Archives for category: Oregon Trails

One Moment, Here

February 21, 2016 //

I really wanted to sleep in this morning. For the past several evenings I have been up later than is my general practice, not for any specific purpose just not sleepy enough earlier to make trying to sleep worthwhile. I don’t mind, there’s always another chapter in another excellent book, or some quiet something-or-other than can be done before retiring for the evening. But…it’s helpful if I can also comfortably sleep later the next day. Hasn’t been working out this weekend, I am awake with the dawn at the latest, and that has been a compromise, attempting to return to sleep after waking seriously too damned early to want to be up.

It may have felt too early, but this morning I woke to a beautiful sunrise just beyond the window. Worth it.

It’s been the sort of weekend that each deviation from plan, desire, or intent, has proven to be an outcome just beyond ‘enough’, and often splendidly beautiful, unexpectedly positive, delightful, or noteworthy in some pleasant way. It has been helpful that I’ve been open to each change as it has developed, finding myself moments of wonder and joy along a path I didn’t expect to tread.

Another unexpected outcome of the weekend’s peculiarly unscripted unfolding has been that I wake on a Sunday without plans or planning. The Friday evening I’d intended to spend with my traveling partner ended up spent on laundry, meditation, study, and art. The Saturday morning I’d planned to do laundry was spent on art, writing, and yoga. My Saturday evening date canceled for his own reasons, without animus, and I ended up spending Saturday evening with my traveling partner. Now here it is Sunday…and somehow the usual housekeeping got done between other things. I like a tidy home, particularly if I might be entertaining, but I so dislike ‘project housekeeping’ of the sort that is frenetic activity immediately prior to guests arriving that I just won’t do that. I ‘clean as I go’ generally, and on Sunday often put in a routine 2-3 hours of really detailed cleaning. Today it just isn’t necessary, and the laundry is done. The errands I ran yesterday, between the morning and evening, knocked out much of the miscellany that had been on my mind since I moved. So… now what?

…And birdsong included.

I watch the sunrise develop beyond the window of my studio, sipping my coffee. I contemplate change, choice, and perspective. These are among my favorite themes to consider, and how lovely a metaphor is a sunrise? 🙂

…But what to do with the day? I feel a yearning for… something. Something new, but not complicated. Something beautiful, but not remote. Something precious and perhaps limited – rare? Commonplace beauty that is rare doesn’t sound easy to find, and actually it sounds more like a Zen riddle.

I could really benefit from a good hike, out in the trees. I see runners passing by on Fanno Creek Trail, which runs between the sunrise and my studio window. I recall a recent article about a neighborhood park or trails or something to be soon lost with a road expansion… looking it up I read that an uncompleted road became, over time, a neighborhood park along a corridor between back fences, where the road had been planned to be, but never finished. Apparently, the funding and approvals are now a done deal, after so many years, and the plan is to begin construction very soon – when things dry out after the spring rains, most likely. I read quotes from community members irked to lose their greenspace after so long, which seems reasonable; there are no quotes from community members who want the road completed, only civic planners; the traffic in this neighborhood is quite horrific during commuter hours. It’s not a fancy or grand destination, but it is nearby and I’ve never walked those trails – and they may not be there to be walked sometime very soon. Regrets suck, particularly when they are the result of my own choices; today I will take time to walk this mysterious soon-to-disappear trail, because it is there, now. 🙂

A pleasant hike along a local trail isn’t going to take an entire Sunday, and the day remains leisurely, unscripted, and quite delightfully rich with possibilities. Today is a good day to enjoy the day, without expectations, without demands, without insistence on or adherence to an agenda. Today is a good day to listen deeply, to be gentle with myself and the world, and to let the day unfold as it will. Isn’t that enough?

Sometimes finding a happy place is surprisingly close to home.

Tags authentically me, be love, begin again, being the change, choices, choose love, love and lovers, love matters most, my home my rules my way, new trails, p.s. I love you, perspective, unscripted, walking my own path

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Wow – This is Ordinary!

