Archives for posts with tag: anxiety is a liar
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Walking in the Dark

August 22, 2025 //
0

I woke ridiculously early this morning. I could hear my Traveling Partner coughing in another room. “Rough,” I thought, as I sat up, “sounds like he’s having trouble breathing.” As I reached for my phone to turn off my sunrise alarm and turn on a dim light, I realized I was pretty stuffy, myself. Allergies? Probably. Or not. Doesn’t matter, if it isn’t going to kill me, I guess. I notice that my head is pounding, too. Nasty headache to begin the day with. Great.

I sigh and stretch, and start getting ready for a new day. I figure I’ll just go get an early walk in, before work, although it’s not yet 03:30, and this changes which trails are available – or safe to walk. I think it over as I dress. My beloved seems a little surprised that I’m going to just go ahead and go, so early, but there’s another heat warning in effect, and it’ll be uncomfortably warm relatively early in the day, so perhaps it is just an opportunity? A lifetime of sleep challenges and insomnia have prepared me well to make use of strange hours. lol A hug, a kiss, and I’m headed out the door to walk in the darkness.

I walked the marsh trail with my headlamp in my hand, pointed down low to illuminate only the ground, and I watched Venus chase Jupiter up the dark backdrop of the starry pre-dawn sky. The morning was ever so still and quiet, and even the traffic was muted. I heard the crunch of my steps on gravel and over dried leaves. The air was still and smelled faintly of mushrooms and summer nights. I definitely had the trail to myself! Sounds in the underbrush as I strode through a grassy stretch covered with sparse old oaks gave me a moment of doubt about my decision-making, but it was only a family of racoons scrambling about, playing and foraging. They took off in other direction when my light reached them.

We spend a lot of our lives “walking in the dark” – life is a journey without a map, and we don’t see clearly where the path may lead. I think about that as I walk. I feel fortunate that this stretch of the journey is a familiar, there’s comfort in that. I stretch as I walk, hoping to ease stiff muscles and joints, and maybe this headache, too. It doesn’t help much, but it feels good to move. As I walk, I think about the tools in my toolkit, metaphorically speaking, and how best to organize my time and manage limited resources in this new here-and-now filled with uncertainty. Isn’t life always a little uncertain? I breathe, exhale, and relax. Could be worse – so much worse. This is only a beginning. Yet another. I wonder where the next opportunity may take me?

…I laugh out loud in the darkness when I catch myself thinking “what do I even want to be when I grow-up?”, realizing I am a long way down life’s path to feel that way, and yet it is still a question I often ask myself…

I get back to the car. I drive to the office that will soon no longer figure into my days at all, most likely. I prepare the budget for this pay period, aware that “things have changed” and that I need to consider new concerns, new details, new limitations – at least for now. Sometimes it’s a little scary. Sometimes it feels rather mundane and ordinary. My emotions are still shifting and I’m still “processing this”. Fuck I will so miss this particular job… on the other hand… it’s a job. There are others. I sigh as I hit “send” on the email to my Traveling Partner sharing my thoughts on the budget and seeking his. I’m grateful this is a shared journey.

I had planned to go camping next week, feeling very secure in my position in life and the world when the plans were made. I cancelled that to make room for uncertainty – and to map a new path. There’s quite a lot to do. I smile to myself; I may even spend time helping my Traveling Partner in the shop – or paint. Change is. Were this 5 years further down the road, I could perhaps simply file for my social security retirement, and breathe a little easier while I look for work, but that time is not now. Doing so now would be a terrible tactical move for the future. I sigh again and shake off the temptation toward wishful thinking. It’s a good time for taking a practical (and where feasible, wise) approach to “right now” – with a loving eye on the future, too.

…Aren’t we all sort of “walking in the dark”, much of the time? I sip my icy cold office coffee and think my thoughts awhile longer. The sun is rising now, and it’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Start Where You Are

August 19, 2025 //
0

I finished my very early morning walk in the darkness. I arrived at the office still very early. Still dark. There’s a busy day ahead, and plenty of uncertainty about the future to exist within, and to get beyond. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Sip my coffee. Office cold-brew, and it’s fine. Not great. Not bad. Completely unremarkable in every way. Another big, deep, breathe, and I exhale slowly, completely, and feel myself relax (again) as I do. My head is stuffy (which is what woke me early this morning). I’m feeling sort of cross for no obvious reason.

