I am sipping my coffee slowly this morning. Enjoying the gentle pace of a morning on which I slept in, instead of getting up super early and slipping out with my camera in my hand to catch the sunrise. Felt good. I must have needed the sleep.
My coffee this morning is good. Prepared with care. Hot. The heat of the mug warms my hands, and the pleasure in the sensation reminds me that Autumn is not that far off. It’s September 2nd – one month ago I was laid off. I’m doing okay, though. There’s so much life to live that gets pushed off to the fringes of a work week, and for now I am able to simply live those moments just… whenever. Feel like writing? No problem. Want to put my feet up and read a book? Easily done. Any time I might want to put more time into preparing a meal? The time is my own. Hiking, giving my Traveling Partner a hand in the shop, spending time in the garden, getting some housekeeping done… none of it is strange, fancy, or honestly even at all noteworthy. What makes it significant is that I simply have the time. The time is mine. That is actually pretty luxurious.
I sip my coffee feeling secure and content. Job searching isn’t even the whole of my life right now. Not at all. In the time while I am not working, I also work on gaining and updating credentials on this-n-that. Lovely to have the time for study. I’m also working (still) on my cooking skills (just now I’m working on improving my Italian style cooking), and preparing for an upcoming visit from my partner’s son. If I am already back to work by the time he arrives, there’s plenty of money to go/do/see – and if I am not, there is plenty of time to enjoy whatever we’re doing. It feels like a win all around.
I feel fortunate. I sit with that awhile. It’s the kind of feeling that is easy to forget later, if I don’t take a moment to really savor it, fully aware.
I continue to sip my coffee, enjoying the quiet of the morning. My Traveling Partner was already up before I woke, and already on with his day. I think about the day ahead, and how best to enjoy it without having half an eye on my email all day. I am still hoping for an offer on a recent excellent interview, but it doesn’t do to get wound up about it; sometimes these things take time. I’m not “waiting” on it in the sense of halting all other job search activity – the day-to-day tasks of taking a look at what is available and applying for what fits my skills, my nature, and my needs continues unabated. 🙂 I am “waiting” on it in the sense that I’d really like to get this particular job, and am eager to have the outcome.
I plan to spend much of the day working on the website for my partner’s business. 🙂 Keeps me productively occupied on tasks that feel like work. I know me; it doesn’t do to let 100% of the timing of “work/life balance” fall away or to allow good habits of managing time and tasks to be extinguished over a couple weeks of not working. LOL I’ll need these later!
In most ways, the weekend has started. It’s a pleasant Friday (and possibly a hot one, though I recall my partner saying it might be cooler this weekend and good for working in the shop). Life and business go on. This coffee cup is empty and it’s already time to begin again.
I arrived home smiling. My Traveling Partner was also smiling. As I started making my coffee, he started telling me new/other/additional details about the CNC he is building. Interesting stuff. There was a break in the conversation, and I started to tell him what my day plan had in store… “I wasn’t finished talking,” he advises. I apologize and make room for him to continue.
Somehow we continue to be “out of step” with each other. I don’t think I ever actually get to telling him what my day holds (as far as plans go). I indicate I’m going to take my coffee into the studio and write a bit before I head out for the errands I’d planned. He restarts (continues?) the conversation about the CNC as I walk down the hall, so I stop and turn back to avoid being rude and hear him out. I’m interested. I also have an idea in mind for my morning writing. (It’s gone, now, and was by the time I sat down at my desk.)
We continue to be out of step with each other. I feel a bit sad and tired over it. He sounds hurt and annoyed when he sticks his head into the studio. So far the morning is…uncomfortable, awkward, and emotionally unsatisfying. When I think about the smile on my face (and in my heart) as I arrived home, I’m irked. With myself. With circumstances. It’s aggravating. We both want to hang out, and it’s fairly clear (to me) that one (or both) of us is not actually in a place to make that easy, for some reason. I don’t actually understand it. I just see it. Am I helpless in the face of this shitty moment? No. I could take action – I’m just, at least for now, unclear on the best course of action to take.
