Archives for category: The Big 5
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Why Not Now?

January 10, 2023 //
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It’s the 10th of January. Not fancy as days on a calendar go, nothing splendid like the first of a new year, still… a good a day as any to make a change for the better, isn’t it? There’s an entire day ahead, suitable for making changes. Pick something, do the thing, see the result, refine the practice, and repeat. Easy. 😉

I woke this morning from an interrupted night’s sleep. The artificial “sunrise” of my alarm seemed to come too soon, and too brightly (although I opened my eyes just as it came on, and it comes on quite dim, so… perception vs reality can be quite subjective). I had the sense that I’d been awake, or awakened, often during the night. I felt groggy as I rose, showered, and dressed. I made it out the door without waking my Traveling Partner, or so it seemed. I know he also had a restless night. He woke me twice to tell me he was sleeping poorly, and managed to keep me “on alert” (without intending to, I’m sure) by fussing and swearing in the other room because he was having a rough night. At some point he must have returned to bed, because that’s where he was when I woke, and seemed to be sound asleep. I found myself more pleased that he was sleeping than I had been annoyed to be awakened, myself, and grateful to get out the door quickly and quietly to head to the co-work space.

I love working from home. The practical reality of it is, though, that sometimes in the early morning hours when my partner would like to be sleeping it can be a poor fit. The local co-work space works as a pleasant compromise without the tedious, time-consuming, and risky commute into the city. That’d be a miserable way to spend 15 hours every week if I had to do it daily. I sip my coffee feeling fortunate to have so many options, and the freedom to choose from them. So, here I sit in an office, sipping coffee. I’d rather be home…but only if that reliably meant enjoying my morning over my coffee at home comfortably without stress or fussing over whatever, and dealing with stress because one or the other of us had a bad night. I like “easy”. Like… a lot.

I remove a couple paragraphs. I lost the thread of my thoughts. I sip my coffee thoughtfully.

Winter mornings are not well-suited to early morning camera walks. The sun rises so much later in the morning that it encroaches on the start of my typical work day. Instead of waking to the earliest hint of daybreak sometime around 04:30 or 05:00, I wake to my artificial sunrise well before dawn. With this in mind I’m thinking about making my everyday practice to head directly to the co-work space every morning that I don’t go into the city (not just Tuesdays and Thursdays), and just let that be what it is until the dawn comes earlier, allowing me to grab my camera and hit the trails around and about first thing, before work. Once the sun is rising around 06:30 or earlier once again, I can go back to my happy practice of hitting the trail first thing with my camera, then returning home to get my work day started there after I know my partner is awake. This works really well most of the year.

I reflect on how nice it is that we support each other with such care, generally. Seems nice. Oh, we do struggle and fuss at each other over some fairly petty bullshit. We’ve got communication challenges because cPTSD is messy and my TBI is… challenging. We’re human. I get irked with him. He gets irked with me. That’s just real. Frustration and bullshit and baggage are parts of the human experience. We’re pretty fucking human. Sometimes it is easier to love each other from a bit of a distance. LOL

This morning I miss him. I reflect more on what works than on what doesn’t. I’m grateful for the love we share. Could I do better? Yes. Could he? Yes. Do we both need more practice? Yup. I smile thinking of him fondly without overlooking the practical realities of loving him. Love doesn’t need me to tell myself pretty lies or to whitewash my lived experience. Love is no happily ever after fairytale. It’s also not a tragedy. Love is love. Part of living life. It’s complicated and messy and sometimes needs more from me than I feel I have to give. My results vary.

I just keep practicing.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Cultivating an Agreeable Nature

January 2, 2023 //
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Is it worthwhile to “be nice”? Is it useful to “be approachable”? Is it possible to be kind and agreeable and still authentically the person I am “at heart”? Short answer; yes. I mean, that’s my opinion, and I’ve had good results making the effort to pivot from chronic sarcasm, day-to-day cynicism, and bitterness-as-humor, to something… “nicer”. That’s really it. The entire point. You can go have coffee or move on with your day. The rest is just more words. 😉

The tl;dr is that I see value in being pleasant in interactions with others. You may feel differently, or even be inclined to argue the point (but I won’t be taking the bait – I said what I said).

It can be damned difficult to maintain a façade of pleasantness or to force a smile, and a “customer service approach” doesn’t feel “authentic”, generally. The thing is, though, when I was a bit less kind, less pleasant, less approachable… I was also less fun to be around, less likely to be supportive, and more inclined toward being argumentative. Making a change in favor of being more “agreeable”, generally, and more pleasant has not stopped anyone else from continuing to be whoever they choose to be (and thus has not prevent some argumentative interactions with folks inclined to that behavior, though I do endeavor to avoid such interactions – and relationships). Sometimes it is difficult to be nice, kind, compassionate, understanding, and present. Sometimes it is effortless. If I am in pain it can be especially challenging to be my “best self”. Still worth the effort most of the time.

