Archives for category: The Big 5
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Sound Sensitivity

January 24, 2025 //
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Used to be I had major issues with sound sensitivity, particularly in the voice frequency range. That seemed to be so much less problematic the last couple years, since shortly before the pandemic, I think. I never stopped to wonder why; I attributed that change to progress through therapy. Seemed obvious. Now I’ve got these hearing aids, and my sound sensitivity is back. lol Apparently I’d just been losing my hearing in the voice frequency range. LOL G’damn it.

I’m laughing over it more than anything else. Cosmic humor for those inclined to perceive (or create) a god. Last night I went to bed just a bit early, deeply fatigued from fighting to stay relaxed and merry in spite of my serious annoyance over “every little thing” to do with a variety of human sound effects that sourced with the human beings in the room with me. It wasn’t personal. Hell, it wasn’t even out of the ordinary – it was merely audible in a whole new way. I’ve got my hearing back, so it should have been predictable that I would also regain some measure of my sound sensitivity, and irritation to do with chomping, lip-smacking, slurping, clanging of dishes and utensils, banging of dishes and pots, stomping of feet, forced laughter, dealing with congestion, needlessly loud remarks when I’m listening to something else… all the regular human stuff. Fucking hell human beings are ridiculously noisy. I made the mistake of mentioning it aloud with some surprise at the observation, and instead of any sympathy whatsoever, what I got from the Anxious Adventurer (and primary source of most of the noise) was “maybe you should turn your hearing aids down”? (“How about maybe you try to be a little quieter – or at least show some fucking consideration and understanding, ffs?” Was my unstated response.) I was surprised at the callous disregard for my experience, and my somewhat hurt feelings and notable irritation were a major part of deciding to go to bed. I just didn’t feel like dealing with being treated dismissively in my own house by a human being who I expect to care about my experience at least a little bit and who receives a fuck-ton of consideration from me day-to-day.

…I may still have some unresolved feelings about this, apparently, I should deal with that. (So much for mostly laughing about it!)

I sigh to myself. The Anxious Adventurer may legitimately “not get it”, and is in some regards still half-feral. I remind myself to be patient and kind, and to coach more often than I snarl.

So. Yeah. There’s that. It’s otherwise quite a pleasant morning. I woke up a few minutes ahead of my artificial sunrise, feeling rested and cozy and warm. My morning routine was… routine (hearing aids and all). The drive to work was pleasant and uncomplicated, and traffic was light. The office is comfortably warm and quiet. The details of the day ahead seem well-planned, and I feel relaxed and confident. All things considered, a very good day for this one individual human being.

I made the mistake of peeking at the news headlines. This terrifying new administration is already getting going with excessive zeal with their attack on immigrants, without regard to the rights of citizens, military veterans, or consideration of basic human decency – it’s appalling, and shameful. Attacks on the basic human rights of women are already beginning. Attacks on the fundamentals of democracy itself, too. The whole thing is a grotesque mockery of anything to do with America. I don’t know what I expected, and I guess I’m not surprised; when someone tells you who they are, believe them. The voters knew they were electing a misogynist xenophobic criminal fraudster in November, and they did it anyway. Horrifying, yes. Shocking, maybe. A surprise? No, not really. Maybe we’ll learn something and start providing education in emotional intelligence, and critical thinking, in K-12 education after this mess is sorted out? At least that ignorant huckster in the President’s office isn’t fucking immortal. (Note to self: don’t read the news. You know it’s terrible, already. Definitely don’t read the comments – that’s where the trolls live.)

Seriously. Just don’t. 🙂

I breathe, exhale, and relax and let that shit go. I pull myself back to this “now” moment, this place, this time. I’ve got enough to do in front of me, and plenty to take care of without getting myself all stirred up over things I can’t fix or prevent. That won’t stop me from being compassionate, aware, or speaking up when I see this bullshit going on. I make a note on my calendar to write to my elected representatives – that’s still a step worth taking, though it often feels futile. I stay committed to being frank about my thoughts on these trying times with friends, neighbors, even casual strangers when the topics come up. I refuse to pretend I don’t care, or to stand silent in the face of cruelty and injustice. I’m just not okay with that.

Another breathe. Another moment to relax and bring myself back to “now”. Trying times. I smile to myself, and give myself a moment of compassion. I’ve seen a lot in 61 years, and some of it has been bad. This too shall pass. For real; change is.

