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Road Signs and Highlight Reels

December 29, 2013 //
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I woke early this morning, filled with a sense of purpose, and slightly concerned I might have ‘overslept’. It was 6:00 am. I didn’t feel rushed, but I also didn’t want to, so I remained committed to the purposeful moment, and moved through my morning routine contentedly. It was the start of an excellent Monday… only… today is Sunday.

I’m still contented; early mornings don’t distress me. I slept well after a couple difficult nights, and a day of illness, and feeling both well-rested and ‘well’, it is a lovely morning thus far.

I took time to meditate, and my yoga practice felt relaxed and deep, and I was patient with myself. I enjoyed the satisfaction of doing a couple new asanas with fluidity and grace, having practiced them enough now to be able to do them without refreshing my memory immediately before doing them.  One of my partners had been pointing out how much bad posture was also causing elevated stress (through physical discomfort) and I added a couple of asanas to my yoga sequence specifically to help improve my posture, overall. It’s been helping. I also got my eyes checked – because by far the most common scenario for my bad posture is ‘hunched over the computer/my laptop’.  I did indeed need new glasses.  Just knowing my eyesight is a factor in my posture, and thus my pain and stress levels, I adjusted my settings on my laptop so that everything is a tad bigger and easier to read. 5 years ago, having to take such an action would have peeved me for days, and caused me to feel very blue over ‘aging’. This year, it was really a pretty matter-of-fact thing, without stress. Why wouldn’t I take advantage of the user preference settings in my own computer to suit my current needs? Anything else would be…ridiculous. I’m eager to have my new glasses, too.

Somewhen during this morning’s meditation, thoughts of road signs [on life’s journey] and highlight reels [of life’s important moments] drifted through my consciousness. I observed them, as words and ideas, and let them drift on by. They lingered in the background, wanting to be considered later, and here I am considering them.

It would be pretty convenient if life did have ‘road signs’, wouldn’t it? “Abrupt Change Ahead” for life’s unexpected challenges, perhaps, or “Caution: Slow Self ” for those groggy mornings? We try so hard to benefit from the wisdom of others, and with such limited success, sometimes. Is that a lack of trust? Is it a lack of understanding that the experiences of others may be truly relevant to our own? Is it a misplaced sense of our uniqueness to the detriment of our similarities? Is it a lack of will competing with the possibility that even those acts or qualities that do not serve us well, may serve us somehow? I find myself wondering if I can somehow imagine those ‘missing road signs’ as I experience my now – by inserting a gentle “Yield” sign in those moments of stress before escalation, or a bold “Stop” sign in that breath before saying just the wrong thing? If I could, would I mind them or disregard them? That got me wondering… am I a ‘good citizen’ in my own experience? I suspect that last one could easily amount to an entire day’s thinking…

Highlight Reels are something totally different, but still somehow potentially instructive and cautionary. I often explore a montage of relevant memories when I tackle life’s curriculum. New lessons often prove to be significantly less ‘new’ than I experience them to be initially, and there is value in considering prior opportunities to have applied the lesson facing me, as well as considering what future opportunities there may be.  There is also value in contemplating past successes – with precisely what I am learning, and things that are quite different in some way.

When do those ‘road signs’ become paralyzing anxiety? When do ‘highlight reels’ become self-deprecatory or punishing rumination full of futility and despair?  If the most useful question is not ‘when?’… what is it?

Not even a thousand words, and no pictures, and I notice the morning wearing on gently. It’s 8:00 am, and although it is a Sunday, I hear a partner making coffee in the kitchen. This morning’s words are more words in a recreational way than words with any urgently serious intention. Casual words. Reflective words. Neither road signs nor highlights – just words.  I will set them aside, and return to the immediate and beautiful ‘now’. 🙂

Today I am compassionate. Today I am content. Today I am changing the world. Sundays are good days for change.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, winter, women, Words

Smiles and Memories

December 27, 2013 //
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I love making new wonderful memories. I also enjoy smiles. This year’s Yule holiday had plenty of both. Quite a nice holiday. If I were still a child I would excitedly list off ‘all the things I got’, and it would be a short – and very satisfying – list. The best gift this year was unquestionably the good company, the low stress level, and the ease with which events and time flowed. A lovely holiday. I’m still smiling.

