I woke early, eager to begin a new day. The cuts on my fingers are healing nicely, and I had my gear ready to grab time camera time with the sunrise.
Lovely morning to enjoy a few quite minutes watching the sun rise.
My Traveling Partner is up to his elbows in 3D printer and CNC rebuilds. He seems happiest when he is quite busy with something complicated. I enjoy hanging out nearby for stray comments, and invitations to take a look at some bit of progress or concern. I am helpful when I can be – and when asked for assistance. I try to “stay out of it” otherwise. That’s comfortable for me. I’ve got my own things going on, mostly to do with the job search tasks and general household stuff, and I’m taking advantage of not having a job right now to enjoy some of my own time more freely. It’s lovely.
…My most recent interview went well, and I am excited about the possibilities, but I’m not leaving my mind there in that place…
A lunch late with a friend later… life is… life. Rich. Filled. Characterized by contentment. At least today feels that way, and I’m okay with that. It’s enough, and I plan to thoroughly enjoy it and savor each delicious moment. That’s the well-spring of future resilience, right there; be present, enjoy the moment, savor the recollection, and celebrate small wins. 😀
Well, look at the time… looks like time to begin again. 😀
However smooth life’s path may seem, there are going to be some painful moments, challenges, unexpected detours… you know, “potholes in the road”. Just saying, even when life is purely delightful, don’t expect universally sunny days and smooth sailing (do expect mixed metaphors – at least here! lol).
The dinner planned for yesterday came together nicely. My Traveling Partner and I worked on it together; we had to.
I am learning how much I rely on my left hand. LOL
I was at the end stages of preparing dinner. Sauce cooking down, house filled with the delicious aroma. Cheese was grated and set aside, ready and waiting. Pasta weighed out for two servings, ready to cook once the sauce was nearer to being done. Garlic butter was all whipped up and ready to be spread on the bread that would become garlic toast. Good time to slice that batard and spread both halves with the garlic butter, I thought…may as well have it ready. I explicitly cautioned myself to use care; sharp knife.
With great care, I cut myself rather badly across my forefinger and middle finger. Shit. Totally my foolishness, too. I made an explicit point of taking note of the fucking risk then stupidly still cradled the batard of bread in my fucking hand to cut it. For real? Fucking hell, just take away my license to adult, right now. lol
Two cuts. One fairly minor, the other quite deep and too damned close to the finger joint to brush it off as “nothing really”. My Traveling Partner was concerned it may need stitching (or worse). Both were bleeding quite a lot. Urgent care is very nearby, so we agreed I would keep pressure on them, keep my hand elevated, and drive the short (less than a mile) distance to the clinic, while he kept an eye on dinner – that sauce wasn’t going to stir itself!
Left hand more or less useless made turn signals hilariously awkward, but the drive was uneventful. “We’re so sorry! We don’t have a provider on site today, we’re just doing tele-medicine appointments today!”, the startled woman at the reception desk said as she eyed the blood oozing between my fingers where the wad of paper towels in my grip didn’t absorb it. “You can go to the other urgent care… or the ER…” she suggested. I carefully loosened my grip on the paper towels to check the bleeding. The smaller cut on my index finger had stopped bleeding, the other not so much. I got directions and made my way to the other urgent care… which was closed. Fuck. I call my partner, share the details, and look at the injury again. It had finally stopped bleeding… so… I went home. Didn’t seem like much of an emergency at that point… More of an anecdote.
I got home safely. Dinner was ready, and it was delicious. Before serving it up, my partner bandaged up my fingers and splinted them so I would not reopen those cuts by absentmindedly trying to use that hand. Dinner was delicious. Hilariously, I know I’ll look back on this fondly as a wonderful evening with a moment of misadventure… I mean, the dinner was that good, and a cut? Just a minor mishap. My partner is still teasing me good-naturedly about it; he had just done the same thing last month!
