Archives for category: meditation
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A Fence, A Crossroad, A Ledge

August 10, 2023 //
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I am sipping coffee and thinking over metaphors drawn from travels of various sorts. My Traveling Partner is preparing to embark on adventure with his son; a camping road trip. I’m eagerly staying behind on this one and enjoying some solo time at home – a first since before we bought the house we now live in. I’m quietly excited about it, although life is life, adulthood has requirements, and there’s shit to get done basically every day, all the time. Dishes. Laundry. Watering the lawn. Picking up the mail. All the routine details of an ordinary life simply are what they are. I’m even okay with that.

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That was around 07:00 this morning. It’s now almost 15:00. …3:00pm. Later. Hours later. The house is quiet. The morning passed quickly as my Traveling Partner and his son finished with last minute preparations and decision-making. Eventually, the time came and they hit the road, seeming quite eager to be on their way. I was eager, too. Eager for the quiet and solitude, even for a few hours.

…Funny thing… As soon as my partner was gone, I was missing him (at least a little bit), and checking the map for his location almost hourly. In between? I was mostly doing housekeeping. Tidying up here and there. Listening to my thoughts. Feeling the heat of the day develop outside through the sound of the air conditioning occasionally coming on, and that happening more frequently as the day progressed. I made a quick trip to the store, and wasn’t surprised to find myself reluctant to leave the peace and quiet of my home. It’s a pleasant environment that suits me well. I smile again each time I walk down the hallway, recently hung with paintings that had been selected for the purpose some time ago. My partner made a point of hanging them up quite recently. Days ago, now, and yet I’m still smiling every time I walk down the hallway. Seeing the paintings hung with such care and my partner’s studious eye for detail, I feel so loved. These paintings tell the story of my life [as an artist] and each one reminds me of something I thought I had forgotten, and does so with such regularity that I’m fairly certain I don’t at all forget these things. Weird, eh? It’s the sort of detail a human primate can really get hung up on, but which has very little importance, relevance, or substance. It’s just a detail. There are so many. 🙂

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I think about my Traveling Partner and pull up his most recent reported location on the map. It’s a cool spot to camp; we had scouted it last time we were camping up that way, and hoping to find a site just maybe a bit better than the one we had settled on for that trip (which was a bit too close to a cluster of managed sites, and thus rather… people-y). We spotted this other site a short drive down the forest road and down a very rough narrow “road” (more a jeep trail, really), a bit further on, and agreed it looked like a great one for the next time we were up that way. Tucked away from the road, distant from other sites, and spacious, with a nicely done fire ring out in a small clearing. I’m delighted to see his location right there. 😀

The quiet feels good, like soaking in a hot tub, or getting a massage, or going back to sleep on a lazy weekend morning. Luxurious and nurturing. I had music on for a little while. While I was tidying up. I’ve since turned it off. It’s a quiet I enjoy – the sound of feeling safe at home. I savor it. All the minutes, and these quiet hours. Life and love are busy with interactions and communication; stillness is luxury. I’m not even complaining, I’m just saying I enjoy this, and I’m shamelessly immersed in the cognitive and neurological feelings of it. Hell, I don’t even have words for how good this is for me, or fully understand why. I think those details matter less than the experience itself.

…That’s the thing I was thinking about this morning… on this journey, whether an experience is “a fence” limiting us or holding us back, or a crossroad at which we must choose, or a ledge we teeter on the edge of, with some urgent question in mind is mostly a matter of perspective. Individual definitions, filters, lenses through which we consider our experience are every bit as “important” as any detail grounded in “the facts of the matter”. I think about this a lot. It seems worth understanding. I sit with that awhile…

I catch myself sitting quietly here at my keyboard, not typing, not even “thinking” really, just being. It’s not a very productive sort of endeavor, though, and I remind myself of things I’d like to do and enjoy while I have this time. …Where’s that book I’m reading…? I look at the time, without really caring to much what time it may actually be right now. I know it’s time to begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, turning 60

Still and (approximately) Always

August 9, 2023 //
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Still and always practicing. Sometimes I get it “right”. Sometimes I fail myself (or someone else). Sometimes I am proud of the woman I am right now. Sometimes I fall short of being the woman I most want to be. I need more practice. 🙂

