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What Are You Doing About It?

January 7, 2017 //
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Some mornings, particularly on weekends, I sip my coffee and catch up on the news of the world and my Facebook feed before I settle down to write. On those mornings, I also fight “taking the bait” and I do battle with invisible forces hoping to leverage the power of outrage to get my attention, and others hoping to get their hands on whatever loose change may be laying about. I’m getting better at maintaining some balance in the face of emotional triggers of all sorts as I scroll through images and words.

The need to build more resistance to emotional manipulation, for me, is pretty serious. My injury and my PTSD tend to result in a level of emotionality generally (the TBI) and volatility (the PTSD) that can make me very susceptible to emotional manipulation, emotionally evocative language and images, and it has been difficult to manage over the years. If I’m being honest, I can’t say that I “managed” it all all, with any skill or noticeable success until I started practicing mindfulness – and omg, do I ever need practice, like, all the time, every day. So human. I learned a lot about how far I’ve come, during this past election year, and I also learned a lot about how far I’ve yet to go. So… I keep practicing. I keep finding my way along life’s journey, one step at a time. The news thing is tricky; I love to read, I consume content at a high rate, I love language… and I’m a highly emotional reasoning being. I needed something helpful to rely on…

I ask myself questions that seem to help sort it all out (for me).

  1. Does this matter more to me than it did when I read the last article about this? If so, am I merely having an expected reaction to repetition?
  2. Can I verify it is 100% utterly legit, fact-checked, references cited, real no bullshit data or information?
  3. Who profits from this? (…and what does that say about the content?)
  4. Is the content original? (If it’s creator content reshared/reposted, is the creator credited?)
  5. What is my purpose in sharing this? Is it necessary?
  6. What am I going to do about it? (If this is action-worthy at all, why not just take action and share that in my own words?)

I think, generally, most of my friends also read the news – no need for me to share it to ensure they hear the latest from the same mainstream sources most of us are reading. It’s redundant – which means it is repetitive, which results in higher believability whether it has a shred of truth or not. Not helpful. If I’m angry about it – do I actually want to share that experience?  If I feel moved to share content solely on the basis of seeking “solidarity”, sharing the experience of being outraged or angry, or looking for community… wouldn’t it make so much more sense to reach out to friends directly, human being to human being, get together over a coffee, or hang out together, and really talk, really share? Sure, we’re all in this together… but using Facebook to reprogram our culture seems to be taking us all to some very strange and fairly ugly places.

I’ve gotten sucked into Facebook time and again, and wasted hours of precious limited lifetime – not connecting with friends and deepening those relationships, either, just reading the news, reading memes, scrolling through duplications and repeats, and generally filling my consciousness with the cognitive equivalent of junk food. I’ve added to the noise, reposting articles that evoke an emotional reaction without closely examining why, or even whether the content is highly accurate, and unbiased. You know what it got me? What it got all of us? The 2016 election outcome. That event has really changed my thinking about what purpose Facebook serves in my experience – and what it can do, and how it affects my quality of life, generally, as an application – because that’s all it is. It’s an app. It’s up to me to use it well, and use it wisely, and be mindful of the results I see, and the consequences of my actions.

Facebook – another opportunity to be mindful. Who knew? 🙂

I’ll hop down off my soapbox. It’s a gray, cold, wintry Saturday morning. WordPress notes that it’s been 4 years here, sharing, practicing, walking my own mile. My coffee is done. The morning has begun. Thanks for being here.

Today is a good day to live life in real-time, with real people, in physical space. I think I’ll go do that. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, War and News of War, weight loss secrets, winter, Words

No Metaphor, It’s Only Winter

January 6, 2017 //
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It’s chilly in the studio this morning. My coffee cooled quickly, and is already only warm. I drink it down before it is cold. The heat is on. I take a moment to be grateful to have it. It’s winter. Cold, even in the mild Pacific Northwest, is often part of that experience. I check the weather, and note the below-freezing temperatures forecast until well past 9:00 a.m.; it is a good day to wear a base layer under my work clothes. I make a second coffee and finish dressing.

My routine is fractured this morning, broken and disorganized. No idea why. Doesn’t much matter as long as everything is managed and I’m out the door on time. My sleep has been poor this week. The return to waking to the alarm after a week of sleeping until I wake has messed with my sleep quality. I woke thinking it might already be Saturday, and very much wanting to go back to sleep.

