Archives for category: pain
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Gently Now

May 26, 2022 //
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My neck and back hurt. I did my physical therapy “magic moves”, with limited benefit. I catch myself “pulling on” my neck, even knowing that is not helpful. Background stress drives physical pain, much the same way physical pain makes me more vulnerable to background stress. Yep. It’s a cycle. How best to break that cycle? Choose the most appropriate practice(s) and do that(those) thing(s). “Simple!” (It isn’t.)

Trigger Warner for Snowflakes: discussion of gun control.

I’ll go home early today. I’m fortunate to have a job, a role, and a boss, with room for empathy and compassion. A lot of folks are suffering emotionally this week. Maybe everyone. Another school shooting. Another round of back and forth bullshit over gun ownership vs violence, and the regulations we may need to reduce the latter as a consequence of the former. I have my own thoughts on that. You’ve got yours. Honestly, I’m not opposed to civilian ownership of firearms generally…but… I also think that there are individuals that likely ought not fucking have firearms within easy reach! (Um…duh.) My thoughts? Maybe overly simple…

  1. To own a firearm, I think a person should be required to have specific training on the use and safety practices of each individual type of firearm they wish to own. No exemptions. Pass a fucking test. (There don’t seem to be many objections to the requirement to pass a test to drive a vehicle… just saying.)
  2. To own a firearm, I think a person should be required to be licensed for that firearm in their state – and I think the training requirement and knowledge test isn’t enough; get a mental health “physical”, and demonstrate that you are rationally and emotionally fit to have that weapon. (People routinely have to pass a physical exam to get a commercial driver’s license, or a psychological screening to work in some environments – how is this any different?)
  3. To own a firearm, I think a person should have to carry specific insurance against the chance that their firearm is misused, used in a crime, or accidentally injures someone. (Again, own a car? You’ve got insurance. Own a home? You’ve got insurance. Own a business? I bet you’ve also got insurance.)
  4. One last detail – I don’t think “open carry” is appropriate everywhere, and should be explicitly prohibited for civilians. I think “concealed carry” should be heavily restricted. If your firearm is a “home defense” weapon, keep it at home. If it is a hunting or sporting firearm, keep it secured until you go hunting, or lock it up at the gun club where you do your target shooting.

I’m just saying, I see a huge difference between responsible gun ownership and every ass clown with an agenda having “a right” to have a gun. I don’t understand why any potentially responsible gun owner would object to 1. getting training and passing a test, 2. passing a mental health screening to ensure emotional fitness and ability to assess risks, 3. having insurance to protect themselves financially against any potential bad outcome associated with their firearm, or 4. not carrying their firearm in places where firearms ought not be. What am I missing?

Oh. I know. I know what I’m missing; it’s a misleading question. What I am “missing” is that there are quite a few angry or emotionally wounded individuals who know they are, who want a gun knowing they are potentially at risk of using it inappropriately – or even explicitly intending to – who do not want their “rights” restricted. There are a lot of other folks who just don’t even want to have to deal with the question “should I really have a gun?”, because they have doubts. My next question is – why would we ever let those people make the decisions regarding access to firearms, for everyone?

Too often I read the news, and someone says “obtained the gun legally”, followed somewhere by “could not have predicted…”, when, actually, it’s often far too predictable, because that eventual killer started out as angry, violent at home (or known to have expressed violent ideations on some forum or another), and struggling with their overall emotional wellness. Yes, we fucking could have known – someone probably did know. Maybe someone even reported the individual to law enforcement because they did know, and were concerned, and tried to do the right thing? How horrific is that? To have the solution within such easy reach… and just let it happen all over again?

Maybe get the fuck up out of women’s reproductive decision-making for one fucking legislative season and work on something that really does need (and have) a solution?

