Archives for category: The Big 5
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Darkness Comes, Darkness Goes

March 30, 2017 //
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Yesterday was an intense roller-coaster ride of emotions.Shortly before midday I hit a low point. Not an everyday lull in my enthusiasm, or a mildly blue moment – I was overtaken by darkness, and feeling an almost suicidal level of despair. This is not an exaggeration; I know what that feels like, and what those words really mean. It took me my surprise. It took me over. While I struggled in the sticky mess, tangled in despair, and unable to find any fucks to give, a soft defeated inner voice tried her hardest to pull me back. “This is emotion; it lacks substance unless you give it substance.” “Begin again.” “This will pass.” I not only didn’t give a fuck, I couldn’t remember at all why I should. Bleak.

As I arrived home from what, in the moment, seemed like a fairly pointless waste of time (my annual physical), I let my Traveling Partner know I would be going offline to take care of myself and to avoid spreading my vile mood like plague. He offered understanding, compassion, and support. He cracked a tender understanding joke. He’s having his own experience, and as much as I am able, I return that loving support, and endeavor not to “weaponize” my emotional experience. I approach the apartment, already prepared for the person with the pressure washer cleaning the building exterior and sidewalks; the landlady alerts me of these things, these days, in advance so that I am not taken by surprise. I find room for gratitude and appreciation, but it does nothing to lift my mood.

I sat down with a cup of coffee, a notepad, and an attentive eye and begin making a list of the housekeeping details I would like to handle. The list grows. I begin weeping intermittently. I don’t make any effort to stop it. I just don’t care. I pause, aware for a moment with more than usual clarity that I am indeed in A Very Bad Place and that steps are in order. I remind myself to let my friends next door that I’m in that bad place, and to check on me later “if things sound too quiet” or… just because. I don’t get the chance; my phone nags at me briefly to attend to a message from them. We end up hanging out and talking about… house work. Room mate drama over housekeeping is such a mundane real-life challenge of adulthood that it’s no surprise to hear that there are such challenges next door… and… I’m preparing for my own afternoon of housekeeping, facing some loose similarities in dealing with the woman in the mirror, who I hadn’t noticed had been slacking off a bit. I also hadn’t noticed I’d dropped my highly effective habit of making a to do list each day. What the hell? When did that happen?

As we converse, I mention I figured I’d been a little overly casual about the housekeeping, myself, for… “about two weeks, maybe”. I flipped back in the notepad on which I was making a new list. Nope. A month. A month ago I’d stop making lists. Just… stopped. Damn it. I laugh. My friends laugh with me. We drink coffee together. We talk about chores. We talk about the way our inner narrative and our assumptions change our perspective. We talk about “theory of mind” and how we tend to assume people generally think as we do, know what we know, and make decisions in the same way. We walk about compassion. We talk about explicit communication. We talk about boundary setting. We talk about life – and we talk about The School of Life (great videos!) We lift each other up through affection community and conversation. When they leave, I feel… able to go on.

“Go on” is exactly what I do; I get on with the housework. I tidy. I organize. I clean. I really clean. My mood begins to lift. Details that were dragging me down, in the background, begin to lift me up as the apartment takes on that well-cared for, detailed, tidy, orderly appearance that I love. Small tasks, large tasks, general tidying, deep cleaning – all of it matters if I am “feeling disordered”. Each task lovingly handled from start to finish, satisfying once completed, builds the foundation for the task that follows.

An hour or so of connected social interaction, and another hour or so of household chores, my mood completely turned around. I felt connected, present, and capable. The bleakness and despair of the morning were behind me. By the end of the day the apartment feels great. It is tidy and clean and orderly. I like order. It gives me a rest from the chaos still lurking within.

Today? Today I begin again. 🙂

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A Day for Me

March 29, 2017 //
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I took today off. I didn’t plan to be sick, I just planned to take the day off for my annual physical and some downtime. I scheduled a hair appointment (to have the wild lavender and pink and green that it is now refreshed before an upcoming concert). Later, I unscheduled the hair appointment, remembering to be frugal while I house hunt; the funds will be needed, more than likely. I re-planned the day to do some “go sees” of new listings in the afternoon. Yesterday, I canceled that too. I’m sick. I will just go get my physical, and come home and sip tea and read, I suppose…