February 18, 2016 //

It’s a Thursday, poised gently between a week in progress and a week nearly over. I slept well and deeply, waking at some point before the alarm went off. I told myself, this morning, that if it were as little as 15 minutes before the alarm would go off, I’d just get up. Seemed quite likely I’d get up regardless… I checked the clock, and noticed it was a bit more than half an hour before the alarm would go off… generally, I’d get up… Peculiarly, this morning I contentedly rolled over, wrapped myself in warm covers, agreeably admitted to myself as sleep overcame me that I’d most likely feel groggy when I woke… only…

I woke to the insistent beeping of an alarm clock that I had trouble locating by feel; it was quite literally out of reach, which seemed oddly metaphorical in my waking moment. I struggled with twisting to reach the lamp switch as the alarm continued to beep. I woke stiff and aching, and had managed to place the alarm clock quite completely out of common reach, on the far side of the nightstand. Finally. Silence. I stood with some effort, and made my way to the bathroom rather sluggishly.

I dither through my morning routine…heat the water for coffee now… or after my shower? After. Music? No music? Music. Fuzzy spa socks until I leave for work…or put on my hiking socks? Spa socks. Dark roasted Java, or medium roasted Uganda? Java. Sweater or t-shirt? Sweater. Back and forth, options being considered, choices being made, and the day begins to take shape for this one singularly ‘me’ human being of middle age, soft sweater, modest means, and generally gentle habits… I see the words, and sense a much younger version of me somewhere in the distance of time with a scrunched up ‘WTF?’ look of quizzical wonder on her face. “How did we get here?” I smile to myself – feeling the warmth of my affection for this ‘stranger within’, this ‘me’ creature, and think of the miles we have walked, the internal demons of chaos we’ve battled together, the endless practice, the choices to change… There is no question, really, how I got from ‘there’ to ‘here’ – there have been verbs involved, and will, and choice, and change.

How beautiful that each new day I can choose to begin again!

I am in some physical pain this morning; the weather is rainy again, and my bones ache with it. I’m not bitching, just saying it is an element of my experience that can tend to color my thinking if left unaddressed. I make a point of taking care of this fragile vessel. Today has all the ingredients of being a very pleasant one. (Still verbs involved.)

I can recall a time when being asked to change seemed more constant than being valued or appreciated as I was, which I recall as being very rare. I don’t doubt from my perspective now that this was a ‘true’ experience from my perspective then. I felt frustrated, and criticized. I felt inadequate. I felt angry – and the anger mostly came from how astonishingly rarely anyone else seemed willing to change at my request, as though I were uniquely flawed, and they were singularly perfectly beautifully human just as they were. It hurt a lot to view the world that way. It grew and festered until it became a fairly constant internal fight that often ended resentfully with a simultaneous feeling of ‘fuck your change!’ and capitulation to pressure, to coercion, to fear of withdrawn affection, followed by all the brutal self-criticism as I attempted to force change on myself to meet someone else’s needs. My soul fairly continuously cried ‘what about me?’ within the context of relationships that were purportedly intimate. What a fucking mess.

It became a very big deal to live authentically – which definitely required that I start figuring myself out, fast. Turning my own attention toward the woman in the mirror in an honest way, unreservedly and unashamedly in my own corner, being genuinely supportive of my own needs in a strong and positive way was another very big deal – and the verbs were definitely piling up alongside new practices. Every change I chose for myself, because that change met my own needs and held potential to take me further down my own path, made change itself just a bit less terrifying, and a bit less alienating. Instead of changes imposed on me somehow making me less and less me over time, I began to choose change for myself, based on my own values, my own needs, my own aesthetic. Life changed with me. The changes I chose were for and about me, about being the woman I most want to be, myself, and about living my values quite openly and comfortably. A lot of things begin to change around me, and within my relationships – for one thing, it quickly became clear who enjoyed and valued me, for real. “Faking it” in life was not only no longer a choice with value – it was no longer an option. What a relief!

