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How to Thrive

May 27, 2025 //
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I’m at the trailhead. I didn’t get much of a walk in, this morning. Feels like a bit of tendinopathy in my left knee. Ouch. I still managed a slow careful walk on the well-maintained trail nearest to home before I realized I am dealing with an injury. Maybe a bit too much enthusiasm with the elliptical machine. It’s a work day, and a fairly routine beginning, aside from this new pain. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Could be worse; at least everything isn’t hurting!

Taking a moment for a sunrise is a good use of time.

So, I’ll be on my cane full-time for awhile, I guess, and patiently giving my leg a break and time to heal. Doing so can’t alleviate the necessity of other sorts of self-care and I remind myself how important strength training is, not only to improve my fitness as I age, but also because glp-1’s have the potential to rob me of muscle. So. Yeah. There’s that. I shrug it off as a concern; there’s worse crap going on in the world and I’m fortunate that I’m only dealing with this, right here, right now.

… Sure, there’s horrible stuff going on in the world, but much of it is entirely outside my control or influence; I can make my voice heard to the few listening, but sometimes the best thing I can do for the world is make my own small corner better and do no damage elsewhere…

In spite of the deer, I may harvest some tomatoes.

Sometimes it seems the most significant difference between surviving and thriving is more to do with my focus and the practices I choose to practice than anything to do with specific circumstances. This is, of course, quite relative and simplistic. It’s damned difficult to thrive in the midst of ongoing trauma – been there, tried to do that, with varying degrees of success (and mostly failing – sometimes the best choices we can make are to change our situation). Generally, though, short of truly dire circumstances, the most notable difference between surviving and thriving, often seems to be largely a matter of perspective. Shit is crazy and often quite horrible “out in the world” these days, but when I pull my focus back to self, hearth, and home, it’s not bad. Life feels less manageable when I allow the world to drag my attention into chaos and Other People’s Drama. There’s something useful to understand there. I sit with that thought awhile.

It’s often what we plant and how we tend our garden that determines what we find there, more than the weather.

Making healthy choices isn’t always a tedious buzzkill, and it isn’t always about this fragile vessel. Many opportunities to live well and to thrive are about what I put my attention on, what I read, what the contents of my mental, emotional, and intellectual “landscape” are filled with. I have choices there, too. Doom scroll through the news feed, or walk a trail on a lovely Spring morning with only my thoughts to occupy me is as important as choosing to drink my coffee black, instead of loading it with sugar. We’re complicated creatures. Our best choices are not reliably the easiest, nor what we seem to prefer.

What are you planting in the garden of your heart?

I sigh and smile. Incremental change over time is reliable and steady; we become what we practice. Don’t like where your life seems headed? Choose another path, change your practices, and begin again. Thriving is within reach, and quite often it’s as much a matter of perspective as it is to do with the practical details. I stand and stretch and consider the day ahead of me.

… It’s a good time to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, War and News of War

A Trail to a Place

May 21, 2025 //
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Among the metaphors for life and living that I favor is simply that of a trail to some destination (known or unknown). Steps on a path adding up to getting somewhere make a handy metaphor for a lot of things. I sip my coffee and think about metaphors, progress, growth, and being grateful to have had so many opportunities to fail, learn, and begin again. This journey hasn’t been an easy one built on paved paths, well-lit walkways, and obvious sparkling vacation destinations (like, not at all), but it has been a worthy one, scenic, adventurous, and filled with memorable moments. I sip my coffee content to begin the day with my thoughts, the recollection of waking rested, the memory of a beautiful sunrise glimpsed on an easy commute to the office. Nice beginning to the day…

…I wonder where this path leads…

“Pace yourself, there’s no hurry,” I remind myself, as I reflect on recent days, and the day ahead. Long weekend – Memorial Day ahead already? Yesterday I was too sore for the elliptical workout(s) I had planned. No surprise, really; I was overly eager and enthused, and may potentially have overdone it just a bit the day(s) before. lol Very human. I’m looking forward to it this evening, though, and I feel a renewed sense of committment and purpose when I think about fitness and exercise, generally. Nice bit of healthy momentum to take advantage of.

I chuckle to myself, although a bit frustrated, when I recall the doe coming back to the garden yet again, yesterday, and eating more of what is left of the tomatoes she’d already been nibbling. I sigh, a little annoyed, but having trouble being really mad at all; she’s doing what she can to survive, and no doubt has a fawn she’s trying to feed. I get it; my garden is well-tended and filled with tasty young green things, all edible. (I wouldn’t personally eat a tomato plant, but I suppose the deer and I have quite different appetites and preferences. lol) I grin to myself; isn’t it enough to have a garden of my own? I’ll learn from this and plan differently next year.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. Things are quite wonderful in my partnership with my Traveling Partner, lately. Love feels somehow “new again”, although I don’t know why that is, I’m definitely enjoying it. Life, too, just as it is, feels good. I’m happy to stand in this place, grateful to feel well and joyful. I make room to savor the experience, and just sit with it awhile. Our best feelings and moments are worth savoring, and lingering over. So… I do that. Nice morning for it.

