Archives for posts with tag: anxiety
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Dream a Little Dream

February 5, 2026 //
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I woke rather oddly thinking I was already awake, and uncertain how I “suddenly ended up” horizontal, wrapped in a comforter, on a soft surface, when I’d been contentedly seated at my desk, drinking coffee and writing – “finishing my book” – happy to be done with it. It was an odd sensation. For some minutes, the phrases I’d been typing (in my dream) were still lingering in my thoughts, becoming a sense that it would be a good topic to write about, and slowly dissipating from my recollection as dreams generally do.

Now, I’m up, out of the house, sitting with a cup of coffee and my thoughts, on a chilly Thursday. It’s not cold. 40F (4.4C) – so relatively mild for February. The whole season has been “relatively mild” in this location, although elsewhere, in many places, blizzards rage and snow piles up. I hope you are safe and warm, wherever you may be. I sip my coffee wondering how bad the fire season will be this year, having so little rain over the autumn and winter months, and so little snow in the higher elevations. Today’s forecast was precise as to temperature and quite accurate, but the car was frosted over in spite of the mild temperature. The morning manages to feel like it’s almost winter. Early Spring? Late autumn? The seasons “don’t feel quite right” anymore. I fear we’ve broken our planet beyond repair. This does not bode well for humanity, nor for many other creatures whose lives depend on climate. Scary. I’m no expert, and I’m not interested in succumbing to this or that whispered conspiracy, I just see what I see, and live my experience; this very mild winter can be expected to be followed by a difficult summer of wildfires dotted around the state. I’ll have to be very careful when and where I camp this summer, and plan on closely monitored very contained cooking fires (I like my Jetboil best).

I remind myself not to forget coffee!

I sigh to myself. I miss being out in the trees, listening to birds and chipmunks and forest breezes, and watching the sun rise and set filtered through trees that have seen more years than I have myself. I don’t have to wait on camping… I could drive out into one of several large wilderness areas and be among those trees in less than an hour, being fortunate to live approximately midway between the coast and Mt Hood National Forest. The thought jolts me back to this moment; today I have to take my car to the body shop to have the damage done on New Year’s Eve (day) repaired. I won’t have my Mazda for some little while. Weeks maybe? Days definitely. My Traveling Partner graciously offers me the use of his truck in the meantime, and it’s a dream to drive (so much so that I’m planning to buy that make of SUV to replace my Mazda when the time comes). So, today I’ll drop off the car, and he’ll pick me up in the truck. The work day will bookend that errand, and for the most part life will be remarkably unchanged – except tomorrow morning when I step out of the house and am reminded that my car is gone. I’m sure I’ll forget, until I see it missing. lol Very human.

Life is filled with adventure – and misadventure. Choices. Opportunities. Change. Getting hung up on some particular detail is often a poor choice. Mostly the details don’t matter to anyone else; they are having their own experience. We’re all in this together, in a grander sense, though we regularly forget that and start giving people on hard times side-eye, like we have never struggled, or fallen on hard times, or failed to choose wisely. Human beings can be jerks. We like to talk about “pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps” in spite of the practical matter that every one of us relies upon others, depends on others, and probably wouldn’t survive long isolated and utterly alone (think “no internet”, “no credit cards or banking system”, “no infrastructure”…). If you’re feeling quite smugly independent about your individual success, I’d like to point out that the infrastructure, delivery systems, and basic building blocks of your experience are not things you did “all by yourself”. lol

I sip my coffee and smile to myself. The morning feels relaxed and peaceful, and I realize one reason why that is; there is no background music playing this morning in this chain coffee shop. One less bit of noise to filter out as I sip coffee and consider life, this moment, and this woman that I most want to be. Nice morning for it. Chilly, though. I’m grateful for this hot coffee. I’m not too proud to drink branded industrial chain coffee from a Big Coffee Chain Cafe in my neighborhood. lol I don’t necessarily prefer it. I’m that coffee drinker who prefers carefully brewed freshly ground coffee from estate-grown varietal beans imported from the cradle of civilization…but will most definitely lick the bitter dregs out of a packet of instant coffee moistened with a tablespoon of tepid water rather than go without. LOL I have abruptly returned home from a camping trip I was excited about – broke camp and returned home less than 24 hours into it, after driving hours – over forgetting to bring coffee!

