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There Was This One Time…

March 25, 2017 //
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I fell asleep composing coherent sentences, assembled from thoughts and words, suitable for this morning’s writing. It was, as I recall, a good idea for a blog post. Unsurprisingly, it was lost among my dreams, during the night. I woke rested, clear-headed, content – and utterly without a thought that seemed worth writing about.

I hoped the blinds in the studio to let the sunrise illuminate the room. I watched the geese on the lawn, sipped my coffee, and listened to the peculiar suburban hum of existing humanity that seems so nearly inescapable, generally. I notice that my throat is a little sore, and shuffle my weekend plans around to reduce stress, labor, and exposing others to potential contagion, in case I am sick. If I’m  not actually ill, the sore throat remains a sign that I likely need more rest than I have been getting. I decide to take care of this fragile vessel this weekend. Life is more a thru-hike along a breath-taking wilderness trail than a paved loop through a state park; it’s important to take care, and pace myself. 🙂

I hear my Traveling Partner stirring in the other room, making coffee. I smile, content and wrapped in love. Last evening was weird, infused with drama. OPD. Not my drama. I am supportive throughout, although I struggle a bit with resenting that a human being I have made a point to cut out of my life completely can still push so much toxic waste into my experience. The resentment quickly fades to sorrow that my Traveling Partner has this bullshit to deal with in another (any other) relationship. I know a lot of people who do. Myself, I tend to fairly quickly find my way to “troll blocking” and “unfriending” these days, even in real life; I have no liking of, or time for, destructive games or drama, and very specifically define “love” and “affection” as exclusive of those sorts of things. Yep. I said it. If you treat someone badly on the regular, it is not understandable (to me) that you “love” them. From my own perspective, you do not. That’s not love. There’s no room for argument, it’s merely my opinion, and how my own map of the world looks.

No drama today, I hope. I sip my coffee and smile. My Traveling Partner puts his head in the studio to tell me that there is a new season of Samurai Jack. Finally! Season 5. We share a fondness for it. I can’t tell if my moment of delight has anything to do with Samurai Jack at all, it’s all mixed up with my delight that my Traveling Partner is here this morning. I have no idea what the day holds. It is unplanned. Unscripted. I wonder what moment will define it.

Today is a good day for patience, and a good day for contentment. Today is a good day to love, and to live gently. Today is a good day for laughter, kindness, and gratitude. Today is a good day to enjoy small things, and to build a drama free zone. Today is a good day to make the choices that change the world.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

Human, Adult, One Each

March 24, 2017 //
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Yesterday was… quite a day. Complicated and stressful. On the whole not at all satisfying. No shortage of love, just with multiple side orders of stress and chaos. I don’t much want to consider it right now.

I woke feeling fairly rested, and I was really needing to get more than 5 hours of sleep. I’m grateful I did. The morning began well, although I could have done without my partner’s loud aggravated venting about how the shower was adjusted; I had precisely the same experience yesterday evening, myself, because he’d left it adjusted to meet his needs and I’d forgotten to be mindful he was the last person in the shower, and had similarly sprayed water all over the place. I didn’t yell about it or get pissed off because it’s not that sort of thing for me. I find myself irked that it is that sort of thing for him. We are each having our own experience. I breathe and let it go. I remind myself that yesterday’s health crisis will be likely to have outcomes of its own, because both medication and healing are their own experiences – processes with sensations, and emotions.

It’s a work day. I keep forgetting that detail, wanting so badly to stay home and relax. I’ve enjoyed my Traveling Partner being here. He arrived in crisis, though, and has remained so, although it morphed from an emotional crisis to a physical/medical one. Now things are likely to settle back into more normal routines. I’ll probably be home alone tonight, having served the purposes of nurturing and providing comfort skillfully. There may be an angry moment later, waiting to be had, I’m not always certain of seeing these things coming, but a tiny voice wants to ask “what about what I need? what about my health? what about my circumstances and the details of my experience?”  It sounds pretty selfish to see it written that way. There’s a balance to strike. It’s more difficult when we both have needs to be met more urgently than is usual. I am very likely to put my own aside. It’s what I learned to do. It’s part of why I live alone these days; it’s that much harder to undermine my own needs, and my own long-term self-care, when I am not faced with the constant presence of people so dear to me that I am risk of choosing to undermine my needs in their favor, full-time. Someday I hope to have become so strong and skillful at supporting and caring for the woman in the mirror that I have strength to share, 24/7. I keep practicing.

