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One Lifetime

March 28, 2024 //
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I very nearly started this out as a reflection on having “only” one lifetime, but… I don’t actually know that with certainty, any more than anyone else does. Maybe there’s more? Maybe not. Won’t know until I’m “on the other side”, I suppose. What I do know is that I’m here, now, living this life, right here. Each individual day made up of so many individual moments – some of those truly “unique” (or at least, unique in my own experience), although many of them are quite similar to each other, as days and moments go, built on habits and routines and rituals and celebrations and things noticed along the way. I sip my coffee and think about this one lifetime, and what sorts of things I’d like to experience and fill my time with.

Daybreak and dawn have come and gone. The sun is up, somewhere beyond the dense gray of an overcast day. My coffee is… fine. It’s fine. Not great. Not bad. Just… coffee. Mostly gone, which seems fitting for the hour of the morning in which I find myself. Pleasant enough morning, if not especially interesting or adventure-filled – I’m fine with having an ordinary morning. Quiet. Productive. Undisturbed. Busy without being frantic. Calm. I’m neither joyful this morning nor somber, neither aggravated nor merry. I’m just here, being. It’s enough, isn’t it, most mornings?

Yesterday was an odd one. All day I felt rather as if some small portion of my brain never really woke up when I rose for the day. That feeling lingered well into the evening, and when I finally went to bed, I crashed out hard, immediately, no reading or lingering wakefully waiting for sleep. I woke this morning to the lights on full brightness; my artificial sunrise didn’t actually wake me up until I just happened to open my eyes as I turned over, and realized the room was fully light. I sat up confused and groggy, but that feeling passed quickly, and soon I was on my way to the office. Traffic seemed quite a bit heavier than usual, but it was just a byproduct of my somewhat different timing, which amounted to a “late start” compared to most recent mornings. The commute, like my morning coffee, was… fine. “Nothing to see here.” Just a drive to the office in the pre-dawn gloom.

Today? A new day, a new opportunity, a new series of moments to live in this one life. What will I do with them? Nothing much – for me – just work, at least for the next few hours. It would feel like tedious drudgery, but I like the job and the team I work with, and the day will pass quickly and likely have some entertaining moments to reflect on later. I’m eager to be home; the moments I spend with my Traveling Partner are some of the best I have in this life, at least over the past several years (and, I hope, the many yet to come). I miss him when we’re apart, in spite of my yearning for solitude now and then. Even when I am most eager to embrace some solitary moment or experience, he’s part of my thoughts, in my heart, and a notable feature of my emotional landscape. “The love of my life” is not an exaggeration; I can’t imagine feeling more strongly, deeply, affectionately about any one other human being. Sitting here with my nearly finished coffee, thinking about how much I think about my Traveling Partner, and what a big part of my experience he has become, my heart fills with love and a smile develops on my face that doesn’t make any sense. “Too much smiling!!” I think to myself, almost laughing. Fuck that man fills my heart with joy, just by existing. It’s nice. 😀

I sit thinking about things I enjoy doing, or experiencing, and ways to spend more time on those things, and less on things I dislike, or don’t get anything out of. Choices. There are so many choices. Too often I find myself choosing to undertake things that seem to “need” to be done, without really examining how true that actually is. Other times, I dodge doing the needful, in favor of doing something that is neither necessary, nor what I might actually want to be doing… just a thing being done that gets me out from under doing something “worse”, but having the unintended consequence of putting something far more pleasant, desirable, or necessary even further out of reach. Humans are weird.

I laugh and yawn, and rub my eyes. I could do better. Choose my actions with greater wisdom and discernment. Be more present and aware, more willful and studious about my decisions. I could undertake a few more verbs, and a little less sitting around, perhaps. I sigh and glance at the clock – it’s already time to begin again. The clock never stops ticking…

…and there’s just this one life…

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

Life is an Open Book Test

March 27, 2024 //
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No one person can possibly know “all the things” there are to know. No one person can even know all the things that have accumulated in the body of documented human knowledge – it’s just too much for one person to hold onto within the confines of a single mind, and one lifetime. We’re born knowing basically nothing, and with a characteristic curiosity that leads us to quickly begin learning, and continue (if we don’t halt the process) throughout our lives. Some people eagerly embrace learning, and consume new knowledge from a variety of sources. Some people have to be prodded into learning, once some basics are learned that get them by in life. Some people furiously resist new knowledge, if there’s any chance it may unsettle what they already think they know. We’re interesting creatures, and there’s quite a bit of variation in our interest in knowledge, what we’re capable of learning, and what we choose to care about.