"How many more miles?" doesn't ask a question that needs an answer.

“How many more miles?” is not a question I need to ask.

This is not an epitaph to a journey. The journey is not the destination. There is no ‘finish line’, no scorecard, no ‘pot of gold’ – because there is no end to the rainbow for this tale of wonder. Another day will dawn, and I will begin again. Each day is so powerful as an opportunity to choose to live life willfully, eyes wide with wonder, mind open to the possibilities, and aware of the world and my fellow travelers within feeling constrained or encroached upon by their values, or their freedom. In this moment, here, this morning, I feel ‘whole’ and ‘well’ and a whole bunch of other lovely words about the ‘me’ that is, versus the woman I wasn’t, for so very long. Strangely – this is what feels ‘ordinary’ today. 🙂

Change is like a doorway on a longer journey.

…Oh…hey… We’re still here? My mind wandered. A quick montage of recollections of other times, harder times, different times, some even fairly recent times, and I humbly observe that although this morning feels very good – and also very ordinary – I’m very human, and there will likely be other less pleasant times to come… somewhen. That, too, is very ordinary. I’d say something insightful about impermanence, but I’m not sure there’s more to say than ‘impermanence is a thing I can count on’. Weather changes. Job changes. Mood changes. Relationship changes. Health changes. Lifestyle changes. Change is. I think what I’ve really been saying this morning is that being the authority on change in my own experience, being the entity choosing the changes, and keeping that power of choice and action for myself – to use it as a tool, rather than as a weapon, and to make it one of the processes of order, rather than part of the chaos – has been a profoundly positive thing for me.

Yes. Of course there are verbs involved. Isn’t today a good day for some verbs? 🙂

Tags an ordinary day, be love, be the change, change is, change it up, change the conditions, change the context, change the meaning, change the name, change the narrative, change the words, choose change, don't change me bro!, Don't like it? Change it, got any change?, impermanence, p.s. I love you, ptsd, standing with the woman in the mirror, TBI

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, women, Words

Making Fire

January 12, 2016 //

Sipping my coffee on a quiet comfortable morning, and I am musing at lessons learned on other days, in other moments. I am thinking about the crackling fire in the fireplace that kept me smiling much of the weekend. I am thinking about a camping trip last March in which I experienced a real moment of dread and anxiety – because I wasn’t easily able to make a fire. I am thinking about the distance I have traveled between those events, and what it has taken to grow from one to the other.

I wasn’t as prepared as I felt.

In March, I had planned a camping trip of 4 days to gear-test new gear, and find out whether I was up to colder weather camping (newsflash: it’s not my preference to camp if low temperatures are below 45 – it’s an important planning detail). I headed for the trees thinking I had everything I needed. Truthfully, the lack of coffee was what kicked my ass emotionally (I’d also overlooked tea), and looking back it was a huge opportunity to overcome that limitation, but the headache spoke louder than reason. I had also not packed my bee sting kit, thinking that the weather was not yet ‘bee weather’. Being wrong about that was a safety issue, and that was the deciding factor to ‘call it’ only two days in and return home. My traveling partner retrieved me from the forest, and although he genially teased me just a bit about my lack of readiness, we both knew that was why I went out there for that particular trip; I’m planning much longer ones, solo, more remote – and on those occasions, it’s pretty urgent that obvious mistakes not be the mistakes I am making when I am too far from home to call for a ride. But this is simply some context on the experience; the lack of coffee may not have kicked my ass if I had been easily able to make fire from on-hand resources, no cheats.

Light without heat won’t boil water.

