Archives for category: Healthy Living
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Not Actually Very Restful At All

August 28, 2017 //
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The weekend was busy. Like, busy to the point of not being at all restful and lacking some of the usual qualities of a weekend. It was busy, fun, exciting, and generally time well-spent. The weather was hot and sunny – summery. The performances I saw were worth seeing. I had great conversations with people I’d only just met. I got my eyes seen to on Saturday, and will pick up new glasses sometime next week. I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in a very long time (years). I enjoyed an exceptional brunch. I visited the Farmer’s Market, and also the Portland Saturday Market. It was a fun weekend out in the world.

I also took time for quiet moments.

I woke to the alarm this morning. My bones ache and my feet are sore from a weekend of dancing in the sunshine. I’m not quite sunburned; I used plenty of sunscreen. I’m “still thirsty” from the days spent in the summer sun, and drinking water along with my morning coffee. I find myself trying to cram a weekend worth of “recovery” into the brief Monday morning hours before a new work week begins – unsuccessfully. It doesn’t work that way. lol

The self-care practices of the week ahead have become quite important; next weekend I will head down south to see my Traveling Partner, and I am eager to enjoy his company for a couple days, but there’s little about it that I expect to be “restful”. I expect to be joining him somewhere out in the trees for a bit of camping, but beyond that, I have no idea what the weekend holds. Love. I know there will be Love, and that’s enough. 😀

I read an article about mindfulness this weekend. I was prepared to argue with it, because of the rather confrontational headline, but as I read it, I found myself generally in agreement. It wasn’t attacking mindfulness practices, themselves. The article is critical of the commercialization of, and lack of understanding of the purpose of, mindfulness. I found the article insightful. I read it twice more. It’s not the sort of thing to change my thinking about my own practices, nor to discourage me from them, but it definitely supports (for me) a better understanding of “why it doesn’t work” for some people in the way that it does work for me. I’m specifically not using mindfulness to try to be more efficient at work, for example, or to eliminate stress from my own experience while I continue to deliver a stressful experience to others, or for financial gain. I use mindfulness to improve my emotional resilience so that I can continue to improve my emotional wellness, without turning away from the hard bits of work ahead, while also being a kinder and more compassionate human being out in the world. I use it to improve my perspective on my experience. It seems very effective for those purposes.

Mindfulness is also something that requires real practice. Daily. Not just demonstrations of moments of mindfulness (looking your way “mindfully eating a raisin” lol), I mean actual real-world practicing of practices that, ideally, result in being a better person than I was yesterday, and these are practices that require repetition (otherwise, they’d be “tasks”). We become what we practice. Sure, mindful awareness – totally worth practicing – and also “deep listening” (listening to others mindfully and fully aware and in the moment), and basic consideration. Think about that; simple considerate behavior towards others is a practice of mindfulness. We could hardly be truly considerate without being present, and being aware of that other person, and what they may need, themselves.

I start the week awake. Aware there is more to practice, and a journey ahead that is unscripted and unfolds moment by moment through my choices. (Yours, too.) I smile and sip my coffee. Mindfulness. Perspective. Sufficiency. Building blocks that led me here. Consideration matters too; I become what I practice. I am writing my own script. I am my own cartographer. Incremental changes over time built on the choices I make now. Fancy.

Practice the practices that take you closer to being the human being you most want to be.

My coffee has gone cold. I finish it off and check the time. There is time for several little chores to be handled before I leave for work. The forecast suggests a hot day, and I decide driving to the office will be the better self-care choice, when I consider getting home in the heat. Each choice matters. 🙂 I begin again. You can too.

Will you?

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Everything or Nothing

August 25, 2017 //
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It’s funny the way we so easily (and so often) attempt to divide some facet or another of our experience into two neat, tidy, categories, some simple dichotomy. How often does life actually work that way? No, seriously, think that over – is the political spectrum really a simple division between left and right? (C’mon now, you know that’s not even a thing.) Is each life choice really an either/or? (That seems wildly unlikely.) Is the option generally “everything” or “nothing at all”? (I can’t actually find one moment in my life when that was a literal truth.)

