Archives for category: solo hiking
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Staring at the Menu

April 23, 2016 //
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I woke in good spirits this morning, but also in more than the usual amount of pain. So far I’ve been mostly ignoring it with some measure of success. The mild deceptively stormy looking morning found me feeling a bit restless and at loose ends, unsure how to spend my time on what is a mostly fairly ordinary Saturday morning. I had considered a number of things I could do with the day, but didn’t make any firm plans in advance.

Sometimes the journey we plan isn't the journey we take at all.

Sometimes the journey we plan isn’t the journey we take at all.

Eventually, I went for a walk through the park…which became a walk to the farmers’ market some 2  miles away…which turned out to be nothing more or less than a 2-mile walk; the market is still on winter hours, and not open on this particular Saturday. I sat in the park there, where the market generally is, and rested my feet for a few minutes, listening to the breeze through the trees, and the sound of the fountain splashing. The walk home seemed longer than 2 miles, and I arrived at my door tired, still in pain, and feet aching… feeling peculiarly content. I awaken to a different understanding of my experience. I could have gone elsewhere, or done something more, but really it was an effort to make a choice to go/do in the first place; I only wanted to walk, and then to walk some more. Looking back on it, I wasn’t needing to get anywhere at the end of the journey – except home.

I pause for flowers along the way.

I pause for flowers along the way.

...Mostly yellow ones today.

…Mostly yellow ones today.

I feel a sense of ease and relief as I cross the threshold, and lock the door behind me. Home. As I relax into feeling welcome in this quiet safe space, I find myself comparing my pain and fatigue with the length of my ‘to do’ list and decide to do the housekeeping tomorrow, and rest and take care of myself today. Rushing through life robs me of the opportunity to savor it, and to linger over small pleasures.

Simple pleasures: birds at the feeder, a small container garden, a cloudy spring day.

Simple pleasures: birds at the feeder, a small container garden, a cloudy spring day, a good cup of coffee.

I sip my coffee thinking about how vast life’s choices and opportunities really are. What will I make of my life? What are my next steps? Where do I go from here? Who do I want most to be? What do I want to do when I grow up? I laugh, wondering at how much of life seems spent on that question…and why I ask it, even in humor… I mean… what’s with the ‘when‘? There is only… ‘now’.  A drenching steady rain begins to fall.

Today is a good day for small pleasures, and for enjoying moments of leisure. It needn’t be anything fancy, or exotic; taking the time to enjoy living life is enough.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, Words

Pain and Mixed Emotions

April 17, 2016 //
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I woke ‘too early’ this morning – meaning, I really wanted to sleep later, and felt unready to be awake. It’s a weekend day, so I went back to bed. I didn’t really sleep any later, but I indulged myself in the sensuous luxury of waking up quite slowly. Worth it. When I finally got up, I felt rested, and mostly comfortable. My back aches ferociously, but for now it remains quite manageable.

My thoughts are a jumble of future considerations, past concerns, and ‘what to do with today?’ thoughts. I smile at the question; it is a Sunday, and Sunday’s mostly take care of themselves, being [for me] a day for housekeeping (both in my home, and in my thinking), and for self-care. I already have a list of things I’d like to get done today, with laundry at the top. It is a day for practical things.

The titular pain is an obvious thing and, as much as I can, I refuse to allow it to call my shots on this lovely morning; there is a life to be lived, and I’d very much prefer to live it without regard to pain. It isn’t always easy, and the good self-care practices that build and maintain emotional resilience day-to-day are surprisingly effective also at minimizing the emotional consequences of living with pain. I keep practicing. Today will be a good day for meditation, and for those yoga poses that I am still permitted by my doctor (while we sort out what is going on with my health).

The titular mixed emotions are… life. I sometimes have a more than necessarily complicated time of things with my emotional life, partly a byproduct of my TBI, partly a byproduct of my PTSD, and partly…well… I’m human. 🙂 We are creatures of both emotion and reason – and emotion generally leads. Having made a firm decision regarding my professional life, and thrown some verbs into the mix, I am investing time in considering my future choices, needs, and opportunities quite deeply. It’s not always comfortable. I am flawed… human… and hopeful. I don’t know where the journey is taking me, but I am very much on the way… somewhere. 🙂

However straight and obvious life's path seems at a glance... I can't quite see where it leads.

However straight and obvious life’s path seems at a glance… I can’t quite see where it leads.