Wow. It feels good to get that off my chest. Thanks for reading. Please write and phone your legislators. Ask them to stop being dishonest assholes about this issue and develop some realistic, responsible gun ownership laws. This is not a partisan issue; I promise you none of the slaughtered children were Republicans or Democrats.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Despair, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, War and News of War

Tantrums

May 25, 2022 //
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I write the word. You read the word. “Tantrums.” We probably both think of children, first. Adults having tantrums are… embarrassingly human. I’ll bet you’ve done it. “Thrown a fit.” Maybe, “lost your shit”? Did you “blow up” over something small? Tired? Not feeling well? Headache? Suddenly you found yourself in the middle of an emotional firestorm, losing both self-control and resilience? I don’t know anyone who can be entirely honest and say they’ve never, ever, lost their composure inappropriately over some moment or another. It’s unpleasant to experience. It’s unpleasant to witness. It’s unpleasant to be around. Each and every one of us who has found ourselves succumbing to the worst of who we are in some moment, who has blasted some innocent bystander, colleague, – or worst – someone we care about deeply over our bullshit, knew right then and there that we were fucking wrong as hell. We probably didn’t say as much. Maybe we never even apologized. Maybe we think because the “facts were on our side” it excuses our shitty behavior? Is it you, this time? Was it them? Do you think you were “right”? Do you think they were? (Do you actually think that matters more than the unpleasant moment you’ve created?)

“Am I the asshole?” Good question to ask oneself in a moment of tension or conflict. Just saying.

I’ve been there, for sure. It’s definitely not “always me”, though; I am but one human among many. Even narrowing the view to just the company I work for. Just my community. Just my family. Just my partnership. Even with my “issues” – it’s not always me. Just saying. Any one of us can, and likely will, succumb to emotional weather, however pleasant the emotional climate may be. Storms come and go.

I sat down to write, over the weekend, but my thoughts had not yet become a thing I could express in words. It was fatiguing weekend of relaxing effort. lol My body was tired. My mind was seeking a moment of quiet to really process things. Maybe I get that moment when I seek it, maybe I don’t. It sometimes ends up being the sort of thing that keeps me restless and wakeful into the wee hours, quiet, and reflecting, filtering, sifting, sorting, all the thoughts and questions, and moments. In the meantime, I’m struggle to put my thoughts into some coherent share-worthy whole. Interruptions. Distractions. Endless seeming “high priority” distractions, and demands on my time and attention.

My Traveling Partner is having his own experience.

Our A/C seemed to be malfunctioning. I mean… it demonstrably was “malfunctioning”, keeping in mind the intention, and settings, should have it cooling the house, and it is doing quite the opposite. Time spent troubleshooting (and snarling at each other), eventually pays off; blown fuse replaced. I struggle to “keep up” with his shifting emotional weather, some days. That was one of those. I imagine my own notion of resilience as a deep, calm, still pool. I perceive his (substantial) resilience more as a wave pool; big swings that reliably settle into calm fairly quickly. We’re each having our own experience. It’s not “personal” – not even truly “adversarial” in any clear way. Just quite different from each other, and sometimes not complementary. We are so similar…and so different. I don’t think I’d change that… I’d just like to be a bit better at it than I am… preferably without having to gain those skills through experience. lol

I continued to write, but ultimately set it aside over distractions. The pain I was in had increased, even though our stressful moment was quite brief, and it colored my thinking. I finally gave up on it. Today it’s days later, and reaching for words in a different moment of stress and conflict, and I find this, half-finished, waiting for me. A reminder that emotional weather comes and goes. That we are each having our own experience. Each seeking to understand the world through the lens and filter of our own experience – and often completely limited to that context, because it is all we truly know. Empathy is hard sometimes. Compassion requires more verbs. Kindness, too. Finding my way to a fully accepting and loving place is hard right now. I’m angry.

I remind myself that my Traveling Partner and I both have only good intentions. That we both love each other. That we are each doing our best with shared goals in mind. That we are individuals seeking to thrive – and help each other to do so – on a shared journey. It’s hard to be the best version of myself when I am feeling angry, or misunderstood, or unappreciated. I know that’s true for him, too. I look at my calendar – another meeting. I take a breath, and begin again.