It was only this morning that I was confronted with numerous wee inconveniences resulting from impaired use of my left hand. lol Typing being one of those. There are lessons here. I hope I learn them. In the meantime, I’ll be asking for help with a few two-handed tasks… and beginning again.
I’ve got huge plans for today… sort of. It’s a lovely summer day, not too hot, and nothing much going on. Spent some time out on the trail with my camera in the morning. Enjoyed coffee with my Traveling Partner (already up) before I left – then again after I got back. It was a strange misty morning, lovely for walking.
The mist lent itself well to thinking thoughts.
Out in the marsh, the ducks and geese were also enjoying the morning, a bit out of reach of my lens. I’m okay with that; I just kept walking.
The ducks and geese took no notice of me as I walked along the trail.
I had the park mostly to myself this morning. A rare treat. I stopped awhile at a favorite spot for watching smaller birds was visited by quite a few swallows, and other birds I was less familiar with. Good times.
Few of my shots turned out this morning, but that hardly matters; I enjoyed the time.
The walk back up the path was well-timed; I passed a lot of other folks with cameras on their way down the path, talking about seeing pelicans? I didn’t see any pelicans. lol I marveled at the dewy spider webs that festooned the meadow flowers as I walked back to the car in the summer sunshine.
Like delicate lace.
…But the morning isn’t the day. The moment is not the whole experience. The time that has passed is not about future plans. lol So…what’s the big deal today? It’s not all that, really, I am just planning a (hopefully) delicious homemade meal for dinner… garlic bread, spaghetti with a favorite meat sauce, cooked slowly, with care. I enjoyed selecting the ingredients. Been thinking about the cooking all day. LOL So… yeah. I’m excited about an absolutely ordinary moment-to-come. 🙂 It’s enough to put a smile on my face. I don’t need more than that today.
This morning I’m all smiles. I had a lovely day with my Traveling Partner, yesterday. It finished well. Life feels balanced, and I am contented. Sure, sure, still looking for a job, so there’s that, but I don’t see that it has any requirement to be a massive continuous buzzkill every minute of every day… or… any minutes. Ever. I know “this too will pass” – doesn’t matter whether it’s a good mood, a bad mood, a wonderful moment, a tragedy; moments are moments. Transient. Finite. Limited. Very little in a single human life is so dire that despair is truly warranted (that’s one of the things that makes despair so terrible and terrifying – it feels like “everything”, and it’s very “sticky”). I enjoy the smile on my face, take a sip of this glass of water, and listen to a video that makes me smile with such tremendous delight it’s hard to move on to the next one. No, I’m not linking it; delight is not “universal”, and what tickles me so profoundly may be disturbing or offensive or puzzling for someone else. No point. Hit up Google or YouTube, find your groove. 😉
Different day, different meadow.
I went to the nearby nature reserve this morning to get shots of birds. I got there just at daybreak; first car into the park. Choice. The summer-scented air was fragrant with meadow flowers and a hint of marsh. The morning was very quiet and quite overcast. I grabbed my gear and walked down the path to a spot I know is a good one for taking pictures of birds. No birds. It was rather as if the wildlife decided to sleep in on this quiet gray morning. I walked on. Snapped some pictures of flowers, the skyline, reflections on the water. Kept walking. Eventually my Traveling Partner pinged me.
My last trip was more “productive”, if I choose to define it that way – there were more birds.
I got a lot of chances to improve on my skills at taking pictures of birds that day.