I take a phone call. Finish my writing. Begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, winter

1460 Days to Go

January 21, 2025 //
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It’s time to survive a grim sort of count down. 1460 days to the inauguration of the next president, on January 20, 2029. It seems a long time, I know. It could happen sooner, after a fashion, mortality being what it is, and circumstances being unpredictable; the future is not written. Make no mistake, we’re all in for a rough ride…unless, of course, you’re part of the billionaire class, and also a favorite of the current occupant of the office of President of the United States of America. I’m very much hoping – and clinging to that hope – that this administration does not bring the fall of our democractic republic. That would be…horrifying. Not that we’re aren’t already well on our way to face a few horrors. The wheels are in motion.

(It’ll be easier to get through the next four years if you refrain from doomscrolling news media or social media feeds.)

Have you read On Tyranny? It’s a good read, and you may find either comfort or useful tools therein. I definitely recommend it. Amazon has it, of course. So does Powell’s, and AbeBooks. Stand up for yourself and your family, your community, and people who are clearly at a disadvantage under this administration. Be the best version of the human being you most want to be that you are able to be. Speak truth to power, and don’t allow yourself to be talked out of what you know you’ve seen yourself. Hard times are ahead for that actual truth. Seek ethical fact-checking, and don’t believe the hype. These things do matter. It is unfortunate that so much of our world has become a race to generate revenue by a handful of already sickeningly wealthy hoarders of cash and corrupt seekers of power. It’s pretty grotesque. My personal vote for the two most toxic characteristics of human beings are greed and pettiness.

…1460 days…

I breathe, exhale, and relax. The here and now does not have to be eternally infused with all of that toxic bullshit. I’m home sick, which sucks, after a lovely visit with a dear friend, which was quite wonderful. My Traveling Partner and I have a good thing together, which is something I value, enjoy, and cherish with my whole heart. I sit with my gratitude, and let that fortify me for troubled times ahead. The Anxious Adventurer is a good guy, doing his best, learning and growing and working on being the best version of himself he knows how to be – while also figuring out who exactly that actually is. That’s a lot to do. He’s doing pretty well.

(We’re all in this together – and we’re each having our own experience. Each of us sees the world and these trying times through a slightly different lens.)

As a woman, I don’t feel at all “valued” or “defended” by this administration’s immediate attack on people who are not so simply defined as either man or woman, in fact, I’m insulted by the narrow stupidity of it. If “defending women” were any sort of sincere goal, we would have equality (in opportunities, in pay, in healthcare), and consent would be the common language of the land – expected, understood, and honored – and our government would not be filled with rapists (which it most probably is, based on the choices for incoming cabinet members, and the behaviors of many who have held office). The concerns of my Traveling Partner and his son may be somewhat different, focused on the things that seem most important and relevant to their own experiences and perspective. That makes sense.

(I plan to listen with care when people tell me what frightens them most, what fills them with outrage, and what they need to thrive. I can at least make the attempt. I hope we all make that attempt.)

I sip my coffee and let my mind move on. I will hope for the best, and be open to “things being okay” for some values of okay. It doesn’t seem likely that this administration has good intentions (at all), or any will to create a better world for every citizen, resident, and human being (it’s already pretty clearly not the goal) – but I won’t try to undermine the potential for success. Maybe they’ll stumble upon it through failure to understand the consequences of their decision making? Maybe they’ll simply fail at their “evil plan”? (Yes, I do see it that way.) Incompetence and gridlock are as much likely outcomes as any measure of actual success for this administration.

I sigh to myself. Still thinking about this garbage. I let it go again, and think about other things. Mostly art. Also books I’d like to have and to read. I’d thought it might be nice to obtain Andrew Lang’s fairy books, maybe as first editions… now I’m thinking it makes much more sense to have non-fiction volumes that instruct and guide and preserve knowledge of various crafts one might need to survive harder times. The Foxfire books have been on my list a long while… I smile to myself. I like books. I’ve grown much less fond of the internet. Books and conversations with real people – more of those things might save the world. I think about that while I sip my coffee. I think about making a trip down south to visit old friends and have real conversations.

…I’ll get over this sickness, then I’ll begin again…

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Categories 2024 Election, anger, Anxiety, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, winter

We Live What We Create (a love letter)

January 16, 2025 //
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I’m sipping my coffee reflecting on love, life, and how incredibly fortunate I feel, how grateful I am, for the partnership I share with my beloved Traveling Partner. Fuck, this has been a hard year (and then some) since his injury back in – was it November? December? – of 2023. Learning to be a caregiver, not just a partner, friend, and lover, definitely showed off some of my unpreparedness in the vast world of adulting skillfully. I had (have) a lot to learn. I’m glad things are improving (every day) now. I feel relieved. Did I say already? I feel grateful. Fortunate. G’damn it could have been so much worse.

