I got a nice walk in, early this morning. The scent of early blooming roses greeted me on my way out. My tinnitus followed me everywhere. It’s a new day.
looks like a nice one
I breathe exhale, and relax. New routine begins today. I wonder what that looks like? I’ve got more than typical flexibility for figuring that out, these days. I’m very fortunate. I sit quietly with that awareness, grateful. Life hasn’t always been so (relatively) easy. It’s a good idea to feast on that with humility and gratitude, and simple awareness. (Builds resilience for future more difficult times.)
My Traveling Partner pings me good morning, and the day feels like it has really begun. I feel hopeful, encouraged, and enthusiastic, in spite of this headache and my tinnitus shrieking and buzzing in my ears. First work day after my camping trip… feels weird. lol
…Anyway. It’s time to begin again, and see where the day takes me.
I’m waiting and drinking coffee. My Traveling Partner is having a procedure done. Mostly pretty routine, I guess, but we’ve both got some medical trauma, both struggle with some anxiety, and g’damn the morning started pretty early for this sort of thing.
…But I’m good at waiting…
I check work emails and get caught up on Slack threads I missed while I was camping and spending the weekend just enjoying my partner’s good company. I am proud of myself for taking my self-care care sufficiently seriously to really leave work behind for a few days. I needed that, though very little of my stress these days is anything to do with work. Work is fine. Satisfying. Productive. Adequately well-compensated. Life, generally, and more specifically concerns to do with health and wellness are a much bigger deal. I sigh to myself, and keeping drinking my coffee. It’s pretty good.
I feel pretty caught up on work within a mostly effortless half an hour or so bookmarking a couple items for tomorrow. Now the waiting properly begins…
…And, yeah, skillfully waiting is one of my “superpowers”. lol I’m fine with it. It’s a bit chilly here in the surgical center… I’m glad I wore a comfy warm, big, shapeless, favorite sweater. I feel well-equipped to wait a while. No sense of urgency or pressure, just some moments spent in my own head. As often as I find myself chasing time for my own thoughts, waiting feels like a gift more often than not, so long as I’m not also fighting “time pressure”, or someone else’s frustration with waiting.
I check whether prescriptions are ready for pickup… not yet.
Yesterday I embarked on an unexpected (somewhat spontaneous) adventure with my Traveling Partner. We’ve both been progressively more irked by and disappointed with the Windows OS, and both finding the increasingly vexing privacy limitations (and relentless harvesting of personal data without consent or remuneration) really objectionable – and finally settled on a suitable change. Not surprising that we’re going to a Linux OS. More surprising was my partner’s surprise that I was so eager to embrace that change! I’ve already removed Windows from “The Major” (my desktop computer) and installed Linux. Now I’ve got to install new (alternate) apps for this-n-that, and configure everything… overdue. Mostly pretty fun, although I would struggle with my frustration over small details without my Traveling Partner’s expertise to rely on when I get stuck (which is…often).
…Like waiting, change is…
…So… for now, it’s just me, this coffee, and some time spent waiting. Soon enough it’ll be time to begin again…
I’m taking a few minutes, having a mid-morning, post-waffles, cup of tea (Smith’s No.120 Jasmine Nectar, which has a lovely delicate fragrance). The tea is quite good. The moment is… meh. It’s okay. Not great. Not terrible. Just a moment, and it’ll pass and I’ll move on to the next one. I’m in a ferocious amount of pain this morning, which colors every experience in spite of knowing how pointless and unhelpful it is for that to be a thing. I keep having to make a point of not allowing it to seep into every crevice of my awareness and experience. My results vary.
…The waffles were good, though…
I don’t feel inclined to finger-point, lay blame, or even “troubleshoot” this moment (or any previous, this morning), it’s not even about that. We’re each having our own experience. I’m pretty sure my Traveling Partner is in every bit as much pain as I am in, maybe more. That likely colors his experience, too. Probably best to simply acknowledge our individual and mutual discomfort and not take any of that at all personally. I sigh. Breathe. Exhale. Relax. (Fuck I wish I weren’t in so much pain, though… but at least the waffles were good…)
I think about the dishes that need doing. The laundry. Tidying up my office space in preparation for working from this location, generally. It didn’t sound like much to tackle when I woke up this morning. It seems almost too much, now. Nothing has changed but the amount of pain I’m in, and my perspective on the day (that is probably a lot to do with the pain I’m in). I’m glad it’s a long weekend… tomorrow may be better, but regardless, it’s at least another day to work on these “getting back to the day-to-day” sorts of details. I’ll be ready by the time the work week begins. I sure feel tired now.
