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Don’t Be Bamboozled

January 20, 2017 //
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It’s the day. The majority of Americans are dreading it (the actual mathematical majority of voting citizens). Today I’ll commute through throngs of Portlanders making their voices here in public spaces, and finding solidarity in outrage and anger. I’ll be focused on getting to and from work today. I’m no less outraged, no less concerned about our future, and I am also taking action. I’ve chosen different actions, for myself.

I’ll be phoning and writing to Congress. I’ve got a couple handy links:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

https://www.senate.gov/

Postcards are inexpensive, and have the added value of making their message clear to all who handle them. In an age of tweets and texts and slogans, keeping it brief also has the advantage of being something that can be read at a glance. Short, powerful statements uncomplicated by rhetoric, written at roughly a 4th grade level will be the win on postcards. Instead of a long detailed letter seeking to persuade, giving ideas the ‘ad slogan’ treatment and getting as many into the mail as possible is the idea. I mean, I could write something long, insightful, honest, vulnerable, and real about why I personally don’t want to see the minimum retirement age for Social Security raised… I mean… holy shit, I so don’t want to still be having to work for a living when I’m fucking 70!!! Instead of 5 pages that won’t get read, I’ll go with something like “Lower the Retirement Age for the Well-being of Seniors!”, and other postcards that say “Remove the Income Cap on Social Security Withholdings; Everyone Pays, Everyone Wins”… And I’ll just keep at it. For four years. Longer.

Anyway. You have your own path to walk, your own voice to raise, your own concerns to share and to act on. Do it. There are verbs involved. Find your way. If everyone takes just one action and makes it their own, with commitment, and reliably beginning again – and again – whenever they feel beat down. Well… change is. Making change is where the power is.

My day-to-day writing isn’t about American politics, or even American life. Certainly it isn’t about our crap-tacular failure as a culture to take care of our citizens in a civilized way, or how ruinously stupid and corrupt our government appears to be becoming, so I won’t bitch about it much. It’s scary, though, isn’t it?

Today is a good day to be the change.

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Categories Anxiety, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, The Art of Being, War and News of War, Words

Appreciating What I Can

January 19, 2017 //
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Appreciating what I  can in life seems best paired with not taking the shit I don’t appreciate at all personally. It is a decent arrangement, generally, resulting in considerable calm and contentment. This morning, I am appreciating sleep – the sleep I didn’t get last night – and I’m not taking at all personally that I didn’t get the sleep I needed, which, while I don’t appreciate that, wasn’t at all personal. Sometimes I can’t sleep through the goings on in the world, however local or remote, and sometimes I can’t sleep through what’s going on in my head. I really do enjoy deep restful quality sleep, though. 🙂

With regard to the sleep I did not get last night, it matters far more that I am awake now, alert, feeling merry, and more or less ready for the work day. With just Friday (and today) between me and the potential for sleeping in (on the weekend), this is doable. There’s no tragedy here, and barely any inconvenience. My lack of sleeping is not associated with anxiety or tinged with negative emotions. I am in a manageable, minimal, amount of pain. “My glass is more than half full”, meaning to say that I enjoyed the evening in the company of my Traveling Partner, and feel cared-for and well-loved. Even with the poor night’s sleep, the day begins well. I definitely appreciate that. 🙂

The snow melted away slowly in yesterday’s steady rain. The commute to work was treacherous and slick; the thin layer of water on all the accumulated ice was far more slippery than ice or snow alone ever could be. I skated awkwardly along the walking portions of my commute, appreciative of bus service that kept the walking portion shorter than usual, by far. As the day went on, the snow continued to melt. The journey home wasn’t especially treacherous, slippery, or complicated – just wet.

Coming home to real partnership is something I appreciate, too. My cardboard recycling had begun to pile up, bins were full after the holidays, and later an icy parking lot I could not safely cross on foot with my hands full prevented me handling things. I felt uncomfortable with the clutter, and it had begun to aggravate me. I arrived home to find that my Traveling Partner had taken care of it, and any number of other things: putting away clean dishes, hanging the closet door that so recently came loose unexpectedly in my hands, installing a replacement external hard-drive (he’d also taken time to locate as many of my old back up files and images archived on his network as he could identify, and had already put them on the new drive for me). My quality of life when I returned home was notably improved over when I departed for work in the morning. It’s lovely to be cared for. I appreciated, too, the sweet relief of connecting and sharing time in the same physical space after two weeks of being kept apart by circumstances, pain, or bad weather.

Small things that frustrate or annoy me may have been piling up over time… now, this morning, embracing a moment of appreciation for what is working, what is going well, and what I enjoy in my life, it’s hard to give any weight to small frustrations and inconveniences. It’s a nice change.