We become what we practice. Once we are adults, our quality of life is largely in our own hands. Not entirely, to be sure, because we don’t all face the same circumstances, and just keeping it real – “the playing field” is not level. No one is in this alone, but we’re each having our own experience, and there is no question that some people are dealt a far more valuable hand of cards in the game than others. So…yeah. There’s that. Beyond that, though, we each have (and make) choices. Those choices really matter. Giving up on that is an unfortunately common mistake, but it’s an easy one to make. I think about that, and times that I’ve abdicated my responsibility to myself, yielded to cynicism, bitterness, or feelings of futility, and made things so much worse than they could have been, if I had chosen differently. Worth reflecting on, but as with so many such things – the lessons we learn after-the-fact can’t help us in the moment. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Sip my coffee. Listen to the woosh of the ventilation in the office – and feel grateful. Love has made a huge difference in how I make choices, and what matters most. I would not be the woman I am without the love I share with my Traveling Partner. Grateful barely describes my feelings.

“Communion” 2010

I feel so loved. My Traveling Partner can (and does) come to me openly and talk about his feelings and his worries. I can go to him when I am feeling feelings, and share my experience and feel supported and heard. Do we have challenges? Sure. We’re human beings, being human. This love, though… g’damn, am I wrapped in love. I woke this morning feeling loved. I’ll work through the day feeling it, too. It’s reciprocal. I love this man with a love that I don’t even know how to contain. Is it reasonable, practical, or even “sane”? Hell if I know – I don’t even care about that. I just love him. He loves me back. That’s worth something in this fairly scary world of chaos, violence, and human suffering. It’s something to “come home to”. I sip my coffee thinking of the moments we shared last night, talking and connecting, and loving each other. I hope every time I’m ever annoyed or angry over something trivial or stupid that my memory will carry me back to last night, and remind me that I am loved, and that love matters most. I hope the same for him – I can be damned frustrating to deal with sometimes – I hope he always feels loved, in spite of that. I sigh quietly and smile.

Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?

…To experience an uncompromising, enduring love for so very long is a rare thing. For me, there’s only been this one, and all other relationships and moments of affection are dim lights compared to this roaring blaze. Love is always uniquely special, as feelings go, and I can only say again how fortunate I feel, and how grateful, to experience this one. This moment, here, now, wrapped in love – and all the others that my Traveling Partner and I have shared. I hope the journey goes on “forever” (or some close approximation of that idea), it’s been a journey worth sharing with this singular human being who loves me so…

“Cherry Blossoms” 14″ x 20″ acrylic on canvas. 2011

I sit quietly, smiling. Nothing else, really, just sipping my coffee and thinking about love. Work can wait on lovers, surely…?

So much of life is about love and loving.

My Traveling Partner is more than my spouse – so much more – he is my best friend. My muse. The inspiration behind so much of my artistic work over the past 15 years. The maker of so many delightful moments, and thoughtful things I use every day. I’d be pretty fucking lost without him – and very alone.

An alternate spelling of “I love you”.

I think about writing my beloved a love note, and realize as I sit here that I sort of already have. It never feels like enough; the love we share is so huge in the experience of a single moment. lol Filled with quiet joy, and wrapped in love, I begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, gratitude, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

This Mortal Moment

January 14, 2025 //
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I am sitting quietly, listening to the woosh of the ventilation and the zing and buzz of my tinnitus. Just that, nothing more. Some minutes pass before I consider my keyboard or my thoughts. I just sit awhile, with this infinite seeming moment. It’s isn’t though; it’s quite finite and mortal and limited by this space and whatever time and attention I give it. Just a moment. Sometimes a moment seems so fragile and fleeting. A metaphorical drop in the bucket of a lifetime of moments…but…how big is that bucket, anyway?

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sip my coffee. I give a bit of attention to the pain in my neck, my back, my headache, and then move on; my thoughts are elsewhere. Here. Now. Just being. I’m not doing anything right now – other than making a point of noticing the stillness, and this moment, and writing a few words before letting stillness and quiet overtake me again. I exhale slowly, hearing my breath and noticing that the sounds of the ventilation, my breath, and my tinnitus all seem quite “the same volume”. I’m not certain they are, particularly considering the “sound” of my tinnitus isn’t a “real” sound at all – no one hears that but me.

