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Easy

January 6, 2021 //
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The rain comes down. It’s been raining now for a couple days, with the one lovely break on Sunday, suitable for a long walk on a trail I’d not previously explored.

The view from the house was pretty nice, too. 🙂

I walked the muddy trails filled with delight. No particular reason. I like walking forest trails. 🙂

There’s something about walking a new path…

I breathed the forest air. Listened to the birdsong and breezes… and the aircraft. These trails skirt the runway of a local municipal airport. lol

It’s a big sky. There’s plenty of room for an airplane or two. 😉

Today isn’t that day. It’s this one. It’s not bad… but it’s no walk in the forest. lol The rain continues to fall. The twilight of a winter afternoon begins to descend, already. I don’t mind either of those things. I smile, recalling the gentle delight of taking a break with my Traveling Partner (who considerately asked me to join him, noticing I’d not taken a break in a long while). An unexpected, warmed up, slice of leftover pizza was a good lunch bite, as I headed back to work.

Now it’s me, this spreadsheet, this rain-spattered window onto a tiny slice of the world outside, and some time. One more meeting.

I feel the tension of a busy workday beginning to twist my neck and shoulder into knots. My back has begun to ache. I stand, stretch, and resume working only after I feel things “really start to relax”. Self-care is so… continuous. I slept poorly last night, but have been sleeping well generally, of late, so I’m not much feeling the fatigue yet. It’s a trap; I may feel it later, when I’ve forgotten my short-night. I make a mental note to be patient with myself, and mindful of my long day, and to be honest and self-aware about my fatigue when it begins to build.

I sigh out loud. Breathe. Exhale. Relax. Begin again. 🙂

Stay on the path, yes, and also remember to take breaks! 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, The Art of Being, winter

How Merry It Was

December 28, 2020 //
1

I’m sipping my Monday-morning-before-work coffee, and contemplating the days preceding this moment. Festive. Lovely. Warmed-through with loving intentions. Merry. So very merry. 🙂 I will admit to lower-than-average expectations – I mean, seriously, there’s a pandemic going on, and American politics are a disappointing ethical shambles presently, and I could every bit as easily have found myself focused on all that mess, instead of the delightful holiday interlude I shared with my Traveling Partner. I chose to focus on the holidays at hand, though, and the outcome was precious and will be cherished for the lifetime ahead. 🙂

…So merry…

Gifts were opened. Coffees and sweets and jokes were shared. Holiday tunes played in the background. I took winter walks along muddy lanes (rain here, no snow). Texts and emails were sent to family and friends (cards were mailed, probably too late to arrive in advance of the holiday). Cookies were baked. Recipes were tried. We reminisced over old times, good times, other times. It was a sweet and romantic connected holiday for two, in The Time of Pandemic. We didn’t go out. We didn’t have friends over. The car has the same gas in the tank it did more than a week ago. lol Sweet strange little holiday that managed to make my “top ten” lifetime fantastic holidays. 🙂

I feel fortunate. I sip my coffee smiling this morning. Half days in the office this week… I’m not expected until later on. Ample time to write… and to read. Maybe to paint? Do some housekeeping. 🙂 One life being lived.

My Traveling Partner woke minutes after I did, this morning. We both seem to be sleeping very well lately. We’re both less grumpy in the mornings as a result. It’s nice. I make room in my thoughts for a moment of compassion and understanding that it can be difficult not to be grumpy when one wakes in pain, and starts the day fairly certain that it’s not going to change. I consider my physical wellness this morning; I am in less pain because I am more well-rested? Maybe. It’s important to be mindful and note any changes in that sort of thing. Allowing implicit memory to smooth out changes that could indicate improvements (and it will) can make it difficult to enjoy and live a reality of less pain… I mean… I’m not going to be able to enjoy what I am not aware of, right? 🙂

Solstice…Giftmas…then, New Year’s… 2020 is almost over. It is an ending layered with more than typical meaning and significance for many people. What will we do with the opportunity ahead to make 2021 more meaningful and significant for ourselves, our families, our community, and for the world? What will I do with that opportunity?

…Then again (and also true), it’s just another change of day-month-year on an arbitrary calendar. It could be any day. It could be any moment – we can each choose to begin again when we will. That’s pretty powerful stuff. 😀 (Does tend to leave us without excuses, though, for why we have not embraced an important change we know we need to make for ourselves.) S’okay. We’ve got a few more days to consider the new year ahead. 🙂

It’s time to begin again. How will we change the world?

