Archives for category: more than a little bit of bitching
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Well That Changes Things…

June 22, 2017 //
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Ever wake up to a lovely morning, resting contentedly in the context of a beautiful moment, begin your day and…

Change? Change. A change that literally “changes everything” – or least feels like it does – can rock my world, shake my foundation, and result in a surreal overload of mixed metaphors, mixed emotions, and general confusion that lasts…well, it used to last until well past whatever the crisis du jour happened to be, and there used to be a lot of them. So many changes and moments were overwhelming crises of circumstance that resulted in chaos, upheaval, and “too much to handle”.

Medical problems. Unexpected bills. Break ups. Lost jobs. Hell – new jobs. Good stuff can do it, too. Love? Love causes some major changes in life and decision-making about the future, I guess I’ve just tended to assume all that anxiety was “excitement”, or failed to notice it in the hormone storm of positive sex-charged emotion. I like to feel emotionally comfortable. I like to plan my life such that even the “unexpected delights” and surprises are not entirely unexpected, nor entirely surprising. I like to feel prepared.

Sometimes I’m not “prepared”. I’m very human. Life can be scary.

Context and perspective are helpful – change is still change. Soon this will no longer be a stopping point on my morning commute.

My anxiety flared up severely – and so did my anger – yesterday morning, as I left for work. I haven’t managed to fully resolve it, but I’m reached an equilibrium with my emotions that feels… manageable. It’s only over a rent increase, really. I’m angry about the circumstances, which seem sleazy, exploitative, and just… douche-baggery for profit. My anger started getting out of hand, my anxiety shot through the roof, and I still had to go to work. I talked things through with my Traveling Partner, gaining perspective as I vented my irritation, resentment, and anger as gently as I could  (Seriously? He’s doing me a favor to be there for me, and isn’t at all involved or responsible, so “taking it out on him” would be inconsiderate and unkind.) So, I talked about it, over messaging, and stayed practical about it as much as I could. I wasn’t “looking for satisfaction” or confirmation that I am “right”, just a reality check, and some supportive understanding. He’s super good at those things, and our conversation ended as I reached the office, feeling… prepared, although still angry. I love feeling prepared!

I’m fortunate that I can fairly easily move, because now I don’t just want to – realistically, I have to (which is why I was feeling so angry, I was making very different plans). The suggested rent increase isn’t sustainable for me, and the circumstances of the increase are such that I certainly don’t care to rent from this landlord anymore, at all, and don’t feel valued as a tenant.

What a strange turn to yesterday’s lovely morning. Still, these days it’s such a mundane bit of adulting, writing about it almost wasn’t a thing… only… it’s still on my mind. I spent my lunch yesterday, and my evening, looking at available rentals, where they are located relevant to work, how much they cost, how soon they are available, and considering each in the context of real life concerns: features, amenities, utility costs, convenience to goods and services, nearness to public transportation (because now I have to move before we have second vehicle – one of the changes we discussed while we were hanging out night before last), nearness to green spaces, nearness to neighbors, and how quiet and safe the communities appear to be. It’s a lot to consider. It’s my life – and worthy of such consideration.

…I had other things on my mind, other things to write about…

I think back, smiling, to hearing my Traveling Partner remind me I already wanted to move (though I hate the process of moving), and that this – however poor the timing – is an opportunity to improve my quality of life through my choices. It’s true, too. The frantic panicked feelings all mixed up with my anger and my anxiety began to fade away as my options began to open up (through skillful Google-fu, and studious inquiry). The number of potential choices became a list of bookmarks in my browser, phone calls and emails to send inquiring about various rentals… houses…duplexes…apartments…condos…townhouses… My criteria stopped being based on “oh-my-fucking-god-what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do-I’ve-got-to-find-something–fast!!” and started being based on “wherever I move, the details need to improve, and can”. I struck everything from the list that didn’t achieve that – and still had a decent list of immediately available rentals to act on that shorten my commute, reduce my rent, and improve my day-to-day quality of life – and in one case appears to do so while also keeping me very near to green spaces, and increasing my quiet and my privacy. Nice.

I’m moving. I am okay with that. Change is. I sometimes wish it weren’t so much, so often, but… wishing is a child’s plaything, not a productive tool for managing change. So, I let that go. I confidently choose a move date. I’ll be somewhere new on August first. I don’t know where – but I know I’m moving.