…Nope. My plans are over-turned by the rental management here in the community. It is, apparently, “inspection time” again. (Please imagine me rolling my eyes irritably at this point right here.) I don’t have much to do to be ready, but I have canvases out in my studio, and I’ll just fret about the stupid inspection if I don’t spend an hour tidying up a bit, regardless. So. I guess I’m getting my physical and coming home to housework. The inspections are on Thursday. I won’t be home. I’ll have already taken today off from work, and can’t cut into my work hours further without putting time-sensitive work at risk of not being completed. It makes me uncomfortable to have anyone in my space when I’m not home, these days (other than my Traveling Partner), and the last time my landlady was in my apartment on a day I wasn’t at home? Yeah, I was burglarized. I’ve lost trust, and feel anxious about having her in my apartment in my absence. Work from home? I wish. The work I’ll specifically be doing is much more handily done with the vast acreage of widescreen dual monitors connected to the network directly than it can be at home on a laptop screen connected through VPN. I’m just going to have to adult this one. I’m annoyed by that, but not unprepared. I managed to avoid letting it keep me awake last night… mostly. I got 4 and a half hours of sleep. :-\

I woke mostly clear-headed, head still stuffy, lungs not yet congested (yay!), and still willing to embrace life as a goodness. That’s something. Today is  not the day I planned. (It often isn’t.) It is, however, a day out of the office, with a little more than typical looseness to it. I remind myself that this irritant (the inspection) is just one of the many small things driving me so urgently to find my own place – really my own, as in “homeowner”.  The inspection (for me) is a nothing event, anyway; I live a tidy, quiet, gentle life, and take good care of this space. The inspection never amounts to more than a casual walk-through, I just won’t be here, which really creeps me out. So. I’m inconvenienced and uncomfortable. I’ll get over it.

I am my own cartographer on life’s journey. There is no rule book, no map, no user’s guide for being human. We are each having our own experience. The map is not the world. The day… is not the plan. I’m still okay right now. 🙂

 

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A Bit of Human

March 28, 2017 //
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I got through most of the work day pretty well, yesterday. By noon I was fading fast, losing cognitive efficiency and clarity of thought quickly, with a viral-seeming sort of headache plaguing me quite continuously. I “called it” at 3:30 pm and headed for home a bit earlier than I typically would. I arrived home, stood in a hot shower for a while. Figured chicken soup would work for dinner. Couldn’t eat. Just had no appetite, and didn’t care. I went to bed about an hour or so after I got home, expecting to have a restless night, or be up again sometime later unable to sleep.

I woke to the alarm, at the usual time. Headache is gone. I feel alert, and generally okay. My head is a little stuffy, but not unmanageably so. I sit down with my coffee wondering how long this will take to fully run its course, pleased that it isn’t worse than it is, and glad that I took a Benadryl last night – it gets some credit for the long night of relatively deep sleep.

I scroll through my Facebook feed and then back out of that. There is a lot of anger in the world, and justifiably so in the face of new heights of government cruelty and societal bullshit. Is it really new, though? Nope. It’s really got our attention, now, though. People are really objecting to it, and are no longer willing to shrug it off, disappointed, disillusioned, and exhausted by lack of change. Social change that happens slowly over time often goes mostly unnoticed. Social change through protest, dissent, and private emotion in public places – “wearing our anger out loud” – is change through upheaval, and it definitely gets noticed. It creates a grand “conversation” between groups. It gets heated. Families get torn apart. Tribes are formed. Friendships end. Friendships are forged. It’s a time of change. From my own perspective, my best possible choice through it all is simply to be who I authentically am, on this personal journey to be that person most skillfully, most honestly, and with my choices and my will focused on my Big 5 (respect, consideration, reciprocity, compassion, and openness). It’s less about being right than it is about listening deeply and learning more… about being. If I can be a better person tomorrow than I am today, I am content that I am making progress toward being the person I most want to be, over time. If we were each committed to being the best possible human being we have the ability to be, it would be a good start on a peaceful world… right?

Right?

Right? Nah. Probably not. Most people already think they are “one of the good guys” with no further self-reflection at all, never considering the consequences of their actions on others. Tons of people are hung up on their own righteous ideology, their own opinions-as-fact, their own take on the world. We’re fancy primates; we don’t give up easily on our own bullshit.

Today is a good day to really listen to “the other side” of a discussion – however many other sides there are. Today is a good day to listen deeply, to consider other ideas than my own, and to make room in my awareness to understand the thinking of others. Today is a good day to accept the premise that we are each “doing our best”, generally, as we understand it ourselves. Today is a good day to ask illuminating questions – not to “win” an argument, but to truly illuminate my own thinking, and inform my understanding of the world more broadly, with greater wisdom and perspective. Today is a good day to maintain an awareness that we are each having our own experience. There is more to learn.

Today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

Slow to Start

March 27, 2017 //
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Weird morning. Restless night. I’m struggling to wake up fully. I’m feeling a bit uninspired by the day ahead – which is completely unfair to a day that is not yet started. There’s no knowing from this vantage point what the day may hold. I remind myself to give it a chance, and contentedly (if somewhat groggily) sip my coffee.

Rain-soaked park

The rain fell steadily yesterday. There is rain in today’s forecast, too. My perspective on rainy days sometimes changes, dependent on “having to” go out in it, or “getting to” go out in it. My hike yesterday, through the rain-soaked park, was lovely and I greatly enjoyed it. I’m less enthusiastic about my commute to work on rainy mornings. It’s odd that there is any difference in my appreciation for the rainy walk, considering I like both the walking, and the rain.