…What a shitty cup of coffee this one is. I made it just as I make other cups of coffee, but this one right here? Dreadful. Feels like a metaphor… (nonetheless, it is a pretty terrible cup of coffee, and no fooling, I’m still sitting here drinking it.)
I look over my list of errands. One of them is to a retailer that will apparently be closed today. Fucking hell, I’ve had this on my list for days, and I just keep missing the window. I breathe and exhale, letting go of the moment of frustration; it’s excessive for the concern at hand, and reflects the emotional tone of the moment in the background, more than anything to do with the errand itself. I feel myself teetering on the edge of running out of fucks to give far too earlier in the day – it is an unreasonable reaction to feeling frustrated with my partner and the dynamic between us in this moment.
…G’damn this is one awful cup of coffee…
I clearly need to begin again. Like, for real, all over again. LOL
I’m not a perfect person. (Who is, though?) I need practice – at most things, honestly. I have an idea who the woman I most want to be might happen to be. I can “see her” in my mind’s eye. I hear her voice as an echo; something I could have said better than what I chose to say, or speaking truth to power in a moment when I failed to do so. I hear her speak up for herself, when I don’t. I hear her set expectations and boundaries more skillfully than I often do. I have a sense of “who she is” and the values she embraces. Me? I’m still practicing all of those things. She listens well and deeply, with real attention and consideration. Her answers are thoughtful – and insightful. She’s clearly well-informed on the issues that mean most to her – and she’s kind about education and informing others. She’s patient with people, even when she’s in pain. She’s no saint, she’s lived a real life and she owns her mistakes. She takes time to reflect on her thinking, instead of following the crowd on commonly accepted opinions. She’s fearless about disagreeing – and committed to collaboration and skillful communication. She likes to be on time, but she’s not a jerk about people being a few minutes behind on plans. She’s fucking amazing.
…She’s the woman in my mirror – mostly. She’s who I see in my best moments. She’s my destination, and when I stay on top of my self-care, and committed to healthy practices for emotional regulation and communication, she’s my journey – walking with me, guiding me, picking me up when I fall and lighting my path. Of course I am “a work in progress” – we all are, if we are wise about being and becoming. 🙂 That’s my thought on it, anyway. I keep practicing. Keep walking my own mile. I’ve got choices, and there are verbs involved. I know my results will vary.
This isn’t an awareness that makes anything any “easier”. I am prone to being deeply disappointed in myself (to the point of catastrophizing, sometimes) when I fail to meet the rather high standard I’ve set for myself. Being practical and kind to myself, and allowing for my own humanity is all part of that journey, too. More to learn. More to practice. Keeping it real? I fail all the fucking time. LOL I’m very human. I pause to reflect. Begin again. Continue to practice. Seems a worthwhile way to spend a life. 🙂
Yesterday in the evening, for some reason I don’t recall right at the moment, tempers flared between my Traveling Partner and myself. Raised voices for a moment, a few spilled tears, some impatience, some anger, some frustration… we got past it, it was just emotional weather. My partner pointed out some things that matter to him a great deal. I swallowed my pride and listened; it’s always hard to hear I’ve failed as a partner or lover in some way (however small). Yeah, I still need practice. Even the fundamentals of living well and treating others well can easily erode and slip away from me without practice. Doesn’t matter at all if the speed and ease with which my habits quickly extinguish with even brief lack of practice is related to my brain injury; the solution is to continue to practice (and that includes self-compassion), and to begin again when I fail myself. That’s enough. It’s all there is. 🙂
Being between jobs is an interesting space to grow within. That 40+ hours lost to employment every week, generally, becomes time for study, for practice, for growth, for exploring the unknown, for trying things out… in that respect, it’s a wonderful opportunity. Today, I spent much of the day with my camera, and learning related software. What about you? What did you learn today? 🙂 It may keep you young to keep learning. It may keep you alive (depending on what you learn, and what life throws your way).