Beginning again? And then some! 🙂

…It’s a new dawn…it’s a new day… it’s a new life for me… 

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Categories anger, Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Chasing Dreams

June 19, 2017 //
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Have you ever chased something? Run hard, run fast, kept running after whatever – or whoever – pushing yourself beyond expectations because you’re just that close to catching up… only… “chasing” and “catching” are not specifically connected in any particularly firm way. I’ve chased things I never ever caught up with – or achieved. At some point, perhaps I reconsidered the worthiness of the goal, or just… couldn’t quite get there.

I woke feeling groggy. The apartment was stifling and still, in that “it’s going to be a hot one today” sort of way. I’d feel foolish to bitch about a “hot” day forecasted at 87 degrees Fahrenheit; my Fresno friends have it much worse. They’re expecting 107 degrees or so – real heat. I take a moment to enjoy sipping hot coffee in the cool of morning as the sun rises. Perspective. Gratitude. Nice ways to begin the day.

I’m thinking about how easily I am tempted into pursuing something desirable without really being mindful of the journey, itself… Chasing something, instead of… well… what else? It’s worth thinking this over.

I have friends chasing Love. I wonder if they’ll catch up with that? Seems an odd way to go about it…

I have friends chasing Success. That’s a tough one – and so subjective. I never could catch up with that one, until I understood that I could only achieve satisfaction through understanding Success on my own terms. I’m likely an abysmal failure seen through the lens of another person’s definition of Success. I’m undisturbed by that.

I have friends chasing Money. Fuck, it would be so lovely if that weren’t a thing. I even wish I could help; I’ve had to find my way to being content with “enough”, just generally in life, to clear that hurdle and let go of a chase that only ever seemed to wear me down, fairly pointlessly, without ever ending or achieving anything of note.

I used to chase a good night’s sleep, pursuing Rest as though it were a mugger who’d taken my handbag; I wasn’t going to let it go, and I wasn’t going to stop, and… I wasn’t going to catch up to it by chasing it, either. lol

Sex, too – Personally, I’ve probably chased Sex more often than most other things. The yearning tempts me into it and off I go with the wanting and the needing and the pursuit… Easily won at 20, 25, 27, 30… less so at 54. Perhaps what I think I want hasn’t caught up with where I am in life? Perhaps chasing shit just isn’t the most effective approach to living life? (Or getting sex!) (Or finding an intimate emotional connection!) (Or knowing myself!)

For me, the word itself is telling, “chase” suggests pursuit without end, a frustrating journey without a satisfying conclusion. The very notion of being encouraged to “chase” one’s dreams seriously irks me, because, for example, for me it implies that they are always just out of reach – so have fun with that. lol Built in frustration – no, thank you.

I’ve stopped chasing my dreams. I’ve stopped chasing Sex. I’ve stopped chasing Love. I’ve stopped chasing Money. I’ve stopped chasing Success. For now, I’ve even stopped “chasing” homeownership – because once I realized I was chasing it, I knew I wasn’t going to catch it. “Chasing” a goal doesn’t end that way for me, because what I understand about “chasing” means something quite different from that.

This morning, this moment, my experience of life is a little like that breathless pause, mid-chase, bent to catch my breath, heart pounding, chest heaving with the struggle just to breathe… having given up pursuit to rest, to reconsider… to be. Aware that I’ve been chasing shit again, and can go ahead and stop that. 🙂 It’s a nice morning to sort things out. To think. To pause. To appreciate what already is, and re-examine what my resources are, and what I really need, and where I am heading in life. There are, of course, verbs involved – my results will vary – I’ll probably need to begin again. 😉

…Like… a bunch of times. LOL

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, Words

Sunday as Monday

June 18, 2017 //
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It’s still odd getting used to working Sundays. I’ve got the car for this one, and that’s actually pretty nice. I slept badly; it takes time to get used to new work days or hours. I woke a couple times, and struggled with anxiety coming and going, of a fairly garden-variety “will I remember to go to work?” sort. I know that will pass.

I also woke feeling discontent, which may or may  not have anything to do with the fact that it was acid reflux that woke me, about 15 minutes ahead of my alarm. Unpleasant. The result of my discontent, which was with me before I fully woke up, is a bit of snarling at myself in the background over tedious this and that, which could easily be handled with consideration and kindness. I figure I’ll get past it, once I’m awake, have had some coffee, some time to meditate, and time for the antacid I finally thought to take to have its effect. Rather than also snarl at myself over snarling at myself, I make a point of not taking my morning irritability at all personally; it’s very human.

My coffee is terrible this morning. Yes, I am drinking it anyway. lol As with life itself, sometimes I take a few swallows of a bitter brew before I realize I could choose differently. 😉

The sky is gray as the dawn comes. The forecast says it will be a hot day. The breeze filling the apartment with the cooler morning air feels a bit muggy. Tomorrow the forecast is for hotter weather still, but the temperature appears to drop again, after that. I hear a rare rumbling of thunder in the distance. I try to get my head right for the work day. How does the weekend feel like it has been both so very long and also so very short? How am I so tired?