I’m sipping a delicious hot coffee, a freebie from the local chain vendor of caffeinated beverages (one of many that accumulated over the past not-quite-a-year of weekly commutes to the city). Handy. Yes, I saved them up over time without using them, figuring there might be some time when it would be nice to enjoy one, but perhaps excessively costly, for… reasons. Here I am, with reasons. LOL It’s a pleasant quiet morning. The slow dawn revealed a cloudy start to the day. The day started easily, and I had slept well through the night, waking feeling quite rested. My Traveling Partner pinged me a kiss emoji over SMS on my way to the solitude of a morning walk, and some time in the co-work space handling job search tasks. A good beginning to a new day, indeed. 😀

A different day, a different beginning; it’s not really about the cup of coffee, how it’s made, or where it came from – it’s about the moment.

My Traveling Partner and I had a moment of conflict “recently” (I have the sense that it was this week, but… I honestly don’t recall when, at this point, and it entirely blew over, and was, it seemed, more a byproduct of stress over lingering sleep challenges than anything else), and in the midst of taking turns saying things to each other that were needlessly unkind, he mocked the very thing(s) that I rely on to persist in putting one foot in front of the other day-after-day and which I use to heal ancient pain, and grow as a person, and yeah, also even use to treat him well, and with kindness and compassion. Ouch. My feelings were incredibly hurt. I was astonished and appalled. I was… enraged. I was saddened. (I mean, for real though? Damn, dude. Way to be hurtful.)

Here’s the thing, though… On reflection, I am sensitive to the idea – the very true truth – that “hurt people hurt people”. I know this first hand, from within the context of my own experience. Meaning to say that people who have been emotionally wounded over time do lash out, and they do inflict new/further damage on people around them, often those they love, and that damage is often targeted, using uniquely personal information that has the greatest potential to inflict pain, taken from the most intimate shared moments. Messy and unpleasant. Also… not actually “personal”. It just feels that way. It is an expression of the pain of the person delivering the injury, more than anything explicitly to do with the person they are lashing out at in that moment. Hurt and anger are strange like that. It feels personal to the recipient, mostly because as creatures we’re prone to taking shit personally, not so much because it really is.

…I get it, though… I work through a lot of my personal bullshit and baggage right here. Out in the open. Honest and real and raw and… also aspirational. I seek to do better. I don’t always hit the mark. I set goals for myself. I don’t always achieve them. I acknowledge where I’ve failed or fallen short. I pick myself up and walk on. I am practicing. Day after day, I show up, and I practice the practices that I hope will, over time, result in my becoming the woman (the person) I most want to be. I’m not there yet. I’ll point out two things that seem obvious to me, but maybe aren’t so obvious… 1. I practice because I’m human, and I’m “not there yet”; I need the practice! 2. “The woman I most want to be”… may not be the woman anyone else wants to see me become. With just those two things in mind, there’s more than enough within these blog posts to fill any argument with insults and barbed remarks to fuel any heated moment. Taking them personally would only set me up for disappointment, a feeling of chronic inadequacy, a sense of utter failure, and a quick slide into despair… defeating the point of being here, now, in the first place. “Don’t drink the poison.“

Instead of attacking him for attacking me over such personal things, or for seeking to undermine my progress (it’s highly unlikely he was looking at his words through that lens at all), I let those words simply land in the space between us unaddressed beyond the basic point that he was feeling hurt, mistreated, and provoked, and was frustrated by his lack of sleep. I did my best to focus on the need actually being expressed, and not so much on the shitty way he was expressing it in the moment. He’s very human. I “filed it away” for later reflection, and here I find myself, reflecting. It’s a nice morning for it. I’m in a good place. We’re in a good place with each other. I know I need more practice. That’s not new information. What’s useful to reflect on is where we are with each other, and how I can make use of what I’ve heard my partner say to me to become a better partner, and friend, myself.

Any misstep can become a beautiful gesture of love, if we’re willing to be vulnerable about our failures.