Life is very much an open book test, after a fashion. We each have the chance to address our own ignorance live, in real-time, through an almost ludicrous assortment of means and resources. Don’t know the answer to some question? Don’t have a solution to some problem? More than ever the fix could be as simple as “looking it up” – somewhere – or asking someone who knows (or thinks they do). What an incredible luxury to have so much stored knowledge available more or less on demand.

…Remember encyclopedias? I remember…

…Remember vast shelves of hardbound books with fine print, spanning floor-to-ceiling, row after row, almost having a visible “vanishing point” or horizon in huge elegant libraries populated with quiet folks, head-down, reading things? (They still exist… when was the last time you went to a library?) I used to go to the library all the time…

I’m sipping my coffee thinking about libraries, books, and knowledge, and all the many resources that exist for answering unanswered questions. I’m thinking about “lifelong learning” and the power of learning to “keep us young” (cognitively). It’s only just now daybreak, and the sunrise is still in the future by some small amount. Another sip of my coffee, and I find myself considering how easily an encyclopedia becomes “out of date” compared to the living body of knowledge stored on servers, on “the cloud”, and archived digitally. There was a time when a good encyclopedia was about as “state of the art” as stored knowledge got – compressed into smaller pieces, widely available as resource in most any library, it was where so many of us found information on some topic, person, or place when we needed it.

Now? Just “google it”… “Google” even became a verb for that activity of searching for something using a search engine online. LOL In spite of how much knowledge is so easily available, somehow we still haven’t eliminated misinformation, nor have we “learned all there is to know”, nor have we even mastered who and what we are as creatures, nor fully understood the world we live in. Wild. All that knowledge and we’re still ignorant primates muddling along adding to our available knowledge without being able to consume it all.

…I sit with my coffee and my thoughts, watching the sky slowly shift from darkness to shades of gray with a hint of blue, to something bluer and less gray, as the clock ticks away the moments until the sun rises…

After talking over my self-care needs and “where I’m at” with my Traveling Partner, I planned some downtime and reserved a room on the coast at a favorite (and inexpensive) spot with good views and easy beach access. It’ll be good to get some quiet time for myself listening to the wind and the waves, and watching the tide come and go – and only a week away! 😀 I’m getting better at this self-care thing…

I watch the traffic on the streets below making the trip around the park block below the office window. It’s rather like some peculiar merry-go-round of commuter traffic as cars turn left on these one-way streets, looking for a choice parking spot. The street car also goes around this block, as it doubles-back to return the way it came, but a block over. Humans being human, in the machines they’ve created. I finish my coffee, contemplating what it means to be human in this moment. I guess it’s a good one to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Words Matter

March 26, 2024 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about words.

Specifically, I’m thinking about the sloppy way headlines or thumbnail titles are often written, misusing words like “and” or “but” – they aren’t really interchangeable, generally. Same with words like “how” and “why” – these are not synonyms and have very different meanings in a statement or in a question. Headlines that profess to tell “why” something is happening, or matters to the viewer (or reader), for articles which actually only describe that it is happening and maybe how it is happening are distinctly (and irritatingly) misleading. Don’t get me started on headlines that use words to attempt to force the reader (or viewer) into making a shared assumption about something without ever actually proving that it is so. Damn I hate that shit. An example might be “Learn why doctors won’t prescribe this drug!”, for an article that never gives an answer to the question “Why won’t doctor’s prescribe this drug?” and also doesn’t actually support the (often completely bullshit) assumption that this is even the reality of the situation in the first place. It’s super common. “Clickbait” headlines are often rife with misleading nonsense assumptions and unanswered implied questions. Read with care. Think your own thoughts. Have your own (well-informed, supported by reality) opinions. Don’t take the bait.