There’s no expectation that I’ll cut my camera time short when my partner wakes, although I do try to “stay gone” long enough for him to sleep in, should he choose to and find himself able. Still… not much going on in the nature park, so I turned back and walked back to the parking lot. I passed a lot of other visitors with cameras. By the time I was within view of the parking lot, the path down to the meadow looked like a fucking camera convention. Individuals and groups, each taking some favored spot, waiting, watching, hoping for a great shot of… something. (Anything – other than each other.) lol I see a lot of really fancy gear as I pass other visitors. I could easily be overcome with dissatisfaction and “gear envy”…but it’s not my way. Like, I mean, explicitly not my choice to be thusly overcome; I get some great shots with my modest gear. I enjoy it as it is. It’s often so much more about location, timing, and willingness to walk on, or sit quietly awhile, and less to do with the gear, generally. 🙂 A lot of life is like that. Even mindfulness practices – anyone can (people often do) spend a ton of money on coaches, consultants, therapists, or “specialists” to learn to sit quietly, breathe, and relax. (It’s even possible to take an expensive destination retreat at an actual monastery, should you have the desire and the resources. It’s not necessary to do so, though, at all.) It’s not even a certainty that spending that kind of money on breathing exercises and mindfulness practices will “pave the trail” for you more skillfully than taking it upon yourself to read a book and begin practicing practices. It’s more about the verbs than the dollars.
…I’m one of those people, by the way. No kidding. I was at the edge and still spiraling down, and I felt wholly defeated. I spent a notable amount of my limited resources on therapy. Doing so saved my life. Looking back, I can see how easily I could have made that journey, perhaps, without spending that money…only… I didn’t, because I wasn’t able to. I did not know what I did not know. I needed that help. So I did the needful and took steps to get the help I needed. Did my therapist do more than point me in the direction of reading different books, or helping me practice other practices? Oh, for sure. Real therapy. I needed a lot of help making that healing journey (that is still in progress), and part of that process was gaining a better understanding of my actual legit issues. Still… it is possible to make a healing journey without a map. It isn’t about the money.
I prepared my reading list so that someone who maybe can’t at all afford the expense of therapy in their here-and-now could still benefit from the foundations of the journey I’m taking myself. I write this blog for that same reason – and also because I often find that I “fail to take my own good advice” because I’ve lost perspective over time. This blog is something of a repository of my notes about this journey, and my changing perspective over time – a reminder that it can be done, because I’ve done it, just in case I find myself doubting. (I’m very human.)
What a lovely morning this is, so far. It may last the day. It may not. So much of that is up to me. I’ve got choices to make. Practices to practice. Verbs to put into motion. It’s time to begin again.
The morning is very overcast. The meadow is dull and dry looking this morning. I sit with my coffee in the grass, on the compact three-legged camp stool I keep in the car. My camera is set up, but the birds are shy this morning. I sit watching the colorless sunrise, and listening to the noise of my tinnitus and… helicopters? Yep. It’s the air show weekend. No wonder the birds are laying low this morning.
Another sip of coffee. I manage not to fall on my ass as I set the cup down abruptly hoping to quickly get some shots of a small mouse or vole or other small mammal in the grass. I failed to make the adjustments needed quickly enough to get the picture, and subsequently also missed a small yellow bird who decided to stop precisely where my camera had been pointed. Yep. It’s one of those days. lol
I reach for my coffee and knock it over. lol
The air quality seems poor today. It’s warm again this morning, and very muggy. I don’t envy folks attending the airshow; it’s going to be uncomfortably hot before noon. I definitely don’t feel like I am missing anything by not attending. The constant sound of aircraft overhead makes me tense and cross. The heat and humidity leave me feeling irritable and sticky.
There’s nothing on my calendar for today. I had planned to go camping again next week, but the heat discouraged me, and as it turns out I have a final interview with a job I interviewed for this week… so I canceled my camping trip. Very adult of me. lol I plan to enjoy today as part of my weekend.
Lanscape crews turn up… I expect they’ll mow this lovely meadow, and I am feeling annoyed by that.
Is it me, or is it this moment? I notice that I am already struggling to manage my pain, on top of “everything else”. Sounds like it’s me. I give the landscapers a wave and start gathering up my gear. There’s a pleasant park on my route home, a lovely spot for meditation. I will relocate, and begin again.
Evening Light 