I notice that the interface here in WordPress looks… different. I find myself wondering what I clicked on, although it could be that the user interface actually changed, again. Not ideally helpful for folks who are “other than neuro-typical” (probably pretty aggravating for just about anyone who has mastered some software or other previously, and logs in to find it changed). It’s weird and annoying, and I let myself be distracted by music videos, instead, and wander off for a few minutes of conversation with my partner. Life. No pressure, just living. 🙂
It’s time to begin again; there’s so much to practice. 😉
My Traveling Partner is a very sweet man, to me. Lacking my Kindle (which it seems more and more likely I somehow managed to toss it out thoughtlessly, somehow), I am reading bound books (which I also love). I use most anything as a bookmark: business cards, advertising flyers, scraps of paper laying about, very thin pieces of wood, actual bookmarks I’ve made for myself on watercolor paper… just, whatever. He made me some new additions to my bookmarks, and I’m just so tickled. 3D printed little monster hands that appear to be clawing their way from between the pages, and some super-cute emoji bookmarks that have emojis we often share between us. I feel very loved.
I think about having a new Kindle, though, if only because night time reading is so much easier (and less likely to keep me awake longer than I was reading from sitting in bright light). I’ve promised myself that I shall celebrate my new job (when that is a thing) with a new Kindle. I asked my partner about the chances on a 3D printed Kindle cover… and started down the path of searching 3D print patterns and filament colors. lol I’m overly eager, it’s true. I quickly discovered I may want to try my hand at designing a cover, myself. I didn’t find any that really sing to me. It is what it is. I’m a woman of specific tastes, I suppose. Similarly, with filament color, so much depends on the design of the cover itself, I found myself a bit stalled.
I move on to other things. It is a quiet afternoon. I’ve gotten quite a lot done. Enjoyed my partner’s company immensely. Nice day for it.
I woke early-ish, pulled on my clothes still only half awake, and grabbed my camera gear. I heard my Traveling Partner call out to me as I neared the door (“he’s awake?”) and turned back for a “see you in a little while” and a kiss. The sun hadn’t yet risen as I reached the highway heading out of town to the nearby nature preserve (great bird-watching, and well-maintained trails). Lovely morning for it, I thought to myself.
Sunrise over a misty morning along the marsh-side trail.
It’s a Sunday, and I’m thinking I’ll get out into the garden this morning. After I finish my coffee. After I upload all these photos. After I finish feeling more like relaxing than I feel like getting shit done. lol
It was a good morning for pictures of birds.
I enjoyed the drive. There was almost no traffic at all so early on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed the misty dawn and the pale pinks and peaches of the sunrise as it developed into a new day. I enjoyed the walk down the trail alongside the marsh. I enjoyed the moments, sitting quietly, watching for the next interesting picture to unfold in front of my camera lens.
I wasn’t alone on the trail. I wasn’t even the only person on the trail with a camera.
The last several times I’ve come to this location for my camera walk in the morning, I find myself parked next to the same other person. Another woman enjoying her morning walk, camera ready for action, a portable seat or cushion with her (I have a compact folding stool, myself). We greet each other as friends, at this point, and sometimes share a portion of the walk, even stopping for similar shots along our path. We talk of other locations we favor, and share experiences (“Did you see the pelicans?”, “I got a great shot of the swallows yesterday!”). We make jokes now about the morning not seeming complete if we don’t see the other person’s car in the parking lot. She has a much fancier camera and lens than I do. I mentioned how awesome it would be to have that kind of “reach”… she smiles and admits it is pretty nice, then comments that she often regrets the choice; it’s very heavy, and sometimes the weight limits how far she will walk. I admit that I enjoy the lightweight gear I’ve got so much that I don’t have any immediate plan to get a larger lens. We agree that the gear has less to do with the quality of our images than our limited skill – and our good fortune on timing and location. At some point, if we’re walking together as we were this morning, our paths will take us different directions. That’s the way of things, isn’t it? We are each having our own experience, walking our own paths, and any momentary companionship, however genial, is quite temporary. 🙂
I smile and sip my coffee. Does it taste better because I went for quite a long walk beforehand? I for sure appreciate the warmth of the mug in my hand after the chilly morning on the marsh.