Why do we do that?

I don’t have any answers on that one, I’m just calling out what seems rather obvious to me in this moment right here; it isn’t true. It’s not real. A false dichotomy is… most dichotomies, actually. It’s not even easier to choose between just two options – it’s just easier to think about. Easier to piss and moan about the outcome, too. Easier to build a narrative that suggests we are forced to one or pushed to the other, “without any choice” – even though all of it is about choices.

It’s just something I noticed and started thinking over.

The weekend is just hours away. I have plans. I have choices. I have a full calendar. I have a routine… that doesn’t fit. lol It’s not an either/or situation. I am not faced with the simple choice of doing this, versus doing that; there are many more details. Hell, it’s not even “a spectrum” (that tends to imply a linear direction or sequence that must be followed in one clear way – or the opposite clear way – how often does life actually work that way?). I am faced with a busy weekend and I am choosing… to choose. In the moment, on the fly, perhaps doing things quite differently than usual.

My most spontaneous friends (and my darling Traveling Partner) probably recognize this (to me) very strange (not to them) bit of circumstance as “living”. lol I face it as defiance to routines that tend to stabilize and comfort me, and there is some risk involved there…but… I know there is value in a bit of disorder now and then, and there are both lessons to be learned, and life to live, and that sometimes routine is not helpful. So. This weekend? Planned but unscripted. Tickets purchased. Reservations made. Appointments booked. Brunch agreed upon with friends. Adventure ahead! Fair warning to you, dear Readers, I may not write… because… choices. lol I may write at very different times, or even not at all. I don’t even know.

How does this go? I know people do this spontaneous thing all the damned time (less common for me)… and, hell, how far out of my comfort zone will I really be? I do have plans, tickets, reservations, appointments… all those things provide some structure to the weekend ahead. lol Hardly a fair test, my most adventurous free-living spontaneous unplanned and unplannable feral friends might observe. I know, too, that they are right; I’ve still got that calendar locked down tight, time well-managed… but… far less so for me than I typically do, and it feels a little unsettling to embrace the uncertainty this way – but uncertainty is a big part of life, and the choices that fall between and all around all of my favorite false dichotomies are so easily lost or forgotten or overlooked because my time is so structured, generally, in favor of a great deal of certainty.

This weekend? I’m uncertain. LOL I’m even okay with that.

Last night I finally got some real rest after several days of existing on what amounted to naps during the night, and long hours of quiet solitude that ideally would have been spent sleeping. Fuck I needed the sleep. lol I don’t recall quite when I crashed (it was very early), and I woke once, maybe twice, long enough to groggily flip on a light, realize it was night, and go back to sleep. I woke with the alarm. The emotional disarray that (for me) is definitely part of the sleep deprivation experience is now behind me, and I am finding that calm centered place so much more easily once again. I’m glad.

I have no clear idea of the path ahead, and as I embrace the weekend of uncertainty, I remember that really… I never actually do. 🙂 It’s a journey without a map. The journey itself is the destination. It’s a journey paved with choices and changes. It’s time to walk on…

…It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Sometimes Kind of Blue

August 23, 2017 //
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My evening ended on a blue note. I wasn’t just kind of blue, I ached with it. I felt… low.  I logged off for the evening, uncertain if media-over-stimulation might be contributing, although there wasn’t much that was definitely bad in the news (well, bad relative to the constant droning and pinging of real-world bullshit, which is bad already, and fairly ceaseless).

My tattoo had begun to itch a little, as the surface skin began to pull away from the healed skin beneath. A little like a sunburn pealing, it was nagging at me for attention, and I really did not want to scratch and damage the tattoo. I couldn’t really relax. I was feeling sort of tense of fussy, just generally, waiting to hear from my Traveling Partner that he was safely on his way back to the world after a weekend of festival camping I could not take time off to enjoy with him. (I’m not welcome with his other partner, regardless, and realistically, my “issues” would not be likely to do well for an entire week of festival-going; it’s not really about the time off.)

