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53

June 12, 2016 //
2

Numbers are funny things. I’m no math whiz, but I spend a lot of time with numbers. Numbers fascinate me. I’ve been thinking about 53 for days. Today is my 53rd birthday. It’s not a spectacular benchmark, as birthdays go, but I didn’t really expect to see this one as a younger woman. So. There’s that. 🙂

A new day. A new year. New choices. New opportunities.

A new day. A new year. New choices. New opportunities.

Fun facts about 53? It’s a prime number. I’m not sure I’m actually ‘in my prime’ though, some days. There are more facts about 53 readily at hand on Wikipedia, and elsewhere. In the meantime, aging is a thing. Real, and if one is fortunate, inevitable.

I have no elaborate birthday plans, no lengthy wish list for birthday gifts, no unmet need so specific that only cash exchanged for goods, wrapped in paper, and provided to me precisely between dinner and dessert will address it. I struggled to come up with something to want, beyond my traveling partner’s good company, and the well-wishes of friends.

53. 53? 53. Definitely 53. Tired more often than I’d like to be. In more pain some days than I can easily manage. I weigh a few pounds more than I’d like. Certain the career I had doesn’t suit me. Uncertain where my journey will take me next. Standing between what was and what will be, awake, aware, and content to continue the journey, mostly without a map. Wiser than at 23…but I thought so at 33 and 43 too, and I look back on those moments with a smile; I didn’t know as much as I thought I did, and wisdom was more of an idea, a hope, and a goal. I suspect that is still the case, at 53, and that I will be smiling at my idealistic foolishness, mistakes, and wrong-headedness, at 63, 73, 83… if I am around to test the theory, I’ll be grateful. I’m grateful to be here, now. Grateful that most of what isn’t ideal can be chosen differently.

What do I want for my birthday? Something intangible. Something I already have. Love. Contentment. The pleasure of my traveling partner’s companionship (although he is not in this room, now, we’ll spend much of the day together, later). I want to feel good. Enjoy the day. Sure, I want to be adored, it’s my birthday…enjoying the day is enough. Sometimes the unexpected, the unplanned, the unsought moment is what makes a day memorable; why chain myself down with plans and expectations today? It’s my birthday.  🙂

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Categories Free Will, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

Give a B*tch a Break

May 27, 2016 //
0

I woke up ‘too early’ this morning, having stayed up late into the night with my traveling partner, merrily enjoying each other’s good company without looking at the clock. I woke up in good spirits, although a tad frustrated not to sleep in a bit later – 5 hours isn’t quite enough sleep for me. I was pleased my traveling partner continued to sleep.

It’s a practical rule of life that things will go wrong at the least convenient time (thanks, Murphy!), and so it was this morning; the carbon monoxide detector detected that its battery was low and squeaked out an irritating, strident chirp that could not possibly be over-looked – or slept through. Damn it. My first thought was ‘wtf?’ followed by ‘what size battery does that take?’ and ‘can I get that swapped out before my partner wakes up?’. The questions weren’t hard, and the answers were obvious. My partner considered going back to bed… but… morning. Double damn it. What a crappy way to be jerked from a sound sleep!

I really enjoy my partner’s company over morning coffee and a little conversation – we generally do that when I am on my second coffee, well-awake, and comfortably able to maintain continuous consideration and awareness of the needs and space of others. That takes me about an hour to 90 minutes from when I initially wake. I’m more than a little irritable, stiff, clumsy, and emotional first thing on waking. He wakes up much faster, but is also (surprise!) quite human, with his own needs and experience, and he’s frankly often not fit for company until he’s been awake half an hour or so. Our mutual desire to be in each other’s company is, by itself, sometimes insufficient to overcome the less beautiful useful tender qualities of our humanity. lol We were ‘up together’ – which isn’t ideal for the two of us. It’s a good opportunity to practice practices that need interactions… practices like gentle boundary setting, clear communication, and avoiding unpredictable emotional volatility with mindful awareness – and The Big 5. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to practice not taking shit personally; we are each very human, each having our own experience – and we love each other. That’s the important part to keep in mind while we’re so busy being very human. lol 🙂

Time for that second cup of coffee... :-)

Time for that second cup of coffee… 🙂

It’s a pleasant morning, and we’ve given each other the time and a bit of space to get our individual shit together. Today is a good day to enjoy love… so I’m thinking I’ll go do that. It’s more than enough. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5

Love Works, Too

May 24, 2016 //
0

I woke with a headache this morning. This one eases with the first cup of coffee, some yoga, and a big glass of water. Maintaining this body is somewhat complicated, or so it seems to me this morning.

Meditation starts the morning, for some unmeasured time, seated comfortably on my cushion, at my favored spot just at the patio door, looking out through the container garden, watching the sun make a brief pastel appearance betwixt cottony soft gray clouds. I enjoy cloudy days. The small birds that prefer the earliest of morning hours to visit come and go from the feeder, eyeing me curiously. My hope is that by the end of summer I can come and go through the patio door without frightening all the birds away, perhaps even sit quietly right there, outside, positioned to take clearer photographs of them. That will require quite a commitment to stillness, and then some. 🙂

This morning I enjoy my traveling partner’s charm and camaraderie, coffees together/separately, and a choice opportunity to take time together over a housekeeping detail that is helped by partnering up on a complex task I had some difficulty mastering; his exceptional commitment to patiently coaching me is valued this morning. We enjoy the time together, and the sharing. It’s significantly enhanced by no hint of imbalance in the relationship, no one jockeying to ‘be right’ or to ‘be the expert’, just two people who care sharing the load in life, making each other stronger. It’s a pleasant way to start the morning.