I'm still smiling...so is this thing. :-)

I’m still smiling…so is this thing. 🙂

One of the most delightful things about this year’s holiday is the strange stuffed animal one of my partners gave me this year. It was perched on the sofa, in the evening, unexpectedly. Its big happy smile has, since then, reliably evoked my own smile. It speaks to me beyond the mechanical “Merry Christmas” message it plays when I push it’s button. Big wide-open eyes, a friendly approachable smile…I have realized more than once since it showed up that I was carrying it about the house with me. lol. The simple delight of a smile is hard to overstate.

This year really wasn’t about ‘stuff’*. This year was also one of the most lovely winter holidays I’ve enjoyed. Good fun and good company, and it rather seemed as if everyone brought the very best bits of who they are.

I looked over my ‘Best of 2013’ results on my Facebook profile. Wow. A year of growth, of change, and so much to cherish and be grateful for. I am struck by how much there is to enjoy in life, even at the toughest times. I’m grateful for so many opportunities to grow, and to be heard.

Soon enough the year with end, and the New Year will commence – with or without fanfare, time passes. Time – so much and so little of it. I hope I am able to use what I have wisely.

This morning I hurt. I’ve a headache and a stuffy head. My arthritis is making me stiff, and I feel grumpy listening to the ‘snap crack pop’ and crunch of arthritic bones as I slowly work on regaining my mobility for another day. I slept badly. Really badly. I think back on yesterday and wonder… did I really have 4 quad lattes yesterday? Did I really have one of them past 4:00 pm? Am I really surprised that I didn’t sleep well? The house seems noisy, although I don’t find anything specific to pinpoint as noisier or louder than usual. I have an appointment and I am up earlier than I need or want to be. I’m hormonal and cross with the world, and vaguely resentful to also be aware that it is all pretty inconsequential stuff.  None of this has to be any more important right now than words on a page. I could choose to escalate my irritation to ire, and perhaps from there to anger or even rage… really, though, I’d rather not. It’s managing to be a pleasant enough morning in spite of pain, fatigue, and hormones, as I sit here in the quiet with my coffee.

I find myself wondering about ‘is’.  This lovely morning could be so easily derailed with a few poor choices. ‘Is’ it a good day – or a bad day? How much of that do I really choose, on any given day, at any given moment? What is the difference – really – between a day when I hurt, and hurting doesn’t matter, and a day when I hurt that becomes a day when all that matters is the pain I can’t seem to escape? Is it ‘choice’? What are the choices that make the difference?

So many of us struggle with so much… and I often see people dear to me struggling, and want to say ‘choose differently!’, but even in the moment I recognize these are not helpful words to hear, however helpful taking the action of making difference choices might be.

This morning I am looking for opportunities to make choices that have more desirable outcomes. Today I am learning to be more compassionate with myself, and less judgmental. Today, I am asking good questions and enjoying the beauty offered in each moment. Today I am changing the world.

 

*I did get some very cool “stuff” this year, though, and I would not want to diminish the thoughtful generosity of my loves this year.  They obviously know my heart.  I even stepped a little further into the 21st century by embracing eBooks at long last. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, winter

Sometimes It’s Like This…

December 22, 2013 //
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This morning I woke up with pain. Some sort of weirdness yesterday afternoon with a nasty cramp in my right calf, after a long Solstice walk in the forest, that lingers this morning as unexpected pain associated with some specific movements. It hurts in the background as a dull ache until I do something ‘just the wrong way’ and it reminds me with a moment of acute agony that it doesn’t plan to be so easily dismissed.  Still, I woke in a good mood and I was pleased to find that walking on a flat surface is one of the more comfortable things I can be doing – which made making coffee this morning relatively easy and not particularly painful. So…good mood…good coffee… time for a good morning. Right? Oh. Wait – there’s more!

I had an irksome moment with technology this morning when I sat down with my laptop (note to self – please, PLEASE, do take time to meditate every day before anything else, it does make that much difference!). My mouse wasn’t working. I did the troubleshooting, rebooted the laptop, still no mouse. I replaced the mouse battery, no mouse. Rebooted again – finally, I have a living mouse. But… for some reason using it ‘feels weird’. Sluggish. Like the buttons are not as responsive. I become aggravated, I fight it. I struggle to set aside my frustration – and the background irritability that stems from a loving partner pointing out just last night that I’m due for a better mouse – one that doesn’t shine a laser in his eyes every time I thoughtlessly lift the mouse while pointed in his general direction. At that moment, I was really liking my mouse – it’s a pretty one. Right now I’m just frustrated with it and wanting to smash things… but the wanting to smash things is not solely the fault of the mouse. There’s more.