I think about the wildflowers out on the coast and the ones on along the trail this morning. It’s interesting what a different assortment they are. I look for pictures, and only just now realize I didn’t take any this morning. I sort of just rather purposefully walked down the trail to “there”, and then back. It wasn’t a grim trudge, but it wasn’t notably joyful. I was just… existing. Doing a thing. I was already in pain.
I hear my Traveling Partner laughing in the other room. That brings a smile to my face, even though he’s been a bit cross this morning. He enjoyed the waffles, though – those were good, this morning. It was lovely to share that experience with him. Good waffles. 😀
…The waffles are gone. They were delicious. The moments pass. One by one they go from a moment of being to nothing more than a recollection. Impermanent. A small piece of a larger whole. Any given moment, however good, however difficult, is another chance to begin again. It’s something. It’s enough.
This morning I am sipping my coffee by the warmth of the fire in my propane-fueled FireCan (linked, because I love this thing). It’s the titular can to which I referred. lol
Taking the chill off the morning.
The “can’t”, on the other hand is all the stuff either utterly outside my control (like the rain expected later today), or outside the limitations of my abilities, or prevented by some fundamental of reality itself. My thoughts are provoked simultaneously by the chilly morning and this warm fire, and the rangers who happened by talking about another recent hiker death caused by straying off a marked trail, and falling to their mortal end. (Not here, but elsewhere in Oregon.)
Stay on the path, people, stay on the path.
…There is something to be learned about living well in the mistakes people make that so easily send them to their doom over an out-of-reach desire… or a fucking selfie. Just saying, in life and on the trail, plan your journey with as much care as you can, tell your loved ones where you’re headed, prepare for the likely conditions, and stay on the fucking trail. It can still all go very wrong, but you’ll have done your best to prevent mishaps through bad decision making. Maybe.
My coffee this morning is very satisfying. I am drinking more than usual and until later in the day, while I’m camping. That’s not unusual for me. It doesn’t seem to affect my sleep out here. Noise definitely does. Last night was very quiet. I slept well and deeply waking once to pee, and later to the sound of creature wandering through camp, perhaps very close, perhaps some kind of cat. Depending on the specifics, I guess I am glad we didn’t meet on the trek to the restroom, earlier. lol
A beautiful moon rising after sunset.
The moon lit the night sky such that when I woke during the night and got up to walk to the restroom, I didn’t need my headlamp at all. The night was surreal and beautiful in my less than ideally awake state. I wondered at the beauty of it all. I gazed into the night sky, through the shapes of trees silhouetted against the starry sky. Night even smells quite different, some flowers are more fragrant at night. The quiet was so… quiet. I lingered long enough for the chill to catch up with me, before I returned to my cozy sleeping bag, still warm from my body heat.
A crow is cross with me this morning. I wonder what he thinks I should be doing differently? A massive RV pulls past, loud engines giving voice to the amount of power it takes to move an entire house up a narrow road. I chuckle to myself. There aren’t that many campers in my age group still tent camping, seems like; they mostly prefer a nice comfy house on wheels of some sort. I get it. I’m not criticizing at all. Tent camping is a bit of work. There’s manual labor in the set up and tear down (so much), especially for campers who enjoy being “well-equipped”. (I’m honestly more “glamping” than camping, but doing so is built on my own labor, and I enjoy the little luxuries.)
I make a bite of breakfast. Freshly scrambled eggs with some squash and mirepoix, and sourdough toast, toasted over the fire. Some time after breakfast dishes are done, I’ll hit the trail, striking out in some new direction, on a path I’ve yet to walk… but I’ll totally stay on the path.