…And it is possible to learn to be nicer, kinder, more agreeable, more pleasant… it just takes a fuck-ton of practice…

My Traveling Partner pops in for a moment and reads the first sentence over my shoulder. “It’s better to be kind than to be right,” he says, “but you can be both.” He looks thoughtful and adds “…be kind first” as he moves on to other things.

Some people are unpleasant, disagreeable, or unkind. That’s not about me, and I don’t have to “drink the poison“, or “take the bait” – although I may need to exert an effort to walk away from bullshit now and then. Look, let’s just take “helping them change” or “fixing their issue” off the table right now – I know it’s tempting, but it’s not actually a thing (even within our relationships). They have to do their own verbs to become the person they most want to be, and maybe they think they’re just fine as they are? If who they are is giving you grief, that’s a mismatch in social values, not a troubleshooting scenario for you (or me) to fix – even if we find ourselves in a relationship with someone who “isn’t easy to be around”.

Similarly… maybe it’s you? Maybe you’re the asshole? (I know it has been me, more than once…) Are you really the person you most want to be? Do you actually want a reputation for being short-tempered, unkind, disagreeable, contrary, cranky, unapproachable, arrogant, terse, argumentative, or unpleasant? Does any of that actually sound good? (I bet it doesn’t.) We usually get around such things in our definitions of self by pointing our finger at someone else (or circumstances) and saying “they made me…”. (Provocation doesn’t excuse bad behavior. Just an fyi on that.) Making excuses for our short-comings doesn’t make our short-comings more acceptable – they just slow our progress toward being a better human being, as an individual, based on those things we can choose to do (or change) to be the best version of ourselves we can imagine from the perspective we’ve got. Another common “out” we reach for too often is that we were not “understood”. Were we not? Truly? Or are we just hoping to be off the hook for a moment of nastiness we really ought to sincerely regret, and move on from committed to doing better? The worst of the excuses is using straight up justification of our worst behavior, as in “I am taking this approach because it is necessary [to get a desired outcome].” (Is it, though? Really? Or are you just being an asshole because that’s less work for you, personally? Couldn’t you do better?)

Anyway. I am sipping my coffee and thinking about how to feel cranky without “being” cranky, and how to express frustration or anger without becoming the embodiment of my worst self, or taking a frustrated or angry tone with someone I love. Seems likely it can be done… I probably won’t solve that over a single cup of coffee but it sure seems worth considering. 🙂 It’s along the same line of thinking as “how do I survive trauma without becoming a monster?”, but that’s a very large puzzle and pretty much 100% of all of the words in this blog touch that one in some way, you know? Breaking down the big challenges into smaller challenges, and finding the small practical details that can become the loose threads that unravel this tangled mess is kind of the point of sitting here at this keyboard. 😀

It’s a whole new year opening up ahead of me. How will I use this mortal time to live my best life, and to be my best self? Where will this journey take me?

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Big 5

We Become What We Practice

December 26, 2022 //
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I am sipping my morning coffee (it’s good). It is the morning after Giftmas (it was lovely). Our holiday dinner was delicious (and ample). I am feeling fortunate (and grateful).

I slept better last night than I really expected to. My guts were churned up, rebelling against a “brunch” entirely of chocolate and coffee yesterday, followed by a heavy fairly rich meal at dinner time. I woke a couple times feeling a bit uncomfortable, not quite unwell. It passed. I even slept in a bit, and woke feeling pretty good generally, although aware of my arthritis in the background, and still bruised here and there from my fall on the deck on Giftmas Eve.

I haven’t made a firm plan for today. I probably ought to go to the grocery store… I’m not sure I feel like going out at all. I’m also not sure I don’t. Coffee first. Maybe some time reading by the fire? I am thinking about The Four Agreements. It was first suggested to me by my Traveling Partner. It’s clear that the recollection of them still exist in his thinking. Occasionally, he “calls me out” when I fail to practice one of them in our interactions together. I try to process such things as useful feedback, rather than kick up a fuss about it.

I’ve gotten a lot of really useful practical wholesome insight from The Four Agreements over the years, since I first read it in… 2010?

We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else.

Don Miquel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

Here’s the simple truth of everything we learn, and everything we do; we become what we practice.