Today is a good day for practices, and patience. Today is a good day for self-care, and consideration for others. Today is a good day to change this small bit of the world right here, and look to the horizon to see the world changing in the distance.

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

Ease and Stillness

April 14, 2016 //
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This morning is quiet. The noise of the trains coming and going in the distance seems muted. The traffic on the nearby busy street is still infrequent, and hushed. The loudest sounds this morning are my fingers on the keyboard, and the occasional clatter of raindrops spattering window panes and eaves. I am in a manageable amount of pain.

Change is a thing. I find myself embracing it willfully, constructively, and using that profound power of choice to craft something of my life that suits me better. It is a process that is both incredibly exciting, and indescribably nerve-wracking. My anxiety comes and goes, and between anxious moments I feel… alive.  I noticed quickly that my anxiety most commonly surfaces in the context of taking action in my own favor in any way that doesn’t seem to ‘fit the mold’ I’ve been nudged into over a lifetime. From my perspective, that makes the anxiety itself quite suspect, and I look upon it now as ‘baggage’, more than as any legitimate warning of danger or risk. When it surfaces again, I make a point of ‘letting it go’. Yes, it comes back, and sometimes quite quickly – I repeat the process, letting it go, soothing myself with meditation or intellectual engagement in some other area of interest. It dissipates. It returns later. It is a process. Surely it will take at least as many repetitions of letting go of the anxiety to teach myself the lesson that the anxiety itself is the illusion, the baggage, the issue… didn’t it take many such repetitions to build the experience of chronic disordered anxiety in the first place? 🙂

What better time than now?

What better time than now?

I heard birds singing outside my window. The sky is light now. I hear more of the steady distant roar of commuter traffic, and the wail of the train seems louder, too, as if to make a point of getting the attention of sleepy morning professionals hurry in to the office. I remind myself to get some real down time very soon – maybe a couple of weeks off between jobs, or a weekend camping out in the trees now that the weather is sufficiently mild [for my own needs]?

Today is a good day for choices, for beginnings, for next steps and new things. Today is a good day to change my world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, Words

Tricks, Traps, and Jokes

April 1, 2016 //
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Crap. It’s April Fool’s Day again. I should have taken the day off to stay safely at home, and off-line. I didn’t. It’s a regular work day, and I’ll be in the office and wary of the ‘playful’ side of colleagues, and the ‘spirit of the day’.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not an innocent here, and I’ve done my share of April Fool’s Day pranking in younger years; I gave it up many years ago when it finally struck me that willfully sowing chaos and stress in other people’s lives isn’t really funny at all…that was back in the 90s.  April Fool’s pranks in some cases are mostly fairly harmless, but very misleading… and once I finally gave thought to how that might affect people who have cognitive challenges to work around already it seemed both inappropriate, and unkind. April Fool’s pranks sometimes fall into a very different category, and are mean and at the expense of someone else’s emotional or physical safety without regard for the consequences to that other human being. I find myself wondering why it would even seem necessary to say that those sorts of pranks are not okay? Are you waiting for me to say ‘April Fools!’? I’m not going to. It’s not my thing. I’d rather treat you well and work together such that our shared understanding of reality is functional and reasonably accurate.

I'd rather find a friendlier way to celebrate spring.

I’d rather find a friendlier way to celebrate spring.

I woke this morning, immediately before the alarm went off – which was nice; I don’t like hearing it. I woke with my thoughts filled with as-yet-unprocessed bits and details and things my consciousness is fussing over in the background, feeling a bit frustrated by the din within. There are fewer moments of real stillness lately, a byproduct of cohabitation that has its charms and its challenges. Taking more time meditating, sitting quietly, and reading sounds nice and I am looking forward to the weekend.

I know that one of the things nagging at me is the very real need to ‘brush off’ the lingering OPD (Other People’s Drama) of exes, and however initially unappealing it may sound, realistically I am aware that forgiveness and letting go are the way to proceed. There will be no ‘closure’, most particularly with the most recent one; these are people having their own experience, too, and in their narrative things are very different from mine. There is no ‘meeting of the minds’ to rely upon, no shared interest in harmony, balance, equanimity, mutual respect or consideration… frankly, if there were, things might have turned out quite differently all around. Any ‘closure’ I find will likely be created from within, based upon the firm foundation of my own willingness to be accepting, to forgive, and to let go of attachments (not attachment to the people involved, those are long gone, but rather the attachment to needing to be heard, attachment to being understood, attachment to being ‘right’…). There are, as usual, verbs involved. This one isn’t easy, but few challenges are.