I use online services. Many people do, these days. Some services require strict authentication and identity verification – like banks – and while I value that they do, and appreciate the good security, I also find that during the holiday season, it can be a huge irritating bit of inconvenient bullshit. Yep. Total bullshit. I managed to ‘lock up’ an account on such a service by starting and then canceling a transaction. Yep. I just wanted to see if there would be a fee – and the fee structure is not easily available to view, making it easier to start the transaction, get to that point to see if there is a fee (and what it is) and then cancel the transaction if it is not worth paying that fee… generally not an issue. Today, it locked up my account and generated a dismally polite email advising me that ‘all’ I have to do is re-verify ‘a few’ ‘simple’ account details – by snail mail.  I call this ‘a service I am unlikely to use again’. The amount of frustration generated, and the resulting emotional volatility and rage are actually just not worth dealing with at all. My immediate reaction is ‘I won’t use this service anymore’. My strategy for getting my morning back on track is ‘take a few deep breaths and meditate’.

I am easily frustrated by dealing with banking, with frustration, with technology failures, with deviations from simple routines – they hit me hard, and momentarily disable me with a sudden increase in emotional volatility and a sudden loss of cognitive skill (or a perception of it). I very much doubt that online businesses, or application developers, spend much time thinking about how changes to their products affect the small number of people who do have challenges with brain injuries or cognitive challenges. Something as simple as changing the authentication process can be frustrating for anyone, but for me that bit of frustration can set off an avalanche of anger, confusion, and emotion that turn the simplest task into something almost unachievable in seconds. It sucks.

I’ll take a pleasant moment for gratitude – it is surprisingly comforting to remember how much worse an experience like this used to feel when I didn’t know why I reacted the way I did, or why it seemed so much more challenging for me than it seemed for ‘other people’. I’m grateful that I found out about my brain injury.  It’s easier now – at least, it is easier to ‘find my way home’ to a place of balance and calm, again. More like a storm, less like climate change. 🙂

It’s actually a pretty good morning, now that the irksome bit is behind me. My coffee is cold, and my leg hurts, but… it’s only pain and cold coffee. Nothing to cry about. Certainly no need to smash things over it. Wow. What a difference mindfulness makes! Yep, still human – but I am human; I use tools.

This guy is mindful, and living in his moment.

This guy is mindful, and living in his moment.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, winter

This Is Entirely Different

December 21, 2013 //
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Well, or maybe it isn’t.

Actually, it is.  I’ve written ‘this post’ six times, now. Each very different, written on a different theme, a different emotional voice, a different perspective, expressing very different needs, or understandings of the world around me, or my own life. It’s an odd morning that way. I’ve been up since 6 am, and after some meditation and a bit of yoga, I have been sipping my coffee and writing.  This post is entirely different from the previous versions.  It’s a strange morning and while I feel moved to communicate…I’m not sure what I want, or need, to say.

There’s a meme trapped in my thoughts. It drifts around Facebook regularly, it comes from somewhere…unknown to me in the moment. Words over a picture, the usual thing…the 3 questions meme – quote? “Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said by me?  Does this need to be said by me, now?”  I do love some good questions. I woke with these words in my head, but juxtaposed over a troubling dream that seemed very unrelated to the words.

I dreamt I was dangling from the Burnside Bridge, holding on by my hands, everything slick from a drenching rain that was falling. I pleaded with a man on the bridge to pull me up – I felt fear and desperation, and a panicked certainty that falling would be the end.

The Burnside Bridge

The Burnside Bridge

The man in my dream was a lover, or husband, or  father…someone dear to me, someone I could count on, someone I expected to assist and support me.  My pleading went nowhere helpful.  My potential rescuer seemed unaware of the urgency of my situation, looking vaguely thoughtful and caught up in his own thoughts, his own moment.  I repeated my plea, my hands were wet with both rain and sweat, and it was so hard to hold on.  The man above me looked down on me and politely said he would be happy to help, of course, but first he wanted to give me some feedback…

I woke to that ‘feeling of falling’ that dreams sometimes end with, feeling quite terrified, heart pounding, short of breath to the point of panting – and very very happy to be quite alive and not actually falling to my death in the icy December waters of the Willamette River.

