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Artificial Light and Illumination

March 12, 2013 //
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Artificial Light and Illumination

Artificial Light and Illumination

I didn’t sleep last night.  Well, to be more accurate, I slept deeply for about 90 minutes, sometime after 3am and woke abruptly to the alarm in the middle of vaguely distressing dreams.  I just wasn’t falling asleep. This time it wasn’t my anxiety; hormones were the cause of my sleepless night. I’m content with at least having been able to rest comfortably much of the night, without stress or anxiety. That’s an improvement, but I’m tired this morning.  I am weary and struggling with the headache that accompanied me to work this morning.  The headache is hormones, probably, although once I am this fatigued I often have a headache, and I guess it doesn’t matter why my head hurts – it is what it is.  Something to be mindful of.

Today will definitely put new mindfulness practices to a test. Damn I don’t feel ready for a test on this subject! Hormones, fatigue, a headache…I feel irritable, run down, and alone in my experience – and I know that last bit is an illusion. Half the world is female. I am so not alone in this. lol.

Life is an amazing teacher. Lately I am paying much closer attention to the lessons. My everyday commitment to being a student of life and love has me contemplating compassion this morning and taking note of how much more difficult it is to feel compassion for an experience we simply don’t or can’t share, perhaps because it is outside our own experience. More than anything when I’m struggling with my hormones, I really want to be comforted, treated gently, and with compassion – or at least sympathy.  It’s surprisingly hard to come by.  Thinking about what I mean when I say these are things I want got me around to the practical bits: hugs, kisses, kind words, sympathetic humor, and consideration above and beyond the everyday…which got me thinking about a younger me, dealing with other women, and what a phenomenally smug and annoying little bitch I must have seemed!  At that time in my life, I just didn’t have the difficulty with PMS and my hormones that I would later in life (and do now).  I was not kind to women who did.  I wasn’t sympathetic.  It wasn’t part of my experience, therefore it likely wasn’t ‘that big a deal’.  How cruel and dismissive. How inconsiderate. How heartlessly rude. Well, I get mine now, Ladies.  Fair is fair.  This week I am studying a lesson on compassion, and learning to be compassionate for experiences I am not yet able to share or identify with, and learning to treat people suffering their own journey and choices with respect and consideration.

Hormones are hard sometimes. My thinking feels foggy and my emotions feel volatile. I feel irritable and reactive, and finding ‘the sweet spot’ in my experience and some balance and contentment is a challenge that actually requires repeated choices to ‘take a moment and just breathe’ to pull myself back to being mindfully in-the-moment.  It does seem to work, in spite of my troubling tendency to take small things personally.  My body feels uncomfortable. My head aches. I feel tired and run down. The physical pieces of the experience I’m having today make the emotional or cognitive pieces feel more difficult. Simple frustrations – like the free pedometer app on my smartphone mysteriously not working this morning – result in a higher than ordinary stress-response.  I have new things to do for that – and each time my frustration level begins to rise, or I start feeling angry or irritated with something specific, I take that moment to get re-centered and just breathe.  I want it to be more helpful that I know the emotions are hormonal, not ‘real’… but I still feel them. I really need hugs, or a back rub, or… intimacy and a feeling of connection.  I need to feel connected more than just about anything right now, and the hormones that make me feel that need so strongly are also why I don’t feel that way in the first place.  It sucks.

It’s only Tuesday – the week stretches ahead of me, as does life.  Hormones change, and change again. Time passes. In a few days this stress and discontent, this fatigue, even the headache, will all be gone and the world will feel new and I’ll laugh this off and feel wonderfully wrapped in the loving connection of home and hearth, of love and Love… but now doesn’t feel very good, in spite of it being quite a decent day.  I’ll be making choices to stay mindful, compassionate, and kind, in spite of my experience. There lies the difference, I think,  between ‘illumination’ and ‘artificial light’… the soft dawn of illumination lights my entire experience as I learn and grow, and the ‘artificial light’ is my gift to myself – my choices to turn away from the darkness, and choose a path with my will as I learn new skills and build healthier practices,  and it is our gift to each other – sharing what we learn along the our journey with other people.  We achieve illumination, perhaps, when those things become who we ‘really are’?

