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Choice, Freedom, Agency

October 29, 2024 //
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I’m sipping a hot cup of black coffee this morning, the first hot one this year, I think. It was a choice based on preference and chilly weather. It’s a foggy morning and the autumn chill made the thought of iced coffee less appealing. I’m grateful to have the choice, the freedom to make that choice, and the agency with which to act upon my preference by doing so.

A whole lot of years ago, (about 47 or so years ago) I made a choice based on preference that I stood firm on with few regrets, no hesitation, and only rare moments of poignant wonder about what a different choice might be like; I chose to be childless. I chose not to parent. I chose to avoid motherhood. I made this choice at a pretty young age, before ever having a moment of therapy, and before having to face the necessity of terminating a pregnancy. I made this choice based on my preferences, my understanding of myself, and my perspective on life, and the world. It was less that I knew what I wanted, and more that I knew what I didn’t want. I did not want to become little more than a vessel for other life, and it sure seemed to me at that time that such was the lot in life of most women with children. So I chose. I was free to do so. I had the agency to enact and stand firm on the choice I made, though I had to fight for it time and again.

…It was a smart choice, for me, all things considered, and I remain glad that it is the choice I made for myself…

How you vote in this election may determine whether your daughters and future generations of women are free to choose to be childless, if that is the choice they wish to make for themselves. It’s an important election, and there really are people in the world who would like to force women to breed for some nebulous greater good, or as punishment for their fundamental humanity, regardless of the risk, regardless of whether the woman is suited to motherhood… regardless of her choice. Pretty terrifyingly grotesque, frankly. I don’t understand such people. That’s the stuff horror movies are made of.

Anyway. Vote. Your freedom of choice and even your personhood and agency may depend on the outcome. Yours, and a lot of other people’s besides.

I’m sipping this excellent cup of coffee daydreaming about love. I enjoyed a lovely evening with my Traveling Partner yesterday, after a difficult (but short) workday fighting off a nasty headache. It’s not so bad today, and I’m grateful. I face the day ahead relaxed and at ease. I slept decently well and I feel rested. I want to paint, but it’s not time for that and I laugh at my foolishly inopportune inspiration. Maybe later? I’ve committed to taking some photographs for my partner later, but perhaps after that?

I sit quietly on this rock at my halfway point on my morning walk. Shorter walk today, but no less appreciated. I can see the traffic going by on the highway, a stream of lights through the fog. I finish my coffee and my thoughts. I look over my writing before I head back up the trail to the car, and on to the office. My heart is filled with love and I am enjoying this strangely tender, grateful moment. I’m so glad I’ve gotten to live this life I chose. It’s a worthy journey. There’s more ahead, and further to travel on this mortal path.

It’s time to begin again…

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, women

The Best Advice

July 3, 2024 //
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Beautiful sunrise. Good morning to get a walk in. I’ve had the trail to myself, and watched the sunrise as I walked. Lovely.

Every day, every journey, begins somewhere.

The weather forecast indicates there is an extreme heat warning for the latter portion of the week, possibly record-breaking. I checked with my Traveling Partner about whether there were steps we might need to take to stay comfortable and ensure our AC functions properly. I’ll make a point to stock additional beverages and cold foods, so we won’t be required to cook using the oven or stovetop for long periods of time. I’ll drink more water.

…”Drink more water” is excellent hot weather advice, but there’s something quite limited about even the very best to bits of advice; it only works when actually taken. There are verbs involved. If we receive great advice but choose to disregard it, instead of applying it, our failures and misadventures thereby are of our own making. No one to blame but the person in the mirror. We for sure can’t claim we didn’t have guidance or that the advice was ineffective. lol

Why do people get great advice and then choose not to follow it? I don’t have an answer, I’m just wondering. I mean, actually, I can come up with several possible answers, but I don’t at all know which are likely to be most correct. Maybe we don’t trust the advice to be accurate? Maybe we don’t find the source to be credible? Maybe we think we’re a special case and the norms don’t apply to us? Maybe… maybe mostly… we’re just not really listening in the first place? That seems likely… people are pretty crappy at listening to someone else talking.