I think about the lawn my Traveling Partner recently put in. It’s gorgeous. In the process of preparing the ground for the new sod, my partner inadvertently damaged one of the roses. He didn’t hide that, or ignore it, or try to excuse the error, or blame someone/something else; he simply pointed it out, with some regret. He also took that moment to transform the mistake into something beautiful; he carefully cut the roses and put the blossoms in a wee vase on the table where I would see them. So cute. The little vase of flowers meant so much more to me than the unplanned cutting of a stray cane or two on a rose that is already pretty well-established. Just saying; we’re human. We make mistakes. We fuck shit up. It’s how we handle that and the outcome, and how we support and seek to heal each other as human beings that matters most. 🙂

I sip my coffee. It’s a good morning.

So… yeah. I’m a work in progress for sure. lol The journey is the destination. I am my own cartographer, and this trip has no map. I do my best, and I can fearlessly state that my results vary, and sometimes my best definitely does not feel “good enough”. It’s necessary to begin again. Often. All of that is more than “okay” – it’s the nature of the experience. Growth and incremental change over time are not instant. There are verbs involved.

I breathe. Exhale. Relax. It’s a beautiful morning to practice practices, and to put in the effort to become the woman I most want to be. With that in mind, it’s time to begin again. 😀

When it feels like it’s all stairs, it’s nice to have someone sharing the journey.
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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, turning 60

Progress!

August 6, 2023 //
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Wow. Real progress with the sleep machine, after a week using it. I mean… I still wake up a couple times a night for no obvious reason (this is not new for me), find myself feeling… something… and I sit up for a moment, take the mask off, breathe freely (awake), readjust the mask and return to a comfortable sleeping position. The first couple of nights, that didn’t necessarily mean going back to actual sleep, and my sleep was pretty light. Last night, though, I actually got a couple hours of legit deep sleep. I woke feeling really rested. It’s nice.

Honestly, it’s not like I woke up more often or for any longer period of time than I ever do, it’s just that it’s a bit of a production to remember the mask, sit up, untangle the air hose, reach the machine, find the button, turn it off, release the mask straps, pull the mask off and set it carefully aside such that I can easily put it back on in the dark. LOL So much more involved than “wake up, sit up for a minute, go back to sleep”. It’s just taking some practice to get it down to basics I can comfortable manage without really waking all the way up.

…Difficult tasks get easier the more I repeat them. Complex tasks feel simpler with more practice. Discomfort eases with exposure over time. Incremental change is a real thing, and when I successfully balance these observations with practicing non-attachment (to an outcome)(when I can), the result is… a different experience. 😀 It’s not quite a rule book, or a how-to guide, just saying; if we keep doing something, it gets easier to do it at all. (Which does also suggest we should maybe choose with some care what sorts of things we commonly do…) We become what we practice.

…What are you practicing?..

It’s a quiet Sunday morning. I’m sipping this first, quite excellent, cup of coffee and thinking about the work week ahead. Oh, sure, I’m not presently “gainfully employed” by some entity sending me a regular paycheck, but there are steps to take to return to that state of being, and putting structure and focus on that is usually (I find) quite helpful (for me). So, in a sense, the tasks associated with looking for work become the job. It’s also a good time to give my Traveling Partner a hand with his business for a time. I’m handy and available, at least for awhile. Conveniently enough, it’s also (coincidentally) timed such that my step-son is visiting, and I won’t be taken down by fatigue day-to-day, just working – which means I’ll reliably have the energy to cook healthy meals and enjoy activities. 😀 I’m pretty excited about that. Stir fries, pasta dinners, maybe even – heat permitting – some baking – it sounds like fun, because I won’t be exhausted all the time.

I’ve always loved libraries.

Yesterday, on a whim, I went to the library. Yep. The actual municipal public library in my town. It’s quite a nice one. I went because I have it in mind that I’ll need an occasional “work from…” location that isn’t home. The local co-work space is closing. It’s been an excellent (and very handy) convenience, but as is often the case with small businesses in small towns, the demand apparently wasn’t high enough to keep it going. I checked out the library with that in mind. Wi-Fi? Yep. (Even encouragement to use it in the form of a notice that it is available 24/7 and “park in our parking lot and use our Wi-Fi any time!”) The operating hours of our library are limited; 10:00am to 7:00pm most days, and libraries are notoriously “quiet spaces” as well…so… not ideal for busy work days crammed with meetings, but absolutely fantastic for any days when job search activities need quiet, focus, and few distractions. There’s even a wee closet of a closed space for precisely that sort of thing (to include, in the case of this wee space, interview calls and meetings). Nice.