My thoughts turn to moving and I find myself wondering if my frustration with not yet finding a new place have been stalling other healthy processes; frustration is my kryptonite, and I try to be mindful of its sway over my thinking when it becomes prominent in my experience. The lease here runs out at the end of the month. The weather has been intensely crappy for house-hunting, or searching for a rental home closer to work, and there are so few hours in the day available for the purpose, at all. There is little time left. Do I sign a six month extension on the lease here? I don’t want to live here anymore. I want a place of my own – really mine, a home. I know so much more about what I want, and what I need, and what is enough… and I haven’t found it, yet. I’m also… not quite ready. I meant to be. The holiday season got in the way of being more prepared, and I made a practical decision about supporting my Traveling Partner’s goals ahead of my own, short-term. We do that for each other now and then, because… love. So… yeah. Six more months here now seems the pragmatic choice, the practical, feasible, doable decision with the least upheaval, for the time being. I would, in all honesty, prefer to move during the summer months, anyway. Less rain falling on paintings being exposed to weather, carried from residence to moving truck, from moving truck to residence. Thankfully, I have options – and an awareness of options. I make an appointment to sign the lease next Thursday, on a day I will be out of the office on other personal matters. I have another week to keep looking. Hell, I found Number 27 less than a week before I moved, back in May of 2015. 🙂

Today isn’t “perfect” – what ever is, really? It’s enough, though. Today is a good day to appreciate having enough. Being enough. Doing enough. I am content with sufficiency. Today that’s enough. 😀

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

Each Day Like a Gift

January 17, 2017 //
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I am sipping my coffee with an eye on the weather, this morning. The forecast calls for freezing rain, or maybe snow, or some sort of define-ably inclement weather, just about at the time I am planning to be commuting to work. I am watchful, to ensure I am appropriately prepared. No particular anxiety about it; there is still snow on the ground and a lot of ice here and there, and I am already prepared for that.

The weekend was pleasant and restful. I miss my Traveling Partner. Weather has kept us apart; neither of us favors traveling in these conditions unless utterly necessary, and our emotional need to be assured of the other’s safety outweighed our need to be in the same physical place at the same time. Still, I miss him greatly, and I am eager to see him. It probably won’t be tonight. Maybe tomorrow, or Thursday? The weather won’t stay like this indefinitely. Change is.

I face the morning like a holiday gift. I knew it was coming, but I don’t know much more about it than that, so far. I commit to letting the day unfold as it will, and refrain from borrowing anxiety over events that are not yet. My morning doesn’t need that, not even at all. I make room in my morning to enjoy simple pleasures: the warm water in the shower, the ease in my morning yoga routine, my general lack of pain this morning, the feeling of the warm coffee mug in my hands, how pretty the fish are in the aquarium, and the general sense that this feels like a “good day”. I smile and wonder whether other creatures waste their time defining things, or if that is peculiarly human.

I move on with the morning, and take a moment or two for gratitude; it complements pleasure nicely, I find. I feel grateful for the luxury of plumbing, and potable water, electricity and internet access, and the accessibility of well-made, ready-to-wear clothing in so many colors and styles, particularly (this morning at least) fuzzy warm spa socks. I am grateful for less practical things, too: good friends who live nearby, and also dear friends whose affection is not diminished by distance or time spent apart. I am grateful for the opportunity to love, and to learn to love well. I am grateful to have a Traveling Partner on this strange journey that is life. I am grateful to have so much cherished solitude in which to develop deeper self-knowledge, and to grow and become the woman I most want to be. I am grateful for a job I enjoy, am valued for, and have become proficient at, over time. I am grateful for chances – and second chances. I am grateful for perspective, awareness, and education. I am grateful to have the willingness to overturn my opinions in the face of new knowledge.

It’s a lovely quiet morning, preceding a day filled with unknowns. I will approach it with enthusiasm and joy, in anticipation of another day on this journey to… me. Like any gift, the contents are a mystery until I unwrap it, open it up, and see what’s inside. Whether it disappoints me or pleases me greatly probably has more to do with my expectations, and how I face life generally, than the contents themselves. I’m grateful to have the day, regardless.

Today is a good day to begin again. Every journey needs a beginning. 🙂

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

Tinted Glasses

January 16, 2017 //
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I started the morning at a pleasant hour, feeling rested and merry, in a familiar amount of pain, consistent with the cold weather. I sipped my coffee and quietly honored MLK Jr Day, reading biographical essays of great civil rights leaders of color, and about black American, and immigrant experiences of struggling with the American dream. I had considered going to one of the numerous public events, but the icy weather keeps me home today.

I got to thinking about racism and discriminatory biases generally, even peculiar “mean girl” biases against “outsiders” who don’t wear the “right” clothes, or make-up, or use the “right” language; human primates take “fitting in” pretty fucking seriously. Comically so, were it not for how much damage we do, and how we hurt each other. Can we not let go of that? It’s so childish and trivial.

I think about a younger me. It has been a struggle to better myself, to leave my racist upbringing behind, to stop judging others because they are not within the parameters of some bullshit ideal built up in my head about what people “should” be, handed down to me by my parents, or propagated by the media. I’m not the woman I was at 23, at 27, at 32, at 40… Still very human. I still face the woman in the mirror every morning asking how can I take another step toward being the woman I most want to be? How do I treat my fellow human being truly well, and also treat myself truly well?