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Categories anger, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Evening on the 17th Floor

May 16, 2022 //
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It’s evening, and I never get tired of being awash in evening light. The perspective from this 17th floor hotel room is vast and lovely. A distant highway adds sparkle as traffic follows the road in the deepening twilight. I look out toward the horizon picking out various landmarks I had spotted in daylight hours. There is a far off ferris wheel that lights at night. Tonight it is blue. The sky is clear tonight. At least over here. Out on that horizon, more thunderheads, but no lightning (yet).

Florida from the 17th floor.

I wore myself out at the conference today. That wasn’t my plan. Reality has its own, and consequences of physical limitations are for sure part of that experience. The convention center is quite huge. The distances from one end of the conference to the other are… vast. LOL In the late afternoon, I laid down “for 10 minutes”, planning to join other attendees at dinner a bit later. I woke a bit more than 3 hours later, a little groggy, very thirsty, and feeling somewhat rested and in quite a lot less pain. I’m okay with all of those things. Although I am quite outgoing based on my “personal presentation” in the workplace, or out and about in the world, the truth is I’m often cringing at the “unwanted contact” with other beings and other minds. Baggage? Oh, surely, and I’m even okay with that. I live decently well these days, and there is no shame in being content with a great many solitary experiences. I have grown quite fond of the woman in the mirror, and she’s excellent “company” given a few moments to myself to enjoy the experience of self.

My last trade conference before this one was some years ago. My experience was intense, unpleasant in spots, overly busy, distracting, unsettled, and my return home was… problematic. I over-reacted to the excitement and relief of being home, and my emotionality brought me in conflict with my partners-at-the-time. The meltdown was… significant, and terribly unpleasant. I feel hopeful that I’m past all that, and that this trip will end with the sort of comfortably familiar return home that I have whenever I return from routine business travel.

…The only things I find unpleasant about this particular adventure are the stifling humidity (Florida, need I say more?) and the astonishing size of the convention space, so vast that just getting registered yesterday resulted in 16k total steps walked from when I reached the airport, until I dropped into bed, exhausted. LOL It’s probably excellent for my overall fitness… but damn it’s hard on my ankle, and by the end of each day, my feet hurt like crazy. That’s how I ended up napping; I really just wanted to put my feet up awhile so they wouldn’t hurt, and I could go/do just a bit more. lol My body knew better; I needed that rest.

I am missing my Traveling Partner. Missing “home”. Missing my garden, and the plump gray cat that stalks blue jays from the fence-top outside my studio window while I am working. I miss being wrapped in contentment and love. I miss my own cooking. I am grateful to have the opportunity to travel a bit; it provides useful perspective on home life, and gives me a chance to fully appreciate my life. I’m not yearning and feeling lost, just missing things about my life that I truly love. I’m eager to get back.

I write a paragraph reflecting on practical/personal details of travel, generally. I delete it. I’m rambling. I’m connecting with my home experience by writing while I think about it. Inefficient. I think I’ll shift gears and message my partner, and chat awhile. 🙂 No phone call? Nah. Being on the phone is physically uncomfortable – it makes my tinnitus worse, and also tends to find me holding my left arm in a position that makes the pain of my neck injury worse. I smile to myself just thinking about my partner.

Soon enough, more sleep. Soon enough, I’ll begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Another Sleepless Night

May 4, 2022 //
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Awake again in this noisy place. The lights here have a hum. Each light has its own. Most of them fall just enough outside the frequency range of my tinnitus that I do hear them… and more or less as if my tinnitus has somehow expanded. Super annoying, but in the darkness of night that is not what woke me. It wasn’t even the occasional mechanical grinding of the parking garage door opening, then closing. It wasn’t the talkative folks in the adjacent room; they’ve finally settled down to sleep. It isn’t even the acid reflux that seems to be along for this trip to the office.