…Would I survive without coffee? Sure. Getting past the first few deeply irritating days without would be annoying, but I’d survive – I just don’t want to. I recognize that this is characteristic of addiction. I’m grateful it’s just coffee.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I consider logging into work tools and beginning that part of my day a little early, but I don’t have to; this moment is mine. I smile to myself happily. Nice moment, this. I sip my coffee and enjoy that feeling. So much less anxiety this morning. Like… none. I slow down and appreciate that, for what it is. I’m grateful. I’ve endured much over the past two years, and it’s been harder than I imagined it could be, and I’ve done more/better with most of it than I would have expected myself to be up for. Things are turning a corner. Change is. Hard times come and go. This too will pass. Impermanence is a characteristic of life – even our human lives, however much control we seek to exert over events. I don’t necessarily like that – I’m a big fan of stability and comfort and ease – but reality does not care about my preferences, and having an easy life was unlikely to turn up in the hand I was dealt; the odds were poor (still are for me, and for most human beings). I’m okay with “okay”. I’m grateful for my good fortune in life, wherever it finds me. Enough really is enough, although I sometimes have to pause and consider my blessings, and take a moment to be aware (again) of how fortunate I truly am. (Like anyone, I find a stupid about of bullshit to bitch about rather pointlessly some days.)

Walking my own path, one step at a time.

Crazy world we are living in right now, eh? There’s a lot of terrible stuff going on here in the US and in the world. What we say about it matters. What we do about it matters more, if we can be moved to action. Heroes will rise. Villains will fall. I feel hopeful this morning (probably because I am not looking at the news). I breathe, exhale, and relax, and prepare to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Tumbling Through the Strange

December 28, 2025 //
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Weird dreams last night, surreal and strange, filled with conversations with long gone friends, and with my Dad (deceased, for many years now). It all seemed very real at the time. I woke feeling disoriented and somehow misplaced.

The drive to the trailhead was quiet and uneventful. No traffic at all, this morning, which is eerie enough on its own, but with the freezing stillness of winter and the fog, it was very spooky. The world looked as if it was being rendered immediately in front of me as I approached, and erased behind me. The morning is dark and cold, properly wintry, frost sparkling under street lights, and the temperature only 30°F (about -1°C?). Nothing looks icy, just frosty, but the highway feels different around the curves and on the bridges and overpasses. I take my time and drive with care. There is no rush. It’s Sunday.

The parking lot at the nature park is empty. No surprise there, I suppose; there aren’t many people who enjoy a walk in this cold so early in the morning. Same with me. I’m not here, now, preparing to walk because I have a fondness for walking in the dark on a freezing winter morning! It just happens that I wake quite early, and this is the timing that has developed over years of practice. I wake and begin my day with a walk, generally. Exceptions are rare. What I do enjoy greatly, even on a freezing morning (and  much of the point of this practice is about this characteristic), is the solitude. Time alone with my thoughts is precious.

Before dawn, with a longer exposure; the picture is not the reality.

A hint of daybreak coming is evident in a subtle change in visibility. The sky seems faintly lighter, the silhouettes of the trees darker and more clearly outlined against the sky. Details of my surroundings are becoming clearer. In the cold, I won’t be inclined to stop for long at my halfway point, and I won’t want to write with stiff cold hands. I take my time with it now, before I step out onto the trail.

My head aches. My tinnitus is loud. My arthritis is griefing me. My sinuses are congested with the lingering effects of having been ill. I could go on; being human can be messy, annoying, uncomfortable, and unpleasant. None of that shit is “the important stuff”, is it? Just distractions and obstacles on the path, right? Human. If I give in and let all the mundanities of pain and aging and illness command my attention completely, it tends to diminish the joy and beauty and wonder that are also very much part of this experience. Which has more value – watching daybreak unfold into a new day, or being vexed by pain? Where we focus our attention has a lot to do with the quality of our experience in a given moment. I sit with that thought as I watch the sky slowly change from night to day, content to enjoy this moment as it is.

I sigh quietly, thinking about 2025. It’s nearly over. There’s a whole new year queued up, ready for whatever we make of it. I have no “resolutions” or grand plans. I do have practices, and hopes for the future, and a handful of intentions I’d like to make good on. There are always verbs involved. My results reliably vary; this is a very human experience. I will do, and fail, and learn from my failures, and begin again. Sure, I’ll likely also succeed many times, and celebrate those successes, but I’m not likely to learn as much from them. (I hope to be appropriately grateful for the circumstances that are pleasant and comfortable. I hope to be gracious about help, and sufficiently self-aware to understand that I’m not “getting there” alone.)