I meditated. I let the dream go. I wrote. It came back. I wrote different words and dispelled my demons. They returned moments later. I wrote more different words, changed my thoughts (alright, Brain, nothing to see here, move along…), and continued to write, erase, rewrite – again the dream returned. I decided, finally, fuck it. Write about the weird dream and see where it goes. It doesn’t go anywhere, really, why would it? It was a dream. One of those intense, not-quite-a-nightmare sort of dreams that I generally accept as my sleeping mind attempting to communicate something to my waking mind – it is an endeavor of limited successfulness, and largely due to the difficulties with words.  This particular attempt seems to be pointing me toward considering emotions, words, and what matters most in the present moment. Differences between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’, perhaps, or a reminder that we each have our own needs in the moment, in life, in love… or… perhaps something entirely different.

Now it is morning, the household begins to wake. The day is all potential from this vantage point, and dreams are behind me, lost in the night. Today is a good day to love gently. Today is a good day to be compassionate with myself, and with others. Today is a good day to experience joy, and contentment, and to accept struggle with compassion. Today is a good day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, winter, women, Words

Just One Thing

December 19, 2013 //
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Yesterday I spent the day gently, most of it, on mindful service to the small creatures in my life. I spent hours on aquatic gardening: doing a water change in my community tank, some pruning, planting, tidying things up, acclimating the new tetras that have been in quarantine, and generally spending the larger part of the day with the fish.  It was soothing and serene, and I definitely needed to support my inner stillness after a morning of unexpected turmoil.  Tending the aquarium was a good choice to get back on track and feeling calm and balanced.

The secret life of shrimp.

The secret life of shrimp.

It was a moment of shared humor to find myself discussing the aqua gardening, and commenting that I doubted there were any shrimp surviving, since I simply never see them…I gestured to the tank and…there’s a shrimp, right up front! LOL I took a moment to snap a picture, because I wanted to be sure later that I didn’t doubt my recollection of having seen him. 😀  All that cleaning and moving things around must have disturbed any shrimp in the community. I found several more lurking quietly in the Java fern. 🙂

What made yesterday sort itself out in such a wonderful way wasn’t heartfelt apologies, or emotional ‘laying down of arms’, or occupying time in spaces away from conflict, although those things generally help.  For me, it was more about taking time to be deeply engaged in a favored activity, a needful task of some complexity, that I gave my entire attention to for a while to a ‘greater good’. Mindful service. In this case, mindful service to my own needs, and my aquarium. Simple gardening on some level, and gardening is something I know puts my heart and head right, when I take the time to allow it, to pursue it, and to invest in the good in it.  (Experience tells me I could pay lip service to the idea of ‘mindful service’ and just go through some motions, and perform tasks to completion, while investing in being hurt and angry, and get nothing in return but a sense of futility and resentment – will and intent matter; results also require action.)

The day was a good one, morning challenges passed quickly, comfortably, and were quickly forgotten. That’s more progress, and it feels like something I can begin to count on. 🙂  I admittedly enjoy tallying up the improvements in emotional resilience, reductions in volatility, new tools, new skills, new experiences of living in a general state of contentment, and comfort within myself…it’s been a year (368 days) since my sense of self began to unravel in a terrible way, a process that took weeks, consumed the holiday experience, and ultimately found me as only a shell of myself, considering choosing to end my own life… What a difference a year can make!  I don’t discuss those dark days in any detail with people, even people I love very much; too much pain to share, too few words to express it without sharing the pain more than the understanding. I feel hopeful that those days are well behind me now, and nothing more than a memory.

The mindfulness thing was the key. Still is. There are so many times I wish I could convincingly say “no, really, try this“, to friends and loved ones with their own challenges, their own suffering… but generally, as with my own experience in my own life, there is a state of readiness needed to even hear the suggestion in a usable way. I was once someone willing to say, with conviction and based on my own experience, that I had ‘tried meditation and it didn’t do anything for me’.  “I tried meditation…” No, no I had not. Not like this. I had always been focused on focus, focused on concentration, focused on clarity – focused on thought. I did not understand ‘awareness’, ‘stillness’, or observation. I did not understand the importance of breathing. I’m not sure what I ‘understand’ now…but I practice. 🙂  It is enough.

A lot more is ‘enough’, now. I hope to more deeply explore ‘sufficiency’ in 2014, to be more deeply and mindfully in service to home, hearth, and to myself, to ask more questions, and be more comfortable with uncertainty, to continue my studies of life and love, and to connect more deeply and more intimately with my loves, with my friends, with my family. I’ll get started today – it’s a lovely day to change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, winter
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