Enjoy Tuesday – it’s the only one this week. 😉

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Categories Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women

Cherishing the Dawn

March 11, 2013 //
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I don’t actually have any appreciation for the weirdness that is ‘Daylight Savings Time’. It makes no sense at all to arbitrarily change the clock back and forth bi-annually…unless of course it makes sense to force people and systems to change-up routines thus, for no valuable purpose aside from change itself. lol. I feel for all the people who take prescription medications that are timing sensitive, or whose experience relies heavily on routine.  Those things matter, and those people have an experience to deal with making this adjustment. Having said that, it was interesting to watch the dawn unfold slowly as I walked to work, having gotten used to some daylight before I even head to work in the morning. The walk was a pleasant one and I listened to birds sing and wondered why it had seemed there were whole years of life I do not remember hearing birdsong…and I felt a soft excuse for rain begin to tease my skin with tiny droplets of mist as my journey reached its end.

It’s an interesting experience, life.  Practicing a more mindful approach to the experience of life is pretty interesting, itself.  Yesterday went sideways for a little while, but I managed to enjoy my own experience pretty well in spite of that, aside from a very human moment or two or real irritation and taking something more personally than had benefit. I got past the tough bit with considerably more ease than has been my experience in the past.  The mindfulness practices seem to take those apparent mountains of issues and stress that appear on the horizon some days and render them harmless potholes on the residential road of life, instead of sinkholes on my autobahn. lol. Taking things a little slower, and being compassionate with myself is feeling pretty good.  The day and weekend ended wonderfully well, in spite of the brief bit of… less-than-awesomeness. Time, compassion, and love, Love, and fun are great connection builders!

Just in case I was on the verge of being too complacent with my progress, Mother Nature showed her humorous side this morning and reset the menopause counter to zero. Cruel prank or life lesson? I guess that’s up to me. LOL

Happy Monday! Today, I’m not taking out my issues on other people; they’ve got their own to deal with…for now I have a surplus of smiles to share. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Turning 50, women

Le Sacre Du Printemps

March 10, 2013 //
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Spring blossoms

Spring blossoms

This morning I woke with a headache and a snarl. Unpleasant. Very real. Very human. A quad latte and a couple hours later I’m over being snarly, at least. I still have a nasty headache. Not much to do about it besides treat myself well and with compassion and patience.

It was a sweet gesture that one of my partners put on Larry Coryell playing Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. I love his version of that piece of music (so much that I’d have linked it, but couldn’t find a good YouTube video of it).  Chilling with coffee, talking about projects shared and individual…’making love’ on a level that isn’t about sex, and is about family and connection. In spite of the headache, I feel pretty good.

It’s been a very good weekend. I have been enjoying my experience so much that I didn’t realize I hadn’t written a post on either Friday or Saturday…there are so many people sharing so many moments and so many words, though, it seems unlikely that the world ran short on reading material. lol. It has been an interesting couple of days, existing in my now, and sharing time with my partners; love, Love, and practicing mindfulness. I figure I’ll be practicing indefinitely, too.  It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing one can ‘achieve full proficiency’ at with the end result of stopping…it’s an ongoing thing…unless I am seriously misunderstanding the how/why of it.  It is interesting to see the small things I’ve misunderstood in life to the point of causing myself pain or confusion, or throwing weird roadblocks in my own path. Like…learning something; I’ve spent a long time thinking that the point is to ‘know it’ or become ‘good at it’ to the point of some level of expertise or ‘completion’ then stop, show my work, and get my grade, certificate, compliment, affirmation, acknowledgment, pat on the head, promotion, award, trophy…something that makes it an ‘achievement’ more than an experience or point of ongoing progress and growth. ‘Ongoing’. Life is ongoing. Even the noun is more a verb than a noun, because nothing about ‘life’ stands still.  Through the headache I can feel a glimmer of something I didn’t understand trying to peep through the fog of my filters and weirdness.