I camp fairly light, and I make sure I have flint and emergency fire-starting gear, but generally rely on Esbits for quick fuel to boil water. Doing so let’s me travel fairly light, and doesn’t place a requirement on me to actually build a fire and burn wood traveling through forests, or in places where a fire is a bad idea. It had been so long since I actually made a wood fire I had entirely lost those skills – and was wandering around in the world unaware of that (far more important than the loss of skill was the fact that I was unaware of the short-coming). It was an embarrassing discovery. I had brought along an alcohol stove, another common hiker/camper favorite, but one I wasn’t so familiar with using and didn’t have a lifetime (any time) of personal experience; my use of fuel was inefficient, even wasteful, and I didn’t bring enough fuel to account for that. I used up my fuel figuring things out (and setting my cook pot handle on fire – don’t ask). To prevent myself from ‘falling back on favorites’ on this particular trip I hadn’t packed as many Esbits – and I “knew” I had enough alcohol. (I was wrong.) These sorts of things add up to potentially life-threatening fails under extreme circumstances, and it was wrecking my nerves even after I returned home. (I thought I could count on myself for fire for crying out loud!) I had some work to do. There would be verbs involved.

No skill required – yet.

Over the winter holidays, I enjoyed a number of fires in the fireplace, and have continued to do so. Each new fire in the fireplace became an adventure, a learning experience, and part of a progression – the first one was just a Duraflame log, lit and enjoyed for a couple of hours (and an opportunity figure out the flue with confidence). Each successive fire has been more reliant on skill, until this past weekend I started a lovely warm fire without cheating it at all – lit with a lighter meant for lighting fires, but aside from that nothing made it effortless, and success was not assured. I learn from each stumble, each mistake, each new transition toward being more fully reliant on the basics (wood, oxygen, and spark or flame to begin it). This weekend I explored a variety of tweaks on placement of wood on the grate, size of kindling, timing of putting heavier wood on the fire, and had quite a lot of fun with the experience, and ending each day with a bed of coals banked and ready to begin again.

The cozy warmth of a fire built with purpose and skill.

In between my March camping, and my lovely warm fire this past weekend there has been quite a lot of study, and some practice (with more practice yet to come – because a fire in the fireplace is not 100% analogous to making a fire in the cold, or the rain, or the wind, and there is much more to learn about fire, about readiness, and about self-sufficiency and interdependence). I’ll probably continue to hike and camp relying on what works best (and most reliably) for me, and what feels most comfortable, but I’ll be heading to the trees far more prepared to take care of me when circumstances don’t allow for what feels most comfortable, and more aware of what I may really need to enjoy the experience.

Taking care of me has a lot of verbs… and some nice perks. 🙂

Today is a good day to be a student of life and love, open to new understanding. Today is a good day to put aside assumptions, and ask clarifying questions. Today is a good day to look suffering in the face with a mind open to understanding what my needs really are. It’s a journey worth taking. 🙂

Tags be prepared, be the change, being and becoming, check your gear before you go, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, it's a metaphor, light versus illumination, making fire, mindfulness, mindfulness matters, practicing the practices, ptsd, solo camping, solo hiking, taking care of me, TBI, walking my own path, Where There's Smoke

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

There Is Sunshine

January 1, 2016 //

A new year begins today. The winter sun hits the glass of the patio door and fills the room with light and warmth. My feet are extended into the rays of sunshine spreading across the carpet. I wiggle my toes, feeling them warmed in the filtered winter sunlight. The remainder of my second cup of coffee has grown cold; I continue to sip it, content with the exceptional flavor which is undiminished by the cooling. I am smiling.

New beginnings are quite variable, every experience, each perspective, just a bit different from another. I am not the woman I was on the first day of 2015. That woman was stressed to a breaking point, yet again, mistreated in one relationship, insecure in another, restlessly contemplating where a third might take her, given the difficult circumstances generally.

The path ahead wasn’t obvious.

It was a complicated year. An abusive relationship was creating roadblocks to progress in therapy through behaviors that seemed willful or deliberate at times – it would prove irrelevant whether they were deliberate; the outcome was damaging. The future of my relationship with my traveling partner seemed insecure, and despair crept into my experience a number of times. I felt frustrated, held back, and uncertain where my path would lead me, but committed to continuing the journey. I continued to practice new practices that were definitely doing good things for my resilience, improving my ability to maintain a neutral, honest, and healthy perspective, and helping me manage stress. I wasn’t sure it would be enough to thrive on…and I wasn’t sure that the positive changes I could see developing would be enough, soon enough, to hold on to what I valued most in life – or love.