I sat quietly in several locations of the library getting the feel of it… would I enjoy working in this space? Sure. Suits me. The only serious limitations are the lack of morning hours (I can adjust to that) and… no coffee. I mean 100% “no coffee”. No food or drink in the the library. Period. So… yeah, I’ll certainly have to plan around that. LOL What a great spot for doing training and such, though! I’ve got a couple certifications to finish up, and that kind of thing is much easier for me to do in a quiet place without distractions. 😀 I know my Traveling Partner enjoys having some space to focus and think without me taking up space, sometimes, too.

I sip my coffee smiling. My Traveling Partner comes in and massages my neck a bit. I feel loved. We exchange pleasantries and smiles and he leaves me to my writing. It’s a lovely morning. A relaxed Sunday.

The lack of panic and stress over being out of work is helpful. It’s harder to do the job search stuff really skillfully while also juggling panic, desperation, worry, sadness, or becoming consumed by terrifying what-if scenarios of consequences that have not yet come to pass (and probably won’t). All of that is wasted emotional energy. I’m fortunate to have a partnership that supports me emotionally, and a partner who does not himself panic when I am between jobs. We shift gears a bit, take a careful approach to the change in resources, and continue to enjoy life. There’s work to be done, and it gets done without giving up weekends, pleasure, or good vibes. The good vibes matter. Enjoying life matters. 🙂

In the garden it’s time to harvest seeds and herbs to dry for winter months. I have time for it.

I think about dinner for later… pasta with some kind of luscious sauce of ripe summer tomatoes? Maybe some sausage in that sauce? Sounds pretty yummy. I double-check my grocery list; I’ll need to pick up a couple things. (I smile, reminded that whole fresh produce is fairly inexpensive, compared to packaged prepared convenience items, and the same circumstances that make me so careful about spending money on groceries also somehow tend to improve our quality of life, by “limiting” us to whole foods prepared at home.)

It’s a pleasant summer morning. There’s plenty to do and to enjoy – and it’s already time to begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being

Another Restless Night

July 29, 2023 //
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I slept poorly last night. Restless dreams, wakefulness, and frequently having to get up to pee, along with being in pain, made for a difficult night. My Traveling Partner woke up in a shitty mood, in pain, and cross with me as his default approach. Not my favorite way to start a day. I dressed and headed out as soon as I woke. “Later” will be soon enough to return home, hopefully some time after my partner has had his coffee, done some yoga and stretching, and taken whatever he can to manage his pain and allergies.

I’m sitting on a fence rail next to a marshy expanse of still water favored by all manner of water birds. There is seasonality to the view. I enjoy this quiet place, although on weekends it is often crowded with bird-watchers and camera nerds. It’s a nice place for perspective.

God damn, it would suck if this otherwise beautiful relationship were to fail over our inability to sleep in the same place. I think about that briefly. Tears well up, and I brush them away. We’re not there yet and there are still things to try. My sleep study got moved up from mid-August to… tomorrow. I’m not exactly excited, just hoping something helpful comes of it.

A woman and child walk past me. I hear the child ask “Mommy, why does that lady look sad?”, and the woman’s kind careful reply “Sometimes being a grown up is hard honey. It makes Mommy sad sometimes, too.” For real, Lady, you’re so right. Sorry, Kiddo, it’s not always easy.

I sit quietly awhile. No plan. Just stillness. I check the hours for the pharmacy near home in order to time my return such that I can pick something up for my Traveling Partner. I try to do enough sweet things, kind things, helpful things to offset the unpleasantness of our shared challenges. It’s not “enough”, but it is at least something. I find myself making a silent promise to refrain from talking about my own pain, and fatigue, and stress, and anxiety… Hoping to be more easily able to make room for my partner to feel heard, even if I can’t do much about it. Again, it’s not everything, it’s just something.