…I think I’m just homesick…

I miss my Traveling Partner. He’s getting some uninterrupted work time, which is likely pretty helpful right now. I know he misses me, though. We exchange text messages through the day. Gentle pings. Reminders of love. I appreciate this practice quite a lot. I’m eager to be home, though, and the week feels long and fatiguing.

I’m fortunate to have so much to go home to. I’m eager to return home. I miss that place. I miss my garden. I would miss these things even in a solitary life, sure… but what I miss most is the love that waits for me there.

I sit quietly awhile, writing paused. I reflect on love. I think of my Traveling Partner’s soft breathing as he sleeps. I wish him a good night’s rest from afar. I sip on this bottle of water, waiting on the acid reflux to subside a bit. It’s not quite 2 a.m. this time. I woke around 12:30 a.m., and I’d very much like to get more sleep. lol The work days feel long on these visits (they are), since I’ve little else to do (I tend to be rather focused on purposeful on these trips). I haven’t done much sightseeing, so far. It just seems to require more of me than I’ve got available, energy-wise. So, the work days run longer, compounding the issue. S’okay, though; I’m here to work. So I work. 🙂

In another time and place, I might have gotten dressed, put on my shoes, and gone out into the night to walk awhile. Pretty healthy choice for dealing with insomnia, but Seattle is a big city, and this is not a great neighborhood to be a wandering stranger in. Times have changed and the world feels less safe for that sort of thing, generally. So, I don’t go walking. I consider the small gym downstairs… but the lights there are ridiculously bright, and that would likely result in further sleepless ness.

…I try not to spiral down dark mental alleyways, and avoid looking at the news…

I’m feeling pretty over this acid reflux nonsense. I try to remember why I did not go to the corner store at the end of the street for antacids, earlier… I think I was just tired. Short-sighted. I’m regretting that I allowed fatigue to put me in this situation a second night.

…I can’t believe there were no Tums in my toiletries (there generally are)…

There was a time when I had acid reflux so chronically, even in spite of taking a prescription strength treatment, that I developed a hacking little cough, and was perpetually distracted and bad-tempered with it. My mind mentally wanders through what I recall of the sundries here in the hotel, while I am wondering if a delivery service may provide relief… then I remember that the hotel does have “the pink stuff” in stock. That’ll do, I guess. Some relief – in exchange for the potential that it may “turn up the volume” on my tinnitus (taking aspirin or other salicylates does seem to have that as a temporary consequence, especially with prolonged use).

I dress and walk down the hall, get some Pepto-Bismol, and some Benadryl (because my spring allergies are going nuts here in Seattle). I pick up a cold bottle of sparkling water, too – it sounds refreshing. The night crew in the lobby have the music turned up, playing something with a thumping beat… Beyonce? Could be. I smile as I return to my room. I’m glad they have a good time in the wee hours. Night shifts can be difficult, and a bit of fun helps.

My phone buzzes at me and I realize I was so tired when I crashed for the night (quite early) that I never silenced it. Could be what woke me in the first place, although the acid reflux would have, eventually. I’m already less uncomfortable, now, and soon the Benadryl will have me thinking of sleep… the trick now is to be sure of going back to bed with no less than 2 hours yet to go – otherwise I’ll wake groggy and stupid, and struggle to “restart my brain” when the alarm forces my attention to the new day. lol It’s not yet even 2:30 a.m…. I think I’ve got this. 😀

There’s something to be learned from this; my reluctance to compromise on my solution-of-choice resulted in two nights of poor quality sleep, and two days of discomfort. Was it worth it? It was not. I chose poorly. Something to think about, as I head back to bed.

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Categories Allegories, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Practices, Sleepless Nights, Spring

Staying Within a Budget

April 23, 2022 //
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I’m drinking water. It’s a sunny Saturday in April. The weather is mild and well-suited to getting outside into the garden. At least at the moment, I’m not “there”.

