Sometimes we choose change. Sometimes change is simply part of the flow of events around us and we see it coming. Sometimes change is dropped on us unexpectedly, rocking us off our center and creating chaos.
This week I got laid off from a job I really enjoyed. Good culture. Great colleagues. Good pay and benefits. I’ll miss all of that. Change is.
Getting the news in the moment was hard. It was unexpected, and it was an intensely emotional personal experience in a professional setting. Uncomfortable. I feel fortunate to have experience practicing non-attachment. I feel fortunate to have a romantic partnership built on shared values and mutual respect that supports and encourages me through change. I feel fortunate that we are relatively well-prepared for something like this, and that the job market looks very promising, in spite of so much news about companies doing lay-offs. (There are just as many articles about companies hiring, and no shortage of opportunities in my feeds.) So, it becomes a matter of practices (like meditation, like non-attachment, like good self-care) suddenly becoming relevant (…”this is not a drill!”), and supremely helpful.
I woke yesterday to the relative luxury of my time being wholly my own. I took time to get a sunrise walk in, camera in hand. Spent some hours in the co-work space I favor, focused on various job search tasks. Got my unemployment claim started. Kicked off a variety of queries of job postings of various sorts. Applied for a couple that look like a decent fit for my skills, mostly to get comfortable with the process again. In due time, the interviews will begin to dictate my time, and eventually it’ll be back to work. 🙂
This morning, after my morning camera hike, I went back to the house for a leisurely morning coffee with my Traveling Partner. It was a relaxed morning of this-n-that, and then back to the co-work space. Later I’ll do some leg-work for my partner’s business. Life feels pretty good.
Change is. I don’t expect this will “always” feel easy, but I sure am enjoying that it feels easy right now.
I look at the clock and grin; it doesn’t dictate my experience right now. It’s still time to begin again.
Omg, just… fuck this entire day, already. I’d laugh but I’m still working through pulling myself back from the brink of this absolutely pointless and unproductive tantrum. Honestly, I suspect I’m just thoroughly “peopled out” and then some; I really really really earnestly and most definitely just need a real break and some time (days) alone. It feels like one thing after another, right now, and I’m at grave risk moment-to-moment of losing perspective. I mean – it could be worse. I could be living a life that puts me at real risk of actual harm. This is not that. I could be struggling to survive at all, and this is not that, either. I’m just fussy, and over having to attend to the demands of others around me (without regard to whether those are reasonable, or whether I’m paid to deal with those). Over. It. I need some me time, and I’ve let this need go unmet too long, most recently simply because I was too sick to enjoy the plans I had made to meet this need – the postponement was necessary. Now I’ve just got to get through this week…
…One new beginning at a time.
So, yeah. I’m cross. My morning hike was okay. The sunrise was lovely. It was fine. Hard to find real satisfaction in it; my Traveling Partner woke while I was out on the trail. Our first (digital) interaction was complicated by my involvement with other things and his pre-coffee state. Misunderstanding and miscommunication – sorted out before I returned home, but before any of that, it distracted me from my own experience and what I was doing (for myself) in the moment. Later I got to be talked-down-to by a stranger helping my neighbor next door. He could not have known I am an artist and I work in color – a lot – or that I’m knowledgeable about such matters. A discussion between my partner and I about the color the house next door is being painted opened the door for this other person to “helpfully” interject his opinions. I managed not to bite his head off, but I was on the edge of being rude when I firmly dismissed his opinion and turned my back. Two or three more such moments, in the context of the work day, stacked up on each other and I’m just fucking done. I have shit to do, and prefer to be quietly productive and not interrupted. So far, even that isn’t working out ideally well.
I end up starting my Monday cross with the world, and daydreaming about my upcoming camping trip intently. I keep pulling myself back to the work in front of me – which reminds me how irritable I am, all over again. Not my best bit of adulting, today. I let my irritability keep driving me to follow-up on the details. Power bricks all charged? No? Do that. Hey, how about that Kindle? Am I taking it? Maybe? Is it charged? No? Do that, too. Camera batteries all fully charged? They get their turn on the charger, too. Are my toiletries packed for camping? I make a note to tackle that on a break, later. Little details that matter out on the trail; I just keep at it. The thoughts come. I put them to use. It’s one way to burn off some of this irritation through useful activity. My results vary, but I figure if I just keep at it, eventually I’ll be over my bullshit.