Hot coffee, a bowl of grits, and the sun in my eyes… it’s the morning of a new day. My last in this office, and I’m grateful I still had this day here! I woke ridiculously early – shortly after 2 a.m. – and couldn’t go back to sleep. My head was stuffy (allergies) and I couldn’t breathe sufficiently easily to rest comfortably with my CPAP mask on (yeah, that’s a thing). I finally gave up at 3 a.m., dressed, and headed to the office to avoid waking my Traveling Partner – no reason we should both lose sleep because I’ve got a head full of allergies.
I got to the office too early to pay for parking. Too early for drinking coffee. Too early to take my morning medication. Too early to start work. It was just too damned early. I crashed out on the beautiful leather modern-style couch in the corner: cute, minimalist, simple lines – and very uncomfortable, but I managed to nap briefly (almost an hour) and woke feeling decently well-rested. Good enough to begin the day. Good enough to make coffee (and grits). Good enough to enjoy the sun rise. So far? A good morning, in spite of the early start.
I flip through my notes about this-n-that. The camping trip (I’ve got a packing list and some things yet to do)… the housekeeping and shopping (preparing for the camping trip and providing for my partner’s comfort while I am away)… things on my mind that want further reflection (saving those for the camping trip and the drive down to the camp site)… oh and work (time to tidy up any loose ends before being away for an entire week). I’m eager and excited. The time is short; this is my last work shift before my camping trip, and Sunday is the day I plan to hit the road. There are things to pack, things to charge, and things to pick up at the store, and my Traveling Partner delighted me with a new 3D print project (a marble run), and it may be ready to assemble today! I’m thankfully not feeling overwhelmed by all of it – just excited. 😀
…Although I’m super excited about this camping trip, on some level it’s only now setting in that I’m really going, and for four days!…
I’m pleased that my plan ensures I’ll make it back in time to enjoy a pleasant long Memorial Day weekend with my Traveling Partner, chilling at home and puttering in the garden. (No way do I want to go camping over a holiday weekend. LOL Too many people.) I think about that for a few pleasant minutes… I think about making waffles, and watching favorite animated shows, and sharing pictures from the camping trip and hearing all about the projects he did while I was gone.
I remind myself to get out into the garden tomorrow and give it a good watering after I cut back any salad greens that have begun to bolt after the heat earlier this week. I think about cutting a bunch of those tasty greens to take with me (instead of buying salad greens). Sounds delightful. Tomorrow should be a great day for it, too.
Thinking about the weather tomorrow, I pause to check the weather for the upcoming week at my camping location on the coast. Mixed reporting; each source I look at gives a somewhat different forecast. lol Looks like a good chance of some showers Tuesday night (they all agree on that), into Wednesday morning, and pleasantly mild otherwise. I remind myself to thank my Traveling Partner for suggesting I take the Moon shade for additional cover – super handy for cooking if the weather is a bit drizzly. I grin to myself as I think ahead to camping – I love sleeping in a tent listening to the rain.
The picture is not the experience. The map is not the world.
Regardless how well-prepared I feel I may be, reality will have a say. I make a note to keep an eye on the changing forecast, and to set up camp such that items needing protection from the rain get it and any firewood is kept dry. I find myself thinking about how differently I set up my camp when I bring along the solar panels, and the fridge and such… without those “extra” items I tend to put my tent well away from everything, and don’t think too much about placement other than distance. Bringing along the solar power, the fridge, a complete camp kitchen and the Moon shade (which anchors to my vehicle) changes things… I think on that for awhile, just amusing myself with thoughts of camping, and setting up camp with purpose and intention. I can’t really do anything about it until I really see the site I’ve chosen and put my feet on the ground there, and see details like where the sunlight lasts longest, and which way the wind tends to blow, and where the fire ring is relative to the picnic table (I already know the picture is unlikely to be “the true truth” – those tables can be easily moved by a group or a couple of people with the will to do so, but I have trouble moving one alone, these days).
…I make a lot of notes (it’s just a thing I do)…
I sit quietly for some minutes, sipping my coffee and smiling to myself contentedly, feeling grateful, fortunate, and well-loved – and also wondering what I’ll forget on this camping trip? (Always seems to be something.)
I glance at the clock. I’ve “caught up with the day” – and it’s time to begin again. 😀
Evening Light 