… Maybe sometimes there’s too much new information to process…

Are you listening to the good advice you’re given? Do you use it?

My neck aches ferociously this morning. I think I “slept on it wrong”. Ouch. The pain colors my experience unpleasantly. When the time comes, I take my morning medication, grateful to be able to add prescription pain relief, grateful to have it available, hopeful that it will bring some relief. I stopped on the trail several times trying to “work the kinks out” by practicing the release and self-massage techniques my chiropractor taught me. These are often quite helpful, this morning they are less so. I still make the effort. The headache that rises from the pain in my neck spreads like flames across the left side of my face. Occipital neuralgia. Fuuuuuuck. “Just kill me now”, I snarl quietly to myself, though I don’t mean it literally. I just hurt. I stretch. I breathe. I keep walking. This too will pass.

I reach my halfway point and keep walking, lost in my thoughts and preoccupied by my pain. This trail is a loop. Though I often walk out and back, a shorter distance, the full distance of the loop isn’t unreasonably far. I laugh at myself; looks like I’m going the distance this morning. I have time. Anyway, I’d be shit to be around this morning, and my Traveling Partner was already up when I left. No reason to rush back with my bitchy cross mood intact. I sigh as I walk.

… I should probably begin again. That’s pretty good advice…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, turning 60, women

Missing a Friend

June 11, 2024 //
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This is the sort of morning I would happily spend some time emailing my recently departed Dear Friend…

The sunrise from the trail this morning.

I would certainly share a picture of the sunrise, probably commenting on its beauty.  Recent years found my Dear Friend to have very limited ability to get around without help, and she wouldn’t see such a sight without pictures shared by friends. She often asked for details and anecdotes about my unassuming local travels. (I miss her, greatly.)

Tomorrow being my birthday, and having already received (and opened) gifts from my Traveling Partner, I would share those details with her, too. The context, the sentiment, why each gift delights me so, and the “back story”, if there is one, would all be shared and talked over together. She’d tell me why celebrating this birthday matters more than I think it does, and remind me that I am precious to her. She’d embarrass me a bit with praise, and point out how easily we can lose our abilities through disuse. She would encourage me to do more and go further. She would cheer me on and share my joy. If I were feeling beat down or defeated, she would laugh at my dark angry humor and give me her own wise perspective.

…She would slyly say nothing about some handmade delight she had sent my way, that would surprise me the day of my birthday with something more to open…

…Fuck I do miss you, my very Dear Friend…

Of the roses I planted this Spring with my Dear Friend in mind, one has bloomed. I grinned to see the colorful flower. I took a picture to share with her, forgetting for just an instant…    I shared it, instead, with another friend who was similarly close (closer, for years longer) with my Dear Friend, hoping it might bring her a smile, too.

“Rainbow Happy Trails” blooming in a corner of my garden.

I walked the trail this morning, watching the sun rise and the morning take shape. I breathed in the scents of Spring flowers and meadow grass as I walked along between river and marsh. I’m not really “sad” this morning, and the moment of poignant recollection passes without tears. I honor my Dear Friend through these memories and I am okay with missing her; she meant a lot to me, and our friendship got me through some hard times when I sometimes felt I had no one else to turn to. We could count on each other’s good will and affection, and we were there for each other through joy and hardship. That’s a beautiful thing.

…61, tomorrow… it is a bit weird not sharing it with her…

I walk on down the trail. I’ve got it to myself for now. I walk with my wandering thoughts. The work day will begin soon enough. When it does, I’ll begin again. Soon enough. Soon enough. No reason to rush. In the meantime, I walk with my thoughts and my memories, stopping at my halfway point to meditate, reflect, and write a few words about a very Dear Friend of mine. Time well-spent.

I finish up my writing and sit quietly awhile.   Photographers coming down the trail purposefully remind me that this is a work day. I check the time, happy to see I’ve got time to spare. Lovely morning.