No idea what the noise outside is… sounds like someone cranking an engine that will not start. Could be something to do with the painting going on next door. A construction project in my partner’s shop? I just want to work. I just want to stop hearing things. My tinnitus is so loud… how is there still all this annoying noise?? I breathe. Exhale. Relax. Remind myself to let it go; none of this, not any of it, is at all personal – even my irritability is likely more symptomatic than “about” anything happening right now. I put on noise canceling ear-covering heavily padded headphones. No music. Just… quiet. It’s that day. At least right now. Now I’ve simply got to nudge myself in the direction of beginning again…
What a fucked up mess this moment is. I mean, it could be worse. Really, I’m fine. I’m just… an emotional pile of shit. Chaos and damaged piled high, this morning. I didn’t see it coming. So often, on days when I yield to unexpected fortuitous happiness, joy, or profoundly good moods, I don’t see the twist that sends it spiraling off course equally unexpectedly (and with a whole fuck-ton more baggage, resentment, and disappointment … in the moment, in myself, and yeah, even with the entire fucking world).
Um… no, I don’t have any helpful suggestions for these sorts of trying moments. I suppose, besides being utterly human, they are also probably more commonplace than any one of us damaged fucked up little chaos primates would like them to be. Fuck my bullshit – and fuck yours too. Sorry. I mean… I hope you’re having a good day (legit). Right now, I’m not, and I’m still seething, and stuck on the edge of tears. It’s not “necessary”. It’s not even “rational”. (It’s definitely not “rational” – these are emotions, for fucks sake.) “Wait it out.” That’s a suggestion; these things pass. “Breathe” is another helpful-ish sort of suggestion. I mean… that one is sometimes like telling a hysterical person to “calm down”, though; it’s correct and useful for what it is, but who the hell wants to hear that shit in the moment?? Nope. Me either.
So…yeah. Fucked up moments are a thing in our human experiences. Sometimes our hysterics, tantrums, or blow-ups make sense for scale, urgency, or magnitude of our hurt… other times not so much. I can only point out that refraining from taking action in the heat of the moment, and ideally even mustering some self-restraint with regard to what we might choose to say out loud, makes a lot of fucking sense – but it won’t end the moment (or our hurt) any sooner. Just reduces the mess there is to clean up afterward.
Around here? Nothing damaged, nothing broken, no one injured, no violence occurs… it’s just sad and frustrating and disappointing and aggravating (and did I say sad?) when tempers flair, or feelings get hurt. My head aches from the stress, and from crying. My Traveling Partner has gone a long way toward soothing hurts and trying to heal the moment; he’s pretty good like that. I am less skilled at that sort of thing, and I’m a bit “stuck” right now. Nope, no advice to offer from the perspective of “in it” right now – only perspective. It’ll pass. I know that with certainty. Emotional weather, just a squall. The climate around here is exceptionally pleasant. Weather still happens. (It’s a metaphor.) It’s a bit of an endurance test, and I know I can pass.
Inspiration leads to… change. Leads to amazing discoveries. Leads to new art, new writing, new thinking. Inspiration comes in a lot of forms, and I think one of the most unusual forms of inspiration for me over the past 2 years and 8 months (or something like that) has been… the pandemic. No kidding. Yes, it’s been hard. Yes, there have been tragedies upon tragedies, upon inconveniences, upon hardships and chaos. There have been colossal disappointments and headaches, and a lot of the experiences of pandemic life have been less than ideal. No argument there. …But… Have you noticed the other things?
Early in the pandemic, to stave off boredom and despair, a lot of people took to new projects and practices to keep themselves from spiraling into depression or to “save their sanity” as close quarters quickly began to feel like real confinement. My Traveling Partner built a new gaming computer – then built one for me. (We really lucked out on the timing, there, because things like graphics cards became “unobtainium” early in the pandemic.) I took on renewed enthusiasm with my aquarium, redesigned the interior of that habitat, and gained some delightful new aquatic creatures. We worked together to refine my work-from-home space to make that not just endurable, but really practical, and actually better than anything I could achieve in the office.