Do you find yourself wondering, ever, why it is I so often focus on just these random-seeming here-and-now details and observations? I mean, what’s the point, really? It’s all about those new beginnings; it is far more likely to get me somewhere if I begin where I am. That’s it. No mystery, it’s just a more effective choice to begin where I am, rather than begin somewhere else (whether that somewhere is in my thoughts or on the road to a destination). It’s rather difficult to go from Baltimore to L.A. if I’m standing in the wilderness of Montana. I can anchor myself in the present moment by making observations about my experience, here, now. It’s not a fancy practice, as practices go, but grounding myself in this moment, right here, through observation and awareness, is a very useful tool for establishing a feeling of perspective, and giving me a starting point on the next moment that is definitely connected to the moment I’m in. I’m struggling with my anxiety a bit this morning.

My stuffy head is vexing me. I woke around 03:30, and clearly wasn’t going to be able to sleep; I couldn’t breathe. I got up. Now I feel my anxiety surge – and each time it does, it is eased by blowing my nose and restoring my breathing. It’s almost comical. I notice the anxiety before I notice I can’t breathe, again. It is easy to conflate the anxiety with other potential causes – the world of 2025 contains plenty of anxiety provoking moments, events, and circumstances. I could get all spun up over this or that bit of doubt, fear, or insecurity and lose myself in my anxiety, but it’s really all about the breathing, right now (at least, that’s the situation this morning). Other mornings it is more about pain management. It’s frankly very rare that my anxiety is driven by some real world experience that is not about something to do with this bodily very human existence. lol It’s nearly always my body screaming at me through my emotions to do something about some uncomfortable physical experience.

I chuckle and think happy thoughts of my Traveling Partner sleeping at home. He is peculiarly sensitive to my breathing; if I am struggling, he’s aware and uncomfortable. I’m glad I went ahead and started my day, and I hope he can get the rest he needs. Maybe I didn’t wake him as I left? I sip my coffee and smile. Without any added context, thoughts of love create such beautiful points of bright light in a human experience. This love we share feels like a “firm foundation” for a good life.

There is real uncertainty, and real cause for anxiety now and then, those are ordinary commonplace parts of the human experience. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let the thoughts come and go, and consider the moment and the day. “The winds of change are blowing,” said my Traveling Partner yesterday, while we talked about work, the future, and a certain “funny vibe” in the office. Change is. Am I ready? (Is anyone, ever, really “ready” for unexpected change, or change they don’t look forward to, or did not choose?) I don’t know how much longer this good thing may last… but… we never do, do we? Whatever it is, however good or bad, it is as temporary a thing as everything else. There is damned little permanence in a human lifetime, and trying to cling to what is, in defiance of what is ahead, isn’t an effective strategy.

I smile to myself, and in my thoughts I unfold the vastness of the menu in life’s Strange Diner. Any time now, it may be time to begin again… I wonder where this path leads?

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer

Time Passages

July 10, 2025 //
0

I’ve got an old song stuck in my head from a long long time ago. No idea why – it wasn’t even a song I really liked when it came out in 1978 (I was too young to understand much about nostalgia). Strange time for me then; I was 15, and that’s a strange time for anyone. lol

So, I’m sipping my coffee and watching the storm clouds, dark and threatening on the eastern horizon, and listening to this song (to get it out of my head), and wondering “what the hell?” A glance at the Billboard Top 100 from that year shows me songs that would do a better job of “taking me back”. This old Al Stewart track doesn’t even make that list. lol Why is it in my head? I don’t suppose that really matters – it’s gone now. 😀

The weather forecast says it’ll be another summer day. There’s no rain in the forecast, but I’m not sure how much I can (or should) trust the weather forecast these days, with all the recent indiscriminate staffing cuts in relevant government agencies. I watch the clouds begin to break up, revealing streaks of a clear robin’s egg blue sky beyond. Summer. It’ll probably just be hot, and maybe a little muggy (like yesterday). I lose interest almost immediately; I’m indoors, and the office has AC. I’ll return home in a vehicle that has AC, to a home that has AC. I sit with that thought awhile; I’m very fortunate. I take time for gratitude, and to consider how many places in the world suffer with terrible heat, and how many people must endure it without AC, or any sort of indoor climate control at all. I remember the stifling heat and humidity of my childhood (no AC) in Maryland – and that was years and years before people were seriously discussing climate change as a problematic force to be reckoned with (and “hot” was cooler than it is now). I’m fortunate to enjoy this good iced coffee, looking out on a hot day ahead from this comfortable place. Hell, I could be drinking my coffee hot and it wouldn’t feel like any sort of hardship or inconvenience at all – I’d still be enjoying the experience, and grateful to have coffee still available. My anxiety about that concern surfaces briefly; can we really expect coffee (and similar luxuries) to remain available in the face of profound climate change and bullshit government shenanigans that impair both the supply chain and the value of… everything? I feel certain that we are facing real potential that something as simple as a cup of coffee could become a luxury on the order of a fucking Birkin bag in the relatively near future… I try not to get spun up over it. It is A. not a thing yet, and B. not a thing I could directly change, even if it were imminent. I breathe, exhale, and relax. If my brain is going to attack me from the inside with my anxiety, it’s damn well going to have to work harder than that. lol

