Archives for posts with tag: be here now
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Spring

March 13, 2018 //
2

Yesterday was lovely. I watched the sunny day unfold beyond the windows at the office and wondered at human foolishness. How is it we imagine that locking ourselves away to “earn a living” instead of being outside on a lovely day makes any damned sense at all? I looked around me any number of times yesterday, feeling fairly certain we’ve got this stuff all wrong.

The first flowers to open in the front border.

The commute home was easy, relaxed, and uneventful. It took the usual 50 or so minutes. I didn’t care about the time, because the time didn’t matter. I was simply enjoying the sunny day. I got home filled with good intentions about being productive around the house, but my inner Agent of Chaos had others ideas. I spent much of the evening meditating, and a great deal of time out on the deck, enjoying the breezes, and the sound of the wind chime. I could have put that time to “good use” in some way, perhaps pruning roses, or sweeping or tidying up the remains of winter, but no; I just enjoyed the feeling of spring. I’m not even complaining; there was nothing I needed to do more, really. 🙂

I woke with difficulty this morning; the time change will take me some days to adjust completely. Sluggish mornings ahead for a couple days, probably. Like this morning. Usually, my feet hit the floor as I turn off the alarm, or I take a moment to stretch before I rise, but alert and aware of myself, more or less. Not so this morning. This morning, I may have woken ahead of the alarm by some moments, but it wasn’t obvious one way or the other. It took me about seven and a half minutes to coax myself out of bed, and I was at risk of falling back to sleep the entire time. Convincing myself to get up was only the beginning. My routines are broken. I fumbled around for half an hour, then remembered to take my medication (usually my feet hit the floor, and it’s either meds then yoga or yoga then meds, but always those two things pretty immediately) sometime midway between turning on lights, and turning on the electric kettle to make coffee. Then I did yoga – and the kettle heated up, clicked off, and I would eventually have to start that all over again. The morning is as inefficient as yesterday evening, but for very different reasons. lol

So here I am. Another day ahead. Another journey in mind. Spring unfolding all around me. I guess it’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Spring, The Art of Being

A Morning, A Now, A Weekend, A Future

March 9, 2018 //
1

I woke a bit early, showered, and made coffee. I caught up on Facebook, and disengaged as soon as I’d flipped through the posts of dear friends, because that’s all I was there to do. My weekend bag is packed for the weekend. I’m eager to the point of confusing excitement and anxiety, which also means – more, better, self-care, and closely managing behavior with an eye on the potential to reach that tipping point at which excitement might actually become anxiety, because that’s not a place I want to reach. 🙂

Every weekend that I go home – and it does, at this point, feel very much more like home there, than here – I promise myself I’ll write while I’m there. I don’t. It’s not a lack of inspiration, it’s more a lack of will to pull myself from those moments even long enough to write about them (or about anything else). It tends to point to the greater urgency to truly care for myself, and be present in my relationships, over sharing the tale of the moment with others. I’m sort of sorry for that – and sort of not. I don’t think I’ve spent any other portion of my life this emotionally well, and I feel generally pretty okay aside from the signs and symptoms of aging, and physical pain associated with such things (and other similar such things that have lasted far longer than any sense of age). It used to be that I could mock my physical pain because it was nothing compared to the chaos and damage, nothing compared to my emotional pain. Weird to actually notice how very different my experience is now.

Still, here it is Friday. Last week I drove down after work, after an appointment. This week… I’m so eager to get the weekend started I am seriously considering the drive down tonight, in spite of Friday evening commuter traffic being a definite thing for the first 18 miles or so, and likely taking about 90 minutes to get past that mess. I just want to go. I want to be there, more than I want to be here. The yearning makes my heart ache, and makes me breathless with excitement.

I’m so human, though. I remind myself that each journey in life, across distance, also represents – in living metaphors, if we’ll have them – our metaphysical journey through life’s experiences. My last trip down and back was ferociously hair-raising, and uncomfortably so. I’ve been working on the specifics of my emotional experience as a driver on American roads in my commuting. This is no different. I consider my intention. Get there safely. Get there without wrecking my emotional experience. Get there while also following traffic rules. Driving with the average speeding of traffic, neither slowing things down by being needlessly slow, nor screwing with the flow of things generally by aggressively insisting on going faster than the average speed of traffic. Considerate. Polite. Skillful. Safe. Purposeful. Alert. Aware. Unaggressive. Not taking things personally. Mindful we are each having our own experience. Arriving at my destination still happy I made the trip and feeling something other than profound relief to have arrived alive. 🙂 Gotta have goals. 😀 Committed to the journey, not the outcome. Not the time or the timing. Drive the drive, and enjoy that process first. Get there when I get there, and enjoy that then.

I’m so ready to begin again. Are you? Where will the journey take you?

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

As Easy As a Pour Over

March 6, 2018 //
0

I took the espresso machine down to the countryside this past weekend. I used the last k-cup for the Keurig, too. I woke this morning, and began again; I made a pour over. Rich, dark, delicious… the kitchen filled with the fragrance of freshly ground coffee, and I sipped it happily wondering how I strayed from this simple path?