As time wore on, a lot of landlords began to get restless and their ability to earn their living was negatively impacted along with a lot of hard-working people struggling during the pandemic. Our own landlord made noises about wanting to move back into the unit we were occupying – even though we were great tenants able to pay on time each month. We started looking for a home of our own, and surprised ourselves by finding one we could afford, in a community we actually found desirable and livable. We moved, during the pandemic. Craziness. The “new house” thing kept us very busy during the latter half of that first year, and on into the second.
Time kept passing. Pandemic kept being a pandemic.
On Valentine’s Day this year, my partner surprised the hell out of me with a rice cooker and a wok. (We generally don’t do anything about Valentine’s Day other than love each other – which we do all year, every day.) I had never cooked with a wok. I’d only recently even attempted a stir fry for the first time, in a big skillet. I began my next pandemic project right then; learning some Asian cuisine. This was not only wildly successful (and tasty)… it opened my eyes to something I really hadn’t allowed myself to understand before this; I wasn’t actually a very good cook. I made food that was entirely edible. Simple. Decent casseroles. Good biscuits. Acceptable mostly relatively healthy absolutely 100% ordinary food. Good enough that someone sitting down to my table would eat a meal. Not good enough that folks raved about it or asked for my recipes, with the exception of my chocolate truffles (thank you Jacques Pepin) and my shortbread (thanks, Granny). Sometimes my cranberry sauce would wow someone enough to ask for that one (my own recipe, using whole cranberries, cooked with care, and some “wow” added with tangerine slices and Cointreau). Not exactly something to brag about.
My Traveling Partner has always been kind, gracious, and appreciative of my cooking. He’s also nearly always had “notes” – feedback. Some observation on this or that I could maybe do better, offered with great care, love, and consideration for my feelings. My cooking did not get better thereby, or at least not very much. I needed more time, and more study, and I needed to get to that place where I understood that my cooking needed real improvement to be “good”.
That first “pandemic Giftmas”, he gave me Kenji Lopez-Alt’s book “The Food Lab”. (I recommend it!) This started me down the path of actually learning to cook. Like, for real. I learned to make scrambled eggs that were so good I was proud to serve them – and enjoyed eating them – and learned that I didn’t actually “hate eggs”. I just didn’t know how to cook them. LOL I started paying attention more to what I was doing, and really taking my time in the kitchen. The new house has a kitchen that is really my own – and my Traveling Partner began making me cool kitchen gadgets and tools in his shop. I added “The Wok” to my cookbooks, another great cookbook by Kenji Lopez-Alt. I began making changes to how I shopped, prepared, and cooked various foods, based on my partner’s feedback, my new cookbooks, and… inspiration.
My cooking just kept getting better.
The cutting board and knife bar were made with love – and definitely improve the flow of my work space in the kitchen!
My cooking was definitely also “skewed Asian” – I pretty much gave up cooking anything that didn’t happen in a wok. LOL (I even planted my new garden with veggies specifically for stir fries. :D) I was a bit hesitant to stray from what was working out so well!
I kept studying and seeking out chefs, cooks, and content creators whose YouTube videos gave me the most practical insights to becoming a better cook. I continue to do that today. Why am I even going on and on about it? Because… inspiration. See, one evening I decided to whip up something with pasta instead of making a stir fry, or fried rice, or noodles. It was truly dreadful. I mean, honestly, I made something I’d made before, made the way I had always made it. It was a bit of an eye opener, honestly. Did not realize how entirely mediocre my cooking actually had been. It was a hard meal to eat. We had a sense of humor about it. I went back to wok cooking, which I’ve gotten pretty good at it and continue to study.
…But it nagged at me…
…I enjoy good pasta…
I also enjoy Joshua Weissman’s cooking videos. I bought his cookbook. I recommend his content. Some of it is Asian or Asian-inspired. A lot of it isn’t. I kept thinking about pasta. I really do like pasta. I was hesitant. I went looking for more pasta-specific content I could count on to be really good – things that would elevate my cooking, and teach me. Not just any cook, chef, or content creator makes the cut for me; I want to learn. The content has to be “proper“. I’m pretty selective. I stumbled on Vincenzo Prosperi – an Italian in Australia. I watched a video on his channel Vincenzo’s Plate, reacting to bad cooking (hilarious)(and just as I had with Uncle Roger’s videos about fried rice) – and then watched Vincenzo prepare the dish correctly. I watched others. I was watching one a couple days ago. My partner happened to be watching. “Now that looks good!” I was hesitant… seriously nervous about it… but I went for it last night, and made a lovely mushroom pasta dish for dinner. Wow. Worth the study, worth the care – it was tasty and felt like a kind of a home coming. (Thanks, Vincenzo!).