We become what we practice. Choose wisely.

Dawn comes. Fog clings in the low places, obscuring the marsh trail and the meadow. It’s a bit warmer (35°F, now, about 1.5°C I think). Better for walking. I wrap my scarf around my neck, and pull my knit hat on. I look down the trail, feeling fortunate for this quiet solitary moment. It’s time to begin, again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Uncategorized, winter, women, Words

Like a Pimple

November 20, 2025 //
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Sometimes small things get large, or at least feel larger than reasonable. Sometimes that experience is a reflection of lost perspective. Sometimes it is about many small things piling up. Keeping small things small is a smart choice, but sometimes it sounds easier than it seems to be in practice.

I sigh to myself from the parking lot of the co-work space I sometimes use. It’s an hour away from home. Some idiot person who didn’t know better locked the deadbolt on the front door of the co-work space, which uses an app to control access. The locked deadbolt is not necessary for security, and being locked it prevents the app from unlocking the door. Shit. I’m more annoyed by this than I want to be.

Most mornings I could shrug this off as a mild inconvenience, but today I had planned on an early start, have calls scheduled earlier than usual, and a late evening request from an upstream colleague last night to look into something “first thing”. Fuuuuuuuck. I would have shifted gears and gotten set up at the Starbucks across the parking lot for the price of a terrible coffee… but they’re closed. So I’m sitting in my car, an eye on Slack to see if the co-work management gets back to me about the locked door. This is not the first time I’ve had to deal with this; it happened once last year, when the cleaning contractor changed. Apparently, it happened yesterday, too, although I wasn’t here and that didn’t affect me.

… I don’t need to be this irritated…

I’d be less annoyed if there were anywhere at all to sit, near the locked door. There isn’t. I’d also be less annoyed, probably, if I hadn’t come here to work with specific plans in mind that have timing details. I sigh again and try my damnedest to let it go. Adapt. Bounce back. Pivot to plan B.

My head aches. My chest is tight. I feel deeply anxious and as if I am having difficulty breathing “enough”. It’s stress. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and focus on my breath. I keep at it until I feel less like smashing things with a hammer and more just quietly aggravated. This situation isn’t personal, at all.

Small shit adds up and it can create big stress. Yesterday, just as my work day ended, I got an unexpected call on my work number from an ex, which I ended before any conversation could develop. I was still triggered, and as a result I was tense and hyper vigilant through the evening, and my sleep was restless and disturbed. Yuck. Traffic this morning was awful and I hit most of the lights red. The coffee place I prefer was closed; their opener didn’t show up. Everything (and I do mean everything) seems more expensive these days, and that manages to stress me out in spite my attempts to put it in perspective. Small shit, adding up.

Daybreak comes as I sit in the car, thinking about what to do next to deal with the random stressful bullshit that doesn’t involve violence. I would have, anyway, so I take time to meditate.

… Fuck this shit, I am so g’damned annoyed right now…

The receptionist doesn’t come in until 09:00… I definitely need planned to get started earlier than that.

Shit. I’ll just have to begin again…

An unexpected ping from another co-work colleague gets me the code to a side door, and my day restarts from a new perspective on timing. There are changes to be made – aren’t there often changes to cope with? I sigh and try to be kind to myself. I am the person I am, with the baggage and odd wiring that make me who I am. It’s mostly pretty okay. Sometimes it’s challenging. Beginning again helps when things skitter sideways and my plan breaks down. I do my best – mostly that’s enough. I remind myself to breathe and slow down, as I move on.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Once Upon a Time in the Fog

November 14, 2025 //
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I woke to the overhead light above the bed shining in my eyes. My “alarm” went off without waking me, the lights reaching full brightness before I finally woke. This is rare for me. I shook off my grogginess, literally shaking my head, then shimmying my shoulders, trying to shake off the last remaining sleepiness. I dressed and headed for the door. My Traveling Partner was already awake, already drinking coffeee. We exchanged pleasant words, and I kissed him before leaving the house to head up the road to the more distant co-work space. It’ll be more suited to the meetings I’ve got today, and I’m grateful to have the option.