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Categories Allegories, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, winter

Quiet Moments

December 1, 2020 //
3

I’ve learned to find quiet moments almost anywhere that isn’t ridiculously noisy or busy. Handy. Sometimes I do find that I’ve got to search out that moment of quiet, or build it from unexpected circumstances, but now and then some perfectly lovely moment of quiet just happens to be where I am sitting.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I woke often. I returned to sleep with relative ease, mostly. I never felt wholly awake and alert (which might have made getting up make sense), and I didn’t feel particularly sleepy at the time (even immediately before falling asleep). “Wakeful” night. I seem to have managed to get enough rest, anyway. 🙂

There was this one quiet moment, during the night, that I sat contentedly, relaxing in the dim glow of the Giftmas tree lights, just enjoying that quiet moment. It was lovely. There was no pressure to do more, or do differently. No rush. No stress. Just quiet time, there in the holiday twilight alone, while my Traveling Partner slept on, in the bedroom. It was precious.

Today is lovely, too. Beautiful moments. A soak in the hot tub on a misty cold autumn morning. A quiet cup of coffee shared with my partner. A spontaneous exchange of yule gifts, because… why not? It was delightful. 🙂 The recollection of it still is.

I sit smiling in this quiet moment, retrieving joyful memories of other quiet moments. Enjoying joy through recalling joyful moments. Easy. (And yes, it’s a practice, and yes, there are verbs involved, and results may vary…but how pleasant to practice it? Why wouldn’t I? 😀 )

Here. Now. This is enough. I fill up on the joy and contentment, smiling. It’s the middle of a work day… time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being

Shitty Moments

November 3, 2020 //
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Today is turning out to be a less than pleasant day. I mean… it could be worse. I already voted, and it is not a headache to do that in Oregon. So… there’s that. Win? It’s something, at least. I make a point of being aware of the small win. In many other respects today is mostly fairly shitty.

…Well… a whole bunch of the moments are annoying, unpleasant, frustrating, ineffective uses of time, or wasted in a cascade of interruptions when I am struggling to concentrate. I slept badly. It’s been downhill from the moment I woke, although I’m certain that I had choices that could have been chosen rather differently, potentially with better outcomes.

This headache, though. This arthritis pain. Fatigue. Lack of focus. The sensation that I “can’t hear myself think”. A feeling of “falling behind”. The lack of sleep is just the sprinkles on the icing of a relatively crappy day.

…Crappy days are a thing. Everyone gets a few. I try not to take it personally. I try to refrain from allowing my shitty mood to become weaponized. I try not to allow myself to pass on the shitty experience to anyone else.

The work day is almost over. It really hasn’t been “personal”, at all. I’m tired and I’m in pain – that pretty reliably has significant potential to be rendered as “a shitty day”. I imagine shrugging it off, and find myself simultaneously amused and annoyed that the text editor in WordPress does not have a default menu of emoji for day-to-day use, and chuckle to myself when I realize how much I actually do use emoji instead of written word – even at work. Wow. How 21st century am I?

…I guess I’m at least 21st century enough to have a solid grasp of the practices involved in emotional wellness, resilience, and bouncing back from a shitty moment… I know how to begin again. 😉

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Frustration, gratitude, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights

Be Careful What You Wish For…

October 5, 2020 //
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I’d settled into work for the day, with a reminder to myself to phone the contractor handling the repair work (for the recent water damage). Having heard nothing for more than a week (again), it seemed wise to reach out pro-actively and see what could be delaying the work, and maybe get it scheduled. I felt very grown-up to be so on top of things on a Monday…

…Yeah…

So, just as I was preparing some routine work for follow-up with key stakeholders, fingers flying across my keyboard, I heard the doorbell. A package? So early? (I bet you know where this one is heading!) Yep. Contractors. Here to do dry wall. Wtf?? Nothing on my calendar… nothing coordinated with me… no follow-up since materials were picked. What. The. Fuck.

My Traveling Partner was wakened by the door bell. Hadn’t even had his coffee. My studio and the adjacent room were not ready for contractors to do work; I’d moved a bunch of stuff while my stepson was visiting. Paintings. Computer equipment. Paperwork. Book shelving complete with books. So, I did the only obvious thing… I smiled and welcomed the contractors in after alerting my partner they were here to work. I moved stuff out of their way. I did my best to keep my shit together while my work space was disrupted yet again. Fucking hell.

Things got moved. Including me; I’m in my partner’s game room, working. Whatever. It works, and I greatly appreciate having a partner who is flexible and quick-thinking. I managed to shed minimal tears over generally being faced with further upheaval. Win.

…Now all that’s left is to begin again. 😉

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, Frustration, gratitude, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights
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