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Character Study

June 2, 2025 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about favorite characters in books, movies, and anime, and what it takes to write a good character, and how the “story arc” of a truly great character pulls me in and gets me invested in the character. I’m thinking about why a good character matters so much. I’m reviewing my own life through the lens of character development, and this journey that is life itself. I’m just one woman, living one mortal lifetime, and honestly I see myself (now) as relatively ordinary in nearly every way. That wasn’t always the case. Dunning and Kruger will have their way with us all. lol When I was young, lacking in life experience, and prone to very poor decision-making, I thought I was the absolute center of my universe, the Big Bad, the main character in every story, and the best choice of human voice to say “all the things”… I was quite mistaken. I grew out of it. lol Reality does not care what I believe.

…Ordinary is okay, nothing wrong with it. “On the average, things are average.” – I’d attribute the quote, but I don’t know who said that (it wasn’t me). I’m not dismissing or discouraging aspirational goals or pursuing one’s ambitions, I’m just saying human primates have a tendency toward grandiosity (whether private or explicitly stated), and we’re mostly just… primates. Fancy fucking big-brain-having apes, that have chosen to build and to make, and have learned to wear clothing and how to set themselves up for elaborate failures. Hell, I’m not even saying so to provoke any sort of change – I’m just pointing out this thing I am observing, while character and character development are on my mind (for no particular reason). I’m not meaning to be at all discouraging of whatever you may be seeking to do or to change, just saying generally we can expect most things, most of the time, to be completely… insignificant and ordinary… in most regards. Our individual epiphanies and fantastic ideas are often pretty illuminations of ideas someone else has already put forth elsewhere, before it came to us. Our triumphs are often held in common with the triumphs of others rather like us. Few of us as mortal human primates stand out in any particular way, good or evil. A small handful do – often in the worst possible ways – but seriously, most of us just don’t, and that’s actually just fine.

Do you earnestly truly need to change the world and need to be known for some special something? I can tell you how! Be remembered. Sounds easy, and surely there are a number of ways to go about it, if you’ve just got to have it. If you are more particular than that, and want most to be known and celebrated for actually helping make the world a better place for humanity, this one is more difficult, but built on the same principles – you simply have to be much more selective about what you do that comes to define you and what you are known for. What do you want to be known for? How do you want to be remembered? If you were reading your life as a story, a novel, or a screenplay, what would be the pinnacle achievement that shows you have grown, and how you have successfully made the world a better place? Can you get there, realistically? Authentically? Ethically? What would your path need to be? What experiences would you have to seek and submit to? What would you change about who you are? You can get started any time…

…Where does your path lead?..

…We become what (and who) we practice.

I sip my coffee and think about my journey over the past 62 years, but more specifically how far I’ve come over the past 15 years. It still astonishes me that I had made so little progress toward bettering myself in my first 47 years – that’s a long damned time to fuck about being a rather terrible person lacking in goals or firm ethical grounding, mostly mired in chaos and damage, and definitely struggling just to survive. I did an unfortunately adequate job of masking a lot of that, and giving a decent appearance of being… decent. I mostly just stepped very carefully around the wreckage within, and did what I could to protect those I cared about from my madness and my inner demons. I lacked trust in anyone’s affection for me, most especially my own. I needed help – a lot of it – and some lucky breaks – and I definitely did not know how to get there from where I stood then. “Here” wasn’t even a place I could envision, then.

One of my luckiest breaks was developing a friendship with the man who would eventually become my beloved Traveling Partner. Life changed enough in some small way that my sense of self was changed, too. That mattered more than I could know at the time, and it took me a long way on a new path. My perspective on life changed. It wasn’t “everything”, but it was a good beginning. A new beginning, and the start of a willingness to consider change with greater comfort, and even to embrace it and to seek it. I began asking new questions. I began considering myself as something other than my own worst enemy. I stopped treating myself as though I somehow deserved the lifetime of trauma I had endured. I still needed help, and I sought it out. I began looking at myself in a new mirror, “changing my dictionary”, and using a new map – one I was creating myself. I stopped allowing the world to tell me who I was, and began working to become the woman I most wanted to be – for love. Now I pursue these things because they are the path I choose. (It helped to have profound inspiration to inspire a new beginning though, not gonna lie.)