Looking back, there were surely things I could have done differently, other practices, other choices… I yearned for connection but was too distracted and irritable to do so comfortably. I declined a number of offers from people dear to me to chat (“I’m here if you need to talk…”). I just wasn’t really up to it. I was mired in my bullshit mood, for the moment. I put on a favorite old jazz album. (Maybe you are listening to it now…) I wrote a cross email to a friend who finds some humor in my cross prose. I lingered in a long sensuous somewhat-warmer-than-tepid shower for like… forever. I gave myself a pedicure and a foot rub (I grant you, a foot rub is better when someone else is doing it, but it’s still pretty nice to do for myself). I crashed early with a book I then did not read; I fell asleep. Sleep may have been what I really needed; I woke to the alarm.

Don’t look directly at the sun.

It’s a new day. I get to begin again. Shortly before I went to bed, my Traveling Partner sent me a quick “I love you”, and I could once again see him on the locator map. It felt comforting that he was again “in range”. When I woke, his message letting me know he’d arrived “home” was waiting for me. I check the locator map to see where he meant by that. lol

I can choose.

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Categories anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

Go Ahead, Be Broken

August 22, 2017 //
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I woke with a headache and a snarl, and I also woke rather slowly and with great effort. I slept poorly, both restless and wakeful, I didn’t get the rest I need. It is a new day.

My pounding head reminds me that although there are no loose bits rattling around inside, this fragile eggshell is cracked. I smirk at myself, aware that some of my tendencies – things like linguistic complexity where none is required, “being deep” in casual conversations, the peculiar awareness of and communication via living metaphors, the likelihood that I will take something sarcastic at face value, the difficulty ending a conversation, oh, just a whole bunch of things, really… “quirks”, eccentricities, moments of weird – are complex outcomes of a brain injury, of PTSD, of surviving some nasty shit by learning to cope with it. I can say I’m “broken” with something like a comfortable feeling of familiarity. I used to let it define me… differently.

For awhile I fought it. I refused to define myself in terms of the chaos and damage. I refused to “be” broken. Other times, I wallowed in it. Yielded to the damage. Gave in to the chaos. Gave up on changing anything.

Time passes. Change is.

This morning I woke up snarling at myself. Frustrated by the headache. Annoyed by feeling so groggy. Eager to get to the coffee…

I am unsure whether it is the caffeine, the comfort of the hot mug, or the slow familiar waking ritual of making it, then drinking it, that serves so well to put the day on track. It does though. It does put the day on track, generally. This moment of warmth – literal and metaphorical warmth – enjoyed alone each morning, a moment to “get my head right”, and get past the headache, or the arthritis stiffness, or the stuffy nose, or the lingering recollection of a bad dream, or… well, whatever the waking moments of consciousness throw at me. I’ve got that cup of coffee to help me turn things around. Does it actually matter to me what the mechanism of action actually is? Not in the slightest.

Be broken, if it helps. Grieve if you are hurting. It’s not especially helpful to squash down all the feelings with a lot of “shouldn’t” and “don’t” and extra helpings of criticism taken from the words of others, and reformed in your own words and returned to your narrative as your own thoughts. No one needs guilt or shame on top of the things that already suck so much – and those things don’t only weigh us down and hold us back from going on with things, they also tend to stop us embracing what is authentically good about who we are – chaos and damage and all. Some of this broken shit frustrates me, daily. Some of this broken shit is part of who I am.

“Broken” 14″ x 18″ acrylic and mixed media with glow.

Some of my most cherished individual qualities are very likely specific to my brain injury – or my PTSD. Some are things I like most about myself, others are things that other people have indicated they really appreciate about me. I’ve no intention of “fixing” those things. Don’t want to. Don’t need to. What if fixing the rest would also, by necessity, fix those things as well…? This thought is one underlying my focus on “being the woman I most want to be” rather than focusing on “fixing all the things wrong with me”; some of the things I may think are “wrong with me” in one moment, or from one perspective, may actually be very “right with me”, after all. 🙂

I’m rambling. Sipping my coffee. Grateful to have taken the time to really wake up before going on to other things. I take time to appreciate the value in waking up early enough to let myself really become my best self before I go on with my day. I pause to wonder how I got through so many years of launching myself from bed first thing, and immediately dressing and getting out the door quickly; it seemed efficient at the time. It was a grueling and fairly punishing routine, in practice, and I often treated people who are unfortunate enough to interact with me very early in the morning fairly badly, especially in that first hour after waking. I’m not suggesting that getting up at 4:30 am to depart for work at 7 am would be “the right choice” for everyone, there are other needs, and other ways. This just works for me. By 6 am, I am feeling mostly human. Awake. Aware. More able to respond, and less likely to react. The headache has dissipated. It feels like a lovely morning.