I stretch, and sigh, and adjust the way I’m sitting in this rather uncomfortable office chair. It’ll be a day of it, though a short one. I see a new doctor today. For a moment I wonder how that will go, and whether I’ve chosen well or poorly. I put all that aside, again; the time is not now. “Now” is just this moment, here. Quiet. Still. Alone. It’s quite pleasant and… something else. Fulfilling? Satisfying? Peaceful. For a moment (this moment) there is no chaos. This is a chosen, deliberate, willful thing. I am choosing peace and order in this solitary moment. It isn’t much, as peace and order goes, and it surely does nothing noteworthy to improve the state of our messy chaotic terrifying world – but it is here, and now, and it is real. (No one is dying in this moment, in this place. Real peace. I’m choosing it. You can too. So can “they” – and by “they” I mean all those beyond these walls who are choosing to kill, or to send others to fight and kill and die. Those are most definitely choices and could be handled quite differently.)

I sigh quietly, annoyed to have let my thoughts slip from this moment to other moments, other places – other intentions. I pull my mind back, and begin again. Here. Now. This moment. This place. This feeling of peace and contentment and stillness.

Later this week The Author will visit me and my Traveling Partner, and I am eager to see him – it’s been too long. 2016? 2017? Something like that, I think. I remember his visit to help me move into #59… or was it the duplex? Was it both? He’s a good friend – willing to help with a move. Hell, he helped me move to Portland from Fresno, both of us driving vehicles not ideally up for that challenge. That’s friendship, right there. This has been an enduring friendship since we first met… 1996? I think so. He has visited me. I have visited him (though less often). I think about making a trip down his way maybe this Spring – if my Traveling Partner is up to being without me for a few days when that time comes. Could be fun. A chance to see many old friends, and renew those with shared moments and new memories. A worthwhile endeavor.

I smile and my thoughts move on. I look at the time, reluctantly. The work day calls for my attention. My coffee is almost gone. Daybreak is visible on the horizon, beyond the windows. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, winter

Willful Change Takes Effort

January 12, 2025 //
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I woke from restless dreams about change and started my day the usual way, more or less. The evening, yesterday, ended on an unfortunate contentious note that seemed neither necessary, nor helpful. I finally gave up on conversation and went to bed, feeling irritated and frustrated.

I managed to sleep, but my sleep was both unsatisfying and filled with strange dreams of things not turning out properly regardless of effort or attempts to fix things. I woke feeling glad to be released from my dream life.

View from the trailhead before dawn.

I got to the trailhead still fighting the fairly stupid very human urge to “prove my point”, left over from last night. That kind of horse-flogging, tail-chasing foolishness is an incredible waste of precious limited mortal lifetime. I snarl quietly at myself to let that shit go. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I roll my eyes in an unseen expression of exasperation, and sigh. Letting a moment of discord take over my thoughts and “live in my head” that way does nothing to add to my life, and it’s pretty fucking pointless, generally. Seeking to convince someone else of something that directly contradicts their experience or beliefs is unproductive.

Either, or. Neither, nor. Grammatical details matter most if the result affects meaning or understanding. The rest, I think, is a matter of style… but… language functions by agreement, does it not?

… I still catch myself doing a search of my written work for a turn of phrase and a keyword I’d been accused of not using (or not using correctly), and easily find dozens of examples, old and new. It’s neither rare nor used incorrectly, where I find it. On the other hand, to the point my Traveling Partner was making, it’s also not at all consistent and I often don’t bother with it. I write very much the way I talk, so it’s a given that in spoken conversation and day-to-day use, I’m certainly also quite hit or miss, and probably misusing grammar on this detail a lot. I sigh. Is he right? Is he wrong? Am I? Are we both? Are we neither of us specifically exclusively correct? The particular point of grammar involved really matters to him. Less so to me (aside from how much it matters to him).

“Emotion and Reason” 18″ x 24″ acrylic w/ceramic and glow details, 2012

I sigh to myself and let my vexation melt away. What matters most to me is how much I love this particular human being. Enough to work to change. Even to flex my style. There is work involved, especially because I just don’t actually personally care much about this particular point of grammar, myself (using”neither/nor” to support the negative most correctly vs lazily defaulting to “either/or” all the time). Being very grammatically correct on this point has often gotten me teased for sounding pretentious or stuck up, and I suspect that drove me to discontinue it in favor of a more relatable approachable conversational style. I think it over as I lace up my boots before I put the whole vexing thing aside to walk the trail.

… The things we do for love…

There’s a hint of daybreak in the paler gray of the pre-dawn sky. The moon has set, but I won’t need my headlamp for long. The chilly dampness of the marsh wraps me in mist and silence. It’s a good time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, Logic & Reason, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words
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