Archives for posts with tag: are you practicing?

A Better Use of My Time

November 12, 2023 //
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I woke early. It’s a Sunday. I had hoped to sleep in, but it’s not that day, not that experience.

I somehow managed to “psychically wake up” my Traveling Partner although I was sleeping in another room. (I honestly just don’t know how I woke him, but he turned up to tell me that I had done so within seconds of me sitting up to acknowledge a new day. “Psychically” covers it as well as anything else for now.) I dress and head out for a walk, hoping he can get some more rest. I choose a favorite trail that’s a bit of a drive to get to; it prolongs my time out of the house.

… It’s a lovely misty morning for a quiet marshside walk. I get back to the car too early to head straight home; if my partner is sleeping, I want to be sure he gets more than an hour of napping! Good time to jot down a few words.

An Autumn Sunday

My plan is to return home, make coffee, and spend the day creatively (and doing laundry, and tackling some outside chores that should not take long). I’m specifically so very hungry to be painting, and shit just keeps getting in the way. Some days it just feels like “everyone wants a piece of me” and there’s nothing left for me at the end of the day… Or week. Routine chores and practical shit that just has to get done uses up most of my time and attention, leaving me too tired physically to then also paint. Time taken in the studio often feels like time taken away from my partner. I could do better. I need to do better. Painting is, for me, both a form of communication and a form of self-care and I am failing myself on this pretty seriously.

I sit with my thoughts and half an eye on the clock.

What an emotionally difficult weekend this has been. I meant to spend most of it painting and loving my partner. I managed to fail on both of those intentions pretty notably. Tears well up when I acknowledge that for myself, but they don’t fall. I take a deep breath and exhale. Another chance to begin again. G’damn we said some pretty awful things to each other. That saddens me. I know I can do better.

So, it’s another day, another chance to be the woman I most want to be, another opportunity to choose my adventure and walk my own path. Adulting is hard, but I know what I want out of my day, even if I am not entirely sure which verbs are most likely to get that result.

… I can at least do my best…

It’s time to begin again. Again.

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Categories anhedonia, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, inspiration, meditation, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights

Breathe, Exhale, Relax

April 4, 2023 //
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I’m sipping my coffee, which is going cold faster than I am drinking it. The sky is slowly shifting from night through the dawn-shades of blue and soon it will be daylight. I breathe, exhale, relax, and sit quietly and contentedly in the early morning stillness for some minutes before my fingers ever touch the keyboard. I spend a few minutes just enjoying the quiet time.

Yesterday evening was lovely. Not fancy. We didn’t have anything planned and didn’t do anything noteworthy, it was just a lovely evening at home together. I’m just making a point of reflecting on it, and enjoying that recollection.

One of the most challenging details of emotional wellness, mental health, and building resilience, is simply the essentials of day-to-day practice. Meditation only “works” if I do it. Regularly. Reliably. Same with the breathing. With the self-reflection, acceptance, and non-attachment. As with physical fitness, so much of these shit is “use it or lose it” – if I stop meditating, I lose the resilience that comes of it. If I stop practicing “being calm”, I slowly descend into emotional chaos over time. If I stop taking long (looooong) walks? I slowly lose endurance, fitness, and even the appetite for the endeavor at all. So much depends on taking a first step, then another, and developing a practice.

Discipline. Not the “discipline” of punished wrongdoings – the real discipline of sticking with a plan, of following a path, of staying the course with a practice – even over a lifetime. Discipline. I don’t have that much of it, honestly, thus the need to practice. When I practice with great reliability, I build my discipline and yes, become disciplined – and it’s a transferrable skill! If I am disciplined with regard to my meditation practice, it’s far more likely that I’ll also be disciplined about self-care, household chores, and deep listening, and the dominoes begin to fall into place in an orderly way. Discipline keeps me on the path to becoming the person I most want to be. 😀

It starts with a breath.

It starts with a practice.

It starts with a step.

It starts with a new beginning.

Are you ready to begin again? Where will this path lead you?