The morning is a mild one, damp with recent rain, and chilly but not cold. The sky is cloudy, with stars peaking through in places. No sign of the northern lights this morning, but I do look. Ordinary enough, and an unremarkable beginning to a new day.

I turn onto the highway, and find myself in thick fog. Visibility is obscured such that even the big pick-ups with fancy extra lights at full brightness are not revealed in the oncoming lane until they are about 50 feet away. Fairly hazardous driving conditions, and I make a point to drive safely, and at a reasonable speed for conditions. Somehow, I still manage to find myself ahead of all the traffic, out in the foggy darkness. The world looked surreal, unformed, and ready to be created by pure will and imagination. I entertained myself with fanciful notions of “making the world”, as I drove through the fog and the darkness.

…So much is obscured by the fog…

I get to the office, get set up and settled in, and the day begins. I sigh to myself. This feels comfortable. I like things routine and familiar. I like things easy. I don’t think these preferences are unusual, but I have also learned that although I am not alone in having these preferences, they are not at all “the only way”. Embracing change has done a lot to free me from the terror (no fooling), anxiety, and stress of enduring other people’s choices, preferences, and chosen paths. One example? I like to get moved into a place, figure out where things go, and then fucking leave them there… for years. I don’t have a personal need to rotate the displayed art, or move the furniture around based on the circumstances, or change how the kitchen is organized. If there’s no clear and obvious need to make a change in my surroundings… I don’t.

I like having a clear mental map of my living space. I like being able to navigate in the dark during the night without stubbing a toe, or banging a shin, on some object I didn’t expect to be where it was. I am adaptable enough – I can get used to such changes with relative ease, and I try not to bitch about changes that really don’t matter. I’m not actually particularly spontaneous or interested in purposefully making changes for the sake of novelty or “just because”… But some people are. Even some people dear to me. We’re each having our own experience. We’re each walking our own path. My household may not be a democracy – but it’s also not an autocracy or a dictatorship. It’s more a… merry band of chaotic anarchists trying to avoid violating personal boundaries and doing what we can to live together harmoniously, with occasional outbreaks of “my house/my way” occuring on occasions of frayed nerves or in stressful times. I mean… that’s my perspective on it. My Traveling Partner and the Anxious Adventurer likely have their own perspective, and surely have their own experience. We’re all doing our best, and trying not to be dicks to each other.

I don’t like change. Yep. I’m one of those people. On the other hand, I recognize that change is. Change doesn’t give a fuck about whether I like it or not. My Traveling Partner has learned to be kind and considerate and to discuss his ideas for switching things up in shared space before acting on them. (I’m pretty sure he’d happily rearrange all the furniture in the house some afternoons just to see how something might look, on a whim, multiple times in a given year, were it not that he truly cares about my mental health.) I’ve learned to be open to discussing how things could be different or better with some change, and to be open to trying things out. It’s been healthy for me, although sometimes stressful. When my beloved got hurt, and change was necessary to accommodate his needs, I made a point to remain open, to adapt, to keep my stress to myself long enough to allow change to have its way with me in the moment, and to accept that change was helpful and necessary. None of that is to say it was easy. There were verbs involved. I had to work at it. I sometimes cried privately over silly things that stressed me out and were of no real consequence. I also survived all of it quite easily. There was a lot to learn there for me. I’m still processing some of it, and now that my beloved is back on his feet, and beginning to make the kind of progress that puts him back to work in the shop, happily puttering and doing projects, and beginning to return to some kind of normal… there is more change. More opportunity to be open. More practicing required to manage my stress and anxiety.

It was this morning that I realized that some of my anxiety is due to my Traveling Partner’s increasingly rapid improvements, and the return of more and more of his capabilities. I’m relieved, yes, definitely. I’m grateful and encouraged. I’m delighted. I’m proud of him. I’m also having to deal with the anxiety that I experience in the face of specific kinds of change. He’s now able to reconsider some of the accommodations we’d made when he was most disabled… and to consider others that would be better for him now. He’s also able to just go ahead and do most of it himself, and some of my anxiety is part of letting go of more and more of the caregiving. I don’t get why that would cause me stress, but there it is; some of my anxiety is coming from this gradual resetting (again) of shared expectations of ability, capability, and limitations. New boundaries. New needs. Differences. I feel unsettled in spite of how much I wanted to see this day come.