Practice being calm? We become calm individuals over time. Practice being kind? Kindness becomes a hallmark of our decisions and thinking. Practice lifelong learning? We become educated as we gain knowledge. It is seriously that “simple” to change who we are, if we choose to do so – it’s a matter of practice, and time.

…Here’s the thing, though…

If we practice being angry? We become less able to manage anger appropriately (we become angrier more easily, more often). If we practice aggression? We become more aggressive. If we practice lashing out at others in moments of stress? Yep. You’re catching on; we do more of that, more often, more quickly – we get really “good at it”.

We each have the tools of change in our possession. We have more control over who we are (and therefore also more responsibility) than we may like to acknowledge. Doesn’t mean the journey is always easy. Doesn’t mean we’re in this alone. We live within the context of our circumstances, our relationships, our triggers, our biases – we are human. Personally, my own thinking on that is that this gives me choices – who do I most want to be? How do I practice that? My emotions may be a reaction to my experience, to the world around me, or to a person with whom I am interacting, but that doesn’t get me off the hook for managing those; they are mine. If I practice having tantrums? I will have tantrums. If I practice calm reflection and deep listening? My reaction to the world around me becomes characterized by calm, and consideration. Because I am so human, avoiding provocation can be quite difficult – but I know that even this is about practice. Like it or not, human primates are not entirely domesticated and can be dangerous under some circumstances… we really only ever “have control” of one of them – the one in the mirror. Limited control at best, too. Our practices matter.

It can be hard, sometimes, to practice The Four Agreements. They seem so easy, and I suppose they are easier than a lot of things – they just take practice. Rather a lot of it. (Worth it.)

It can be hard to practice The Four Agreements (or frankly, any personal growth practice) if someone I interact with routinely doesn’t share the basic values or at a minimum respect what I am hoping to do by practicing them. It’s harder still if there is someone in my day-to-day social group or community actively seeking to undermine my progress or growth. Over time, I’ve cut quite a few people loose who seemed invested in the most broken possible version of me. I think that’s the healthiest approach to toxic relationships; end them. That comes up in The Four Agreements, too:

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.

Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

The new year approaches. I’m thinking about who I am, who I most want to be, and what practices keep me on my path. We become what we practice. I smile when I think of how many times I have said that, written it down, read it back to myself – it’s a core idea (for me) in becoming the woman I most want to be. Beginning again is just a beginning (obviously) – it’s that stepping stone to the next bit of practice. We become what we practice. It’s not avoidable or negotiable. It is inevitable. Practice something – anything – long enough and it becomes characteristic of who we are. Good or bad.

Everything you have ever learned, you learned through repetition. You learned to write, to drive, and even to walk by repetition. You are a master of speaking your language because you practiced.

Don Miquel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

So… here’s a question that matters… What are you practicing? What effect does who you are have on the world around you? On your relationships? On people you say you love? Are you the person you most want to be? Maybe it’s time to reflect and make some changes to your practices?

Maybe it’s time to begin again?

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Change (Still) Is

December 11, 2022 //
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Change is. I could stop there – I’ve even said it before, in those words, on a cold, slushy winter morning, before I started out on my commute to work on that day. I’ve written so many posts about change, specifically, that I lost interest in counting just the ones with “change” in the title long before I reviewed even the past two years (more than 7 with some scrolling). LOL

A recent “change” – a tree came down during a recent storm. Sometimes we expect change, sometimes it catches us by surprise.

Today I woke in a good mood from a pretty unsatisfying night’s sleep. It’s not that the sleep I got wasn’t good quality – it was lovely, just not enough of it – it was more about failing to actually fall asleep until well-past midnight, and waking up quite early. The night before, a passing storm kept me awake – it was windy and noisy. I had plans though, sort of, and I got up, showered, dressed, and headed out as quietly as I could hoping to avoid waking my Traveling Partner. His sleep was interrupted too, and I knew he needed more; he’d asked me to start my day early (and elsewhere) so he could sleep in. I planned ahead; I put my camera and handbag together near the door, and had my coat ready for the likely chilling morning departure. I had a list of possible stops – fun and adventure, mostly, nothing serious or properly an “errand”, I was just heading up the road for a lark, with my camera and a list of places to stop, including some holiday reconnaissance.