I think back over the weekend – it was much less productive than I meant it to be, one possible source of my irritability and discontent this morning. I fuss over the feelings for a moment, before realizing the likely shortcut to being over it is to go ahead and feel it, acknowledge the feelings, and make choices that result in a different experience. lol So practical.

I am definitely having my own experience. I would prefer it be a different one. My results vary, and I have so many choices… being human, it can be so hard to go ahead and choose… There are verbs involved. Looks like I need to begin again… 😉

 

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Categories anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

My Cross to Bare

May 29, 2017 //
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No kidding. I’m super cross. Grumpy. No idea why, but it is enough to pull me back to my desk. I’ve tried things. I’ve done stuff. Blah blah practices… (eye roll)… verbs. Fuck. I got hit with varying results this afternoon.

Small things are rubbing my emotional balance the wrong way, like grit or sand or finely ground glass mixed into a lovely custard; my pleasant day is unexpectedly less pleasant. I know I can get past this bad bit – and it isn’t that bad, just sort of irritatingly irritating in a way that feels chronic – and isn’t at all (and won’t become so unless I invest in maintaining this experience). So… I sit down here with words to sort it all out and if not “make sense” of it, at least gain some perspective.

My gear is packed – but it is not yet “the day”, and although I am now fully packed up and ready to hit the trees, and the trails, I’ve got a couple more work days ahead of me before that moment arrives. Irritating. Understandably so; I’m eager to hit the trail and find some quiet out among the trees, but the time is not yet now. Frustration – any sort of frustration – is my kryptonite. So. There’s that.

Soon…

“Things” have been aggravating me – and a lot of it falls rather uncomfortably into the large bucket labeled “not my circus, not my monkeys”, things I could so easily let go of entirely, if only I could entirely let them go. LOL  Friends who are dear to me descending into the steaming pile of “horrible to watch” that is domestic violence definitely causes me some stress, more so now that they are “back together”. Fuck, I have seen that terrible cycle far too many times, and lived it too many times myself. There’s a fine line between “being there” for my friends, and enabling domestic violence, and I’ve had to set clear boundaries that at this point any hint of violence will simply result in a phone call to the police, non-negotiable. (How many fewer years of violence would I have suffered myself, if my neighbors had been unwilling to silently tolerate it, or look the other way?) Still, it’s stressful to be aware of its nearby presence, and I feel uncomfortable with it, and far more so because over days it has gone (in conversation) from “violence” to “a misunderstanding” (trust me when I say that violence is no misunderstanding, regardless how it begins). The discomfort is irritating, too. Local hate crimes are also pinging on my consciousness and adding stress to my experience – and that’s a major driver to get out into the trees; I need a break from society. Politics, too, and the news, and the constant ads and “sponsored content” in my “news” feeds… all stressful, all bullshit, very little of it with any legitimate value. Irritating, indeed. None of any of these things are “about me” – letting them all go would be the ideal thing, and I’m finding it difficult to do. So. There’s that.

A huge measure of my stress was apparently hidden in concern about my Traveling Partner, too. He’d said “Monday” when I observed that his calendar said “Sunday”, last week. Okay, no problem – although the lack of calendar accuracy is more sand in my custard, because I count on that planning and explicit expectation-setting when I make my own plans. Okay, okay, still seriously small stuff… although… if anything did happen to him, I would have no idea when to act on that, and could lose precious time by waiting too long to raise an alarm or seek help. It’s his choice to manage his plans in this fashion, though, and we’re both adults. Monday. That’s today. Okay, no problem… only… when? It’s felt like a long Monday as the hours have passed without a word. Shortly after 3 pm, he reaches out, we connect, and I feel much less background stress as a result. Good enough for this moment.

Minutes continue to tick by. Breaking down the stressors into manageable pieces provides me with the perspective I need to really let all of that go, and my contentment with the day is restored, refreshed, renewed – and I can begin again. Again. lol

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub!!

May 16, 2017 //
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I woke feeling merry – then moved to get out of bed. Holy crap, why the evolutionary-hell did it seem utterly necessary to develop arthritis pain?? I sigh, and ease myself slowly from the bed to something more or less like a standing position and make my way to my yoga mat.