I’m fighting off a UTI, and I’ve been very fatigued recently, though I feel decently well-rested today (and since the antibiotics started doing their thing on this infection). I made a delicious scramble for my Traveling Partner and I to start the day on (he’s working, I’m… doing things that definitely require effort, but don’t “seem like work“). This antibiotic is best taken on a full stomach, so breakfast definitely made sense.

…After breakfast, I cleaned up the kitchen and did the dishes…

…I broke down a bunch of cardboard and took it out to the recycling bin…

…then started laundry (towels mostly)…

…then I made the trek down to the city to pick up a snap-together little garden shed to put all my gardening gear in, to get those items out of the shop space that my Traveling Partner needs for other things…

…then I came home (very cramped drive back, since that shed, even in pieces and boxed, barely fit in my car at all) dropped the shed off at the house, and headed out for some quick grocery shopping, and to return an item that didn’t suit the purpose for which it was purchased. Thankfully both tasks could be done at the same retail location.

By the time I got home again, it was lunch time – so I brought lunch home with me and sat down for a few minutes with my partner over a bite to eat between tasks in the shop. He’s got multiple projects in progress. I do my best to be helpful and supportive where I can.

…After lunch, I put the little shed together. Once completed, I asked my Traveling Partner if he’d like to help me decide specifically where to place it – he must have misunderstood my question; he came right out and put it where he wanted it. I’m cool with that; it isn’t heavy, this shed, but it is awkward, and it’s nice to have help. (I could have moved it into position, I’d just forgotten where we had talked about putting it.)

…Then I broke down the surprisingly large quantity of cardboard that the shed arrived in, and stuffed it into the back of my car for a trip to the disposal place next week; it’s too much to fit in the bin here at the house.

…Then I realized I was already feeling fatigued, and it’s not even 2:00 pm (at the time I noticed my fatigue, that is)… so… I sat down, here, with this glass of water for a few minutes of restful self-care. There’s still so much to do…

I had thought I’d spend the day weeding the garden and maybe painting… the decision to go get that little garden shed sort of threw that plan out, in that instant of spontaneous decision-making, and the discovery that there was exceedingly limited local availability of these specifically sized small sheds. I still feel the motivation… but for the moment I am wiped out. I need to give myself a proper break.

…Then…maybe…I’ll get a short walk in, out in the sunshine, around the neighborhood, checking out the progress of Spring in everyone’s flowerbeds along the way, and pick up the mail on the way back… I definitely want to do that; I’ve got new seeds waiting in the mailbox. They won’t do me any good there.

Soon the towels will be dry, and they’ll need to be folded and put away. There’s still plenty of weeding to do in the front flower beds… and my clean laundry (from days ago) has yet to be folded. “Fuck how am I already this tired?” I think to myself, drinking my glass of cool water. I know the answer; resources are finite. That’s it. That’s the whole truth of it. Whether we’re talking about acreage, or fresh water, or cash money, or our actual living life force expressed as our capacity to do work… it’s all dreadfully finite. It’s important to “stay within our budget”, but it’s not always entirely obvious that there is one…

…I felt so incredibly free and energetic – boundless energy and sheer force of will, on demand, at any hour, any day (pretty much) when I was younger. I’m thinking teens and 20s, when I make this observation. That kind of seemingly unlimited individual energy probably wasn’t as unlimited as it seems looking back on it. I do miss having just a bit more to draw upon, when fatigue seems to set in well-before I’ve checked off my to-do list, and before the afternoon can become an evening. Sometimes, a break to rest, to drink water, to sit for a moment with my thoughts, is enough to recharge for the next little while, and I get a few more things done. Yesterday, I even managed to push past my fatigue to prepare an excellent evening meal that we both enjoyed immensely… I wasn’t good for much after that. LOL I had “used up all my spoons”. I went to bed early(ish).

Today I tried to budget my energy – and my time – a bit more wisely. I don’t know that I succeeded at all… but if I stopped right now and did not one fucking thing more, I’d be pretty okay with that… but oh! there is so much more I do want to do today…

…It’s time to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being
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