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It Isn’t About the Pain

June 23, 2016 //
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I woke in pain this morning, to a chilly gray rainy day. Yesterday’s sunshine is a memory. Today, pain takes a firm determined step forward; I am often in a lot of pain on the rainy days I love so much. It’s an arthritis thing, I suppose. Still, it’s a lovely morning so far in spite of that, and I sip my coffee and make my list contentedly. I look at my list and realize I’ve jotted down a task I’m unlikely to be physically able to do today…I cross it off. Tomorrow, maybe.

Yesterday's sunshine...no more real now than any other memory unless I savor it and make it my own.

Yesterday’s sunshine – a lovely memory.

It’s early, still. Meditation, yoga, a walk, and a shower – the morning is well underway. My physical pain distracts me. I pull my mind back to other things – things that matter more to me; it’s ‘date night’ with my traveling partner. Our time together is so genuinely at ease, so deeply connected and passionate, so emotionally supportive, so playful… I’m still awed by this amazing love we share. 🙂 It’s worth pausing often to appreciate it, especially with impermanence being what it is, and change being a thing. I don’t know what obstacles may exist on the path ahead, or what twists life may sneak into future of love. I am learning to enjoy what is, without wailing over what isn’t – or taking every damned thing so personally that I am unable to understand that we are each having our own experience. Incremental change – incremental progress. 🙂 I keep practicing.

We choose our path, but sometimes the way ahead is not obvious until conditions are right.

We choose our path, but sometimes the way ahead is not obvious until conditions are right.

There’s plenty to practice, isn’t there? Life is rich with complexity, full of stress, and so busy it all seems to happen so fast – too fast, sometimes. Yesterday morning, I could feel how very precariously poised I was, between a full on meltdown, and something different from that. I was uncertain I would be able to maintain emotional balance, perspective, and contentment in the face of the numerous stressors piling up, and the growing feeling of being overwhelmed somehow. I took the day, and I took care of myself. Meditation. A walk in the sunshine. More time meditating. Time spent in the garden among green living things. Some time enjoying coffee in the sunshine on the patio. Meditation. Healthy nutritious meals made from whole fresh ingredients. Adequate sleep. Mediation. Comfortable clothes. An orderly environment. Appropriately timed medication. I spent the day being purposefully kind to myself, and as much as possible taking action, rather than reacting. By mid-afternoon, I felt reliably, sustainably content, comfortable in my body, safe with my thoughts, and secure physically and emotionally. 🙂 My results vary – it could have gone quite differently, and I was prepared that it might.

There's more than one path, more than one way, more than one choice; there are a lot of verbs involved.

There’s more than one path, more than one way, more than one choice; there are a lot of verbs involved.

So here I am today. Today seems nice so far… the pain is not relevant to that, and it may not be an impediment to enjoying the day in relative comfort. Even here there’s a balance to be found, the balance between distracting myself from hurting, and being sufficiently aware of it to take appropriate measures at regular intervals: moving around, taking those effective pain relief measures available to me, taking ‘yoga breaks’… It’s easy to get mired in the sensation of pain and overlook that it would ease if I got up and did something else for a few minutes. 🙂

I keep practicing.

I keep practicing.

Even my heart is at ease today. That was not so much the case yesterday. Ah, but it isn’t yesterday now, is it? I begin again. Today is a good day to take care of me. Today is a good day to enjoy the things about life that I find most enjoyable – and maybe find some new things to enjoy as well. Today I begin again – again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Epsom salts, Free Will, gardening, health, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Logic & Reason, Love, medical marijuana, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, women, Words

The Forest and The Trees

May 7, 2016 //
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I enjoyed an entire day of gentle stillness yesterday, no agenda beyond enjoying some chill time, no stress, no bother, no real ‘workload’. Much of the day was spent in meditation, seated on my cushion, or relaxing on the patio, watching the birds come and go, and listening to the sounds of the park in spring. No stress. Literally no stress. It is a remarkable feeling, and I’m glad I had the weekend away with my traveling partner to remind me what that feels like, so I would be prepared for it solo! There were some moments yesterday when my primate nature restlessly fussed in the background seeking some kind of escape from the peace of it; the chill time I had inflicted on myself requires as much discipline as any other effort. I resisted the call of social media, of favorite brain candy, of distractions by the dozens, and took the time I needed to really relax. There were still verbs involved. lol

I learned something over the minutes and hours of a wholly meditative day, yesterday; I need more time spent this way. I took a moment in the evening to reserve a favorite camp site in a favorite nearby(ish) state park with plenty of forest and good hiking trails – many that I’ve not yet hiked – for an upcoming weekend. Time out in the trees is very much the thing I need, without the constant temptations of distractions intruding in precious moments of stillness – mostly. All that remains is to coordinate the transportation details, get my gear together, and do a thorough gear check; it’s been more than a year since I last camped. Wow – so long? No wonder I am needing this time to refresh and recharge!

