Archives for category: Logic & Reason
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Sometimes It’s Like This…

December 22, 2013 //
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This morning I woke up with pain. Some sort of weirdness yesterday afternoon with a nasty cramp in my right calf, after a long Solstice walk in the forest, that lingers this morning as unexpected pain associated with some specific movements. It hurts in the background as a dull ache until I do something ‘just the wrong way’ and it reminds me with a moment of acute agony that it doesn’t plan to be so easily dismissed.  Still, I woke in a good mood and I was pleased to find that walking on a flat surface is one of the more comfortable things I can be doing – which made making coffee this morning relatively easy and not particularly painful. So…good mood…good coffee… time for a good morning. Right? Oh. Wait – there’s more!

I had an irksome moment with technology this morning when I sat down with my laptop (note to self – please, PLEASE, do take time to meditate every day before anything else, it does make that much difference!). My mouse wasn’t working. I did the troubleshooting, rebooted the laptop, still no mouse. I replaced the mouse battery, no mouse. Rebooted again – finally, I have a living mouse. But… for some reason using it ‘feels weird’. Sluggish. Like the buttons are not as responsive. I become aggravated, I fight it. I struggle to set aside my frustration – and the background irritability that stems from a loving partner pointing out just last night that I’m due for a better mouse – one that doesn’t shine a laser in his eyes every time I thoughtlessly lift the mouse while pointed in his general direction. At that moment, I was really liking my mouse – it’s a pretty one. Right now I’m just frustrated with it and wanting to smash things… but the wanting to smash things is not solely the fault of the mouse. There’s more.

I use online services. Many people do, these days. Some services require strict authentication and identity verification – like banks – and while I value that they do, and appreciate the good security, I also find that during the holiday season, it can be a huge irritating bit of inconvenient bullshit. Yep. Total bullshit. I managed to ‘lock up’ an account on such a service by starting and then canceling a transaction. Yep. I just wanted to see if there would be a fee – and the fee structure is not easily available to view, making it easier to start the transaction, get to that point to see if there is a fee (and what it is) and then cancel the transaction if it is not worth paying that fee… generally not an issue. Today, it locked up my account and generated a dismally polite email advising me that ‘all’ I have to do is re-verify ‘a few’ ‘simple’ account details – by snail mail.  I call this ‘a service I am unlikely to use again’. The amount of frustration generated, and the resulting emotional volatility and rage are actually just not worth dealing with at all. My immediate reaction is ‘I won’t use this service anymore’. My strategy for getting my morning back on track is ‘take a few deep breaths and meditate’.

I am easily frustrated by dealing with banking, with frustration, with technology failures, with deviations from simple routines – they hit me hard, and momentarily disable me with a sudden increase in emotional volatility and a sudden loss of cognitive skill (or a perception of it). I very much doubt that online businesses, or application developers, spend much time thinking about how changes to their products affect the small number of people who do have challenges with brain injuries or cognitive challenges. Something as simple as changing the authentication process can be frustrating for anyone, but for me that bit of frustration can set off an avalanche of anger, confusion, and emotion that turn the simplest task into something almost unachievable in seconds. It sucks.

I’ll take a pleasant moment for gratitude – it is surprisingly comforting to remember how much worse an experience like this used to feel when I didn’t know why I reacted the way I did, or why it seemed so much more challenging for me than it seemed for ‘other people’. I’m grateful that I found out about my brain injury.  It’s easier now – at least, it is easier to ‘find my way home’ to a place of balance and calm, again. More like a storm, less like climate change. 🙂

It’s actually a pretty good morning, now that the irksome bit is behind me. My coffee is cold, and my leg hurts, but… it’s only pain and cold coffee. Nothing to cry about. Certainly no need to smash things over it. Wow. What a difference mindfulness makes! Yep, still human – but I am human; I use tools.

This guy is mindful, and living in his moment.

This guy is mindful, and living in his moment.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, winter

This Is Entirely Different

December 21, 2013 //
4

Well, or maybe it isn’t.

Actually, it is.  I’ve written ‘this post’ six times, now. Each very different, written on a different theme, a different emotional voice, a different perspective, expressing very different needs, or understandings of the world around me, or my own life. It’s an odd morning that way. I’ve been up since 6 am, and after some meditation and a bit of yoga, I have been sipping my coffee and writing.  This post is entirely different from the previous versions.  It’s a strange morning and while I feel moved to communicate…I’m not sure what I want, or need, to say.

There’s a meme trapped in my thoughts. It drifts around Facebook regularly, it comes from somewhere…unknown to me in the moment. Words over a picture, the usual thing…the 3 questions meme – quote? “Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said by me?  Does this need to be said by me, now?”  I do love some good questions. I woke with these words in my head, but juxtaposed over a troubling dream that seemed very unrelated to the words.

I dreamt I was dangling from the Burnside Bridge, holding on by my hands, everything slick from a drenching rain that was falling. I pleaded with a man on the bridge to pull me up – I felt fear and desperation, and a panicked certainty that falling would be the end.