One task, one moment, one verb at a time, I wake up and step through my morning routine. I am eager to face the day. Eager to finish it. I am eager to enjoy the weekend after an intensely busy, short, week. There is so much more to do than I will finish this week, but it’s a list of things that extends well into 2017, and isn’t a matter of stress so much as planning. I’m okay with that, I like to plan.

It’s a winter morning. Nothing more than that. I’m content. The chill is quickly becoming a comfortably warm room. My second coffee is hot, fresh, tasty. I have what I need. It’s enough.

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, winter

I Heard You Screaming

January 5, 2017 //
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Heading home in the cold last night, walking from the office to the light rail station, I crossed the square. As I walked toward the train platform, I passed a tall man carrying a flower-print duffel bag, wearing an expression of fatigue and sadness. I kept walking. I noticed the woman hurrying to catch up with him, a moment later. Then she started screaming. A plaintive wail, “no!”. “No! No no no!” She wailed. She screamed it at him, pulling what looked like a sleeping bag around her shoulders. She began to run after him, shrieking, wailing, crying into the night, and to all the passers-by “no!!!”. It was not anger that made her voice so distinctive and alarming, it was the pure raw grief and hurt and fear – real panic, the sort of thing one expects to hear in the midst of warfare, or violence. She sounded desperate, terrified, and bereft. The wails continued as she ran after the man. He walked on calmly without looking back. I turned and watched the scene move away from me, feeling helpless. There was no obvious action to take. The woman was blind to everyone and everything around her, except that man walking away. The only sign he was aware of her at all was that they had been sitting together, when I saw them from a distance, and also… a flower-print duffel bag is an odd thing for a man his age to be carrying, generally. Her screaming haunted my sleep. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how her story ends. I feel ashamed that I didn’t do more, but don’t know what I could have done under the circumstances. I feel puzzled by the seeming lack of awareness of everyone around, that evening… I saw no heads turn but my own.  Bystanders, each and all of us. What a shitty situation for a woman screaming “no”, alone in the night. I’d like to have been more helpful. It is still on my mind this morning.

I sip my coffee and think about how this experience is so telling of who I am now, where I am in life as a human being. I spend a few minutes noticing that I actually do care, even about the isolated distress of a stranger I passed in the night. I wasn’t always this person. I sip my coffee, and think about other times, when I was the one screaming and afraid, without help, alone in the darkness… I think about people who might have heard me, who may have wanted to do… something, but… what? I feel grateful that my life is calm and quiet these days. I take a moment to appreciate having survived some terrible dark nights. I make room to forgive the passing strangers who did not help, because they did not know how. That’s a step forward, for me. I feel the weight of a little more baggage drop to the floor. It hits with an imagined thud, and the realization that I can also forgive myself for being unable to figure out what to do last night, to help a stranger in distress.

It's okay to put some of that down, for now.

It’s okay to put some of that down, for now.

I take one more moment to wish a stranger well, after-the-fact, and to hope she found some peace, somehow, and some comfort. I hope she found a moment she could be okay in. “Not my circus, not my monkeys…” Well, sure… but… also… we’re all human beings. Each having our own experience. Separating myself, generally, from drama doesn’t have to also make me a dick to people, or insensitive, or callous, or cruel. Compassion, kindness, consideration are all still within reach, still important to cultivate, still matter. I’m no super hero – I barely adult adequately well to support my own life, some of the time – but I can still care, and still be kind, and still open my heart to listen deeply to another. Those still matter, even if I can’t save the world. Even if I can’t stop all of the screaming, everywhere.

Today is a good day to be awake, aware, and considerate. It’s a good place to begin. It could be enough to change the world… with some practice.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, women, Words

No Sign of Perfection

January 4, 2017 //
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It’s cold this morning. The apartment is comfortable, but the chill weather on the other side of these walls and windows makes itself felt in odd drafts, and cold that seems to seep in through the walls. The wind chime on the patio is rocked madly by the winter wind, seeming less a delicate chime in a breeze that a cry for help. I shake my head thinking to myself how many times I have reminded myself to take it down for the winter. It’s out of reach for me, even with a chair. A helpfully tall neighbor offered to take it down. We both forget about it regularly, and no action has been taken. There’s no real significance to it, just winter wind, a cold morning, and a clear lack of perfection that doesn’t stop the world turning, or result in any particularly noteworthy change in the quality of the morning.