When 2015 began, I was struggling with attachment, afraid to let go and just be. I struggled with blaming myself for things going on that weren’t about me at all, and I struggled with feeling responsible for making a relationship work, in which it had become clear the other didn’t actually want things to work and was not invested in building a functional relationship with me. Accepting that was painful (rejection hurts) and it was hard to just breathe and let it go without ‘closure’, or honest communication, or even basic civility. The pain diminished in the instant I remembered that the character and behavior of that other human being is no reflection on me whatsoever; she is her own human being, and all the consequences of her choices are entirely her own (as mine belong entirely to me). That was an important lesson and turning point.

It has been a year full of important lessons in taking care of myself, in emotional self-sufficiency, and in learning to love well, and without unhealthy attachment – with the result that my relationship with my traveling partner has grown and deepened wonderfully, and I am so much more able to love well, generally, and to listen deeply. I ended the other, abusive, relationship (keeping a promise I made to myself long ago), and I declined to pursue a relationship with characteristics suggesting high risk in a number of areas of life in which I’m not inclined to compromise. I’ve stopped trying to meet needs for connection and intimacy through sex, with result that sex is improved; I have sex only in relationships in which there is already intimacy and connection. 2015 taught me a lot about who I am, and what I really need to thrive. In 2015, I learned a lot about ‘enough’, and began investing in lasting contentment, instead of chasing more/better.

2016 begins well. I could stop there. I have, a number of times already. No map. I don’t really know where this new year will take me, what I may learn, gain, or lose. I don’t know what’s up ahead on this journey, and I am feeling tranquil and unconcerned about that – making it hard to write, honestly. 🙂

Today, though, is a good one for contemplation. I will take time to consider the year-to-come, to wonder, to dream, to plan, to question – it’s the questioning that is perhaps most relevant to where I may find myself a year from today. I’ll think it over, and make some notes; I find it helpful to look back with some context. I’ll write in my private journal, and send myself an email ‘from the past’, as I did last year – it was a special moment this morning when I got that email from myself. Being able to read my own stern warning to end an abusive relationship with the comfortable knowledge that it was done months ago was validating; I am learning to take better care of myself, and my heart.

The view of 2015 is very different from this perspective. The path ahead seems a bit more clear, now.

The view of 2016; the path ahead seems a bit more clear, now.

Today is a good day to take care of me. Today is a good day to begin again. Today is a good day to be my own cartographer, on this journey of my own making. Happy New Year! Are you ready? Let’s change the world!

Tags 2016 begins, are you going my way?, I am my own cartographer, learning as I go, mindfulness for the win, mindfulness matters, One Hour, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, rejection hurts but mistreatment hurts worse, stay on the path, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, walk on, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, gardening, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work…

December 31, 2015 //

…Unless you are ready to choose change…unless you use verbs…unless you begin again. And again. And yet again…until the thing about which you propose to be resolved becomes a quality about who you actually are. Just saying. It’s said better here, perhaps. Or here. Or here. All of them are fairly easily summarized – you can choose change, it does require verbs. There are no shortcuts, and there are no excuses.

Sometimes it feels like an uphill climb. There are unexpected obstacles.

The most frustrating thing about ‘New Year’s resolutions’ is that they so rarely result in real change (for many people – your results may vary). The ‘why’ of that is so simple; there are verbs involved, and a requirement that our intention, our will, and our actions align to result in change. No verbs? No change. I can want to lose weight, intend to lose weight, and make a good plan to reach a reasonable goal; if I do not practice the practices that get the desired result, I will not lose weight – and the frustration and disappointment of personal failure can so easily (and thoughtlessly) be transmuted to emotion-driven over-consumption of unneeded calories. Bummer. A lot of things work that way; feelings of futility and frustration easily result in a level of ‘giving up’ that results in not only not making the desired change, but even over-indulging the undesirable behavior. Huge bummer.