I cooked dinner the other night…mindfully. That was…interesting. To be really committed to the processes and really focused and aware of the elements of the experience made a very simple meal a different experience in both preparation and enjoyment. I had the subjective experience that the food tasted better, although it was a very simple meal of fettuccine pesto with chicken and red peppers. My partners sure seemed to enjoy the flavors of it more than just about any other meal I’ve prepared for them.  I’ve been exploring a lot of every day experiences with more…I don’t know, call it ‘mindfulness’ or call it ‘self awareness’ or call it ‘commitment to the moment’, I’m not sure it matters what name I give it; it is the doing of it that seems to change things. I can’t help but wonder why I didn’t ‘get it’ sooner? I know it isn’t that no one mentioned it, or that there were no books about it, or that mindfulness practices didn’t exist…was it a lack of readiness on my part?  Did it fall into the set of ‘things the TBI put out of reach for a while’, like algebra in my teens and twenties? Was I unwilling to understand or unable? Does that matter? I’m getting more comfortable with questions, and less hung up on answering them; I find myself speculating whether there may be a correlation between the lack of impulse to answer all the questions, and my generally reduced anxiety level the last little while, then I let that go, too, and chill in this lovely quiet time and space.

Tonight I hope to be in the kitchen making a simple meal for my family, and enjoying love and family and making ready for another week of work and life.  I’ll be seeing an old friend on Wednesday, and I’m excited about it.  We’ll also have a house guest this week, and I feel relaxed and comfortable with that, which isn’t always the case with me. I have dreams and plans and goals, and a life to live with a smile. That feels awesome. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50, women

That’s Neither Here, Nor Hair

March 7, 2013 //
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I’d like to have a caution sign for the inside of my bedroom door. One of the safety yellow ones seen at the roadside for any number of upcoming hazards, and I want it to have one of those crazy squiggly road symbols for dangerous curves, and a falling rock symbol, and also a symbol for potholes. At the top, I’d expect it to say ‘Caution’, as most of them do, and perhaps at the bottom ‘Life Ahead’. Frankly, I could probably use a quick reminder every day before I head out into the world and get hung up on some ‘obstacle’ that isn’t actually an obstacle at all, but more of a lesson. 🙂

Short night last night, and a good morning anyway. Stayed up a bit past my ‘bell-curve bedtime’ watching a movie with my partners. Totally worth it. Lost a little more sleep to the happy sounds of life and Love, before my awareness distilled to a few moments of self, then dissipated to dreaming. Also, totally worth it.

This morning I am still turning over the Conundrum of Hair. I put it in capital letters to highlight the experience that this relatively simple question has come to serve as an interesting life lesson about decision-making and taking care of me. I mean, seriously? I’m talking about whether or not to get a hair cut – not exactly life-changing stuff, as changes go. I keep turning it over in my mind, trying to figure out not only what I want (for an outcome) but also learn more about my decision-making challenges in general.

I grew up hearing ‘Do something, even if it isn’t right!’ as an oft-repeated instructional slogan intended, I think, to foster a high level of productivity, initiative, motivation, and, oddly, effective decision-making (defined only as ‘making a quick decision and acting on it).  I learned it, and became an adult quite capable of making very bad decisions very quickly, and firmly, and taking prompt action on them – but I did not also learn to make the best possible decisions, only quick ones. lol. Life needs a bit of both, I’ve learned.  Often the decisions I’ve made quite slowly, over time, with a lot of consideration, and some false starts and mind-changing, plan-changing, or self-changing have been more worthwhile. I was taught a lot of disrespect for ‘dithering’, ‘vacillating’, and ‘being indecisive’. Funny how complicated these things have made deciding whether or not to cut my hair! Watching the process unfold both as an observer and as a participant is interesting, itself, and I’m finding value in taking a step back and asking myself some new questions.