(There’s a chance I watch too much Rick and Morty…)

Yoga helps. I’m not so stiff afterward. My coffee is tasty and hot. I’m still smiling and aside from being in pain, I “feel good”. I am learning to define  how I feel by qualities other than physical pain… it definitely makes a better experience, day-to-day. I suspect this will be a valuable trait as I age. lol Besides… fuck pain!  I put my headphones on, crank up some favorite dance tracks, and keep moving. I may be a plump, curvy, middle-aged fat chick with some wear and tear, but I’m fucking smiling, bitches – and I feel wrapped in love and smiles this morning in spite of pain. 😀 Wubba-lubba-dub-dub!!! 😉

Finding my joy has been a journey all its own, and part of “all of the everything” along the way. I can recall being a deeply bitter, disappointed cynical shell of a human being, a dry rotting husk where my heart could have been. Unpleasant. (That describes both me, I think, and my experience, itself.) It wasn’t surprising, knowing what I know (which is most of everything) about my experiences. What surprises me even now, though, is how much I yearned to be someone completely different. Not “different from the woman I am” as much as “a woman having a different experience than I am” – and looking back it took a long damned time to figure out (with help, frankly) that my own choices were a large part of where I landed in life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming poor people for poverty, or rape survivors for having PTSD and trust issues, or domestic violence victims for struggling with repressed rage and learned helplessness; no victim blaming here at all, implied or explicit. What I am saying, is that I didn’t recognize how much personal control I have over my own state of being. I could always make choices that change the quality of my experience for better or for worse – that’s a lot of power, and carelessly wielded it results in a lot of emotional chaos. We do have choices. A lot of them. So many choices it can be a little overwhelming… does it matter if I wear a dark blue wonder woman tank top under my sweater this morning? Not so much… but it’s a choice. The choice whether or not to budget my finances is a much bigger deal, as choices go. Or, the choice whether or not to labor away in a job that defies my values, and working for a person I don’t respect, and who treats me poorly – that’s a big deal for sure, and yep, also a choice (and a choice I am very glad I made differently, at long last).

The music keeps playing. I keep dancing in my chair while I write. Now and then the music moves me such that I’ve got to get up between paragraphs and enjoy a particular track in a more physical way. I love to dance. I make no claims of skill – I just enjoy movement, and music, and the way they go together so well.  At 53, and more than a bit self-conscious about … something… I don’t comfortably dance with ease and freedom in public spaces (anymore/yet). It can bring me near to tears to brush too closely to plentiful recollections of being young, fit, sexy, flexible, and so easily able to be the music in a physical form. Stiff from arthritis pain, back broken in two places, fused and wired back together, and too heavy to feel light on my feet for very long has talked me into a level of self-consciousness about being seen exactly as I am that I’ve not yet sorted out, and which creates conflict in my sense of rhythm, which adds to my self-consciousness. At any rate, it’s a source of emotional discomfort that I rarely discuss. It’s part of my journey these days; there is so much music I want to see live, and I want to be comfortable in that world, too.

The unexpected frankness with myself this morning, on this tender sore place in my heart labeled “too fat” opens my eyes to how much I’m hurting over this, and the tears spill over my cheeks like tiny waterfalls. The worst of it is the sting of knowing that the mocking skinny girl lurking in my thoughts isn’t about experiences I’ve had of other women; she’s the woman in the mirror, at a much younger age, that woman so easily able to dance, lacking any awareness of where life would take her, and brutally insensitive about others. Straight up, it’s not about treating other women badly over matters of weight, appearance, or beauty. I know my own heart. I know that woman. I know what she was about. I know her. I find myself acutely aware of who I was and the content of my thoughts, then. Life itself got tired of my shit, and now I am faced with all manner of many things I was uncomfortable with as a younger woman. lol Well-played life. You’ll make me wise, yet. Perspective matters, and it can be painful to develop.

Kindness matters too. And compassion. My tears dry as I savor the wry humor of being so carefully placed in life to experience a broad range of experiences. Gnothi seauton. I could have been a better person than I was in my 20s, but I wasn’t – and I wasn’t even aware of what a basic and shitty human being I actually was. Self-awareness demands a lot of me, and this morning it demands that I acknowledge how much I yearn to feel as comfortable on the dance floor as I do in my living room. As comfortable with my partners as I do when I am alone. Funny… until I became aware I felt otherwise, I didn’t realize this is a journey I also very much need to take… so… I guess it begins here? In a blog post I didn’t realize I was going to write, about an issue I find more personal than my sexuality… my emotional comfort with my physical self. Again. Still.

I’m still smiling. Still sipping my coffee. Still dancing through the pain. All good things – and there is further to go on this journey, and I suppose that is also a good thing. 🙂

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets, women
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