…It’s the last day of being 60…

…I guess I’ll begin again…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Roses, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, turning 60, women

Perspectives

June 5, 2024 //
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My walk this morning was early, quiet, solitary, and thoughtful. Pleasant. Nice way to begin a new day.

When I started down the trail, a glance at the sky in one direction revealed dense dark storm clouds, homogenous and gray. Looking the opposite direction the sky was bright with promised sunshine later, and shades of peach and gold. Between these, fingers of clouds stretched across from one perspective to the other, feathering away to nothing into the clear skies from the stormier view. I walked along thinking about perspective.

This morning I am missing my Dear Friend who died earlier this Spring. There is so much I would share and talk over with her. There’s a particular feeling of rather acute loneliness that turns up within me each time I remember, again, that there’s no point in writing an email to share some particular moment with her, to get her perspective, or to share my own. She was always first to see new paintings (after my Traveling Partner, who is right here), and first to read new writing. Now… funny; I haven’t painted anything at all since she’s been gone. I take fewer pictures and rarely share them. I walk on with my thoughts, feeling the solitude from a different perspective.

…I have an appointment with my therapist later this month, but it’s nothing like talking and sharing with a Dear Friend…

I’m 61 this year. In about 7 days actually… I feel strange that there are so few around anymore who will care about that at all, or even know about it, if I don’t mention it. 61 doesn’t “feel old”, from this lived perspective, but I’ve lost (or lost touch with) many friends and family members who might once have been celebrating my birthday. It’s a strange feeling. I walk on.

I find myself feeling a bit blue as I walk. I wonder whether it may be some lingering effect from tinkering with my medication in order to do the requested diagnostic test. Seems possible, but I don’t really know. I keep walking.

By the time I am back to the car, I feel rather as if I’ve experienced an entire day’s worth of emotion and shifts in perspective, simply walking along with my solitary thoughts. I’m okay, and I am okay with having emotions (and thoughts about those), but it still feels strange and somewhat empty this lack of my Dear Friend to share some of this with. It’s not as if she were my only friend, nor even the only friend I regularly email… but it’s her perspective I am missing so painfully. I’m very aware of that, this morning.

…Every time I think I might like to paint, or feel inspired, or feel that inner tug to return to the studio, my heart seems to answer “why bother?”. This is an unexpected outcome of my grief over this particular loss…

I relied on this Dear Friend’s perspective as counterpoint or reinforcement of my own for some 25 years. I guess I am not surprised that I miss that. I know I am not surprised that I miss her.

Tears fall as I sit with my unexpected moment of grief. My grief expands as my tears fall. I cry over the loss of my Mother, although we never forged a close adult relationship, and were rarely closer than “pleasantly civil”. I grieve that lack of intimacy and connection. My tears fall for my Granny,  too; she did much to raise me and prepare me to find my own way as an adult and she was more mother to me than my Mother was. I’m not criticizing; we expect too much of women, and motherhood isn’t a good fit for all of us.

…I guess I am just feeling kind of alone with the years this morning, as I approach 61. Strange that it hits so hard on this quiet morning, 7 days from my birthday. Stranger still to feel this way when I am truly not “alone” in life. I have a loving partnership, and a handful of good friends (though some are distant), and the fond regard and esteem of many others…

Feelings are not facts. The map is not the world. The forecast is not the weather. I sit with my emotions and breathe. This will pass. I will begin again. I’m okay for most values of okay.