Number 23 is waiting for me...

Number 23 is waiting for me…

Life sometimes seems to get going so fast…the rushed hurried pace of planned events tangled up with the unexpected can become overwhelming without warning if I am not mindful of the potential. I’ve learned to limit how much I plan into any given day, even when I travel on vacation. I’m not the sort who makes detailed plans with a lengthy list of scenic landmarks to check off (Yep, seen it! Next!!), or noteworthy high-points identified by friends and associates that I feel compelled to similarly enjoy – that’s not my way. I do plenty of research on a destination (even this trip to the trees, in a park I am familiar with), and fill my thoughts with information about the opportunities, history, and scenic wonders – then I ‘wing it’. Once I’ve got a hotel reservation (or camping spot) the rest is surprisingly spontaneous, considering my fondness for planning. I don’t prefer ‘tour group style’ travel; I like to go and live.  Do I miss out on seeing that one fantastic whatever? Sometimes. Sometimes not. I rarely come home exhausted, irritated, or feeling vaguely let down, either, which is generally the outcome [for me] of traveling via landmark checklist. Your results may vary. 🙂

Another lovely spring-summer day ahead, a loose agenda (not quite a plan), and a smile on my face – it’s a good beginning, and a lovely morning to begin again.

Why yes, thank you, I shall.

Why yes, thank you, I shall.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Walk With Me?

May 6, 2016 //
2

This menu of choices is pretty vast… Even when life has backed me into a corner, when I’m willing to be honest with myself and willing to open my eyes to opportunities and possibilities previously unconsidered (or even previously discarded), the menu of choices life offers up is indescribably vast, varied, and there for the taking (more often than not). My results have varied – and not just the results of the outcomes of the choices; my own willingness to choose, the nature of what drives the choices, and the inclination to go one direction versus another has varied as well. I walk on, metaphorically, from one moment to the next – change is (very few other things so clearly are).

I woke to sunshine and birdsong this morning, and a lovely sparkling Friday without any specific plan and nothing urgent on my agenda. My ‘to do list’ has things on it like ‘be mindful’, ‘live beautifully’, and ‘enjoy the day’. It’s Friday, and while I am between things and focused on taking care of me, creative endeavors, and figuring out just what exactly the next thing could be, I keep Friday in reserve as ‘a weekend day’ – and why not? My path. I’m the one walking it. I say Friday is a weekend day. 🙂 My ‘new routine’ begins to sort itself out.

It’s nearly 7 am as I write this, and another detail of life these days is the consistency of my morning walk. I’ve loved the commute through the park almost enough to hold on to a job that was slowing tearing me down… keeping the walk makes every bit as much sense as letting the job go. Time to lace up my hiking boots and hit the trail! It’s a lovely bit of paved trail through a very well-kept little park (part recreational and part nature preserve, the meadow is dotted with playgrounds, and the forested trail winds back and forth across the creek), and I can get an easy hike between .5 miles (on days I can barely move) up to 6 miles. It’s a comfortable delight, and very nearby. I take my camera and my monocular.

A detour? An obstacle? An opportunity? A choice.

A detour? An obstacle? An opportunity? A choice.

There are a lot of choices in living well, in taking care of this fragile vessel, and in nurturing the being of light within. I get to make most of them myself. I take a moment to pause and appreciate what that really means for me as an individual, and what it can mean for my tribe, my community, my culture, and my world… choice is a big deal; we guide change with our choices. That seems fairly obvious a thought. I finish lacing up my boots and head out in search of wiser words, and more insightful thinking… today is a good day to be aware of how many choices I have, and to give thought to how I change the world through my choices. 🙂

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

Well, Damn, Just Write Something!

May 4, 2016 //
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Strange time of day to write… midday, heading to late afternoon… I have the dregs of my last cup of coffee cold, near at hand, and highly likely to end up yet another tepid uninteresting sip of brew-past-its-prime as I watch the birds at the feeder, just beyond my window. I mean to be writing… somehow, I am not. (Don’t let this handful of words fool you, I am ‘not there yet’ in some very obvious [to me] way.)

I fuss at small household tasks. I cross them off my list. I admit to ‘cherry-picking’ the tasks in no particular sequence, and I am not certain what drives my choices. I feel distracted, unsettled, and a tad… lost? Not in any complicated or painful way, it’s only that I went from a structured fairly steady routine to something different and as-yet-undeveloped to the leisurely delights of a real vacation – something that has been quite rare in my 3+ decades of fully adult life-time – and now here I sit, once again face-to-face with the ‘something quite different and as-yet-undeveloped’ not-so steady and lacking in routine experience ahead.

There's more to learn with a closer look, or a longer time watching.

There’s often something beyond the obvious.

I watch the birds come flutter to and from the bird feeder; I have, for now, considerably more time to watch them. 🙂 There’s something to be learned from what I observe in their comings and goings… about queuing theory? Decision-making? Cooperation? All of those things – something more, and that I have not yet puzzled out. I only sense it. It could be simply that on some much deeper level I am working through all the questions associated with that human puzzle that keeps us so busy for so long… “What do I want to be when I grow up?”