I asked myself why am I considering getting my hair cut short right now? Why is the idea of getting my hair cut short – very short – scary? (I’ve had very long hair all my adult life) What does having all this long hair mean to me? What does the hair itself represent in my experience? Does the experience of having long hair have any intrinsic value? What about the experience of having long hair do I value? Am I willing to give that up to experience having short hair? Do I actually want to do this? Is there any other reason to cut my hair short besides ‘because I want this’? I’ve been turning these questions over in my mind a lot. “Long hair is sexy.” Yep, sure is – but so is short hair, because ‘sexy’ isn’t a hair style.  “I like the feel of my lover’s hands in my hair.” Mmm, yes, yes I do.  Does sensuality end with a hair cut?  That’s clearly not the case, since tons of men have short hair and don’t seem to lack for sensuality. “I won’t look like me.” Um…I am not a hair style. lol. “You can’t tell me what to do!” Somewhere inside I still feel the helpless anger and resentment of being controlled, in the memory of having to get a short hair cut because it was too much work to keep long hair neat when I was a child – it’s way past time to let that baggage go. lol.  I have a memory of crying to my father about a short hair cut I didn’t like…I must have been quite young…I remember mostly the feeling of hot tears spilling down and wailing “Daddy, I’m so ugly! I won’t be sexy – I look like a boy!!” and my father’s amused reply “Baby, there’s nothing about you that looks like a boy.” Well, at 49 and with the curves I’ve got, there’s sure no way to mistake me for a boy! lol “My partners like my long hair.” Ouch, that’s more difficult than I want it to be…sure, some people really like long hair, find it sexy, enjoy seeing it, touching it, and it may be part of how they see someone they love…but it’s just hair; it is not identity.  One of my partners is presently letting his hair grow longer after years of wearing it short. It’s sexy both ways – because he’s sexy; it’s not the hair. He looks different than he did with the shorter style; he is still himself. AND, although when he considered growing out his hair, he did mention it, and discuss it, and ask me what I thought, he did not ask for my permission, or make it about my needs or desires when he made a choice to change-up his look. Oh, ok, so that wasn’t really that difficult, after all. LOL 😀

Every internal objection, each moment of resistance, all the arguments from any angle are so easily knocked down when I am calm, centered, and willing to be compassionate with myself about old hurts, baggage, and internal weirdness.  So, now it comes down to what it really comes down to – is this what I want? Does it meet my needs over time? I still have not decided…and there’s no need to rush.  Now it is just a hair cut.  😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women, Words

News, Truth, and Meaning

March 6, 2013 //
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‘News’ is a funny word.  It could seem to be a plural of ‘new’, but ‘new’ isn’t a noun.  There seems to be a tendency, too, to make assumptions about the noteworthiness of an event based on whether we characterize it as ‘news’, to the point of having an entire separate word to describe those as ‘newsworthy’. There are cultural expectations that adults will have some basic familiarity with ‘current events’, with the implication that failing to follow ‘the news’ results in being somehow less relevant, well-informed, or professionally viable.

It’s a trap.

Think it over with me for a moment…periodicals and televised programming centered around journalism and reporting of selected current events or culturally relevant topics are often looked upon with a higher than average level of credibility. Why is that? I mean…they are producing a product for profit, are they not? The truthfulness of the material they offer is not actually regulated or accredited, and the goal of gaining or maintaining viewership, ratings, or sales numbers is not at all the same as a goal of ‘providing factually accurate information’ – is it? What would ‘news’ look like if all the inflammatory language, the color, and the spin were removed? If unbiased, unemotional language were used to present facts simply, we would probably be less compelled to read or watch it. Words, once again, being used to control us. Words being used to persuade us to spend our time receiving input that may not have lasting value, but will assuredly rob us of our time, and potentially our comfort, peace of mind, and ability to manage stress. No one news ‘source’ (they are not sources, they are brokers at best. lol) has a monopoly on manipulating the public, because they all have the same actual goal – gain viewers/readers, gain ratings, make sales for advertisers.  Is there an untapped segment of the public out there? (Angry women? Single mothers? Those on the right? Those on the left?) The media will identify it, and someone will begin creating content to appeal to that group of people – to acquire them as regular consumers.  It’s not about information, and it is not about truth. It is about ‘the business win’.