The Burnside Bridge

The Burnside Bridge

The man in my dream was a lover, or husband, or  father…someone dear to me, someone I could count on, someone I expected to assist and support me.  My pleading went nowhere helpful.  My potential rescuer seemed unaware of the urgency of my situation, looking vaguely thoughtful and caught up in his own thoughts, his own moment.  I repeated my plea, my hands were wet with both rain and sweat, and it was so hard to hold on.  The man above me looked down on me and politely said he would be happy to help, of course, but first he wanted to give me some feedback…

I woke to that ‘feeling of falling’ that dreams sometimes end with, feeling quite terrified, heart pounding, short of breath to the point of panting – and very very happy to be quite alive and not actually falling to my death in the icy December waters of the Willamette River.

I meditated. I let the dream go. I wrote. It came back. I wrote different words and dispelled my demons. They returned moments later. I wrote more different words, changed my thoughts (alright, Brain, nothing to see here, move along…), and continued to write, erase, rewrite – again the dream returned. I decided, finally, fuck it. Write about the weird dream and see where it goes. It doesn’t go anywhere, really, why would it? It was a dream. One of those intense, not-quite-a-nightmare sort of dreams that I generally accept as my sleeping mind attempting to communicate something to my waking mind – it is an endeavor of limited successfulness, and largely due to the difficulties with words.  This particular attempt seems to be pointing me toward considering emotions, words, and what matters most in the present moment. Differences between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’, perhaps, or a reminder that we each have our own needs in the moment, in life, in love… or… perhaps something entirely different.

Now it is morning, the household begins to wake. The day is all potential from this vantage point, and dreams are behind me, lost in the night. Today is a good day to love gently. Today is a good day to be compassionate with myself, and with others. Today is a good day to experience joy, and contentment, and to accept struggle with compassion. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, winter, women, Words

Just One Thing

December 19, 2013 //
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Yesterday I spent the day gently, most of it, on mindful service to the small creatures in my life. I spent hours on aquatic gardening: doing a water change in my community tank, some pruning, planting, tidying things up, acclimating the new tetras that have been in quarantine, and generally spending the larger part of the day with the fish.  It was soothing and serene, and I definitely needed to support my inner stillness after a morning of unexpected turmoil.  Tending the aquarium was a good choice to get back on track and feeling calm and balanced.

The secret life of shrimp.

The secret life of shrimp.

It was a moment of shared humor to find myself discussing the aqua gardening, and commenting that I doubted there were any shrimp surviving, since I simply never see them…I gestured to the tank and…there’s a shrimp, right up front! LOL I took a moment to snap a picture, because I wanted to be sure later that I didn’t doubt my recollection of having seen him. 😀  All that cleaning and moving things around must have disturbed any shrimp in the community. I found several more lurking quietly in the Java fern. 🙂

What made yesterday sort itself out in such a wonderful way wasn’t heartfelt apologies, or emotional ‘laying down of arms’, or occupying time in spaces away from conflict, although those things generally help.  For me, it was more about taking time to be deeply engaged in a favored activity, a needful task of some complexity, that I gave my entire attention to for a while to a ‘greater good’. Mindful service. In this case, mindful service to my own needs, and my aquarium. Simple gardening on some level, and gardening is something I know puts my heart and head right, when I take the time to allow it, to pursue it, and to invest in the good in it.  (Experience tells me I could pay lip service to the idea of ‘mindful service’ and just go through some motions, and perform tasks to completion, while investing in being hurt and angry, and get nothing in return but a sense of futility and resentment – will and intent matter; results also require action.)

The day was a good one, morning challenges passed quickly, comfortably, and were quickly forgotten. That’s more progress, and it feels like something I can begin to count on. 🙂  I admittedly enjoy tallying up the improvements in emotional resilience, reductions in volatility, new tools, new skills, new experiences of living in a general state of contentment, and comfort within myself…it’s been a year (368 days) since my sense of self began to unravel in a terrible way, a process that took weeks, consumed the holiday experience, and ultimately found me as only a shell of myself, considering choosing to end my own life… What a difference a year can make!  I don’t discuss those dark days in any detail with people, even people I love very much; too much pain to share, too few words to express it without sharing the pain more than the understanding. I feel hopeful that those days are well behind me now, and nothing more than a memory.

The mindfulness thing was the key. Still is. There are so many times I wish I could convincingly say “no, really, try this“, to friends and loved ones with their own challenges, their own suffering… but generally, as with my own experience in my own life, there is a state of readiness needed to even hear the suggestion in a usable way. I was once someone willing to say, with conviction and based on my own experience, that I had ‘tried meditation and it didn’t do anything for me’.  “I tried meditation…” No, no I had not. Not like this. I had always been focused on focus, focused on concentration, focused on clarity – focused on thought. I did not understand ‘awareness’, ‘stillness’, or observation. I did not understand the importance of breathing. I’m not sure what I ‘understand’ now…but I practice. 🙂  It is enough.