This morning, I begin again. 🙂 Intent. Will. Choice. Action. Practice.

And again.

And still again, if necessary – and sometimes it will be quite necessary indeed. That’s okay too. There are steps. These are practices. There are verbs involved and my results vary.

I finish my very excellent cup of coffee with a smile and begin the day.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5

What Kind of Journey?

March 1, 2018 //
0

I read a really cool thought-provoking positive post on Facebook from someone on my friend list. New-ish friend, and from the perspective of 54, quite young. I was delighted and fascinated by her approach to the ancient human question of “what do I want to be when I grow up?”, expressed as a question to her friends (and possibly the world) “what is your occupation?” followed by “was it hard to get there?” – I spent some time thinking about it, just as a straight up question, without understanding it to be, more properly, a search query put to the humans in the room, instead of Google. (By itself, that delights me.)

I answered the question. A friend answered the question. Another friend answered the question. One respondent, rather disappointingly I found, myself, very explicitly directs the questioner to consider some specific line of work, as if it isn’t the questioner’s journey, entirely, and a whole wide world of “occupations” to consider, many of which lack that sort of very clear path to a very obvious objective. As if the question had not been specifically phrased to achieve something grander by way of an answer. lol I hope she chooses her path with far less… certainty. Ease and convenience, and all manner of things that are obvious, definitely have less risk – and also promise far less reward.

I realized in considering the questions, I’m not at all unhappy to be where I am. Fuck, it took a while to get here, though, didn’t it? LOL Every step, every turn, there were people attempting to direct my hand, my decision-making, and very few of had any interest of mine in mind.

Walk your own path, young traveler. Make your choices, even in the moment, with your experience and your future in mind. Try things. Taste exotic foods. Tempt your senses with novelty. Find balance and perspective – your balance, your perspective. Do you. The map – any map – is not the world. The plan – any plan – is not the project. You are your own cartographer on a journey into a future that hasn’t been determined. There are verbs involved. You will try. You will fail. You will try. You will succeed. You may find that your notion of what success would look like is very different from the success you actually achieve. That’s okay too. It matters more to succeed on your own terms. To love well. To treat people with great consideration. Your results will vary. What matters most is to be present in your experience, and to love well and deeply. You may change the world…

…Are you ready? It’s time to begin the future. (Don’t worry, you can begin again tomorrow.)

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5

It’s Not a Contest

February 26, 2018 //
0

“Life” is not a contest, a competition, a race, or even, really, a game. I know I sometimes speak metaphorically in those terms, or have in the past, but giving that real thought, I have to wonder if I am setting myself up for an experience that doesn’t suit me, by doing so? Doesn’t it turn my attention specifically toward all manner of outcomes, and distract me from the moment I am in, to some degree, to view life as a competition?

This morning I face Monday feeling fairly content. I’m not in much pain this morning, which is a pleasant starting point for the day and week. I didn’t get as much done over the weekend as I intended to, but I also let go of those intentions fairly early on in favor of fretting over my distant loved ones, and compulsively checking for messages. LOL (So human.)

By letting go of any attachment to life-as-a-contest, life-as-a-competition, I let go of my attachment to most moments of envy that I might otherwise experience; that car, that house, that paycheck, that job, that title, that jewelry…none of that is really relevant if I am not in competition with anyone else (or with my own narrative). By letting go of any attachment to life-as-a-game, I am more easily able to simply treat others well (if I’m “player 1”, and everyone else is “playing against me”, it definitely changes how share-able shared resources really seem, for example).

Watching this chipmunk competing with the squirrels for resources over the weekend eventually crept into my own contemplation of life, generally. 🙂

This morning I’ll step out into the world in the context of simply being. I’ll head to the office and do my comfortable best, content, professional, and secure. I’ll be kind to my colleagues. I’ll seek to be helpful where I am able to support others in their work. Community and collaboration require us to be helpful where we can. In a community, ideally, that’s a reciprocal exchange that is ongoing.

I like to think that if Monday goes well and smoothly, I can build the week from there, enjoying both my life and my work. I’m sure there will be boundary-setting here or there; I’ve grown better at it over time, and the thought doesn’t cause me any stress. I may need to say “no” now and then. I’ve gotten better at that too. I’ll need to bring a firm commitment to self-care on into the office with me; I still really have to work at that.

I’ve taken my “to do list” at home, and having utterly failed to complete any noteworthy portion of my planned weekend workload at home, I’ve spread it out over the week in my planning. I’ve done so partly to get it all done, and partly to determine if, indeed, this is a better way to do that. lol I guess I’ll know by Saturday morning, when I rise to face the dawn, and another drive down south to visit love and family.

It’s not a contest. It’s just my life. I’ve got a list of shit to get done. I’ve got a job to do during the week. There’s a lot to learn in life still just out of reach of what I know today. There’s no “finish line” – and if I approach life as some kind of race (rat or otherwise), I may miss the best bits. This week? I’ll pace myself, and approach living my life from a place of awareness, wonder, and contentment.

I’m ready to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being
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