Archives for category: inspiration

There’s More To It

May 23, 2019 //

I’m thinking about the way social media tends to give us each the impression we know all there is to know about what’s going on around us, and with the people we know, or observe from afar, as though eavesdropping a conversation in a restaurant booth behind us holds any potential to give us context and depth of understanding of the unseen faces having that conversation. It’s a misleading sense of the world, at best, and at worst… we participate in lying to ourselves, and dumbing down the world. Frustrating to attempt to have a deep conversation with a human being heavily invested in the world-via-tweet or yeah, even Instagram – my last remaining social media account. lol

…At this point, I’ve unfollowed every “influencer” (I hadn’t followed many, to begin with, because I don’t know them), and anyone who re-shares spammy bullshit, or advertising, or memes. I have limited my feed to direct relationships with people I actually know “irl”. No exceptions. It’s not about them. It’s about me; I don’t want to build shadows of relationships with distant entities who hold no potential to be “real” in my experience. I may not always like every one of the people around me… but I like them all 100% more than I hold any affection for a twitter account. LOL I mean, seriously? An ever-loving-fuck-ton of celebrities don’t even “manage” their own social media. They hire people to take care of that “workload” for them. They definitely don’t “care” about me – or you. They care about their brand. 😉

I can’t save anyone else from the impersonal science fiction abyss of dystopian disconnection. Sorry. You’ll need to crawl out on your own, if you can. It’s not actually hard, exactly, but it does require your will, and honest intent. So… verbs are involved. Choices. Practice. I kept Instagram, at least for now, simply because I enjoy sharing my photos with my actual friends, and enjoy seeing theirs. Innocent. Authentic. Rather unworldly, inasmuch as I guess I think that’s something I can have… Maybe it isn’t? I sip my coffee and wonder about that. Instagram remains a profit-generating social media platform on which I am not the consumer… I’m the product. Yick. I may need to rethink even this. lol

Snail mail, anyone?

I have been writing letters lately – a bit like the “elderly aunt” I seem to be becoming, slowly, over time. Hell, I’m okay with that. 🙂 I write a lot of email. I receive far less, but it’s not likely that a handful of emails and letters can provide a societal course correction in any detectable way. In my own experience, though, it’s quite a lovely relief from the fuss and bother, and anxiety, of a life in which every possible moment is “connected” via social media. That’s not really being connected at all, as it turns out. We’re all just shouting our opinions at each other, and sharing the ones that agree with our position, hoping to be rewarded with attention, with likes, with clicks, with a boost in personal status, or a large collection of “friends” or followers. How is that not toxic as fuck? lol

There is much less bullshit and drama in a life that is mostly pretty starved of social media. 🙂 Maybe take it for a test drive? If you were born in any year after about 1980, chances are good most of your life has been tangled up in the digital world. Take care of yourself if you do a really serious digital detox; you may be surprised to discover how actually dependent on it you are. Social media has some very drug-like qualities, and you may even be an addict. Be kind to yourself. Be patient.

I laugh for a minute. Quitting wasn’t anything like easy, and the world is just… yeah. My bank uses hashtags on their social media posts. Some of the merchants I do business with have specials that are only presented using digital coupons. Some of the artists and craftsman whose work I favor have contests that require “liking”, “subscribing” and sharing of social media items. It’s everywhere. I still walked away, because I’d rather live very authentically in the real world, such as it is, rather than become a (cognitively) fat shapeless media-fed caterpillar… without at least knowing what I will become, later on. (Pretty sure it won’t be a lovely butterfly of emotional wellness… just saying.) 😉

I finish my coffee. My thoughts continue to rattle around in my consciousness. I’ll spend time on my meditation cushion this morning, making a point to let all of this go, before I begin again, here, alive, awake, and aware, a solitary human being living in the world. ❤

A rose in my garden. You can’t smell it from a picture, or feel its silky petals – that’s only available in the world. 😉

Tags authenticity, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, choose wisely, digital detox, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, let it go, listening deeply, mindful living, mindfulness for beginners, perspective, practicing the practices, relationships, sufficiency, taking care of me, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?, you are the product

Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

One Moment

May 22, 2019 //

Take this one moment – or any, really – and make a point to savor it. Enjoy it. Appreciate it for what it is. Notice how fleeting moments can be…

…Take a deep breath. Pause. Fill your senses…

…Now? Begin again. All over again. It’s a whole new moment. 😀

Tags be here now, be the change, begin again, breathe, emotional self sufficiency, experience, meditation, mindfulness for beginners, perspective, practicing the practices, sufficiency, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

That Thing I Said

May 10, 2019 //

Isn’t it interesting how our words can linger in someone’s memory? How easily hurt each of us can be? How we hold onto grudges, and the way small wounds can fester over time? How trivial matters blow up and change relationships? How little regard we seem to give these things… even though, given some thought, it’s pretty commonplace stuff? I’m just saying – pay attention to what you say, choose your words with care. The consideration you give your words can change whole relationships, and even all the many moments to come. 🙂

…I don’t bring it up for any reason. I’m just drinking coffee in the morning and wondering about things, considering stuff, and thinking things over, and listening to music.

It’s been a busy week. The weekend ahead seems short; I have plans. 🙂 The days are becoming more summery, and the garden is thriving. Something nags at my consciousness… like a thing I have forgotten, being forgotten right now… only I can feel the forgetting, and maintain an awareness of something… but… what? I sip my coffee, catching a quizzical expression on my reflected in my monitor. I spend way to much time in front of a monitor… I suggest to myself that I could, perhaps, choose differently (obviously, right?)… Write. Finish. Walk away. 🙂

My birthday is next month. About a month away, actually. 56. I have to keep re-calculating my age; I keep forgetting, and catching myself wondering… 56? 57? It’s 56. Fifty. Six. Five, six. lol How is it even a thing to forget one’s own age??

I realized over this past weekend that my meditation practice has been pretty hit-or-miss lately. A consequence of small disruptions and changes that have been a natural byproduct of my Traveling Partner moving in, more than anything else. And “being busy”. Here’s the thing though; I feel vastly more “busy” because I’ve let my meditation practice slip, than I might if I hadn’t. 🙂 I even know that. I’ve been here before. (So human) I shrug it off. Finish my coffee. Head for my meditation cushion.

It’s a good day for a new beginning. 🙂 How about it – what will you choose to change, in order to become the person you most want to be, living and loving in healthy relationships, in a beautiful world full of wonder, contentment, and joy? Check the clock. It’s time to begin again. 😉

Tags are you going my way?, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, choose wisely, experience, I am my own cartographer, meditation, mindfulness, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, take a moment, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Free Will, gardening, gratitude, inspiration, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Breaking Habits

May 9, 2019 //

I’m sipping my coffee, before dawn, on a Spring morning. Well-past Winter, and headed for Summer, the morning is mild, and the patio door is open to the cool morning air. I haven’t written a word in days… unless a letter to my Mother, for Mother’s Day, counts. I suppose it does… but…

…I’ve spent lovely hours in the garden…

…I seem to have broken my writing habit. lol Yep. It’s entirely possible to break a habit, however long-standing, however well-favored, and even when that habit is relied upon, enjoyed, and cultivated until it becomes a plot point in one’s life, and an element of character. Still breakable.

Just stop doing it.

Stop a habitual behavior one time, and it has little impact. Stop it again, and it becomes a repeated behavior. Continue stopping it ( as in, don’t do it) and, over time, it becomes part of who you are that you don’t do this thing. We become what we practice, it is that simple.

This is a technique, a practice, that works. It works very well; practice something long enough and changes occur. Practice a desirable behavior. Practice something tedious. Practice something useful. Practice something foolish. We become what we practice.

I broke my writing habit by taking a day from writing, now and then, which grew to amused tolerance of not writing, even for a couple days, which slowly became a small kernel of doubt; do I even want to write? I took a vacation for a few days, to focus on Love, and found myself just… not writing. At all. Good times. Challenges. Adventure. Drama. Practice? Well, one thing I was not practicing? Writing. It’s been interesting to live life without it.