I grabbed a coffee on the way and enjoyed the drive. Early on a Sunday morning there’s very little traffic. The morning was chilly – but also delightfully misty, without being really foggy or icy. It was a fun drive. I went… to the grocery store. LOL No kidding. That was my first stop; a bigger, fancier, more specialty-goods-oriented grocery store a couple towns up the road. I rarely go out of my way for the grocery shopping if I can avoid doing so, and it’s usually not at all necessary. This, though, this was just a fun outing. I walked up and down the aisles feasting my eyes on the vastness and selection, and ooh-ing and ah-ing over the holiday items. I bought a small quantity of real Prosciutto di Parma to use in holiday cooking. I picked up some excellent imported die-cut pasta that I know is really great in recipes. This wasn’t a day to buy “all the groceries”. This was an adventure! 😀

I went up the road further along, and visited another favorite-but-distant grocery. (Let’s be real; there’s very little open at 7 or 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning.) There, I walked the aisles wide-eyed by the selection, again. This time I had a couple items I had an eye out for, specifically, although my expectations were low. Still, I did okay. I picked up a big container of the household (domestic) favorite soy sauce I use in day-to-day cooking most of the time (hard to find closer to home). I even found…

Squirrel!

…I was going somewhere with this. Something to do with change, and adjusting to my new meds well and how nicely that’s working out so far… or something… my Traveling Partner comes in to check-in with me about my breathing. I check my oxygen. A few minutes later, he comes in again, same question. Then a third time. I feel myself start to get frustrated with the interruptions breaking my chain of thought. I breathe, exhale, and let that go. I turn my attention back to my writing… I “find the thread” and feel myself pulled into the flow of my thoughts…then… I feel his tender touch on my shoulder, and smile; I feel so loved. My brain is working out the end to the sentence in progress, just as my partner’s frustration with my lack of response boils over as harsh frustrated words. Fucking hell. I pull off my headset and turn to him; I’d gotten “stuck in my head” pretty quickly – it happens – and I hadn’t quite grasped that he was explicitly seeking to get my attention – to tell me communicating with me is easier on the new meds. God damn it. That is frustrating. (For me, too.)

He goes away frustrated and mad. I try to turn my attention back to what I was thinking about before I found myself thinking about this mess… I fail, so I write about that. Don’t know what else to do, besides begin again. We are such human creatures, full of failings and missteps. I imagine for a moment tripping over my own feet just trying to walk down the sidewalk – then I imagine picking myself back up again, and getting on with the walk. This is not the sort of thing worth becoming mired in or catastrophizing – and in that thought, I realize I’ve come back around to my point; change is.

Making even a subtle change (in medication, in behavior, in circumstances, in environment) can kick off a chain reaction of… changes, not all of those anticipated. Even in something so basic as how I communicate with my partner, or he with me. We’re both getting used to things. Most of it is quite good. Some of it is a bit strange or a tad awkward. So far, I haven’t noticed any “down sides”. Oh – one; I need to change the timing on one of my medications from before bed to first thing in the morning (which is the more common approach in for this one); I think that’s what may have been making it hard to fall asleep. It’s a small detail. Another change.

So, I breathe, and I pay attention, and I am patient with myself (and my Traveling Partner), and I let change be what it is. And I begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5

This is not About That

October 29, 2022 //
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Weird day. Weird week. I think one of the most challenging things about learning to manage my mental health and emotional stability over time has been also holding on to an understanding that I can do 100% of my best, make a ton of progress, gain resilience and emotional intelligence as an individual – and still struggle enormously in the context of any one relationship with another human being (who is on their own journey, having their own experience). It’s that parenthetical that gives it away, right? We’re each walking our own hard mile. Each having our own experience. It won’t matter much however much self-healing and emotional recovery from trauma I do in some relationships; that other person’s own pain and trauma is going to have a lot to say about how much we’re able to understand and enjoy each other. Sometimes that sucks. It’s certainly complicated. I can’t do much about another person’s journey besides doing my best to be a considerate fellow traveler.

I sit with that for a minute. Grateful to come as far as I have. Frustrated when it is clear that some days, in some interactions, the “us” is affected by elements outside my direct control. Yesterday (was it only yesterday? I check my email for confirmation, yep, yesterday), I had a seriously difficult day. Some of it was me. Physical pain sucks ass. Anxiety is a motherfucker. Expectations can throw a wrench into the best machinery and shut things down until the details of a shared understanding emerge. At the end of the day, yesterday, I took a minute to look at stats on this blog; I couldn’t recall if I had posted and if I had, whether I was just bitching pointlessly and creating new drama from old drama. Oddly, a different post had been linked as one that was viewed, and since I find it interesting where the curiosity of folks who read my blog may take them, I clicked the link to see what I had been writing about that day…

…You may recall that I’ve said I write for myself, as a way of reaching out to myself with hopeful reminders, and useful tips that I may one day lose track of…? Yeah, this was one of those lovely moments of serendipity, and the blog post that was linked seemed almost to speak directly to me now:

Don’t sit there being miserable, filled with frustrated rage, stalled, wounded, or oppressed. Choose something different… and yeah, maybe even if that means walking away from everything you have chosen before, to choose differently, with greater wisdom, with more self-reflection, with greater awareness, and more commitment to the person you most want to be.