I think that I want to listen to music this morning. Turns out I only want to listen to one particular track that was already stuck in my head when I woke. I found myself skipping through all the other tracks on my playlist after it played, until an alternate version that happened to be on my playlist came up. With a sigh and a grin, I quickly build a short playlist of several versions and put it on repeat. No, I’m not suggesting this as a cure for an earworm; I just like this track enough to indulge myself on an icy winter morning. 🙂 It’s a track that gets me on my feet, happy to be alive. Now and then, the wind chimes break through, audible through the beats and the bass. It’s a good morning to dance to the music. 🙂

I’m feeling good today. Awake. Alive. Not feeling any significant pain. I remind myself to take time with that, to slow down and savor it. Enjoy this moment long enough for it to seep into my memory. Life isn’t always like this. There are other days – days with headaches, with back pain, with head colds, with sore feet, sleepless nights, brain storms, emotional inclement weather, and circumstances beyond my control that impact my quality of life in a negative way. So… yeah. I’m definitely finding value in taking time to enjoy this pleasant morning – enough to have to remind myself to keep an eye on the clock, too; it’s a work day. 🙂

Today is a good day to enjoy the small things – a favorite song, a pleasant moment, a good beat, a great groove, a moment of laughter or of love – the small things pile up over time, but only if I pause to savor them. Today is a good day to slow down for the small stuff, the inconsequential joys, the details that evoke an unnoticed smile. Today is a good day to notice the smile. I didn’t understand how much of “enough” the life’s small pleasures could be, until I made room for them in my experience. 🙂

 

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, winter

Let It Be

January 2, 2017 //
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It started snowing moments ago. I wasn’t certain I was seeing actual snowflakes, since these were scooting past my window sideways, and there weren’t many flakes. There is clear sky overhead, gaps in heavy thunder-storm-y clouds. Flakes. Then no flakes. Well, damn it – is it snowing or isn’t it? Just as I decide that yes, it is snowing… it stops. The weather continues to toy with me, as I sip my coffee, and gaze out into the morning sky.

There are circumstances in which our choices make a great deal of immediate obvious difference, and others in which it’s not clear what difference any choice of ours might make, at all. On this strange winter morning, I smile recognizing that no amount of fussing over whether or not it is showing makes any difference whatever to the weather, itself. Really… no choice of mine ever does. I mean… we’re talking about the weather, here. Oh. Wait. Climate change. Maybe choices of mine do affect the weather… only… not immediately, and not in an obvious way…?  Right. Choices do matter. The snow stops and starts a couple more times as I consider the impact of my human behavior on the weather, over time, and the questions of “what counts as change?” and “what counts as being affected by me?” I chuckle quietly over the way scale can sometimes change a question, an answer, or the apparent circumstances. (One person spitting on my patio does not count as a rainstorm… on the other hand… dozens of people spitting on my patio may not be a rainstorm, but the gross mess they’ve made is certainly still going to seem significant in one or more ways. lol)

The snow stops. The snow starts. As snow storms go, it’s not particularly impressive. Just tiny flakes of sky dancing quickly past my window, never pausing to land anywhere.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll see my Traveling Partner today. It’s my last day of holiday time away from the office. Tomorrow… a new year, and a return to the office. I am more eager than hesitant, which says good things about the job, and confirms I’ve gotten the restful break from it that I needed. I pause, thinking about plans and planning. Today will be a good one for checking the calendar for the year-to-come and ensuring that I plan out sufficient out of office time to maintain wellness, and momentum. I make a note on my “to do list” so I don’t forget.

A new day, suitable for beginning again.

A new day, suitable for beginning again.

The snow stops. The few clouds still overhead are edged in gold as the sun rises. The snow starts again. Just scattered flakes on the wind, of no real consequence. I wonder how the weather is on my partner’s side of town? Yesterday the mild weather I was out in didn’t extend to his side of town at all; roads over there were frozen, driveways icy, and travel ideally avoided. My thoughts continue toward wondering if he’ll really make it over today… It’s a nice moment, I feel fond awareness that his safety matters, and that I would not struggle with painful disappointment if he should change his plans, today. Disappointment, sure, but not of that painful sort over which drama erupts, just garden variety minor “ah, well, another time then” disappointment, after which one simply moves on with the day quite contentedly, still smiling and feeling safely secure in the awareness that the change in circumstances and plan do not in any way change the amount of affection or high regard we have for each other. There are other days.

A mostly blue sky is revealed overhead as I finish off the final sips of my morning coffee, and no snow flakes. Birds of prey coast on air currents high above the tree tops. A small flock of doves is gathered under the bird feeder. They seem content with the morning, so far. So am I.

Sometimes "enough" doesn't require much.

Sometimes “enough” doesn’t require much.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words
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