It feels like I can begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Tears On My Pillow

August 16, 2017 //
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Yeah, our individual lives and experiences continue alongside the culture-storm of change going on around us. Well… mine does. Doesn’t yours?

I sip my coffee. Breathe, relax. I don’t avoid the awareness that cried myself to sleep last night. I keep my heart open to the awareness that I don’t fully “know why”. Sadness crept in. Tears spilled out. I’m no saint; I’m pretty sure my tears were “all about me“.

My Traveling Partner got into town sometime yesterday, busy with plans and no time for me. It’s an honest truth. My heart aches with it. This morning as I wake he is already far away. His route took him the closest he has been to my new place, since I moved; approximately just 1 mile away, passing by in the night, sometime after I had gone to bed. No drama. No storm of “if you loved me, you would…”. No conditional affection. This event has been planned on his calendar a long while. This makes only twice he’s been in town since he started his new job. Both times he was in town briefly. Both times for other purposes than seeing me. Neither time did we see each other. I’ve lived here now for one month; he has yet to see the place, though he has keys. I get through those thoughts, this time, without tears.

I sip my coffee, and move on with my own experience.

I keep an eye on the clock. There is an early morning meeting at the office, and I will make a point of being there, without resentment for the disruption in my schedule; it is a welcome distraction.

I let my thoughts coast through memories of other lovers, feeling grateful for this partnership I’ve got. It allows me to live (and thrive) on my own terms – even when those terms became “I need a place of my own”. Our choices reliably have consequences. Some of the consequences of our choices are not easily predictable for us, as individuals in the moment, sometimes because they can’t be predicted with ease, sometimes because we refrain from looking ahead with cool-headed clarity.

I find myself “listening for the rain”, thinking perhaps I heard drops on the windows or rooftop, but no rain is falling. No tears, either. I’m okay right now. I sip my coffee, and let contentment wash over me. Running from my feelings doesn’t get me here so quickly. Neither does wallowing in them, allowing myself to spiral downward into the darkness. It’s a peculiar thing to sit with my emotions. Make room for them as if for a fellow traveling on public transportation; sometimes quite reluctantly, but not wanting to be rude. Giving myself a comfortable moment to feel my feelings without taking action, to listen to my moment gently, and to allow myself to feel heard from within can make such a difference in emotional moments. Yeah… as always… verbs. Practice. Varying results. (See that subject line? Results vary!) I’m grateful for mornings; each one utterly new. A restart. A do over. A beginning.

Where does this path lead?

I miss my Traveling Partner. I feel the feeling of it. I allow myself to be wrapped in the love that makes missing him matter so much, and soak in that for some minutes, recalling things we have enjoyed together this year. I allow the mixed emotions to be what they are. There has been little of this so-precious time shared this year. Tears and a smile. I’m okay with that. I think ahead to the week to come. It feels a little empty knowing there won’t be a last-minute urgent message from him late on a Thursday suggesting I drive down to see him, followed by a message noting that he’d checked my calendar and sees I have plans… or a reply from me that I’m on my way, or… soon. We’ll see each other in September. We saw each other once in August. And in June we spent a weekend together for my birthday. Soon, autumn, the holiday season… more weekends together than not, perhaps. Perhaps not. I smile and let go of my expectations like airborne fluff from a cottonwood tree. It’s a journey, and what’s up ahead isn’t very clear. I’ll take it a day at a time. Each rung on the ladder individually climbed. Each step in the staircase individually tread. Each moment individually lived. Well… as much as possible. I’m quite human. lol

It’s time to begin again.

 

 

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being
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