It’s not easy to stick with a commitment to change, whether the change involved is quitting smoking, losing weight, or giving up being a colossal psychotic raging bitch 24/7 to people you say you love; the nature of the change itself is almost irrelevant to the success or failure of the endeavor. How much you want it doesn’t have much to do with whether you will succeed or fail, either; the most earnest heartfelt desire for change is still simply an emotional experience (although one that can be leveraged for motivation, still just a feeling). Add to that the discouragement of loved ones in our support system being less than ideally encouraging – or frankly skeptical of success – and it can seem an insurmountable roadblock to change, just having emotions at all! Harsh – we’re so human! How do we get past all that? I don’t actually have an easy answer there; I begin again when I ‘fail’, and use the opportunity to learn and grow. There may be an easier answer, but I haven’t found it – and at this point, I’m not looking for easy answers. I’m content with questions… and verbs.

Go ahead. Choose change. Make a resolution. Be the person you most want to be in 2016! It may not be ‘easy’. You may fail – you may fail a lot. Incremental change over time is a real thing, though, and we do become what we practice – no kidding, that’s real, too (and true of behaviors both nurturing and damaging). Begin again. Start over. And again after that. Use a verb – use a lot of verbs – exert effort fearlessly; all you have in this lifetime is this lifetime, itself. Spending an entire lifetime not even making the attempt to be all you most want to be (as a human being) seems pretty… empty. Pointless? Wasted. So…later in January? February? Whenever you find you’ve quit, given up, or stalled – begin again. That’s actually ‘all it takes’ – begin again. Did you fail again? Okay – begin again. Again. And again. It’s the nature of practice to require repetition. 😉

One last bit on this, from a different perspective… Some of you out there could stand to treat your fellow human beings better than you do. (You know who you are, and your neighbors do indeed hear you; the world sees you in action pretty much every day and very few people are actually deceived.) Are you relying on rationalizations and excuses to get a pass for the mistreatment you heap upon your fellow human being? (Hormones, fatigue, alcohol, pain, illness…) Maybe you just feel righteous and justified or entitled. You can choose change, too. You can also refuse to choose change, but you don’t get to choose to avoid responsibility or accountability for your damaging behavior from that moment that your loved ones wake up to the awareness that you are in fact choosing who you are, and choosing to behave in a damaging ways to your loved ones (whether you call it abuse or not). If you have been told that your behavior or language is hurtful and you continue it, you are choosing and your behavior is no longer easily defined as ‘unintended’; it is not an accident, and you did indeed ‘mean to’. 2016 could so easily be the year you choose differently, learn to love, and learn to treat other human beings well. 2016 could also be the year that you don’t choose to behave any differently (sadly this is more likely)… but 2016 could also be the year your loved ones finally wake up to their value as human beings and that they don’t deserve to be mistreated, and don’t have to take it anymore – and walk on, to a life in which they are valued, loved, and treated well. (They are free to choose change, themselves, instead of enduring your abusive vile shifty behavior or mistreatment. 🙂 Just saying; it’s a system that works nicely with adequate use of verbs.)

Practice the practices that take you closer to being the human being you most want to be.

So…here it is… the cusp of a new year. As arbitrary as that really is, it is a moment – and you can choose change. Will this be the year you become the person you most want to be? Will you change the world? Will humankind’s global experience improve in your hands? Will you love well? Will you speak kindly? If practice makes perfect, what kind of world are we perfecting in 2016?

Tags 2015 ends, 2016 begins, are you going my way?, be love, be the change, be the human being you most want to be, begin again, choose change, choose wisely, compassion, happy new year, kindness is still free, meditation only works when I do it, new year's resolutions, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, resolutions don't work, TBI, there are verbs involved, walking on, Wheaton's Law

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words

One Moment, Here

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Wow – This is Ordinary!

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Making Fire

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There Is Sunshine

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New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work…

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