I’ve held my shit together and done some pretty excellent adulting this week. Tonight I’ll probably loosen my grip a bit, and cry it out. Having that unreservedly emotional moment without judgement or self-criticism, just letting go and feeling the feelings, is also important.

Today is still ahead of me. I’m focused on work. Tomorrow I’ll begin again.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, The Big 5

Enter Title Here

March 23, 2017 //
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I start writing this morning without a title. That’s not the usual order of things. Another night goes by, I wake and begin again on less than 5 hours of sleep. 4 nights on minimal sleep isn’t going to support great cognition, or emotional balance, and I make a point of setting reminders for later breaks, meals, and coffee. Focus and task management are already impaired. It gets worse on less sleep over time, reliably.

My Traveling Partner blew onto my doorstep yesterday, shortly after I got home from Jury Duty, driven my way by emotional storms and drama elsewhere. We hang out. He talks. I listen. I do my best to avoid criticizing that other person in his life, and to just be here for my partner. It is more important to support my partner, provide a safe place, and time to heal. I had expected to (most likely) spend the evening alone, meditating, relaxing, and making myself emotionally ready for today; I have a medical procedure later. At one or two points I begin to tear up unexpectedly as we talk; although he is here with me, he’s not realistically available to provide the emotional support that I need myself, for tomorrow, and with regards to my health over time. Not right now. I breathe through those moments; I am loved. It isn’t personal. This too will pass. The moments I find myself feeling alone in spite of his presence won’t be what I remember about the day. 🙂

I really need to sleep. I’m still not quite awake. I feel groggy. A little dizzy. I am in more than usual pain, in part due simply to being tired.  I double check that I’ve set my ‘leave now’ alarm. I double check it a few more times. I’m having trouble holding on to the knowledge that the alarm is indeed set. Really. No… really. I check it again anyway, “just to be sure”. I consider taking the car, if my Traveling Partner is still here when the time comes to head to my appointment…faster. Less time spent away from work on a busy work day. It hits me that there was something specific I’d intended to work on… I struggle to remember what. I am eager to be finished with so many things… finished with medical diagnostic procedures, finished with house hunting (and the implied move on the other side of that process!), finished with taxes, finished with hiring a new analyst and completing a software implementation, finished big disrupting tasks and events, generally, and back to living gently, predictably, uneventfully, and comfortably day after day. Sleep. I’d like to get back to sleeping regularly… that I’d like to begin again. Soon.

Speaking of beginning again. I think I’ll go do that. Today is a good day for beginnings. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5

This Works for Me

March 19, 2017 //
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My morning is strangely… off. I slept badly. I got enough rest, anyway. I haven’t yet figured out my day. I’m sort of lazing around watching an occasional video, sipping coffee, and mostly just staring out the window rather unproductively. I find myself amused that I think I got enough rest; I am a zombie on my feet, shuffling through the morning vacantly, without purpose or direction… yet. The day is still ahead.  I notice my empty coffee cup; this I know I how to deal with.

Staring into the darkness during the night. Sleep did not come easily.

My second cup of coffee wakes me up a bit more. I put on a lively playlist. Chat a while with my Traveling Partner before he begins his own day in earnest. We miss each other, and look forward to hanging out, later today. Maybe we do hang out, maybe we don’t; it matters most that we want to. 🙂 Co-dependency and unhealthy attachment build some very unhealthy relationships between human beings. Learning some emotional self-sufficiency, and letting go of attachment (to outcomes, to emotional states of being, to romantic hyperbole, to expectations, to assumptions…) did some amazing things for this beautiful love. It’s a journey still in progress. “The journey is the destination.” “The way out is through.” Love matters most.