Pelican. Also, swallow. This is what “luck” looks like in a photograph.
I finally see a pelican, after a couple visits to this location. People on the trail had been mentioning them for the last couple times I’ve been here, but I haven’t seen them. Probably didn’t walk far enough in the correct direction…? This morning, I see one solitary pelican. I watch for awhile, take numerous pictures, and while I was doing that, I was got seriously lucky; the pelican flared out its wings, and shook itself out in the early morning light. Amusingly, I also captured a swallow in flight in the same shot. I’ve been trying to take pictures of swallows there over the marsh for weeks without luck; they’re very fast, and swoopy. Hard to get a good picture. This time, I got several good pictures of swallows – but I didn’t know it until I got home. They just happened to be in several pictures I took of other things. LOL That’s so often the way of it, is it not? I think there’s something to be learned here.
Where does this path lead?
As the morning began to warm, more visitors appear on the trail. I turn back toward the parking lot, thinking thoughts of home, of love, and of a good cup of coffee. I think about perspective, and of a future not yet determined. I fill my lungs with the scent of meadow flowers, realizing how very much I enjoy the fragrance of wild carrot (“Queen Anne’s Lace”) and yarrow, mingling with meadow grasses and late summer wildflowers.
What a pleasant morning. I think about the garden as I sip my coffee. Seeds are selected. Crops that are finished have been cleared out, their left over leaves and stems chopped up and mulched into the bed. Crops that just didn’t do as well as I’d hoped and seem unlikely to produce a harvest this year (looking your way, melons) will be cleared away, too. Then I’ll add compost and bring the bed level up again (it compressed quite a bit after I initially filled the raised bed my partner built for me), and plant new crops for autumn harvest and for wintering over. I have a lot to learn about gardening. LOL
I sip my coffee and grin at myself at ever thinking I had any idea about “how to garden”. I’ve been gardening in my half-assed way for some 50 years… since I was a kid. My parents had a substantial garden, and I labored in it weekends and summers (mostly weeding and bitching about weeding). I had a small plot of my own that I rather foolishly planted in Jerusalem artichokes, which thrived to an unimaginable degree – cool enough and the flowers were pretty, but no one in the family actually enjoyed them as a food. So… kinda silly and as it turned out, a waste of garden space. Very low maintenance. I learned nothing much from the endeavor besides this one important lesson; grow what you will use and enjoy. That’s not nothing, but hardly worth the mammoth effort involved in keeping those ‘chokes cut back season after season. lol
I have since had small garden beds, container gardens, and patio gardens… all rather fortunately focused mostly on roses and a few herbs. Occasionally I’d grow some veggies, and get something wonderful for my efforts (supremely tasty cherry tomatoes one year, another year a bumper crop of amazing Swiss chard), but I’ve tended to be both lazy and disorganized, and prone to letting shit fall behind when the heat is worst and the garden most in need of my attention day-to-day. No excuses, and I’m not looking to rationalize my results, I’m just saying; I am not my idea of a “great gardener”.
Now I’ve got this home that is mine, and this raised bed out front that my partner built for me, surrounded by flower beds. I’ll only get the results I work for, and that’s one of life’s immutable truths, isn’t it? My partner has set me up for success, though, with a raised bed that is comfortable to work in, close to water, within constant view, and I do adore it. 😀 I find myself ready to admit I’m not a very good gardener and work toward being a better one. That’s a nice place to find myself. It’s a good place to stand, considering options and looking ahead.
Evening Light 