…Maybe you need to hear this…? You did not “ruin everything”. You are not “a complete fuck up”. You are not “the reason all of this went wrong”. You are neither master of the universe nor the single cause of all the world’s ills. You just aren’t. You aren’t that significant, actually. Neither are you unimportant. You matter. You just aren’t to blame for every fucking thing. Ever. Let that shit go? If nothing else changes, today, in this moment, you can choose to let  that shit go…

…Yeah. Wow. A bit on the nose, and I really really needed to hear that – and I needed most to hear it from me. I’m pretty fucking hard on myself, sometimes. Far more so than is necessary. Too often I internalize someone else’s emotional experience, take it completely personally, getting more hurt and more angry and more painfully aware that they (may) be taking something I’ve said or done quite personally themselves…without seeing my own error. Messy. Messy…human…and fairly fucking stupid. I mean…yeah. Easy mistake to make, and once a human primate is convinced that someone has wronged them, it’s fucking hard as hell to get them to walk that back and reflect on the part they played themselves in how things went sideways. I’m not pointing fingers here – I’m talking about me. Why would I be breaking this down if it were actually about what some other person did or said? The most I can do about that is bitch about it. If I focus my thoughts on my own words and actions, and reflect on the differences between those and what I might expect from the woman I most want to be, I may be able to understand myself more deeply – and do better.

…Let’s be super clear on an important detail, though; I’m not trying to be the best version of me that anyone else has in mind. I just want to be the best version of me that I can, myself, envision. She’s probably still not “perfect” – and I’m quite certain some of the things I like most about her won’t at all be what anyone else wishes I would become. I’m okay with that. It’s me that I have to satisfy. When I look back on this life, the only scorecard that counts is the one in my own hand. “Was I the best person I could be? Did I make time for the people I love? Did I do some good in the world? Was I the woman I most want to be?”

…Moving on…

I woke this morning wanting to paint. I finally got around to it shortly after 2 p.m. My Traveling Partner wanted to hang out, and our mortal time together is too brief, so I put off painting to hang out. I’m not sure that was 100% my best decision-making… I tend to fall short on self-care first, and where I currently am mental/emotional health-wise, I need this time with a canvas in front of me and a brush in my hand. Fuck I love that guy, though, and he’s got his own stress to wade through. I definitely want to be there to give him the support he needs when he needs it. As individuals we are so… similar and also so different, it’s easy to get taken-over by each other’s emotions. We are definitely at very different “mile markers” on our journey, and neither one of us has a map. Complicated. There are verbs involved.

My head is full of inspiration, sitting here in my studio. My painting playlist is loaded up and my ears are filled with yet another layer of inspiration. In spite of the stress of the week that is ending, I feel hopeful and grateful. It’s a good life, in spite of my challenges. I’m fortunate to be where I am in life these days. I’m aware of how fleeting good fortune can be and I do my best to stay humble and to prepare for whatever may lie ahead on life’s journey. For me, though, hope and joy and love and gratitude are rarely the well-spring of my artistic inspiration; these feels are so much more than enough on their own. It’s the hard stuff, the darker stuff, the hurts, the trauma, the tedium, the tears, the unexpressed anger that so often push me to my studio. Funny… how is it those are the things that seem so hard to express “appropriately”? Canvas and paint = no censorship, no excuses, no holding back. Art doesn’t have to worry much about being polite in good company, or taking care not to hurt the feelings of others. It can just be what it is. Strangely, even knowing this about myself, what hit the canvas today, so far, has been very much about this tiny hopeful flame that ignited within me very recently. It’s complicated (what isn’t?). I don’t know quite what sparked it, and I very much don’t want to extinguish it. So… I tend “my hearth” and look after my heart, and I take some time to put on canvas what I can’t put into words so easily.

…She’s not finished yet…I don’t know what to expect from her once she is. She’s a late addition to a series I’ve been painting for awhile. You get to see her “first” (well, after my Traveling Partner, who looked in on my progress a few minutes ago from the shores of his own journey).

“Every Dawn a Beginning” 12″ x 12″ acrylic on canvas w/glow, glitter, and resin details. 2022

It’s time to begin again. Again. May there ever be a new beginning.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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