Note: it doesn’t require a great and inspiring love affair to embrace change, to experience epiphany or enlightenment, or to choose to walk your own path, just happens to be what got me there.

Another perspective on love – and character building.

I’m not certain why these things are on my mind this morning. Maybe because my birthday is getting closer, and I’m often self-reflective and introspective around this time? Maybe because things have been so good with my Traveling Partner, lately, that I drove in to the office feeling pangs of “separation anxiety” in a way that I tend to associate with “new love”? I smile at the new Hue Forge image he made for me over the weekend – an early birthday gift – a favorite anime character, Dandy, from the anime Space Dandy. My Traveling Partner also 3D printed me another hydroponic tower garden, which I assembled on the deck (this one is mostly filled with strawberry seedlings). I feel very loved. I smile and sip my coffee, sitting with my contentment and joy, and reflecting on how far I’ve come in 15 years. It’s been a sometimes slow-feeling journey – incremental change over time often feels very slow – but it’s my own, and I’m okay with where I am this morning, compared to where I was on any Monday morning 15+ years ago. 😀

Love blooming in my garden; “Rainbow Happy Trails” and “Whimsy”.

I sigh and smile. I feel pretty good this morning, and I’m eager to face the day, and return home to my beloved. We plan to cook dinner together this evening – an experience we’ve been enjoying together. I feel fortunate and grateful, and I sit with those feelings awhile, watching the sun rise beyond the window of the office, and sipping my coffee. It’s not fancy, this experience. It’s not extraordinary – it is, in most regards, quite ordinary. That’s okay – better than okay – it’s the experience I’ve chosen, and a moment in a life I am enjoying, on a path I’ve chosen to walk. Am I changing the world? Not in any particularly obvious way, but I’m changing my wee corner of it in small ways, every day, working to become the woman I most want to be, living a life I can look back on with a measure of satisfaction, and a sense that I am doing better today, than I did yesterday, by every measure that counts for me, personally. I have a sense of who I am, and who I want to be – and that counts for so much more than I understood it could, 15 years ago.

What does it take to become the person you most want to be? A commitment to character building over time, perhaps? A willingness to begin again, many times, over years, definitely. Some frankness when facing the mirror certainly helps. The clock is ticking. Embrace change. Become the person you most want to be! You can begin again, any time.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being, turning 60, Words

Something About a Change of Perspective

May 13, 2025 //
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My ears are ringing like crazy this morning. I focus my attention on the sound around me, and the songs of early morning birds (mostly robins). I listen to my steps as I walk the paved section of trail near home. I am walking westward. The sky is gray, densely cloudy, and the air smells of recent rain.

I squint at the newly planted section of vineyard alongside the trail, as I approach it. Something red is blooming at ground level, and I can’t quite make out the grape vines in the gloomy early light. Red clover? Vetch? Last year this was meadow (or fallow fields), and I reflect on the feeling I had the first day I came to this trail after the meadow had been plowed under and replaced by vineyard.

One perspective of many possible perspectives.

Here and there wild blackberries encroach on the edges of the vineyard. They aren’t the native sort, they’re an invasive non-native. The blackberries themselves are tasty nonetheless, but it will be many weeks before blackberries dangle ripe from the thorny canes. I walk past some wildflower blooming – or is it a weed? So close to the planted vineyard, I guess it’s very much a matter of perspective. I walk past reflecting on that.

Wildflower or weed?

Breathe, exhale, relax, and keep walking. I am having my own experience, walking my own path, and quietly enjoying this gray rainy morning.

… The clock is ticking…

I pause at my halfway point and sit for a few minutes, listening to the sound of geese overhead and distant traffic. Breathe, exhale, relax. My tinnitus is still pretty bad, but it’s no longer dominating my attention. There is forest around me and I can hear the nearby creek bubbling past. A small brown bird stops near me, hopping here and there in the grass at the edge of a the trail.

