Archives for category: Healthy Living
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Enter Title Here

March 23, 2017 //
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I start writing this morning without a title. That’s not the usual order of things. Another night goes by, I wake and begin again on less than 5 hours of sleep. 4 nights on minimal sleep isn’t going to support great cognition, or emotional balance, and I make a point of setting reminders for later breaks, meals, and coffee. Focus and task management are already impaired. It gets worse on less sleep over time, reliably.

My Traveling Partner blew onto my doorstep yesterday, shortly after I got home from Jury Duty, driven my way by emotional storms and drama elsewhere. We hang out. He talks. I listen. I do my best to avoid criticizing that other person in his life, and to just be here for my partner. It is more important to support my partner, provide a safe place, and time to heal. I had expected to (most likely) spend the evening alone, meditating, relaxing, and making myself emotionally ready for today; I have a medical procedure later. At one or two points I begin to tear up unexpectedly as we talk; although he is here with me, he’s not realistically available to provide the emotional support that I need myself, for tomorrow, and with regards to my health over time. Not right now. I breathe through those moments; I am loved. It isn’t personal. This too will pass. The moments I find myself feeling alone in spite of his presence won’t be what I remember about the day. 🙂

I really need to sleep. I’m still not quite awake. I feel groggy. A little dizzy. I am in more than usual pain, in part due simply to being tired.  I double check that I’ve set my ‘leave now’ alarm. I double check it a few more times. I’m having trouble holding on to the knowledge that the alarm is indeed set. Really. No… really. I check it again anyway, “just to be sure”. I consider taking the car, if my Traveling Partner is still here when the time comes to head to my appointment…faster. Less time spent away from work on a busy work day. It hits me that there was something specific I’d intended to work on… I struggle to remember what. I am eager to be finished with so many things… finished with medical diagnostic procedures, finished with house hunting (and the implied move on the other side of that process!), finished with taxes, finished with hiring a new analyst and completing a software implementation, finished big disrupting tasks and events, generally, and back to living gently, predictably, uneventfully, and comfortably day after day. Sleep. I’d like to get back to sleeping regularly… that I’d like to begin again. Soon.

Speaking of beginning again. I think I’ll go do that. Today is a good day for beginnings. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, 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

Ain’t We Funkin’ Now?

March 18, 2017 //
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Well… ain’t we? Er… are we? I am. It’s Saturday morning and I really don’t need to sit very still all day stressed out about health concerns neither confirmed nor crossed off some secret list of shit that goes wrong with aging. lol Cue music! Better to funk hard, enjoy life for every breath I breathe, than to wait quietly to die. 😉 So, no shit, I’m jammin’ the old school funk tracks that sparked my love of bass, and bass guitar, and have followed me through life to the newest, strangest, bass-est digital music of the current age. Why not? It’s after 6 am on a Saturday… I’m sure the neighbors won’t mind my embracing life through music at this hour… right…? (I’m not actually that inconsiderate, and I’m grateful for headphones.)

Are you still funkin’ with me? Do you know the funk legend behind that bass line? Human. Just like me. Just like you. Just like Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Just like your grandma. Just like Grandma Funk. What I think I’m getting at is… don’t wait to be a legend. Just be. Enjoy you. Maybe you level up to Legend at some point, but as with “happy”, chasing it comes at a cost – and that cost is often the goal itself. Each so human, so precious, so wonderfully quirky and weird and unique… do you.

This morning I let the irresistible nature of the funk distract me from pain, from worry, from an uncertain future (all futures are uncertain, are they not?), and I let go and let… myself enjoy the fucking funk, for as long as I can. Will you miss me if I were to drop dead in some now moment unexpectedly, without the courtesy of a heads up that I am mortal? Would my words outlast this fragile vessel or die with me, losing relevance over time without a connection to a living consciousness? All men are mortal… women, too, I hear. lol I sip my coffee and contemplate the unknowns still ahead of me in life – and at its end.