… I have to trust that after 13 years together he does understand that I am chronically struggling with pain, myself, and that he has the affection for me and the emotional intelligence to hold space for that awareness day-to-day, in spite of his own pain and fatigue. That’s hard sometimes. It can be a very “fuck your pain, what about mine?!” kind of world sometimes. I think I can do better… But how best to do better without being a dick to myself and undermining my own emotional wellness? It’s a puzzle.

… Sometimes being a grown up is hard, and it makes me sad…

I think about a dear friend tearing up a bit as we discussed age, aging, and the inevitable loneliness of feeling “cast aside”. Fucking hell, that is some real shit. Sometimes being grown up is hard. I watch a small flock of birds take flight, appearing to chase a larger bird. They don’t pay me any attention at all. I’m not part of their experience.

We’re each walking our own path. No map. Sometimes we get lucky on the journey and have some companionship along the way for some distance. It’s not a given that we will, and ultimately we’re in this alone, regardless how or whether we surround ourselves with people or creatures. These are individual journeys. Nonetheless, we’re also all in it together. It’s a puzzle. I remind myself to try to be kind. Always.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being

767 Miles of Self-Reflection

July 24, 2023 //
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I drove down the coastal highway, thinking thoughts, and sometimes singing bits of songs I remember well enough to sing them as the sights go by. I stopped often, for various “view points” from which I had hoped to snap a few pictures. Most of those looked like this…

One of many “sights” along my route.

The entire northern section of my drive was enveloped in fog, or mist, or wrapped in low-hanging clouds. Not much to see. LOL

A couple cups of coffee later, the mists persisted late into the morning, well-past the point at which I had expected the clouds to have “burned off” with the rising sun. It was clear I wasn’t going to be pleasantly distracted from my thoughts by the tremendous views; those were utterly withheld from me. lol

For most of the drive, the world appeared to be mostly undeveloped, as if created instant-by-instant from my own thoughts…

It was still a lovely day for a drive.

It was early on a Thursday morning, though, and there was very little traffic. I made good time down the highway, as if toward a clear destination. Truth was, though, the journey really was my destination. I set out to spend the drive with my thoughts, and there wasn’t anything to distract me. It was hard to see it as a problem.

At several stops, and all weekend long, I made a point to take notes about the journey. Thoughts that seemed worth preserving beyond the moment. For convenience, I’d started a draft blog post, and just saved my notes there. When I look them over this morning, I’m amused that they seem almost poetic…

I sit quietly with my morning coffee, trying to assemble some group of words to share the experience of these recent days, mostly without success. I can’t do better than the fragmented notes I took along the way, and a handful of pictures. There’s something to learn from that, I’m sure. More to consider. Another opportunity for self-reflection beckoning me from a distant future moment.

I did eventually drive far enough down the highway to escape the cloud cover…

Looking back, between the clear blue sky overhead, and the deep blue ocean below, in the distance the clouds linger.

The camping wasn’t fancy, it was just a place to rest for a night. I stayed in managed state park camp grounds. It was fine. It was also quite crowded. The camps were clean, and well-maintained, but also rather noisy. In spite of the crowds, both were really pleasant places to camp, and I may go back, some other time, for some other purpose.

There was no real solitude to be found in these places, and each morning I packed up and drove on, content to make my departure with haste. I drove with purpose.

There were reliably flowers everywhere.

In the middle of all this driving, there was an important (and delightful) stop midway to visit an old friend. My longest female friendship of many decades. We haven’t sat down together in shared space in so many years – it was long overdue, and very grounding. It felt like a homecoming of a different sort.

…There are few things as precious as time spent in the company of good friends. I don’t do enough of it.

There is more to share, and a lot to continue to reflect on. There were lessons learned, and lessons observed – with much to learn still developing slowly from those observations. In general, the whole thing was time well-spent. A good time.

…I’m so glad to be home once more…

…so glad.

It’s already time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, grief, Healthy Living, inspiration, loneliness, Love, meditation, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, turning 60, women, Words
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