…I have no idea why this is on my mind this morning, but it has been since I got in the car and headed into the city…

I sigh quietly to myself and sip my coffee. There’s nothing I can do about bad writing habits besides complain about them pedantically (in spite of my own bad writing habits), and since that achieves nothing aside from mild amusement (maybe), I guess I’ll just let it go. There are other ways to spend my time, and other things to think about. lol “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” 😉

Yesterday evening was a “short one”, in the sense that the commute home was unexpectedly long (thanks, Union Pacific!) due to a train parked across multiple intersections in the downtown area, blocking traffic at rush hour. I was pretty well stuck where I was until the train moved, and then I was in the thick of rush hour traffic (which I usually miss by timing my departure such that I’m not in the middle of the worst of rush hour traffic). I grabbed cheap cheeseburgers on the way home, instead of cooking a meal (as had been my plan). I was tired – so tired – when I got home that the evening is mostly a blur.

I went to bed more or less at my usual time, but failed to lay out clothes for the morning, forgot that there was a planned internet maintenance outage last night that would affect my alarm, sort of “overslept” in the sense that I woke up precisely on time instead of early (I think a noise woke me?)… forgot to put my wearable on… left the house still half-asleep and if not actually groggy, for sure fucking stupid as hell. Confused. Strangely, I got to the office feeling awake, alert, and well-rested. I feel content, calm, and relaxed. It seems a good morning. My planned workload for today is something I enjoy, and which will occupy my time most of the time quite pleasantly. A good Tuesday.

Daybreak evolved into morning some time ago, though I’m not sure “where the time went” – no watch on my arm, but how can that even have anything to do with my “sense of time and timing”? It seems irrelevant. What a weird morning.

“Words matter.” I mean, yeah, generally… but maybe not these words, eh? Just some random nonsense, spilling out of a mind that woke strangely into a new day… and I’m being kind to say so. LOL Not my best work and yet here you are! Thank you for that. I appreciate you. I guess the point is simply to move on, be in the moment, present, here for it, and doing my best. If things go sideways, I can begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Rites of Spring

March 25, 2024 //
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I woke ahead of the alarm, this morning. I got going and headed up the highway a bit earlier than usual, enjoying the lack of traffic. I’d love to say I drove mindfully, fully present in the moment, but… it wouldn’t be true. My head was still in the garden, after delightful weekend hours planting and planning, and putting to good use the seed starters my Traveling Partner had 3D printed for me, for such crops as will be planted later, in warmer weather.

2 of 4 seed starter sets (translucent covers not pictured), with re-usable inserts that separate into two sections for easy removal of tender seedlings for planting.

Much of the drive this morning was spent entirely in my own head, having imagined conversations with family and friends no longer available in life for such conversations, at all. I miss sharing the details of the garden and gardening with my Dad, with my Granny, with my dear friend… It’s okay, I guess, the conversations would be much the same as previous such conversations had been, and it’s easy enough to replay them in my head, and imagine sharing the new details of this garden, and this Spring. New roses. New herbs. New ideas. In a sense, it isn’t “new” at all, more part of a seasonal cycle that repeats each year, embraced by those that love it so.

New plants waiting to be planted.

I do share what’s going on in the garden with my Traveling Partner, and he’s a wealth of good ideas and insights, but whiling away endless hours talking about this variety versus that variety, or what specifically to plant in that corner over there isn’t really his thing, so much. lol I’m okay with that; we each have our own things to share and to do, and there’s always much to discuss about the things that interest us both equally. A passing conversation about the garden, a quick update, and a shared moment are quite satisfying, and I’m grateful to share them with him. I do miss the conversations with Granny about the various herbs, and the kitchen gardens and medicinal gardens of her youth. I miss the eager excited exchanges with my dear friend about garden plans and new roses, and her delight over pictures shared over the years. I miss my Dad’s amusement that what had been such drudgery for me as a kid has become something I truly love as a grown woman, and our conversations about the garden as a metaphor, and how we change and grow in life.