I think about the house hunting ahead this morning. I think about love. I savor my humanity. I appreciate yours. The morning feels easy on  my consciousness and my heart, in spite of… worries. Don’t we all have at least one or two? Isn’t it totally the most basic of human challenges to learn to balance our experience in the moment with our concerns of moments not yet now? Who will you turn to for comfort? Your friends? (Good choice.) Your lover(s)? (Another good choice, although I am assuming you choose lovers who are down for providing you comfort in tough times… perhaps that’s not what you choose of the assorted humans dear to you?) Will you choose the talking heads on the idiot box? The comment section of a favorite forum? Facebook associates? (That’s all the rage in the 21st century, and there’s a fairly impressive selection of social media alternatives.) Your professional associates? (That gets harder, sometimes, doesn’t it?) Your parents, elders, children, or siblings? (That can be a mixed bag where comfort it concerned, right? lol) This morning, I am turning to The Brothers Johnson, Whiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Skrillex, Daft Punk… sure, I know exactly what they’ll be telling me, because I’ve heard it a million times, but… I also know what they’ll be telling me, because I’ve heard it a million times. 🙂 It’s what I need to hear; we continue. There is now. Always now… And yet, somehow, we continue; if in no other way, we continue as a presence and a recollection in the consciousness of all those we have touched – good and bad and indifferent. Valar Morghulis.

I can’t escape my mortality – at least not with current medical science or technology (will I live to see that change?). I could sure get mired in waiting around to die, if I chose to do that instead of living. There are verbs involved, regardless. Today, I tell mortality – or at least the fear of it – to funk right off. It’s Saturday – there is a living world just beyond this monitor, and this keyboard, and my coffee is finished. 🙂

It’s totally understandable that death might stop me in my tracks – it is less understandable to wait around for it to do so. lol. Today is a good day to live, awake, aware, and present in this moment, now. It’s enough. 🙂

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

Know Your Kryptonite!

March 17, 2017 //
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Yesterday was hard. Small things frustrating me here, there, and oh right – over there, too. Work. Life. Health. Ping. Ping. Ping. I find myself struggling against tears more than once. Not sorrow. Not anger. My own personal kryptonite: frustration. It’s hard these days to anger me, and by far most of my anger has its roots in frustration. It’s hard to break me down – the most powerful lever remains my own reaction to my own frustration. I bounce back pretty easily these days – except for moments of frustration, those sometimes color an entire day, or experience.

Mornings sometimes promise me the world is made of opportunity.

Yesterday was filled with moments of frustration. The recollection raises my stress level in the here and now, not quite unexpectedly. I feel grateful to know myself better than I once did. My most powerful personal demon is, at least, at long last, named. I have given her a face and a voice and a name, and I am tired of her shit. Frustration can knock me down, but I’m still getting back up, again and again. Frustration may move me to tears more quickly than any moment of grief ever seems to, but I know I can cry a million tears and survive the moment. Frustration may end an event, and evening, a long day, but I can begin again.

By afternoon, I’m sometimes looking at things very differently.

Ideally, I would have gone to bed before 9 pm. I couldn’t rest or relax. Stress had severely pwnd me. I found myself sitting in a silent room, ruminating over frustrations. Worrying about this fragile mortal vessel. Sleep was not likely. My Traveling Partner being out of town also put him out of reach, although we’d spoken earlier, and I was still hanging on to his loving words for comfort. I was still to wound up for sleep. I reached out to a friend, a fellow veteran, living next door. “Hey, dude, you wanna hang out for a few minutes? I’m stuck. Hanging out with someone over a moment of conversation or… anyway. If you’re up for it, I’d feel better with some company, maybe.” “Oh, hey, I was thinking about you. I wasn’t sure… I didn’t want to break in on your quiet time… Yeah, I’ll be right there.” We set an alarm, to be sure he’d head back to his place in a timely way. He’d been in the kitchen, doing kitchen things. We hung out. Talked. My heart rate slowed, my stress eased. Sleep became a possibility. I wake up this morning grateful for good friends, grateful for love, grateful that generally however frustrating or crappy things feel… I can begin again.

Things look different from another perspective. Sometimes that helps.

So here’s me; beginning again. It’s all very human. Health? Well… yeah… the “nothing really” might be something, and that’s worrisome. Work? It’s just a lot, that’s all, and it’s a process, and there’s plenty of traction and forward momentum and meetings and buzzwords… and I’m valued, and appreciated, and it’s just adulting in an adult world. Sometimes frustrating. Life? You know… I’m going to embrace the good, give the side-eye to the shit that aggravates me, and be present, awake, and aware, for as much of this peculiar adventure as I possibly can. What if it ends tomorrow? Well… what if it does? I’m here now. Enjoying this moment, quietly sipping my coffee, and planning my house-hunting for tomorrow. Tomorrow’s uncertainties aren’t even real, yet… not really.

Be present. Begin again.

It has to be enough.

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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