It’s hard to know what the day holds from here… I’ll continue to take care of me, handle the business of the day, and work from my list. I feel content, organized, and orderly. I feel comfortable in my own skin. This feels good… and sustainable. I guess I’ll find that out over time… I mean… my results do vary. 😉

Isn't this enough?

Isn’t this enough?

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Connections

May 17, 2016 //
0

This morning I sit down with my coffee, a headache, and no clear direction to take my writing. It’s a quiet morning. I woke ‘too early’, but well-rested. The routines of the morning have felt… routine. It’s no lack of inspiration; I am eager to get back to painting, but the early hour finds me unprepared to do so on other levels (I am very clumsy for some time after waking, for one thing). I feel content and well, save for this headache plaguing me. My coffee is good. The day is loosely structured and without noteworthy stress. Still… these words here, so far? Observational stuff suited only for getting going, really. Mildly disappointing when I consider how frequently in recent days I am taken with an insight or understanding that I find helpful or illuminating in some way… fail to jot it down in the moment then discover that however enlightening or powerful that insight had seemed to me to be then… it’s gone by morning. Yep. Entirely forgotten…or… summarized into some very succinct handful of words that I find myself unable to build on, or no longer interested in.

A good day to begin again.

A good day to begin again.

I put my writing on pause for a few minutes to chat with my traveling partner, also up early. A friend reaches out through Facebook. We exchange a few minutes of conversation. I see another friend online and realize we haven’t caught up in a while, and I reach out for another few minutes of conversation with someone dear to me. Life is telling me something… I am reminded that what matters most are these beautiful connections we make with each other. Profound or ordinary, enlightening or humorous, tender or firm, the very most critically important thing I find about living life is, again and again, these connections we share. I am filled with joy to have so many good friends who care, who miss me when I am away, who notice when I am hurting (whether I say so or not), and who similarly find that I matter to them. I am also saddened that the whole of us – the world – suffer so much and so often from nothing more or less than that we don’t extend our courtesy, our hospitality, our graciousness, kindness and good-nature to just every human being we interact with, near or far. It’s morning, and a great time to begin again. I find myself committing to being decent and good-natured with each person I interact with today… sure, I probably won’t change the world, but I may improve some small bit of it for a stranger. 🙂

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

It’s a gentle quiet morning, somewhat lacking in clear structure or firm plans. I may see my traveling partner today. I may not. Perhaps today I’ll get the phone call for the ideal job in some exciting previously unconsidered field of endeavor – or figure out how to sustainably enjoy life without that, long-term. Today may be the day that ‘everything makes sense’, or the day that I realize it doesn’t have to. It is, at least, a day – wholly new and ready for me to do… something. That’s enough. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Love, Words, Music

May 16, 2016 //
0

This morning I woke ahead of the alarm – it is, after all, a Monday. A new work week begins, and even between periods of employment, I am “working”. I spent the weekend painting, and aside from a visit with a friend this afternoon, and a possible dinner date with my traveling partner, I’ll be painting today, too. 🙂

I start the morning with meditation, then on to yoga, then coffee, music, and as I sit down to write, I am delighted to find my traveling partner also up for the day, and online. We exchange a few words. It’s a good morning, so far. The apartment fills with the fresh clean spring air, filtered through a couple of rainy days. I close the patio door, and the open windows, and turn the music up. I’m enjoying the music, and I keep the playlist going while I write; it’s a good day for music.

It seems an eternity ago that my experience of my life, day-to-day, was characterized by a quiet durable misery that I invested in considerable effort to keep to myself, feeling both frustration and shame any time it erupted into uncontrolled expression of intense emotion. When I began practicing practices associated with improving my emotional balance, resilience, and self-sufficiency, I lacked conviction that any long-term change was really likely… I mean… I’d already been enduring, long-term, a state of chaos and despair over time that utterly defied the generally pleasant reality of my current experience at that time, as well as many attempts to change it. I practiced anyway. I began again. And again. I kept at it. One practice I continue to practice is a sly one, focused on improving implicit memory and decreasing negative bias – because that negative bias thing is an ass kicker of destruction, insidious, cruel, and hard to avoid. It has been the simplest of practices, and one of the most pleasant; I spend time lingering over the recollection of pleasant events and experiences, I savor them both while I have the experience – which takes practice, itself – and also making a point to enjoy the recollection, to share those experiences, to invest more time in enjoying them, and considering them, than I do ruminating over what didn’t go so well, or doesn’t feel so good. It’s really that simple. Seems inconsequential, doesn’t it? And… at first… it didn’t seem to have a profound effect that I could point to and say “Aha!!”. Not at first.

Incremental change over time is a thing. There are verbs involved. Practices are practices because they require practicing, and in some cases that is a lifelong thing, not so much a ‘task’ that is completed and done with. Results vary. Expectations and assumptions about outcomes can totally screw with the outcome of this simple practice, too. We are so human… I don’t exist as ‘a positive person’ as any sort of default character quality with which I was born… I have become someone with a generally positive experience, incrementally, over time – with practice.

Roses and a rainy day. One moment of many.

Roses and a rainy day. One moment of many.

This morning I am taking time to enjoy the day, to enjoy love, to enjoy life – to enjoy the experience I am having now. I am my own cartographer – this looks like a nice spot to pause for a moment. This moment. 🙂

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Words
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