At the moment, I struggle with seemingly fresh hurts over old relationships; the path ahead is clear, nonetheless, and the choices are mine. I suspect that the attempts to contact me by a couple of exes, and the continued reminders of the more recent hell I vacated (that reach me by way of providing emotional support to my traveling partner as he deals with his own experience), is enough to challenge me to do a more thorough job of taking care of myself by letting some of this bullshit and baggage go, in a more complete way. I continue to practice good emotional self-care. I find The Four Agreements immensely helpful for dealing with symptoms of OPD. Why does it come up again? I wonder, but don’t answer the question easily.  I’m not sure the question really rates the work to find an answer beyond the obvious one; there is more to learn, and I have not yet completed that work.

Seeking balance, instead of answers.

Seeking balance, instead of answers.

The morning unfolds gently. My coffee is almost gone. The clock suggests it is soon time to head to the office. My mind still feels overly busy, and recognizing it I sense a bit of anxiety creeping in around the edges. I breathe. Relax. Let it go. I make a private commitment to myself to spend more time meditating this weekend, and consider getting out on the trail into the calm of the forest… or taking the bus to the beach.

Today is a good day to treat myself well – and everyone else, too. Be safe out there, World, and watch for pranksters. 🙂

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

Love and Verbs

March 25, 2016 //
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This morning was lovely. It’s enough to enjoy the moments, and linger on them in my recollection, later. The day begins well, and that is also enough for the moment I find myself in. Later will be here soon enough to matter when it gets here. Days old irritation with work is, for the moment, eased. It’s a comfortable moment, this one, characterized by contentment, and a certain comfort with the routine of the work day, modified by an early finish for a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and by having completed a significant task with a few minutes in the day for writing a handful of words before moving on to the next significant task.  There’s not much more I would ask of this moment, it is quite enough.

This lovely morning, every moment enough.

This lovely morning, every moment enough.

I read an article this morning that tells readers somewhat alarmingly that ‘CBT is a scam!’. I move past the irritation with some humor, but I am irked by the tone of the article, which suggests that unscrupulous unnamed individuals have put one over on governments, care-providers, and patients with the suggestion that CBT (specifically) and other 3rd wave cognitive therapies (implied) are bullshit scams that don’t help anyone, leaving vulnerable people to continue to struggle with symptoms a couple of years down the road, no differently than similarly disordered peers who didn’t get any treatment at all. I’m annoyed because what is not being discussed is a fairly transparent thing, left unaddressed by the article; there are verbs involved. As with ‘dieting’ to lose weight; mental health treatment, however promising, requires practicing some practices. There are verbs involved. Stop doing the things that help, discontinue the practices that resulted in treatment efficacy, halt the growth and change initially being pursued when treatment began, and sure – the human being seeking wellness loses ground, potentially resulting in a return of all symptoms (and then some). That sucks. It sucks even more that a professional in the mental health care industry would overlook one potential root cause for treatment failure after two years; failure to continue practicing the practices that the patient found effective, initially. We do, however ill we may be, have some accountability for our growth and progress (unless we are so disordered that our impairments put choice and action out of our reach)! The suggestion that CBT itself is a wholesale failure without examining the effects of compliance/non-compliance is a little silly – as with switching from diet to diet to diet, without actually sticking with what worked long enough to see and hold onto the desired changes, it completely ignores the free agency of the person receiving treatment. There are verbs involved. There are choices to be made. Period. Do the verbs. (Reminder: the excuses we choose also communicate our choices –  to do, or not do, the necessary verbs involved in what we say we want from life.)

Better to pause for flowers than be immersed in borrowed stress.

Better to pause for flowers than be immersed in borrowed stress.

I finally shrug off my irritation; we each walk our own path, make our own choices, live our own experience, write our own narrative – my words are filtered through my own experiences, breaking like waves on distant conscious shores, sometimes soaking into the sand, sometimes splashing against the rocks. 😉

Isn't it enough to find balance?

Isn’t it enough to find balance?

Love, too, needs an investment in doing the verbs. Love isn’t a passive thing. This morning, I chose love over words, and a shared experience over solitary time writing. It was a worthy choice, and my mood is enhanced by the love I feel. I am carried through the morning on soft wings of enduring affection. There’s nothing much more to say about it for the moment; the experience is still very much ‘now’.  There will be time to contemplate it with broader perspective much later. Today, ‘now’ is more a doing than a thinking. This, too, is enough.

 

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