So, I drove into the city with my thoughts. It was a pleasant drive, and as I reached the city I found myself wondering what I need most to take care of this fragile vessel, right now? Do I need “down time” at home, in the garden, and more shared connected time with my Traveling Partner? I can easily make a strong case for that. Do I need “down time” in the form of a short getaway, a chance to fully immerse myself in my own thoughts, to read, to write, to paint, to enjoy the stillness of solitude? I feel that, too. I’m in a peculiar “in between place” with myself, and I’m not at all sure what will serve best to satisfy moments of restlessness or ease the internal chaos. I reflect on that and sip my coffee, as daybreak arrives, revealing a cloudy sky.

…Is it too soon for comfortable camping…?

…Can I get an affordable room on the coast and watch the tide come and go for a day or two…?

…Do I even want to be away from the comfort of home at all…?

…Every day away from home is a day away from my garden, and it’s Spring…

I sigh out loud, feeling mildly annoyed with myself. I’d email my dear friend and get her thoughts on it, but… she’s not replying to email, these days, and no longer answers texts. We are mortal creatures, and it’s damned inconvenient, sometimes. :-\

My thoughts bring me back to missing departed dear ones, far away friends, and fond memories of other times and places, other gardens. I sip my coffee as the dawn becomes day. I remind myself to bring up my “what to do about me?” questions with my Traveling Partner; he’s always got useful perspective and good ideas to share. I’m very fortunate to have a partner who supports me taking care of myself properly, and doesn’t grief me over needing time away, when I do. He sees me from a different perspective than I see myself, and I often find his thoughts quite useful for improving my perspective.

…I think of my Traveling Partner, hopefully still sleeping, and my heart fills with love. I’m very fortunate. I sip my coffee and finish this moment with gratitude and quiet joy, and thoughts of garden tasks yet to be completed. The work day stretches ahead of me, and the afternoon on the other side will be another chance to be in the garden for some little while. I smile, and get ready to begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being

Ring, Zing, Buzz

March 24, 2024 //
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I’m waiting for the sun on a Sunday morning. The forecast is for rain, but it isn’t raining here, now. Across the highway, and further still across some fields, suburban lights glitter low on the horizon. This is no wilderness, although the trail I’ll walk feels at least a bit remote, down along the Tualatin river. Daybreak is approaching. Soon. In the meantime, I sit with my thoughts, listening to passing cars and the ring, zing, buzz of my tinnitus. It’s a quiet morning and at least for now, my tinnitus is the loudest thing I hear.

Daybreak on a cloudy morning.

A break in the clouds reveals the blue of the morning sky. Daybreak is not helpful for walking, this morning. Anyway, I am still waiting for the park gate to open. The lower marsh trail I can reach from this parking space just outside the park is seasonal, and off limits until May. Frankly, some mornings (many), it’s tempting to walk the seasonal trail anyway, although it is off limits this time of year, but doing so would come with additional risks; it’s a lowland trail along the edges of the marsh, often muddy and sometimes flooded in spots. It would be just a bit more stupid to walk it in near darkness than I prefer to be. Also, these sorts of community spaces rely on people following the rules in place to protect them (both the spaces and the people using them), to maintain their beauty for years to come and new generations.

… So, I wait…

Waiting, watching, being.

I sit with my thoughts, enjoying the stillness. It’s a mild Spring morning and a good one for walking. The cloudy sky hints at rain. I’m glad I spent time in the garden yesterday. Between the gardening and the weather, it definitely feels like Spring here. I’m grateful for the change of seasons. Another new beginning.

I feel a poignant sorrow that my recently deceased dear friend missed the coming of Spring. No tears. I have the sense that she “chose her time”, and I can only honor her memory and respect her choice. I’m okay; we are mortal creatures. I’m fortunate to have shared so much time with her.

It’s time to begin again.

The park gate opens with a quiet “clang”. There’s enough light to see the trail. The day and this walk are ahead of me, and that seems like a worthwhile direction to go…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, grief, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, turning 60, women
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