This is a lovely quiet morning, suitable for walking. I get to my feet and begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, War and News of War, weight loss secrets, Words

Walking Your Own Path

April 18, 2025 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and reflecting on my journey, and things generally. My sleep was restless and filled with peculiarly realistic dreams of places, people, and circumstances that were in no way actually real in my own life. It was a bit unsettling to wake as if from an altogether different life into the life I live. It’s not the first time I’ve had such dreams, and I doubt it will be the last.

I made the drive to work watching the night sky transform at daybreak. Venus was bright above the horizon, and the sky was smudged with orange and rusty hues. I caught glimpses of Mt Hood from a couple vantage points that don’t offer a convenient place to stop, and struggled a bit to avoid being distracted by the beauty. Safety first! I have places to be, and loved ones who would like to see me again when I return. That was a pleasant thought in the moment. Something about the morning kept reminding me of “home” – not my home, now, but some long gone time and place that I can’t return to. It only exists in my memory. A spring afternoon, the buzz of insects, a screened in porch, and the hum of a fan, Easter shoes that pinched. A summer morning, the heavy scent of southern blossoms, the thick humid air, the clink of ice cubes in cold glasses, and sweat that doesn’t dry. Only memories, now – even most of the people are…gone. I sighed to myself as I drove, letting the thoughts drift through my mind like clouds. Nothing to be concerned about, just the morning of a new day, and some thoughts to get me started. It’s funny – I often “do my best writing” while I’m driving, and can’t jot down the words. lol An interesting challenge is finding them again, later. I rarely do. I find other words, other thoughts.

Strange journey, life, isn’t it? We each walk our own path. We’re each having our own experience. We persist in sharing our advice with other travelers as if they could ever truly make use of what we have learned ourselves – maybe, sometimes, in rare instances we really can learn from the experiences of others. I often wonder how true that really is. We are our own cartographers, and these “maps” we make aren’t very helpful to anyone else, generally. The moments and the journeys are uniquely our own. What do you actually get from reading these words? When I point out that we become what we practice, do you understand what I’m pointing out to you? How it applies to your own practices? The ways it could be useful to change your experience? How easily leaving dishes in the sink “now and then” becomes dishes in the sink more often? How difficult it can be to adopt a new better habit without committed practice? How easily anger becomes a character trait instead of a moment of emotion, when we yield to our anger and relish “venting” our frustration instead of steadily practicing some other approach? When I suggest practicing self-care, do you consider it and take action? When I observe that my chronic device use quickly became hard-to-resist doomscrolling and that I had to change my practices to preserve my emotional health, did you reflect on your own, and the effect it has had on you? You have a moment to make a change, to become the person you most want to be. What will you do with it?

I’m not telling you how to live – I’m just wondering what you get from my observations over time, or if it is merely an entertaining distraction?

We’re each walking our own path. Each tending our own garden. (These are metaphors.)

I’m just one human being, walking my own hard mile, facing my own trauma, and even the consequences of my own actions and choices. I’m grateful (and fortunate) to be where I am now, but there are no promises I’ll “always” have it like this – I’ve lived through far far worse. We are mortal creatures. We’re fortunate any time we can share the journey. I sip my coffee and think about love. Our choices in life only get us so far; some of it is also pure luck and the timing of circumstances. Each moment is precious – and unrepeatable. I reflect on Ichi-go ichi-e, and vita contemplativa – useful concepts. I practice non-attachment, and seek a sense of contentment and sufficiency. Along the way, I’ve found (often but not always) real actual no bullshit happiness. This surprises me, and I embrace the moments as I find them. Chasing happiness never got me there. Funny how that works.

Each moment as temporary as a flower.

My coffee is almost gone. The waning moon is faint in the cerulean blue of the morning sky. I’m okay right now – for all the values of okay – and I’m grateful. Nice moment. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and think about weekend gardening to come. There are strawberries to water, and arugula to plant. There are radish seedlings to thin, and a clematis vine to plant in a pot. There are new moments to live, and new thoughts to think. I smile to myself, grateful to have the chance to share words with you over my coffee, however you choose to use them. I wonder for a moment where your path may lead? Then, I get ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets, Words

Getting There

April 16, 2025 //
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The drive to the office was relaxed and routine. My coffee isn’t bad (neither is it actually good, it’s just coffee). The view from the office window at dawn hints at a warm afternoon, later. A good day to be in the garden.

I’m in the office.

The waning “pink moon” setting as the day begins.

I sigh to myself. Breathe, exhale, relax. I take a few minutes for meditation before work begins. I plan the day ahead. I do a thoughtful body scan, and consider how best to manage my pain and the stiffness that results from the combination of sore muscles and arthritis. I seek the one, and try to avoid the other, but ultimately pain is pain; managing it as well as I can is a good practice. Not letting it run my life is an important choice. They both require a committed effort; there are verbs involved, and a steady willingness to care for this fragile vessel with a full measure of consideration, and my whole heart. I stretch and sigh again, before wondering “at what point is a sigh just a deep breath?” I let all that go and watch the moon set.

Yesterday was lovely. My appointment with the surgeon I was referred to went well, I guess, for some values of going well; I got referred to a different more specialized surgeon. lol Progress? I guess so. The Anxious Adventurer set up two more of the small raised beds for me in my new “west side garden”. It’s small space, and sure, it’s narrow, and limited, and the big A/C unit is right there, but… it’s also just outside my office window, and rather private (not visible from the street the way the front garden is). The first bed is already planted in strawberries, and since I started those from mature plants in 4″ pots, there are already flowers. I smile at the thought and yearn to feel the soil under my fingers as I fill the other two beds with soil and plant them with… something. I don’t know yet. It’s a spot that only gets afternoon sun, and I haven’t yet decided what else to plant there. Maybe just more strawberries? Something with flowers? Perhaps a clematis in that extra large black plastic nursery pot left over from when all my roses were potted (so many years, so many roses)? I smile, feeling my shoulders relax. I get so much joy from my garden I easily forget how I loathed the time I spent gardening as a kid. It felt like an obligation. A demand. Manual labor, nothing more or less, and I was sure that I had better things to do with my time. It felt like indentured servitude, then, and I longed to be 18, and master of my own affairs and decision-making.

What have you planted? How well do you tend your garden? (It’s a metaphor.)

…I’m grateful now for the time I spent in my parents’ garden; I use those experiences a lot, in my own garden, now. I’m still doing most of the labor. lol I don’t resent it any more. I appreciate help when I have it, but I love the work and my only resentment is that aging has robbed me of considerable strength and endurance for it… I have to choose my tasks wisely, and plan the work thoughtfully.

I hope the work day passes quickly. I’m eager to be back in the garden. I think about love and gardening awhile longer. I’d plant honeysuckle or jasmine instead of clematis, but either of those has serious potential to aggravate my Traveling Partner’s allergies rather a lot. I’ll miss them, maybe, but clematis offers lovely dramatic flowers, and will be less likely to be unpleasant for my beloved. I would not willfully choose to harm him. I think about how much I adore him. How my love is returned in equal measure; everywhere I turn in my home I see his love in the little things he has done or made for me. Even yesterday. New work skills, hobbies, creative endeavors, tools and materials, are often tried out or put to use the first time in some new something or other for me. I feel so loved.

A token of his affection, 3D printed, using Hue Forge.

The journey from being mired in trauma, sorrow, despair, or ancient pain is not an easy one. There’s no map. There is no sherpa to carry the baggage accumulated over a lifetime. There’s no handy tutorial. It’s a hard mile and we have to walk it ourselves, but every step, every moment, every sun rise is a chance to walk on, and to begin again. We become what we practice. We have choices. Sure, it’s a lot of work, and it’s often slow going. We stumble. We fall. We fail. It’s human – all of it, so very human. When I began this journey years ago, I only wanted to “be mostly okay” – to feel something good, at least as often as not. I wanted to manage the chaos in my head and to silence my nightmares.

I find myself, now, in a very different place – mostly thriving. Contented. Joyful. Even happy, rather a lot of the time. I wasn’t trying to get “here” – but once I got there, I just kept on walking. Kept working at healing. Kept practicing practices. Kept making better choices and slowly becoming someone more like the woman I most want to be. The journey is the destination – this isn’t new-age-y bullshit, although it is as metaphorical as it is practical – it’s quite real and you can make the journey yourself, from wherever you are now, to that place you most want to be, or at least someplace much better than where you feel you are. Keep walking. One day at a time. One practice at a time. One moment of studious self-care at a time. Making the decisions that the journey requires isn’t always effortless or obvious or even “painless”. Sometimes adulting is hard. I’m not telling you how to do the thing – I’m just saying it can be done, and hoping to provide some measure of hope and encouragement on what is admittedly a difficult journey. Life. Healing. Becoming. It’s not a journey of miles or moments, or hours or days – it is a journey frankly measured in years and decades. A lifetime. But the time does pass, and the miles do add up – and we do get somewhere as we go. Incremental change over time adds up. We become what we practice.

What are you practicing?

If I stopped writing today, I don’t know that it would be missed. There is so much life to live… I enjoy taking a moment to reflect on it, though, and doing so brings me great joy and peace. What about you? What are you doing to cultivate contentment? To find joy in your experience? To build emotional resilience? To become the person you most want to be? It’s not too late to make that journey – you only need to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gardening, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being, turning 60, War and News of War, Words

Where Are You Standing?

April 11, 2025 //
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The woman in my reflection stares pensively outward at some thought that isn’t a visible detail. My coffee sits nearby, untouched, sweating condensation into a pool on the desk. I should do something about that, I think, when I notice. The news annoys me. How can people – especially people of means and good fortune – be so incredibly petty, cruel, inconsiderate, and hateful? I don’t “get it”. I don’t think I actually understood that crap when it filled my own head. Untested assumptions, bullshit I was taught, terrible habits and so much ignorance… I definitely don’t understand it now.

…Feels like we’re all standing on quicksand somehow, these days, only very few people seem to be aware of it… or willing to find something firm to stand on…

I sigh to myself, and stand fast on my personal commitment to be the best version of myself that I can be, knowing what I know, seeing the world as I do, and having the skills I have. I’m certain to fail myself – and others – now and then. I’m very human, but I’m going to do my best to be a better human being today than I was yesterday, because it actually fucking matters. It matters every day, and in every interaction.

What about you? What are you doing to “make the world a better place”, you know, for everyone? You don’t need to tell me, just do the verbs. We become what we practice.

G’damn, I’m so tired this morning. Nightmares all night of strange terrifying things – hallways that never end. Doors that won’t unlock. Empty shelves and people dying of starvation, disease, and fire. Crawling terrified and silently beneath a shower of bullets in the darkness. I woke up choking – it’s just seasonal allergies that last bit, but it was an unpleasant way to wake up from a dream of chemical warfare and endless night. The commute to work was weird, too. The traffic going the opposite direction was quite dense and seemed to be moving faster than usual. There was no traffic at all going my way. I had the road to myself. It was so strange and surreal, for just a second I wondered if there had been some disaster or evacuation that I was unaware of, ahead of me. It was a chilling thought.

“The Nightmare City” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas w/glow

I’m mired in the gloom lingering from a night spent in The Nightmare City. I sip my coffee and work on letting that go.

Daybreak comes, and the sky beyond the window is ordinary enough, some blue, some clouds. There’s pleasant Spring weather in the forecast, however ugly the news is, however tragic and ridiculous our government has become. It’s a strange juxtaposition of circumstances and for the moment I miss my Traveling Partner and the safety of home, more than I can stand. I’d rather be in my garden, planting and weeding, and paying no mind to the world that often disappoints me so very much. Too much death, too much greed, too much warfare, and g’damn – too many terrible petty hateful people. I’ll choose my own path, thanks, and go a different direction. Not because I have to, but because I can – and it seems a choice worth making.

What will you choose? Where does your path lead? It’s time to begin again…

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, grief, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, War and News of War, Words
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