I saw myself on video the other day. A corporate end-of-year presentation looking ahead to the year to come. I did not recognize myself visually, at first glance; that woman doesn’t look like how I feel when I look out from within this fragile vessel made of flesh. She’s… fat. Not pretty. Not “cool”. Sort of… nerdy. Older. I felt struck by something else; I’m okay with who I am these days. I wasn’t frightened, offended, appalled, or ashamed of that woman on video. I heard her words. I smiled because she engaged me with her passion and ideas. I lost sight of her appearance quickly. I have grown.

A change of perspective can be really helpful.

A change of perspective can be really helpful.

For some time now, I make a point to seek out what is beautiful in the people I see around me. I shut off the dripping internal faucet of subtle criticism any time I catch it dripping, and return to smiling at strangers, wishing them well, and seeing what else there is to see about my fellow human beings on this strange journey. I take advantage of the power of imagination, and life experience, to rewrite the internal narrative I tell myself about humanity.

No, we aren’t all kind people. We aren’t all supportive or pleasant people. We aren’t all “doing our best” to improve the world. Still – there is more to each of us than our worst moments, and there is more to each of us than our outward appearance taken in at a glance by a stranger in an impatient moment. So. I try to see more. I try to see differently. I look for the beauty. I look for the delight. I look for the best of what each stranger offers the world. When I catch myself doing differently, in some very human moment of my own, I imagine switching to a different pair of glasses. Glasses that filter out the ugliness and hate. Glasses, let’s be clear, that filter out my ugliness and hate, and judgmental criticism, and anger, and impatience with the world, and frustration, and pain. I’m human too. Sometimes I need to see more clearly, sometimes that means changing not the world itself, but how I see it. 🙂

What sort of tint is on your glasses? Hate? Mockery? Cruelty? Anger? Criticism? Impatience? Smug superiority? Righteous fury? Resentment? And when you turn your attention from the world to the person in your mirror, what then?

Today is a good day to see the world through different eyes. A change of perspective. Greater compassion. Acceptance that we are each having our own experience, and awareness that the experience I have myself, may not be what someone else experiences, at all. Simple respect, consideration, compassion, and awareness, go a long way toward healing the world. It doesn’t take much more than seeing the circumstances and asking “how can I help?”, without defensiveness, without blame, and without criticism. I’m ready to clean off my glasses and begin again.

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

A Day for Me

January 15, 2017 //
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When did you last spend an entire day caring for yourself, body, mind, and soul? The works. Like… a spa day for your whole being? Healthy, while also indulgent. Uninterrupted. Focused, and also relaxed. Purposeful, but not hurried. No pressure – your undivided attention on supporting the person in the mirror. I took a day for me, yesterday. It was strangely not at all as I planned it, but… wow. I needed that time. A day of relaxed self-care that was not also pock-marked with fretting about work in the background. A day of small favorite luxuries without any self-consciousness or doubt. A day of meditation, quiet, calm… and wow was it lovely, and soul-soothing, and magical. Well… not actually “magical”. There were verbs involved, and I did those, for me. 🙂

I had intended to enjoy the day at leisure, and this much I most definitely did do. I made a wee cherry clafoutis for my brunch, a delightful treat. I happily enjoyed more coffee than I generally allow myself, content that a late night could be followed by sleeping in. I queued up a good playlist (that I mostly didn’t listen to), and had my sketching supplies, a book I am reading, and a journal at hand. I ended up spending most of the afternoon and evening quietly meditating – not at all the plan, but as it turned out, precisely what I needed to care for me best.

It was late into the evening when the last coals of the fire in the fireplace dwindled away to nothing, and the room began to take on the night chill from a draft somewhere. That was when I realized I had passed something like 10 hours just chilling. No TV. Music only rarely. Not bothering to pick up my book. Writing a note about this or that now and then. Just relaxing with the woman in the mirror, feeling the feelings, letting the cognitive landscape shift and change, accepting the emotional weather – which changed often, and more rapidly than the icy landscape on the other side of the windows. I watched the birds. They watched me back. I sat warming my feet by the fire, and smiling, feeling content that for the moment, all is well (for me, here, right now). It was lovely. I soaked in it. Bathed in it. Wrapped myself in these all-to-brief sweet moments of calm. Savoring them for later recollections, on more difficult days.

Evening from my meditation cushion.

Evening from my meditation cushion.

I don’t remember going to bed. I know I did; I woke in my bed from a deep sound sleep, feeling well-rested, and well-cared-for. That’s a thing I didn’t understand years ago; our very human feelings of neglect, inattention, shabby treatment, and even having been dealt with cruelly or abusively, can be soothed greatly by how we treat ourselves. It doesn’t stop some other person who treats us badly from being who they are, or make circumstances different than they have been, but it has tended to allow me to heal more, faster, and more completely, and to bounce back from challenges more efficiently. Totally worth taking the time to invest in skilled self-care. I’m no expert (clearly). I’ll keep practicing. 🙂

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