Soon enough it’ll be time to begin again.

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

Green On Gray

May 15, 2025 //
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Cloudy morning. The deep dark green of the oaks dressed in Spring foliage dominate the view as I set off down the trail this morning. My head is full of vaguely grim musings, like “how many more sunrises?” And whether or not human life is sustainable on this planet at all, or how many idiots it takes to destroy democracy as astonished others watch it fall? My head aches. I woke with the headache and my tinnitus loud in my ears. I walk anyway.

Oaks along a well-maintained local trail, on s gray Spring morning.

It’s a workday. For some reason I feel cross and moody every time I think about my upcoming birthday. I don’t know what to do about my moody bullshit, but I guess I know more or less where it comes from. Change. I feel childish and stupidly emotional over it. Change is, and there are much more serious things going on in the world to be moody about than the details vexing me now. I’m just still dealing with it, I guess.

In spite of making tremendous progress recovering from his injury and the surgery that followed, my Traveling Partner, my beloved, is still healing, adapting, and working to recover skills and mobility that were lost or impaired. (We made dinner together last night and it was wonderful to see him back in the kitchen, cooking!) I’m incredibly impressed and proud of him for the sheer will and commitment he’s shown. I know how hard it is; I’ve been there (though I was in my 20’s when I broke my back, and that’s a very different age to deal with such a thing). So I want to be clear about my angsty nonsense; it’s not about him, or in fact about the current circumstances. Not really.

Love matters most.

I catch myself thinking about my 60th birthday. We’d just gotten the Ridgeline, and we were happily purposeful and excited, and eagerly exploring the local wilds together. The physical intimacy in our relationship was connected, deep, and joyful, and we “had the house to ourselves”. Him getting hurt wasn’t even on our radar. A year later, my birthday was mostly caregiving and preparing for his surgery with him, and doing the needful to help the Anxious Adventurer relocate to move in and give us a hand with all that, whatever he could while also building a life here for himself and working. Then another 6 months or so of crazy intense caregiving that exhausted me and pushed me to limits I didn’t know I have, before my beloved really started to “be himself” again. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that these are the circumstances and changes that brought me to this weird and moody place, facing a birthday I mostly wouldn’t care much about under other circumstances. 62? Not even a milestone (and I don’t “feel old”, generally speaking, in spite of chronic pain). I just have feelings. Very human. I don’t know what to do with or about this particular birthday. I simultaneously ache with poignant feelings of loss and strange regrets, and also don’t give a fuck and want to put it behind me.

I have planned taking the week after my birthday off work, but I have no actual plans. It’s just all really weird and the emotions have piled on, and I’m having trouble sorting myself out. It’s annoying.

“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012

I breathe, exhale, and relax. There’s so much to appreciate and to be grateful for. I focus on that as I sit at my halfway point, writing and reflecting. Things could be much worse. Change is, and this too will pass. I can count on that. lol I will find small joys to help me past blue moments. The clock will tick on, regardless. A week off spent sleeping in, painting, and puttering in my garden, reading books, and walking local trails, is time well-spent and needs no elaborate planning at all. It’s even enough, truly. Ah, but I do have these feelings, and the way out is reliably through – so I give myself room to experience and process my emotions, without taking them personally. Just feeling the feelings and reflecting on those. They’ll pass. They’re only emotions after all, not truths, not requirements, just their own sort of experience. I give myself a break and let them come and go like gray clouds on a Spring morning; yes, they appear to cover the entire sky, but they will move on, and there is blue sky beyond.

… Clouds make a nice metaphor for emotions…

I smile to myself. I’m okay for most values of “okay”, and this is a good life. I am indeed fortunate. Emotions are so very human. I sigh and chuckle to myself as I get to my feet and stretch. This path won’t walk itself. There are practices to practice and the clock ticks on. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

Gray, Rainy, Moody

May 11, 2025 //
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Just as I reached the trailhead the rain began. It’s not falling hard, but steadily. I waited a few minutes before yielding to the practical details of walking in the rain, and just did the thing. Boots, cane, rain poncho: I’m ready for it, so why not? My aching back yesterday is no surprise now; my arthritis reliably responds to specific changes in the weather. I ache today, too, and I am cross and moody, even out on the trail.

I started walking, and kept walking until I returned to the car, not soaked but finding myself struggling with pain and irritability. Less than ideally pleasant as morning walks go, and more a matter of will and practice than delight. It’s okay. There’s nothing really wrong and this crappy mood will pass.

Tedious discussion of health stuff follows, skip this next paragraph if it’s “tmi”!