I give myself a moment for gratitude and reflection. I take time to consider more immediate worries than my lingering grief over lost dear ones. My Traveling Partner’s health is top of mind, often, lately and I find myself wondering if the weight of my worry over that may have provoked my thoughts to turn elsewhere for something that feels more “manageable”? Interesting perspective…

…My Traveling Partner pings me a greeting. He’s awake. It’s time to head home, and begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, gratitude, grief, health, inspiration, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, women

A Struggle With Discontent

May 8, 2024 //
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I woke feeling vaguely irritated and feeling discontented and annoyed in advance of any annoyances. Rude start to the day. I woke feeling dissatisfied… with… life? That seems pretty fucking silly, all things considered, and I spent the drive to the office turning it over in my head. There’s a song that somehow seems to fit, though I haven’t yet pinned down why that is. It’s not a new song, nor a song I’ve listened to recently… it just “speaks to me” in this peculiar moment of discontent and aggravation.

…There’s nothing “wrong” with the moment or day, so far…

…I’m just feeling annoyed. It would be much easier to deal with this and put it to rest if I understood why.

I sigh and take a breath, and exhale, and relax, letting my shoulders drop, and my jaw unclench. Weird morning.

This life of mine is perhaps not the problem at all… could be I’m just feeling the weight of the world this morning. That’s baggage no one can carry for long. I sigh again, burdened by this all too human struggle. I reach for a song that sings to a different tune, hoping to change my mind. Feelings of discontent can become corrosive, left to build and become attached to something real… That’s not an experience I enjoy. I keep “setting down my baggage” and trying to restart my moment from a new perspective.

…I find myself missing a dear friend I’d have gone to for conversation and perspective in a moment like this, and my eyes fill with tears. …There’s a hole in my heart… We are mortal creatures. I suddenly feel “wrapped in loneliness” on top of feeling discontented. Shit. That’s not what I was going for at all. (Change is.)

G’damn… I guess I really need to get away from “all of it”… except… I’m relentlessly aware that I’ll be dragging the shit griefing me most right along with me wherever I go. Fucking hell. I guess I’m just feeling low this morning. 😦 I wipe the tears off my cheeks and remind myself “this too will pass” – change is.

I sigh again (it’s just that kind of morning, I guess), and hope that my Traveling Partner got the rest he needed, and hope to get myself sorted out before the day ends – I’d definitely rather not drag this shit home with me at the end of the day.

I’m looking forward to my camping trip. Life is feeling way too busy and complicated lately, and I’m exhausted on this whole other level. Wrung out from day-to-day routine effort and the emotional burden of being a human being in a world of chaos, violence, and petty ugliness – I need a break. What do I even do when I’m camping to get that “break”? I sit quietly a lot, listening to the breezes and watching small creatures living their lives. I sit watching the leaves flutter and the changing light filtered through the trees as the sun moves across the sky. I let my mind sort of “empty out” and “catch up” on all the shit I didn’t have time to consider more fully. I walk. I wander. I take pictures of things that catch my eye, and perspectives I might like to see again, some time later. I write, mostly poetry and bits of self-reflection. I read. I meditate. It’s not fancy, and it’s not complicated by “activities” in any planned way. I’m not trying to “occupy my time” – quite the opposite, actually, I’m trying to “rest my mind” and calm my heart. I don’t know a lot of ways of doing that, or any ways more effective than just… getting away, and giving myself time.

…Soon…

Isn’t it odd that we human creatures can find so much silly bullshit to feel vexed by or annoyed over, even in the context of a generally good life? It strikes me as quite strange and rather stupid that this is the case, and I find myself wondering what purpose such a thing may have served when we were more primitive creatures seeking to make our way in the world? I make a note to ask my therapist for his thoughts on these vague feelings of discontent, and how I can potentially make use of them more constructively – with fewer tears, less sorrow, and a whole lot less aggravating stupid emotional bullshit to wade through. I roll my eyes, even as I recognize that I’m being a little hard on myself; human is human. Sometimes it’s messy, and we don’t exactly teach “dealing with emotions” to children skillfully, such that they grow up with the tools to do the job well. I’m still learning… and somehow, I persist in thinking I should be past that by now… then remember, again, that the journey is the destination, and that the point seems to be the learning, itself.

…Another sigh. A sip of coffee. A glance at the clock. Well, shit. It’s time to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, grief, loneliness, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, War and News of War, women
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