I skimmed the headlines this morning. Hilariously enough, it’s become unnecessary, generally, to bother with reading the articles. Many of the most reputable sources are behind paywalls, and I’m not going to pay for more subscriptions (can’t afford to be careless with such things these days), and the less reputable, more readily available sources often appear to be copying one single source with nearly identical articles (why bother reading that), others are clickbait (no thank you), and what is left over gives enough information in a headline that I often already know the basic facts and where I stand on matters that require an opinion at all. No point reading AI slop, or bad writing. I catch myself responding silently to the headlines – in some cases just correcting obviously poor grammar or poorly chosen words that don’t mean what the author intended (sometimes it’s obvious). I silently push back on the misuse of “how”, when the author clearly wrote about “why”; that sort of thing really vexes me for some reason. Funny thing about the internet and social media; it has tended to make most of us behave as though “the world” gives a shit about our dumb opinions on all manner of topics that we maybe don’t even know anything about (or not enough to have an opinion worth hearing). We earnestly want to be heard, and social media gives us an outlet to let ourselves feel that we are (whether anyone is actually listening or not). I include this, right here. Does my opinion actually matter, when I share it? Are we in silent agreement or silently arguing? I won’t ever actually know. I chuckle to myself for no reason. I don’t have solutions to these things, if they are problems to be solved at all.

I sit for a moment considering how little the small ripples on still water when a rock is thrown in actually matter when they reach the shore. I sip my coffee, content to be here, now.

The work day is planned and waiting for me. The clock is ticking. Condensation on my coffee cup drips down the sides like sweat and pools around the bottom. “You should put that on a coaster…” I think to myself with a sigh. There are things to do, and verbs involved, the future is not written, but I’ll become what I practice – eventually. The woman reflected back at me in the window smiles. It’s time to begin again. The day is waiting.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Fighting Anxiety With Non-Attachment

June 26, 2025 //
0

It is morning. Well past dawn or sunrise. I’m off work – surgery today. Now and then my anxiety begins to flare up, mostly the result of troubling memories of past surgical experiences. It’s a “nothing” sort of thing. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I pull myself back into this moment. This surgery coming up today is quite minor. It’ll probably be done under a local anesthetic and finished in minutes. Regardless; the outcome will be what it is when that time comes. For now I enjoy my coffee in the garden.

A new day.

So… It’s much later. It’s evening. My anxiety was worse than I expected (or was willing to acknowledge). I’m calling it a night and feeling a bit woozy from the last lingering after effects of the surgical stress, the anesthesia, and the pain medication they gave me for today and tomorrow. I don’t really expect to need it past then, and figure I’ll be on my usual meds in the usual way by Saturday for sure. It went fine. I was surprised that it was done under general anesthesia – seemed the sort of thing that could potentially have been handled with an exacto knife and a moment of moment of excessive frugality, perhaps. lol

… Getting everyday shit done is a tad more complicated by being drugged and one-handed, but it’s temporary…

In practical terms my ability to manage my anxiety skillfully was, at best, superficial and only barely adequate. As a result I managed to aggravate my Traveling Partner (first thing in the morning), who was trying to provide caregiving and support and manage his own worry without adding to my stress. He wasn’t fooled. I did manage to mystify the nurse at the surgical center with my higher-than-200/90 blood pressure when my records show my historical average around 135/70. lol She didn’t see my anxiety at all (and I didn’t explicitly call it out). She said later that I seemed very calm and steady, after I thanked her for helping to calm me before surgery. There’s something to learn from that. One clear takeaway is that “managing” and “masking” are not the same practices and can’t get the same results. I gotta work on that. It matters to choose the right tool for any job.