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It is “shot day”. Sunday is the day I’ve set for my weekly Ozempic shot and my weigh-in. Actual weight loss progress is very slow now after an initial 8 months or so of fairly steady losses. Here’s the thing though; I’m using it to control other health conditions and it’s doing that exceedingly well (I’ve been able to discontinue medications aside from my thyroid and pain medication). I’m continuing strength training, and building muscle (heavier than fat) along with having gotten very near the weight my current caloric intake supports means it’s harder to change the number on the scale – but that’s an inadequate measure of health improvements overall, and I try not to fret over it. Instead I seek to walk further, faster, and to continue to advance my weight training (ideally without injury). I consider additional calorie reduction, at this point it’s probably necessary. I’m not unhappy with my progress, generally, just saying that the Ozempic is not a magic trick, a cheat code, or a guarantee of getting to a size 6 again. It’s just a tool and a means of dealing with my problematic blood sugar that happens to also improve my health in a number of ways.

I check the grocery list. Practical stuff, and healthy foods and ingredients, nothing to trim from the list, it’s all good stuff. It’s easier to commit to healthy eating when everyone in the house is in on it. I’m fortunate in that regard. It still requires practice, and attention to details – and a measure of will and impulse control.

I sigh to myself and think about my birthday in June. What sort of “birthday cake” might I enjoy? Cheesecake? A fruit tart? Something creamy? Something light? Definitely not chocolate – too rich, and too dense, it’s just not my favorite. Something fruity might be nice… Something not too dreadfully sweet. Sugar isn’t so appealing these days. Maybe something subtle and a little “fancy”? Lemon-y and spongey and creamy with a hint of lavender or blueberries? Something like that might be nice… but I’d probably be the only one enjoying that. lol My thoughts wander on… and I’m feeling less irritated just indulging the thought of birthday desserts. Human beings are strange creatures.

Looks like it may be a cloudy, rainy day all day. I guess I’m okay with that; there’s considerable housekeeping to do today. I smile to myself thinking about the two small hardy fig plants I planted in large pots yesterday. Eventually I may put them in the ground, if they are truly suited to our climate, but I don’t yet know where. It’ll be a couple years before it really matters, and I’m delighted to have the figs in my garden; I’ve wanted fig trees or bushes since my first garden. It’s to do with a lovely memory of my Granny and my first experience of fresh from the tree sun-warmed figs. I smile. Pleasant memories are a beautiful mood-lifter.

I frown a little impatiently at the foreboding gray sky. I guess it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

Getting Un-Stuck

May 10, 2025 //
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The sun is up as I return to the car. I’m at a less frequented trailhead tucked away on the far side of the nature park. Different approach to the park, different views (more meadow than marsh), and that provides me with a different perspective.

A meadow of fragrant wildflowers.

I’ve been feeling a bit “stuck” now and then, recently, especially with regard to my fitness progress. Realistically, I know “the math”, and the basic truth of it is that I need to get more exercise and cut back on caloric intake (without reducing nutritional value). Such easy words to put on a page. Harder to live them in practice, primarily because I’m living with chronic pain, have some underlying metabolic concerns that complicate things by drastically reducing the amount of energy I can reliably make use of in a given day. Those things don’t prevent me from making progress over time, they just tend to slow me down and discourage me. File under “adulting is hard”. lol

I’m not complaining. Just saying these are real circumstances and sometimes I feel “stuck”. I often find a change of perspective very helpful for getting “un-stuck”, and so this morning I followed a favorite trail from a different direction, at a different starting point, and walked my difficult miles from a different perspective. Helpful.

A different point of view is sometimes the only difference needed.

I walked along as the sun rose, listening to the noisy robins in the meadow grass, and the geese calling to each other overhead. The air was filled with the scent of Spring flowers.

The sun rising beyond a grove in the meadow.

Feeling stuck? Maybe it will be helpful to change your point of view, to adjust your perspective in some way, even if only as a matter of taking a different route to a familiar destination? I know I find it helpful, and almost without noticing, I find myself walking farther at a faster pace (in spite of stops to snap a picture or two along the way). Sometimes beginning again is more effective if we begin from a different starting point, or heading in a new direction, or by entirely changing our approach to a challenge or journey. Your results may vary, but if you’re feeling stuck, isn’t that the desired effect?

Where does your path lead? What is beyond the next bend?

My Traveling Partner suggested, out of love and a desire to be helpful, that maybe I should consider using an elliptical machine at a nearby gym, or some lower-impact means of getting more miles in. It’s an idea I’ve considered (and tried), but I thoroughly dislike the gym environment and the mindless tedium of walking a treadmill to the point that I just don’t stick with it. It’s not a good choice of practice for me, generally. I’m willing – even eager – to be out on a trail at dawn walking a couple miles, happily alone with my thoughts, feeling the moment, enjoying the sights, and I do it day after day, without a miss. It’s time to pick up the pace, though, and challenge myself to go further more often. It’s time to increase my “non-negotiable distance” from 1 mile to two, then from 2 to three. It’s time to spend less time meditating at some beautiful halfway point, and more of my time steadily on my feet. (This is where my thoughts were as I walked this morning.)

Reflections and mist.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I guess I needed a change of perspective (and a change of direction). I certainly feel less stuck, sitting with my thoughts after my walk, feeling my muscles relax, and my heart beat slowing down as I write. There’s an entire day ahead of me and a couple of errands to run. The clock is ticking – it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being
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