Why do I care? Pretty simple – I’m working on learning to take care of me; to manage my stress level, treat myself well, and live a good life that has meaning and in which I can thrive as a being. As the 2012 US presidential election approached last year, I found myself regularly in a state of stress and near-panic over news articles. Unacceptable.  I wasn’t sure how to deal with it – some of the events in the news were even triggering my PTSD, resulting in lost sleep, panic, emotional volatility, nightmares, and a near-continuous state of severe stress that was making me ill, and severely unhappy.  I gotta admit, it gets depressing really quickly to read some heinous news report about a gang rape a world away, and find no comfort at all in local or regional reporting right here at home – because so many of the voices in the news sound suspiciously anti-woman to the point of being ‘pro rape’.  It was an ugly election, and I have a long list of human beings of both genders that I not only won’t ever vote for (no matter what their future achievements or stated values may be), I feel rather as if I can’t actually count on the culture I live in to value and support women, or treat them compassionately and fairly under any circumstances.  It became a very scary world to live in, pretty quickly.  Someone, somewhere, must think it is OK to deliver ‘news’ content that willfully and deliberately selects verbiage that stokes emotional turmoil, triggers anxiety, depression, and anger, and may be not only hurtful and confrontational, but also may not be true…just to get it seen, just to make money. Ick.  The horrors of reported news from December through January was enough for me. I don’t need to complicate things that are already hard on me by allowing content providers to manipulate my emotions.

I turned off the news.  I gave it a break, skimming only what I had to, avoiding the rest. I turned off feeds. I uninstalled applications from my devices. I started logging off and exiting and shutting down things I am not actively using at any given moment.  I feel better. lol. Every day that I don’t read a story where some over privileged idiot with too much power and not enough wisdom says something stupidly offensive and hurtful, I have done myself a favor. I made some choices about content, too. I revisited my settings on the two content providers I choose to continue with regularly – and discontinued all the political and business ‘news’, entertainment ‘news’, and any category that had become a regular source of stress. I am keeping content relating to mindfulness practices, health and fitness, food, and ‘good news’ where that is available. I skim the front page quickly – subject lines only – and move along.  (It may be relevant to something that Hugo Chavez died, that seems historical I suppose, but I am also quite certain that not one detail about that actually matters to me in my here and now.) Going any deeper seems to require, at some point, suspending any skepticism and ‘trusting’ news content providers to be truthful – and to trust that their sources have been similarly truthful.  I’m not actually willing to indulge in that level of trust, when it has become pretty clear that The Daily Show can be relied on more easily to be accurate than mainstream ‘news’ content providers. lol.

Are you taking a moment to feel some sympathy? Are you also taking a moment to feel a little smug that you are not so helplessly enthralled by ‘the media’? Before you go too far down that road, please just take a moment to think back on your past 6 months or so – did you make even one decision to take an action, or engage in a behavior, because of something you read/heard on the news? Did you repeat to someone else even one ‘fact’ that you read/heard on the news, without independently verifying it yourself? I don’t think saying more is necessary, and your choices are your own. 😉

I also don’t want to waste my time reading what someone else wrote about what they think about what someone even further removed experienced, or base all of my thinking and decision making on things I read or heard somewhere.  I want to have my own experiences, and I want to have time to do that.  I gained hours of time back by discontinuing the habit of reading the news, or Reddit, or forums about this or that topic of interest. Now I have time to talk. Time to feel. Time to touch and be touched. Time to explore my life and my choices for the future. Time to consider what matters to me. Time to treat myself well and heal old hurts.

I discovered I do not know how to read the news mindfully.  So…I stopped reading the news.  I haven’t missed it.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Turning 50, women, Words
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