Still, it’s behind me now. My throat is a bit raw from their method of managing my respiration while I was unconscious. That’s not a complaint, just an observation. I’ll have some water, and a cough lozenge, get a good night’s sleep (I hope), and tomorrow, I’ll begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, breathe, gratitude, health, Metaphors, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

The Stress Is Real

March 17, 2025 //
0

Whether or not whatever is causing our stress and anxiety is “real” – the stress itself, the actual anxiety is real. Strange how that works.

I sneeze suddenly and dart across the room to the corner where I’ve tucked my handbag, and scramble frantically through the contents looking for the travel pack of tissues I know is there somewhere. Damn it! Another sneeze, and now my nose is running like crazy and I dread finding myself covered in snot. I continue scrambling through the contents of my handbag a bit panicked, finally finding the tissues after I basically dump the contents onto the top of the printer in the corner. I return to my desk, feeling relieved, then my eye falls on an actual box of tissues right there on my damned desk, unnoticed, placed there by the cleaning crew over the weekend. I sigh, amused and frustrated, and astonished at the intensity of my absolutely pointless moment of stress. The stress was real. The cause of it wasn’t real at all; it was based on a misperception, a misunderstanding, an error in thinking.

“Anxiety” 10″ x 14″ – and she feels much bigger than that, generally.

…That’s often how stress and anxiety work; we respond to something in our thoughts or perceived experience without regard to the actual factual basis of the circumstances, and the stress builds so quickly we fail to “fact check” what’s going on around us…

I take a moment to let renewed calm sink in. I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a new moment. I begin again.

My Traveling Partner had asked me (some time ago) to help with some paperwork. I have been dreading doing it, not because it’s actually all that big a deal, but because… stress. My own medical trauma and difficulties with some sorts of paperwork has been getting in the way of helping him out. He’s got his own challenges and anxiety to do with it, but it’s mostly been about the practical difficulties with keyboarding for long enough to get it done. He needs my help. I am happy to provide it – in the abstract – but the reality of the stress it has been causing me flared up yesterday afternoon, and I found myself in a moment of headache and pain and stressful tears over… mostly nothing. It’s just not that big a deal. It collided with my awareness of the upcoming busy Tuesday calendar (he has a couple of appointments to get to, and needs help getting to those) and my upcoming time off (which appears now to need to include Tuesday) and my headache, and I just… couldn’t get my head around all of it calmly. I found myself facing a huge feeling of pressure and imminent requirement to get it all done. Funny – not one detail of any of it is all that big a deal, so… why all the stress and agita? Why the anxiety? What the actual fuck, eh?

Humans being human. This morning it doesn’t look like all that big a deal. I look over the provided checklist for the paperwork, it’s not all that bothersome, actually. The appointments tomorrow? The Anxious Adventurer stepped up, agreeing to take his father to those appointments. I took it in stride this morning when it turned out I also have an appointment, scheduled in between my Traveling Partner’s appointments, and which would have prevented me from taking him to both of his, regardless. Busy day. The paperwork? It’s just paperwork. Needs to be done so it can join a queue of other paperwork submitted by other human beings to be considered by still other human beings at some considerably later date. Just not that big a deal, I guess. But the stress was real. That’s an important detail; managing that stress was its own thing, with its own needs and its own steps. A real concern, for a real human being – and I’m grateful that my Traveling Partner recognized the need ahead of my own acknowledgement of my stress (which was escalating and confounding my ability to reason), and helped me address it, enabling me to more easily self-soothe, and get myself back on track. No tantrum, no meltdown. The headache lingered through the evening, but even that wasn’t that big a deal once the stress had been managed. Stress complicates everything by clouding our comprehension and judgment, making everything look like a bigger deal than it may actually be.

This morning, I breathe, exhale, and relax. I slept well and deeply last night – I clearly needed the rest. I feel like my body (and mind) have finally made the adjustment to the change to the clocks (good grief I wish we’d stop doing that). I feel more settled and comfortable in my skin. Okay for most values of “okay”, and ready for a new day (and week). The Equinox is coming, and so is my time off. It’ll be nice to have a few relaxed days painting, drinking coffee, driving beautiful roads to lovely destinations, and doing some painting. It is time planned to be very low stress. I hope it actually turns out that way, although the future is not written, and I have no way to know what obstacles may be on the path ahead. lol It’s a very human experience.

I’d like to spend a little time in the garden, too. So much of my experience in life is based on what I’ve planted, what I tend to. I think awhile about my garden as a metaphor… there are weeds to pull, seedlings to nurture, and a harvest in the future. For now? It’s time to begin, again.

My garden is a special place for me – and a useful metaphor.
Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »