning. Sleep is a very big deal.

Yesterday’s sunshine has given way to today’s steady drizzle. Fuck I hate driving in the rain. LOL Still… lovely day to enjoy a drive in the countryside, in no hurry to get to the end of the day.

A different morning, a different place, another moment to begin again.

…I guess I’ll begin again. There are verbs involved. 🙂

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Categories anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A Day for Me

March 29, 2017 //
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I took today off. I didn’t plan to be sick, I just planned to take the day off for my annual physical and some downtime. I scheduled a hair appointment (to have the wild lavender and pink and green that it is now refreshed before an upcoming concert). Later, I unscheduled the hair appointment, remembering to be frugal while I house hunt; the funds will be needed, more than likely. I re-planned the day to do some “go sees” of new listings in the afternoon. Yesterday, I canceled that too. I’m sick. I will just go get my physical, and come home and sip tea and read, I suppose…

…Nope. My plans are over-turned by the rental management here in the community. It is, apparently, “inspection time” again. (Please imagine me rolling my eyes irritably at this point right here.) I don’t have much to do to be ready, but I have canvases out in my studio, and I’ll just fret about the stupid inspection if I don’t spend an hour tidying up a bit, regardless. So. I guess I’m getting my physical and coming home to housework. The inspections are on Thursday. I won’t be home. I’ll have already taken today off from work, and can’t cut into my work hours further without putting time-sensitive work at risk of not being completed. It makes me uncomfortable to have anyone in my space when I’m not home, these days (other than my Traveling Partner), and the last time my landlady was in my apartment on a day I wasn’t at home? Yeah, I was burglarized. I’ve lost trust, and feel anxious about having her in my apartment in my absence. Work from home? I wish. The work I’ll specifically be doing is much more handily done with the vast acreage of widescreen dual monitors connected to the network directly than it can be at home on a laptop screen connected through VPN. I’m just going to have to adult this one. I’m annoyed by that, but not unprepared. I managed to avoid letting it keep me awake last night… mostly. I got 4 and a half hours of sleep. :-\

I woke mostly clear-headed, head still stuffy, lungs not yet congested (yay!), and still willing to embrace life as a goodness. That’s something. Today is  not the day I planned. (It often isn’t.) It is, however, a day out of the office, with a little more than typical looseness to it. I remind myself that this irritant (the inspection) is just one of the many small things driving me so urgently to find my own place – really my own, as in “homeowner”.  The inspection (for me) is a nothing event, anyway; I live a tidy, quiet, gentle life, and take good care of this space. The inspection never amounts to more than a casual walk-through, I just won’t be here, which really creeps me out. So. I’m inconvenienced and uncomfortable. I’ll get over it.

I am my own cartographer on life’s journey. There is no rule book, no map, no user’s guide for being human. We are each having our own experience. The map is not the world. The day… is not the plan. I’m still okay right now. 🙂

 

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Morning?

March 21, 2017 //
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The sleep I got last night was good, but not enough to be “rested”. This makes two days on less than 5 hours of sleep. I saw my physician in the morning, yesterday. I see another on Thursday. I worked. I saw a house, then home for dinner. The excitement of the day being what it was, I found myself lost in the vastness of it all, crying. Just crying. It wasn’t “personal”, and there was nothing to do about it but let the tears fall. I still couldn’t sleep, so went next door and hung out with friends for a few minutes. I had reached out unsuccessfully to my Traveling Partner; we’d been chatting through the late afternoon, already, and not reaching him didn’t trouble me. I figured he was in the studio. (I was just the tiniest bit jealous to find out later he was sleeping. lol)

I woke with effort this morning. I feel okay, I guess. Scratchy eyes. Headache. Sluggish. Thinking is still an effort even after some yoga, meditation, and a lovely shower. My headspace feels as if filled with some immovable goo or epoxy; it is a less than ideal state of consciousness, generally. I pause and pull myself more fully upright, correcting posture that would otherwise make me quite uncomfortable in a very short time. I notice my left hand sort of curled in on itself, resting on my lap in that moment; I am fatigued to the point that some of the indicators of my brain injury are more pronounced than usual. I stand up and stretch, feeling joints crack and pop and shift. I frown for a moment, thinking about work as a massive unscripted undertaking in which enormous quantities of random busy-ness (lol) must be processed under the watchful eye of a ticking clock. I remind myself this is a new week, a new experience, and that last week’s intensity is behind me. My perspective shifts and shifts again as I wake more fully.

I take a deep breath and another. I sip my coffee and wait for my brain to catch up with my insistence on starting the day. I should be good for one or two more of these short nights before spelling errors and temper tantrums catch up with me…

Today I begin again feeling pretty reliant on good practices, reliable habits, planned tasks, and routine. I’m okay right now, just tired. Today is a good day to take care of the woman in the mirror – and to extend similar consideration to all the other working zombies out there, wrung out and over-extended by the demands of adulting for another day. We are each having our own experience. We are all in this together. If we’re kind to each other, we can change the world… even on less than 5 hours of sleep. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5

This Works for Me

March 19, 2017 //
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My morning is strangely… off. I slept badly. I got enough rest, anyway. I haven’t yet figured out my day. I’m sort of lazing around watching an occasional video, sipping coffee, and mostly just staring out the window rather unproductively. I find myself amused that I think I got enough rest; I am a zombie on my feet, shuffling through the morning vacantly, without purpose or direction… yet. The day is still ahead.  I notice my empty coffee cup; this I know I how to deal with.

Staring into the darkness during the night. Sleep did not come easily.

My second cup of coffee wakes me up a bit more. I put on a lively playlist. Chat a while with my Traveling Partner before he begins his own day in earnest. We miss each other, and look forward to hanging out, later today. Maybe we do hang out, maybe we don’t; it matters most that we want to. 🙂 Co-dependency and unhealthy attachment build some very unhealthy relationships between human beings. Learning some emotional self-sufficiency, and letting go of attachment (to outcomes, to emotional states of being, to romantic hyperbole, to expectations, to assumptions…) did some amazing things for this beautiful love. It’s a journey still in progress. “The journey is the destination.” “The way out is through.” Love matters most.

I don’t know what else I am doing today, even now, but I do know one thing that will fill my day; love. It’s enough. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Big 5

The Monday After DST

March 13, 2017 //
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I drag myself from bed with the alarm clock still in my hand. I slept poorly, and only for about 5 hours. The sleep I got was interrupted, restless, and not all that restful. I groggily take my morning medication, entirely forgetting I’d promised myself to take it a bit later to ease the transition to living an hour out of sync with the past many months since the last time the government arbitrarily put us all through this ludicrous bullshit that has no benefit I can single out as an obvious reason to do this weird thing twice a year. Why the hell do we mess around with time? You just know who ever had this idea in the first place thought it was awesome… I always wonder how they convinced everyone else.

I yawn over my coffee, feeling uninspired, and looking for a moment on which to build the day…something small to delight me… something to motivate me to continue on and begin again, however many times it is necessary to do so… I’m not quite there, yet, and feeling very human.

I’ve got quite a few tools in my toolkit these days. I put on my headphones, cue up a playlist, and tackle the morning from another perspective. There is, after all, an entire day ahead of me…and so many choices.

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Categories Brain Injury, health, Healthy Living, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Spring
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