My wee container garden 

I spent some time in the garden, weeding potted miniature roses, taking note of winter losses, and planting some greens. I didn’t mind the steady drizzle then, any more than I minded on my morning walk. The sound of the wind-chime, and the musical ping of raindrops on the flue cover was delightful. I considered what the future holds for my wee garden, when I move to a home of my own… these roses have always been potted, except for one. I am eager to see them grow into the earth, and reach for the sky, once planted in beds and borders. What will I use the containers for, then? An unanswered question without any urgency to carry along with me while I look at houses, and consider each in the context of being my own.

The weekend is behind me, now. Another busy work week begins. I sip my coffee and consider what I can easily do to support myself today. Slow to wake up, and feeling sort of cross, still feeling some cold symptoms (that have still not become anything more noteworthy)… It seems a good day to treat myself well, and with consideration… How best to do so is the only question, now. How to similarly treat others well is another worthy question to consider.

One task after another, one question after another, one moment after another, the morning begins to take shape, and from there, the day. Today it’ll have to be enough to do my best, and to be considerate. We are each having our own experience. It’s a very human one.  🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Soft Gray Morning

March 26, 2017 //
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The busy-ness of life finally caught up with me. Cold symptoms that I woke with yesterday morning seem no worse today, nor are they diminished. Fatigue yesterday resulted in hours of napping, and an early bed time. I didn’t sleep particularly deeply, but my sleep was satisfying and uninterrupted. I managed a few minutes more than 8 hours and woke feeling deeply rested, in minimal pain. Skillful self-care today should result in being fully rested and prepared for another week of work. It’s not fancy, but it is sustainable. I sip my coffee contentedly and begin to plan my day.

I take a break from writing (and day planning) to meditate, and sip coffee watching the soft gray dawn slowly becoming a lighter shade of rainy gray morning. I return to my writing unmeasured minutes later, but the lush green of the lawn and the dark green-black of the pine silhouetted against the gray morning sky continue to pull my eye from my writing to the window, and the world beyond this quiet space. I continue to sip my coffee contentedly. This moment, right here, is a very nice one, and I am enjoying it fully, and without criticism, judgement, or negative self-talk.

Just beyond the window, the soft gray dawn.

Yesterday I shared a visit to the nearby Farmer’s Market with a friend. She was having a tough time with her emotions and reached out for support. We took time for coffee, conversation, and strolling the market together. She talked about life, love, frustrations, and yearning for… something. I listened. She asked questions, I offered perspective – mine (it’s all I have). We deepened our friendship and our connection as we walked and talked and shared the morning. It feels good to count her as a friend. She is in a very young place in life (no surprise; she’s not yet 21) and feels adrift in a sea of choices and misinformation. No rule book on this playground. No map on this journey. We are each having our own experience. She is as wholesome as any 21st century girl-next-door can be, and filled with the turmoil and power of reactivity, passion, and emotion. She’s very human. We both are. It was time well-spent, and part of life’s curriculum for me as much as it may be for her; I sometimes struggle to build healthy friendships with other women (the chaos and damage being what it is).

The rest of the day unfolded quietly as a series of naps, and interludes of wakefulness that were relaxed and easy. It was a good day for it. I’m in less pain today, more rested, and don’t feel sicker. I’m satisfied that my choices met my needs. This morning will probably lead a similarly quiet easy day of housekeeping, meditating, and reading, as the gray spring sky spatters the windows with raindrops, and the last cold breezes lingering from winter toss the trees and the wind chime. No doubt later I will see geese and ducks, jays and crows, and my squirrel neighbors visiting the feeders as I sip coffee; it is still too early, now, for any of that besides me sipping coffee. 🙂

For now, I linger over my morning coffee unready to begin any daytime activities that require more of me. It’s that quiet time between waking and doing. The rain begins to fall more heavily, and I find myself regretting that I’ve no firewood, although it is not actually cold enough for that to make sense… It would be pretty. 🙂 I watch the rain fall beyond the window. It’s pretty out there too, just… wet. I laugh out loud in the quiet stillness of my studio; I am fearless about rain. I enjoy the rain. It’s a good morning to hike the level paved trail of the park beyond my window, and I settle on a hike as a lovely start to the day. The welcome-home embrace of a warm shower afterward will feel luxurious and sensuous. The morning begins to take shape in my thoughts.

Today is a good day to hike in the rain, to laugh with a friend, and to take care of this fragile vessel.  Today is a good day for self-care, and for living in this moment right here. Today is a good day to practice being the person I most want to be. While I can’t be certain these small things will change the world, they seem a good place to begin again. It’s enough. 🙂

 

 

 

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