The last day or two I have tended to be somewhat irritable, and easily hurt. At that same time, there’s been something “a bit off” every now and then, between my Traveling Partner and I, in spite of how delightfully well we get along, and how much love exists in this relationship. It struck me as I fell asleep last night that, in some small way, my writing is not only part of who I am… it is part of who we are. When I don’t write, not only do I lose “my mirror”, and regular moment taken for self-reflection, and reinforcement of those practices that tend to make me more the woman I most want to be… it also removes a handy window into who I am, and how I’m doing, that my Traveling Partner is quite used to having available. I wonder if that’s something he counts on? I remind myself to ask, some other time.

This is not to say I sense any obligation among all these words; my choices are my own. I miss writing every day. There is a longing that exists alongside the tempting freedom from this habit of sitting down each morning, over my coffee, reflecting on my thoughts, my actions, my experience… and frankly the longing won. 🙂 That’s okay, too.

I listen to a little bird outside my window, and my neighbor’s car warming up in the driveway. I sip my coffee, and feel the cool morning air fill the house. I think of the happy happenstance of running into a former coworker (current friend) yesterday, that I hadn’t seen in a while. I exist in this vaguely merry pre-dawn state, drinking coffee. I love this “place”, this particular moment and state of being. How is it that even this habit is so easily broken? How is it so easily resumed?

We get to choose.

Imagine the insane power our freedom of choice actually implies – and what it says, really, about who we each are (and who we are choosing to be). Raw power.

…And…yeah… it means that it matters who we each choose to be, and that who we are is a product of a great many choices we willfully make, each day. We can choose differently, and better, than we often do – and once we notice that? We sort of have an obligation to ourselves – to that person we most want to be – to step up, and walk a path we choose with care, and make those choices that make us more fully who we do want to be, until, over time, that’s who we actually are.

…So… There’s that. I check the time, and begin again. 🙂

Tags are you going my way?, be here now, be love, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breaking habits, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, experience, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, listening deeply, looking in a bigger mirror, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, sufficiency, taking care of me, taking time for me, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, the power of choice, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what do you choose?, what matters most?, who are you?

Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

One Moment of Many

April 18, 2019 //

I’m enjoying a moment. This one. It is a morning moment, served up with a side of pre-dawn quiet, and a cup of hot coffee. I woke just ahead of the alarm, uncertain, in the darkness, if it was worth trying to go back to sleep… wanting to… as I thought it over, though, the alarm caught up with me, and announced the beginning of a new day.

I sip my coffee and appreciate things. I mean, just generally. There’s no doubt life has some challenges to offer, and having experienced a fair few, I maintain awareness that there are likely more ahead; it’s not personal, it’s just living a life. My coffee is hot, well-made, tasty – and in this particular moment, right here, it is enough to enjoy it quietly. Sufficiency. Mindfulness. Gratitude. It is a pleasant start to the day.

I stay with the moment awhile longer. This coffee. This moment. Present. Here. Now. Nothing fancy or expensive to it, and “presence” is not an especially complicated or difficult practice. I let go of ruminations over past challenges. I refrain from launching my consciousness into explorations of potential future challenges. I exist in this present, right now moment, content with my hot coffee. (Maybe you prefer tea? The practice of being present and mindful does not have to change, whatever your preferred beverage! 😉 )

My thoughts drift to recent photographs; representations of recent moments. Lovely urban shots of spring. Pretty pictures of raindrops on rose leaves extended into the afternoon sunshine, sparkling as if edged with glitter. Traffic. Sunrises. Sunsets. My camera has failed me several times recently – great shots that didn’t save – but my memory does not. It’s a fair exchange, I suppose. I smile, and continue to sip my coffee.

Raindrops on roses.

…Another day, another photograph, another moment… another memory. It’s already time to begin again.

Tags a garden on the deck, be here now, be the change, breathe, choose wisely, container gardening, emotional self sufficiency, I am my own cartographer, it's spring, meditation, metaphors, mindfulness for beginners, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, raindrops on roses, sufficiency, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

There’s More To It

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One Moment

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That Thing I Said

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Breaking Habits

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One Moment of Many

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