?

…Sometimes there’s nothing obvious to fall back on.

What a peculiarly unpredictable journey this thing we call life is… I hear a favorite Puscifer track in an entirely new way today… as a tender regretful anthem to the obsolescent band-aids over bits of chaos and damage, and the broken coping skills that no longer serve me well [at all]… a love song to the sad/not sad moment of recognition when I can easily see that one more piece of baggage can be set aside, unpacked, and let go, sung to the woman in the mirror. There’s more to say about it, I suppose, less ambiguously poetic, and more practical words might be useful… Another day. Do you mind? I need some time to think some things through. And seriously… I’m finding it strangely difficult to write today. 🙂

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Words

So Many Verbs

April 27, 2016 //
0

I’m sipping my coffee and staring at a blank page, waiting for my brain to kick in with actual thoughts. So far… nothing. It’s not a lack of thoughts lurking in the background waiting their turn to be given a moment, or a lack of living metaphors, or whimsy. There is surely no shortage of photographs of this and that, out and about, useful for illustrating some point…or just being a lovely image or image of a lovely moment. Quite the opposite; my head is full of things to do, thoughts, notions, observations, yearnings, fleeting illustrative imaginings, and some of the best poetry I’ve never written, too… It’s a noisy mess in here, and frankly some tidying up is in order!

I slept well last night and rested deeply. I even ‘slept in’ some, having not set the alarm and waking at the time my eyes were most inclined to open and face the day (still quite early in the morning, sun not yet up). But what is there to say about sleep, besides noting the obvious value in being well-rested? Certainly it is worth taking the time to go to bed early enough to get a needed night’s sleep; no late night programming is truly worth passing up sleep. I’ve already used more words than needed on the topic of sleeping. Waking well-rested is an excellent start to any day that may have verbs in it. 🙂

There’s the thing, right? There are so many verbs from which to choose! I could meditate – and tidy up the mess within. I could do some housekeeping and tidy up the mess that surrounds me (it is limited to my studio, and is both inconvenient, and an impediment to working creatively). I could finish getting moved in – which tends to have a tidying up effect both internally and externally (it’s just that sort of process). I could ‘mix it up’ and spend some measure of time on a variety of tasks, ‘getting ahead on things’ in a more generalized way. I could choose to do something less obviously useful, like going for a long hike, or having an at-home “spa day” and really taking care of me on a whole other level, or spending the day bird-watching from my patio, or catching up on my studies by reading (and finishing) one or two exceptional reading selections I’ve been finding highly useful and haven’t yet finished… The point I am making (for me as much as anyone else) is that there is a fairly large variety of verbs I can choose from – in most any moment, on nearly any day – and the day is only begun. I am unlikely to make ‘relaxing’ and ‘sipping coffee’ last for the whole of the day, and not only are there more hours ahead of me (as far as I know) there is ever so much more to be done…

It’s down to choices. Choices and verbs.

I sit awhile, sipping my coffee and looking at those words, “choices and verbs”, and giving myself time to consider my choices and the verbs required more fully. I open my “to do list” and my “list of things” (which is a willy-nilly ‘as it came to me’ unsorted vast sort of list of all the many things I might like to have or ‘need to get’ to improve my day-to-day quality of life, or to resolve some small household issue or another), and make an addition here or there. I continue to sip my coffee. I consolidate the two lists into one, for convenience. I continue to consider the options – and the opportunities. As I review the list, add to it, and remove items that have been completed, I find myself feeling more organized, more aware, and less at loose ends. I feel more purposeful, and more mindful of my long-term needs. I remove some things from the list that are no longer relevant; needs and plans change. Change is. This individual day facing me in this moment is mostly unaffected by the changes I make to my lists, but I feel more organized, more clear-headed, and more present in this moment, being less burdened by the lack of ‘sense of direction’ that had occurred as planning broke down in the face of change. Change is – that much is entirely unavoidable, and fighting it is an unworthy use of precious limited life force, particularly when harnessing the power of change can be such a powerful ally on a much longer journey.

It’s still about choices and verbs, and my coffee is down to one last, cold, sip. It is a rainy day beyond the window, and the sun is apparently giving all the light and warmth it can. The gray rainy day nudges me in the direction of indoor choices, limiting the list just a bit. It’s still plenty to choose from. I pause, and notice a serious omission from my list, and make a point to add it… “Enjoy the day and take care of me.” I smile. I’m eager to check that one off every day, and recognize the value in making it a priority, and taking the time to fulfill my obligations to myself.

...Making a list... checking it twice...

…Making a list… checking it twice…

Choices. Verbs. The day won’t wait for me to keep up… Today is a good day to embrace change, and to take care of me… I’ve got a list, and I know how to use it. 😉

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Words
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