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

Breathe, Exhale, Relax, Live

August 31, 2020 //
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It was a lovely weekend. That’s definitely how I remember it… and I think that’s a pretty accurate summary. My Traveling Partner and I shared many connected, intimate moments, some productive moments, appreciative moments, encouraging moments… definitely a lovely weekend. We met neighbors from a couple houses down – a byproduct of community, in a community that “does community” pretty well, and where neighbors see each other, and interact. My partner, working on projects in the garage, door open to the breeze, attracted the attention and genial neighborly conversation of passing folk heading to or from the mailboxes on the corner. Conversations were had. Connections made. 🙂 Social distancing rules were observed without awkwardness. (Life in the time of pandemic has rules of its own.)

The weekend was so… ordinary. We cooked, cared for our home, spent time hanging out together, ran a couple errands, started and completed projects. I don’t need “more”; it was rich and fulfilling. It was enough. I took care and time on my self-care, making a point to meditate, to get enough exercise, to eat healthy meals, all of it matters. The day-to-day is more pleasant when I care for myself skillfully.

Every moment a potential new beginning – that’s a promising thought.

I start the week, and the day, with good practices. I shower, soak (meditate while soaking), and go for a comfortable pleasant walk of a bit more than a mile. I watch the sun begin to peak through the trees, from a seat on the deck, while sharing coffee with my Traveling Partner.

A chilly late summer morning, cold toes, warm fire, hot coffee. 🙂

No, there is no “perfect”, and I’m not always certain I’m “making progress” or “achieving success”, but there is this lovely “now”, and endless new beginnings. Right now, that’s enough.

Check this out… it’s already time to begin again. 😉

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

Cognitive Rest

February 10, 2018 //
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My mind rarely really rests. When I sleep I often dream vividly, rich in detail, color, emotion, and confusingly real-seeming. When I am awake, driving, shopping, handling some task or another, I am often also “writing” poetry or blog posts – that rarely see publication, having inconveniently become more than my limited memory buffer can store. It’s a continuous internal lecture or conversation with myself. Pause a human being in front of me, chances are I will, at some point, begin to do something rather like attempting to make conversation, but with such high risk of becoming a monologue that eventually, I am likely just chattering away without purpose or focus, or worthy content, even if I actually wanted to sit and read quietly, or work. Not talking when I don’t want to talk requires practice.

I like living alone for something besides the “solitude” (which can, I admit, occasionally become lonely); I like it for the “cognitive stillness” and emotional ease. I like it for the cognitive rest I am now able to get, at least now and then, with so much less work to reach that quiet place.

I have a pretty firm, well-established meditation practice. Meditation has helped me build emotional resilience, a calm “center” I can return to with relative ease, and a certain chill something or other which has made life considerably more pleasant, less volatile, less chaotic, and enduringly characterized by contentment. I don’t know that I would call myself “happy”; it’s not a word I’m so prone to using, at all, these days. It’s a mental magic trick that makes more people unhappy than happy to be focused on the pursuit of that elusive beast as a goal, so I stopped doing that. I don’t “pursue” contentment either; I build it. I build it sustainably on healthier choices, and healthier practices. I have been regularly surprised by how much of the forward progress has been entirely dependent on my own decision making, and my own actions.

Meditation did not “cure” my PTSD, or “fix” my injured brain. Meditation is, however, a reliably good practice for improving my day-to-day experience of my life, and that’s enough heavy lifting for one practice, surely. 🙂

It’s a busy brain, broken or not. I wrote 3, maybe 4, really fantastic blog posts in the past 24 hours – in my head. Catchy titles, engaging and amusing openers, fanciful plays on words with layered meaning… gone at the next annoying intersection, or distracting other moment. lol I woke with a completed utterly beautiful bit of poetry in my head at 3 am, got up to pee, forgot what I was thinking on my way back to bed. This morning, upon waking for the day, I have only the recollection that it ever existed at all still remaining. I play “Tribute” in tribute, and giggle over my coffee; these moments of creativity, lost, forgotten, omitted, or overwritten, litter my life experience. I can’t take them personally after so long. lol

A new day begins. So do I. Another day to write, to love, to feel, to practice – to live.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5