Human primates are weird.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a new day. It’s a new beginning. We’re each having our own experience. We’re each walking our own path. Some people like to step on all the cracks on a sidewalk, other people hop over them, still others think any such foolishness is unnecessary and a waste of time. Humans being human. I smile to myself, grateful to see my beloved making progress. I set down some of my baggage, and feel lighter for having done so. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Birdsong In The Darkness

November 13, 2025 //
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I reach the halfway point on my walk, still in darkness. I woke early, but that isn’t important this morning. What seems most interesting is the bird I hear singing – it’s just a little odd to hear sweet snippets of cheery birdsong in the autumn darkness. It’s more of a Spring sound, somehow, and this particular song seems both familiar (I’ve heard it before, I’m sure) and strange (I don’t think I’ve ever heard it here). I listen awhile. The song begins. Ends. Resumes. Repeats.

A soft rain begins to fall. I don’t fuss about that and it isn’t vexing me at all. I’m properly prepared for the weather, warm in my sweater and soft fuzzy cardigan, and dry with my rain poncho over those. Sitting beneath overhanging branches, I’d be sheltered from the rain, here, almost completely in summer, but most of the leaves have now fallen, and the only shelter from the rain are the fewer evergreen branches. I’m for sure getting rained on. I don’t really care much. It’s fine. The air smells fresh and the morning is a mild one. I’m comfortable for most values of “comfort”, sitting here in the predawn darkness.

… I’m not really looking forward to work this morning. No particular reason besides having plenty I’d like to be doing for my own purposes, like wanting to paint but not having the energy to paint and work, generally. It is one of the most concrete signs of “aging” that I notice in my everyday experience; I am more likely to yield to fatigue than I am to paint in an exhausted frenzy of creative passion. I’m less inclined to stay up late painting after work, and less willing to drag my subsequently groggy, irritable, ineffective consciousness half awake through the next work shift. 😆 That was once pretty routine for me (and yet I managed to wonder why my mental health was so poor). It’s a change for the better, as far as taking care of this fragile mortal vessel is concerned – but I paint less, which frankly (from my own perspective) sucks.

I sigh to myself in the darkness and brush a damp strand of hair off my face. I probably need a haircut, I think to myself, and for a few moments I contemplate matters of appearance, aware that I am traveling down to the bay area for work in a couple weeks. I live in Oregon. The company is in San Francisco. The styles of dress are somewhat different, professionally and I sit wondering how much I actually care and how much that really matters anymore. The world has changed a lot in the years since the global pandemic first hit. I chuckle to myself. How much these details matter, generally, to “people”, and whether they matter to me personally in any practical way, now, are definitely different questions.

I smirk at myself in the darkness and wonder if there’s any value in telling the Anxious Adventurer that knowing oneself is an ongoing journey in life, and that figuring out “who am I?” is one of humanity’s big enduring questions. I keep asking it. I keep answering it. The answer is always evolving and changing over time as I learn more about the woman in the mirror. There is no one right answer to some questions – and that doesn’t change the importance of the answer to some one human primate (or, possibly, to the world), nor diminish the need to explore the question.

Daybreak comes. The rain stops. I sit enjoying the moment of solitude. I can almost imagine that the entire world is at peace. Awareness that it isn’t peaceful for everyone, everywhere, surfaces exactly long enough to provoke my anxiety, which surges and renders me momentarily breathless, stalled, heart pounding, chest tight. I gasp for air, and immediately begin taking the steps to reduce the physical experience of anxiety as much as I can, while I also begin the internal conversation with myself that seeks perspective and relief. Anxiety is a liar, and I know this to be true from my own experience. Over a few minutes the anxiety eases.

A lot of things can kick off my anxiety or symptoms of my PTSD. I’ve learned to take most of it in stride, and to accept that my subjective emotional experience is an unreliable indicator of imminent harm. I breathe, exhale, and relax. The anxiety eases. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a serious panic attack. I’m grateful it passed quickly. I’m grateful to have more, better, tools to manage my anxiety and soothe myself than I once did. I take time to meditate. It is an ordinary autumn morning, and everything is fine. I’m okay. This moment is okay. I’m grateful to be here, now.

… I’m grateful to avoid becoming trapped in an emotional mire…

I hear that bird singing. I get to my feet, ready to walk on. It’s already time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, War and News of War, women, Words
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