A lot more is ‘enough’, now. I hope to more deeply explore ‘sufficiency’ in 2014, to be more deeply and mindfully in service to home, hearth, and to myself, to ask more questions, and be more comfortable with uncertainty, to continue my studies of life and love, and to connect more deeply and more intimately with my loves, with my friends, with my family. I’ll get started today – it’s a lovely day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, winter

335 Days

December 9, 2013 //
7

It’s been 335 days since I began this blog, this journey, this cycle of change and growth. 335 days.  A bit less than 47 weeks. 8040 hours, give or take. More than 482,000 minutes. Time measured, time spent, some of it wasted, all of it precious, and limited; I am living a more deliberate, mindful life than I had been living. I continue to practice new skills, continue to refine new practices that I value, and that seem to enhance my every day experience. There are a lot of small changes in the way I experience my life, the qualities I bring to my relationships, the value I place on the experiences of others, their challenges, the lessons they offer me when our paths cross along the way.

Now there is time to consider it all as the end of the year approaches.

It has long been my practice to take time on New Year’s day to consider the year past, and the year unfolding ahead of me. An hour or two, at least, to really put some attention on whether I achieved my goals, where I’m headed, what I can improve, what my challenges are. Funny, I’ve been doing that since I was about 14… it wasn’t as helpful a practice as it could have been, because for so many years I let my thinking self control the agenda, the tone, and the outcome, and left no room for my observing self to bring stillness, calm, and insight. Light without illumination, in a manner of speaking. This year I have come so far, and much of the journey on a very different path than any before. I’m eager to sit down with myself this New Year’s Day, look 2014 in the eye and say “Let’s do this thing!”

I slept badly last night. I didn’t, however, experience the stress of ‘how will I get enough rest to…’, which often complicates the bad sleep picture by throwing additional anxiety and something rather like ‘performance pressure’ into the mix. It was a pleasant relief to realize that just getting up and doing something other than ‘trying to sleep’ would be inconsequential to the day that followed.  I feel groggy and fatigued, predictably enough, but the morning is pleasant and comfortable in spite of that.  I’m an analyst by trade, which had tended to foster a rather simplistic notion that somehow ‘data fixes everything’ – if only there is enough of it. It hasn’t proven to be the case in practice. I spent years gathering sleep related data on my own experience: hours of sleep, hours disturbed, the nature of sleep disturbances, when they occurred by type, where my hormones were, my diet, exercise, medication, even details about the weather or environmental conditions, all sorts of stuff. I carefully analyzed the data for trends, looked for patterns, even found some; none of it mattered, because none of it had the power to affect the outcome in my experience. I struggled with missing pieces, undeveloped skills, correlations I wasn’t aware of, didn’t recognize, or didn’t understand were relevant. In my experience of my own life, mindfulness beats analysis for enacting change and improving my experience, easily. It’s not even close.  2013 has been the year that mindfulness became something, for me, and I, in turn, am becoming someone I enjoy being – sleepless nights and all. 😀

This morning seems a nice one to take a moment for gratitude, and a smile. The path isn’t always easy, and sometimes I still feel like I’m walking in the dark, banging knees, shins, and heart on unseen obstacles, but I no longer fight the needful journey.

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, winter, women, Words

The Dawn of a New Day

December 8, 2013 //
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Like any other, this day begins with a sunrise. Most are quite lovely, when I take time to notice them. Has anyone ever paused to notice the sunrise and said ‘damn, that’s just not attractive at all!’? I somehow doubt it very much. Sunrises, as things go, are pretty reliably lovely. I find myself wondering if that is in any part due to the simple relief and gratitude of waking up for one more day of living?

One of many sunrises.

One of many sunrises.

I slept poorly, and I am unsurprised; a significant change in my routine often disrupts both my sleep and my emotional balance, whether the change itself is a positive or negative thing. I am learning to refrain from defining a given change, or experience, as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Someone else has an excellent parable about that.  I like parables in general, and along with metaphors, and allegories, find them both illuminating and efficient at communicating subtleties in ideas.  There are some good ones here.  I sometimes consider their value as ‘children’s stories’ over the more favored (and severely idealistic) ‘fairy tales’ with reliable happy endings, where everyone gets to be a princess. Would I be different than I am if my childhood had been filled with wise parables that taught perspective, compassion, and consideration, rather than filled with fairy tales where the princess always wins – even if she didn’t really do much to earn it?

I’m not being fair to fairy tales, though, or to the volumes of reading I did as a child. I read all the fairy books…and mythology, and legendary tales of mystery and fantastical wonder, anything I could find in a language I could read, actually.  I still somehow missed some very important messaging somewhere along the way, or failed to carry it forward in life with me.  Like so many people I ended up thinking seeking ‘my fortune’ and seeking ‘happily ever after’ were goals worthy of my time and attention, without understanding that these things are of so much less value than the foundation stones required to support them: contentment, compassion, consideration, gratitude, self-acceptance, and finding that inner stillness with which to contemplate and enjoy the wonders of life.

I’ve somehow gone off on a tangent. I’m okay with that, this morning. It is a lovely morning, and soon enough I will be in mindful service to home and hearth, finding new balance in a new routine.

This morning looks like a good day to avoid assumptions, to be compassionate and patient with others – and myself, to cherish the warmth of life, love, and family. Today is a good day not to take other people’s stress as my own. Today I will practice new tools, and take care of me. Today I will change the world. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, winter, Words
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