It’s going to be hot this week. I woke this morning eager to consider a cold pasta salad. I searched YouTube for inspiration (…that word again…), and found Jim at Sip and Feast. I watched a couple videos, and my Traveling Partner wandered through the living room just in time to hear Jim talking about his Greek pasta salad. “That sounds yummy” he remarked. “Yeah?” was my answer while my fingers began the practical task of jotting down ingredients I didn’t have on hand. There was time for a trip to the store before the heat set in…
A recipe is really just another kind of map, isn’t it?
It’s much later. There is a lovely pasta salad ready for these hot afternoons. I’m sipping an iced coffee that I spiked with the squeezed out shell of the lemon I zested and juiced for that recipe, and some very handy Jacobsen’s Lemon Zest sea salt – which, omg, so useful and yummy. (I’m not sponsored by any of these folks or brands – I just enjoy them and want to share with you.)
It doesn’t have to be fancy to be satisfying.
It’s a good day to be inspired. It’s a good day to begin again. It’s your adventure – choose your next move. 🙂 Where will inspiration lead you?
Sick time activities tend on the easy low-effort side, for me, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time the last few days (between naps and hot showers) looking over pictures of previous camping trips to the same general location I’ll be going next. I noticed fairly quickly that “the numbers don’t add up” – the campsites are numbered, and I reliably snap a picture of the site I’ve selected, and note the number in my itinerary and various writings. I tend to favor sites that are the most distant from other campers, wherever I go. As I’ve said before; I go for the solitude. 🙂
Like, seriously, out among the trees, camped surrounded by dense tall nettles. Manufactured solitude. 😀
During the pandemic, I didn’t get much camping in. (Duh) There was that last trip in August 2019 – before the pandemic – and then “at long last” another in August 2021, when pandemic restrictions were beginning to lift (rather briefly, as I recall, before returning for some while…I hope I am remembering that correctly). That most recent trip was not down into the deeper, quieter, hike-in camping – that camp ground was closed for substantial repairs, and even the trail down into that area was closed. There had been some serious storms that took down trees, flooded trails, and caused a lot of damage (I read, but did not see for myself). When I went to book my upcoming trip, I noticed something odd… there was a particular site I was considering reserving… only… it didn’t exist on the map at all, now. Actually – there are two fewer sites than there had been, and two of those that were removed were among the four sites that were singularly “remote” (by a notable distance) from the others (and each other). One of these now-missing sites was one I greatly enjoyed. Change is. The other I hadn’t yet tried out, but found visually very pleasing, and had considered it more than once. These changes briefly tested my sanity; could I really be remembering things this incorrectly?? Could I be so wrong about where that site was??
This is no longer site #9. This is the past. Gone now.
This site is gone, too. I wonder what reminder of the past may linger there now?
Now there are just two sites in the hike-in campground that truly stand out as being quite a bit more distant from any other camp sites. One of those is a “walk-in only” and can’t be reserved at all (and is generally occupied any time I’ve gone there). The other? My personal favorite spot. The thing that I found amusing-confusing is that the numbering (of course) had to be updated to “make sense” on the ground for folks seeking their reserved site… and now, the carefully recording numbering of prior visits that I see in my notes and pictures makes no sense; it doesn’t match the map as it exists now. My preferred site was #23, which “no longer exists” but strictly speaking it’s right there on the map – just bearing a different number. So many lovely visits to #23… only… now it’ll be #21, and of course the one trip I had previously made to #21 would be better numbered, now, as #17. Sites #22 and #9, as they had existed, are simply gone now. There is no need for a #22 at all and #9 is attached to a different site altogether. Vexing. But… change is. These are certainly the sorts of changes that can screw with a person’s memories of the past, though. lol
Sometimes I get hung up on such details. What something is called now versus what it used to be named. Street names. Business locations. Changes in which streets are one-way. I sometimes struggle to reconcile what I recall with what I see in front of me. I don’t think that’s unique or unusual; I think we all deal with it because change is. Sorting out these photos and getting them organized by camping trip has been fun and I love the reminders of each one. The pictures take me back down trails as they once were, and each visit has its utterly unique and splendidly different moments… on the same trails. Different weather. Different light. Different flowers in bloom. New or old signs. Well-maintained or falling into disrepair. These small variations don’t reflect “poor memory for details” at all, they simply remind me that “change is”, and that this affects us all, with every experience. The map is not the world. The trail is not the hike. Each moment is an experience all its own.
