I’m waiting for the sun, or at least daybreak. Enough light to make out the trail so I can get started on my walk this morning, would be enough, actually. I woke earlier than necessary and also failed to get up and out the door without waking my Traveling Partner. Shit. Well, I did try.
I woke with a headache and feeling rather… cross? Gloomy? Pointlessly aggravated for no reason. I refuse to capitulate to my relatively crappy mood, since it fails every reality check. There’s nothing amiss and it’s a lovely morning in every respect, aside from my mood. Emotional weather. It’ll pass, like any rain shower.
… I know my mood will improve after a walk along the marsh, and down the path past the river, listening to the birds and breezes. My Traveling Partner pings me to share a video, bringing a smile to my face. I feel loved and this headache doesn’t change that.
I watch the sky begin to lighten with a sliver of dawn down low against the horizon, silhouetting Mt Hood in the distance. I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s almost time to begin again.
I’m groggy. I slept less than ideally well. The commute into the office was… fine. Traffic was heavy, and seemed peculiarly fast. I felt like I was running late (I wasn’t) and my timing even now feels a bit “off”. It’s less than ideal, just generally. I feel mostly comfortable in my skin, although I’m having to work to manage the pain I’m in this morning. It’s okay. It could be worse. My Traveling Partner woke me around 2:00 a.m., annoyed to be awake and letting me know that. I admit it, I was aggravated about being awakened (particularly since I wasn’t having the best night as it was, myself), but he was a super sweetheart 100% after that moment of annoyance, and it was lovely to see him before I left for work. The annoying moment and being awakened at 2:00 a.m. was less than ideal… but… in the grander scheme of things, it doesn’t amount to much.
…It’s just that kind of day…
Life is a funny mix of ups and downs, trauma and achievement, healing and hurting, convenience and inconvenience, ease and difficulty… and a day or moment that is “less than ideal” may still be pretty fucking fantastic in most regards, and surely isn’t “bad”. It’s pretty easy to overlook where “less than ideal” actually fits on a curve… think about it. “Less than ideal” is basically everything that isn’t “ideal” a characteristic that can be applied to damned few things. “Ideal” is perhaps not quite “perfect” (and nothing actually is, although some things may seem to get close)…so… “less than ideal”? Yeah, very little of that is going to actually be “bad”. Mostly it’ll end up being pretty fine, and generally okay. Something to think about. Perspective is funny that way.
…I’m still super groggy…
I sip my coffee sort of dragging myself through the morning. I look at my to-do list for today, and I’m surprised that I’ve knocked off easily a third of what I had planned for today, and I’ve only been at it a couple hours. The plan is not the experience. The map is not the world. The “less than ideal” sense of things is not an indication of success or failure – it’s just a feeling. 😀
I guess I’ll make another cup of coffee and begin again.
My commute into the city this morning was pleasant and uneventful. I got gas. Got coffee. Arrived at the office a bit early – and that proved to have real value, since I’d managed to forget to slip my office fob and key into my coat pocket on my way out of the house! I didn’t lose my head over it – it wasn’t even a particularly stressful moment; I had the presence of mind to think to check with the building concierge and was able to check out a key and fob temporarily, to let myself in. (Being first on site has its downsides. lol) Turned out to be just as unremarkable as it sounds.
I sat down to my computer and skimmed my email, and Slack notifications, and answered the most time-sensitive items straight away, then went to make coffee – only to discover that the weekend cleaning crew had jammed the door on the coffee machine, so… no fancy machine-made coffee this morning. I’m drinking instant. LOL I’m not too proud for that, and hey, it reminds me how fortunate I truly am, so I sip my instant coffee quite contentedly as I catch up on emails and whatnot that piled up over the days I was out of the office. Easy. Routine. Within minutes I’m sufficiently caught up for the day to feel like an absolutely ordinary Monday. Win.
It’s hard to measure the impact of anxiety on a day that begins with “catching up” after being out of the office. I can remember a time when my unmanaged anxiety would have had me spun up before I ever sat down to look over my email, and prone to reactively responding without thoroughly reviewing whole threads to see what had already been well-supported, eventually spending some notable portion of an entire week aggressively pounding out replies to things via email that might have been better handled (and more skillfully) after a moment of real consideration, and maybe a pause to reflect, instead of churning out new replies to haphazard earlier replies, and breathlessly dashing from meeting to meeting feeling like I was on the edge of losing my mind. That’s no way to live (or work), and certainly tends to undermine any restorative restful recreational hours that had preceded the shitstorm of “catching up”. It can be done more gently, and with greater presence and thoughtfulness. 😀 So… that’s what I do now. lol
It took me about an hour to fully catch up from taking a long weekend. Not too bad. I end the hour with a thorough understanding of what I missed while I was out, and what new action items are on my plate. My time is planned. My work feels supported. I know where I need to put my attention, now. This feels pretty comfortable.
…And all that in an hour after a long weekend…
The weekend was lovely and restful. The homecoming was comfortable, and warm, and welcoming, and I feel very loved (I hope my Traveling Partner does, too). I’m looking forward to ending the work day and maybe cooking up a stir fry after work, or some other properly home-cooked healthy meal. I feel refreshed and restored, and full of energy (at least for now, at the start of the work day). I sip my coffee and smile, hoping my Traveling Partner is getting the rest he needs.
The sun rises on a gray rainy day. The sky lightens to a soft featureless pale gray, and rain spatters the office windows. “Nothing to see here.” I think to myself. I sigh and think back to the sea breezes and waves, and the gulls floating on the air currents just beyond the balcony. It already seems “so long ago”. I laugh at my mortal foolishness, and begin again.
My morning coffee this morning is truly awful. Made it myself, and I’ve made a few bad cups of coffee in this lifetime – this one’s a standout among them. lol It’s early on a Saturday, in a small somewhat shabby hotel, in a lovely quiet spot on the Oregon coast, though, and if all I have to complain about is a shitty cup of drip coffee made in a poor quality plastic drip coffee machine from provided (and likely ancient) pre-measured ground coffee… well… it’s a damned good morning, generally, eh? 😀 I alternate sips of water (cool and refreshing) and sips of coffee (g’damn this is terrible), and check to see what time the nearest good quality coffee may be available this morning (it’s “off season” and quite a few of the small cafes and such are closed on a seasonal basis, taking a pleasant break during the rainy winter months). 07:00 a.m. looks like the earliest I could go out and fetch back a good cup of coffee, and by then I’m likely to be wanting a bite of breakfast and maybe a walk on the beach…
…I think things over while I sip my bad cup of coffee, and lean on the experience as useful perspective, and a launch point for a moment of gratitude; as bad as this cup of coffee is, it’s here, it’s hot, and it’ll do what coffee does to kick start my morning. It’s enough, and I’m grateful for a world in which coffee exists and is (still) reliably available to a person of average means. (Realistically, that may not always be the case.)
…Good grief this is a bad cup of coffee though…
I slept well and deeply again last night. Sleep pulled me down into it’s dreamy depths relatively early (again). The walking and the sea air combine to find me truly ready for sleep by the end of the day, and it’s quite lovely. I slept a bit more than 10 hours and woke to the sound of ocean waves pounding the rip-rap at the base of the hotel property, feeling rested and refreshed. The hotel has been surprisingly quiet on this visit, and I’ve enjoyed that greatly. The morning begins gently, and I feel pretty good – less stiffness and less pain than yesterday, which is promising for the day ahead.
I shut off the desk light in the room – I don’t need it to write, and it obscures my view of daybreak and the sunrise-to-come. I smile at the fractional moon overhead, as it sets, and marvel for a moment at the way it shimmers on the bay. I open the door to the balcony, and the chilly sea air. A handful of ships in the distance reveal themselves by their lights; I’d never see them during the daylight hours without a more powerful zoom than any I brought, the their lights twinkle away in the dim blue of dawn.
A brand new day. What will I do with it?
I sip my coffee, feeling “more awake” as the quantity remaining dwindles. I think about breakfast, and choose a local favorite breakfast spot I haven’t yet tried. I listen to the waves, louder just now for some reason. I watch the gulls soaring and gliding playfully on the early morning breezes and the updraft alongside the hotel wall. The morning sky begins to shed its deeper hues in favor of something closer to a baby blue or a robin’s egg blue. Looks like a good day to wander and wonder unfolding ahead of me. I smile and finish my terrible cup of coffee, and prepare to begin again.
The day began earlier than it needed to, and I am okay with it. I’m waiting for daybreak to get a walk in while my Traveling Partner sleeps. Afterwards, I will make a trip to the grocery store to stock up on things he likes (and can make pretty easily), and then do a bit of tidying up before I finally finish packing, load the car, and hit the road for a couple quiet days of (hopefully) restful downtime.
I spend a few minutes meditating. I look over my packing list for obvious omissions. I update my to-do list. I sit quietly, taking note of how my body feels, and “where my head is at”.
My tinnitus is loud today and I am in more pain than usual. I’m physically uncomfortable, but I also feel pretty good emotionally, and generally quite merry and eager to face the day. Learning to hold space for these very different experiences at the same time took a long time to learn, and longer still to recognize the value in doing so, but so worth it. Being able to acknowledge and enjoy what’s going well in spite of what’s going poorly is a way of preventing shitty experiences or feelings from wrecking my entire moment (or day). Handy, considering how often I am in pain.
I take a breath and sigh as I exhale. It’s early, but I go ahead and take something to help manage my pain. Self-care is important to my own well-being, sure, and it’s also something I can do to support my relationships; miserable people make other people miserable, too. I’m not miserable with pain yet, but I could easily become so, and that’d be a crappy way to start off on a few days solo.
I’ve packed my paint box. My camera is ready, too. I’ve put the Lord of the Rings “Return of the King” in my bag, planning to finish it. There’s very little packing left to do (my CPAP, my pillow, things I was using during the night mostly). I’m really down to doing things to maximize my Traveling Partner’s comfort and convenience while I am gone. I take a moment to sit in quiet contemplation; I am so grateful to have a partner who is comfortable with me taking a few days solo now and then, and who truly supports my emotional wellness.
I smile, thinking about how much I know I will miss my partner, even though I am choosing to be away, and really need this time. I also know I will return home eagerly and happy to see him, and to love and be loved. It’s useful perspective to miss each other now and then.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. Soon it will be daybreak. Soon it will be time to begin again.
Evening Light 