I don’t know what else I am doing today, even now, but I do know one thing that will fill my day; love. It’s enough. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Big 5

Ain’t We Funkin’ Now?

March 18, 2017 //
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Well… ain’t we? Er… are we? I am. It’s Saturday morning and I really don’t need to sit very still all day stressed out about health concerns neither confirmed nor crossed off some secret list of shit that goes wrong with aging. lol Cue music! Better to funk hard, enjoy life for every breath I breathe, than to wait quietly to die. 😉 So, no shit, I’m jammin’ the old school funk tracks that sparked my love of bass, and bass guitar, and have followed me through life to the newest, strangest, bass-est digital music of the current age. Why not? It’s after 6 am on a Saturday… I’m sure the neighbors won’t mind my embracing life through music at this hour… right…? (I’m not actually that inconsiderate, and I’m grateful for headphones.)

Are you still funkin’ with me? Do you know the funk legend behind that bass line? Human. Just like me. Just like you. Just like Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Just like your grandma. Just like Grandma Funk. What I think I’m getting at is… don’t wait to be a legend. Just be. Enjoy you. Maybe you level up to Legend at some point, but as with “happy”, chasing it comes at a cost – and that cost is often the goal itself. Each so human, so precious, so wonderfully quirky and weird and unique… do you.

This morning I let the irresistible nature of the funk distract me from pain, from worry, from an uncertain future (all futures are uncertain, are they not?), and I let go and let… myself enjoy the fucking funk, for as long as I can. Will you miss me if I were to drop dead in some now moment unexpectedly, without the courtesy of a heads up that I am mortal? Would my words outlast this fragile vessel or die with me, losing relevance over time without a connection to a living consciousness? All men are mortal… women, too, I hear. lol I sip my coffee and contemplate the unknowns still ahead of me in life – and at its end.

I think about the house hunting ahead this morning. I think about love. I savor my humanity. I appreciate yours. The morning feels easy on  my consciousness and my heart, in spite of… worries. Don’t we all have at least one or two? Isn’t it totally the most basic of human challenges to learn to balance our experience in the moment with our concerns of moments not yet now? Who will you turn to for comfort? Your friends? (Good choice.) Your lover(s)? (Another good choice, although I am assuming you choose lovers who are down for providing you comfort in tough times… perhaps that’s not what you choose of the assorted humans dear to you?) Will you choose the talking heads on the idiot box? The comment section of a favorite forum? Facebook associates? (That’s all the rage in the 21st century, and there’s a fairly impressive selection of social media alternatives.) Your professional associates? (That gets harder, sometimes, doesn’t it?) Your parents, elders, children, or siblings? (That can be a mixed bag where comfort it concerned, right? lol) This morning, I am turning to The Brothers Johnson, Whiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Skrillex, Daft Punk… sure, I know exactly what they’ll be telling me, because I’ve heard it a million times, but… I also know what they’ll be telling me, because I’ve heard it a million times. 🙂 It’s what I need to hear; we continue. There is now. Always now… And yet, somehow, we continue; if in no other way, we continue as a presence and a recollection in the consciousness of all those we have touched – good and bad and indifferent. Valar Morghulis.

I can’t escape my mortality – at least not with current medical science or technology (will I live to see that change?). I could sure get mired in waiting around to die, if I chose to do that instead of living. There are verbs involved, regardless. Today, I tell mortality – or at least the fear of it – to funk right off. It’s Saturday – there is a living world just beyond this monitor, and this keyboard, and my coffee is finished. 🙂

It’s totally understandable that death might stop me in my tracks – it is less understandable to wait around for it to do so. lol. Today is a good day to live, awake, aware, and present in this moment, now. It’s enough. 🙂

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