Still the same favorite, but the number has changed. LOL It’ll be #21 on the new map. The map is not the world.
I’ve camped at this place in March. I found it a bit chilly (and definitely unpleasantly so at night). It was rainy. I find that I would rather wait for later weeks, generally, instead of camping in March. lol
I’ve camped here in May. May was also rainy, but the nights were pretty comfortable, and the thimbleberries along the trails were ripe. It’s a lovely time for wildflowers. The trails are sometimes muddy.
I’ve camped here in July. The summer heat often hasn’t really gotten going, and everything is lush and green, and the trails are dry and easy to walk.
I’ve camped here in August, several times. Comfortable nights, followed by cool mornings well-suited to long hikes. The afternoons are hot – good for napping after a hike. The birdsong, crickets, and peeping frogs make a delightful racket.
I’ve camped here in September a couple times, too. Chilly evenings develop from warm afternoons. Sometimes it has rained briefly, most often it has been dry. Creeks are at their lowest flow. Trails are dry, and so are the meadow grasses. A few wildflowers remain.
Funny thing… while it makes quite a bit of sense that I don’t typically camp earlier than March (don’t like being cold all the time)… looking over my photos, I am a little surprised to see that I have not camped later than mid-September, either. Why is that so odd? Well, the weather around this location is quite mild and suited to camping well into November before it begins getting properly chilly again. Not that it matters relative to most other things, I just found it peculiar, and find myself wondering if I should plan something for October this year? Catch the autumn in her glory, perhaps?
What I was getting to, though, is that each experience has been quite different for reasons other than camp site or season. That March trip? It was dreadful, and I cut it short. I was out there primarily doing a “gear check” for longer more remote trips into wilderness areas with only dispersed camping available, and no “conveniences” (like potable water and vault toilets). I utterly failed to be adequately prepared even for the chill of a pleasant March weekend. lol I forgot my coffee. (Nooooooo!) Seriously? I even forgot any sort of hot beverage, even tea or broth. Forgot my bee sting kit (omg, bees in March??). Couldn’t start a fire – just, for whatever reason, completely forgot how to make that happen on this whole other “do not go solo camping you nitwit” level. The ultra-light cot I had such high hopes for? Flimsy and would not support my weight. Fucking hell. After one overnight I was tired, stressed, and miserable. After two? I called my Traveling Partner to come get me. Embarrassing. I still get occasional teasing about that one. lol
Most of my camping trips are just excuses to hit trails I can’t easily reach on a weekend morning, and to get away for some “me time” and take pictures of flowers. They sort of blend together – until I see the pictures, and look back on each trip as its own thing. A singular experience. Each one of them is quite different, and by making a practice of savoring every pleasant moment at great length, my longer-term memory of all of them is of these wonderful experiences out among the trees – even that March trip.
How often do we taint our memories of the life we live by focusing on the shittiest moments with the whole of our attention, picking them apart, re-analyzing them, talking and writing about them at length, thinking of them often – while failing to do the same for all the pleasant ones? When I stopped doing that, and started putting more of my focus on the choice moments, joyful moments, a-ha moments, and wow moments instead, my experience of life over-all improved quite a lot. I recommend it. When I catch myself ruminating on some bullshit moment of chaos or unhappiness, I make a point to follow that with reflections on lovely moments. Legit. Real. Mine. Doing this has definitely changed my “implicit memory” of life and the world for the better. It’s a choice I make regularly. It’s been very effective as a strategy for ensuring that life feels worth living, every day. Figured I’d share that with you. 🙂 I hope you find it helpful.
…The tl;dr? Don’t get mired in your own bullshit. Reflect on your joys, your wins, what works, and what you love. Take time for that. Sip your coffee (or tea, or… you know, whatever you like) and focus on what delights you in your surroundings right now. I mean… I’m not telling you what to do, just sharing what has been working for me. 🙂 You’re walking your own path, of your own choosing. You can begin again.
Choose your path and walk it. Your results may vary.
Evening Light 