I’m sipping my coffee thinking about a strange dream from which I woke this morning, groggy and unprepared for a new day. (I really don’t like the change to DST at all; I’ll be groggy in the morning for days to come.) In this dream, I’d somehow made my way into the basement of a large modern museum, and from wainscot to rafters that space was hung with my art – but only that difficult-to-access basement space. lol Large work, small work, framed, unframed – crammed along the walls, a chaos of color, mostly unsigned. I recognized all of it – even the pieces I haven’t yet painted – and I could examine each one clearly, and recall when (and why) it was painted. I walked through the space, eyes wide with wonder to see it all – so much! There were other things to this dream, a shared living space elsewhere, other artists (with whom I am not yet acquainted), friends (some of whom had slyly snatched a favorite piece from the walls of that place to take along for their own personal joy). What had my attention was the art – so much of it! The pieces I hadn’t yet painted drew my attention most often, and most clearly. I examined them closely, hoping to understand the journey ahead of me more clearly… “When will I paint that?” I wondered as I walked.
Waking up was a bit disappointing; I wasn’t finished looking yet, and had just gotten into a deep discussion with an old friend about a particular piece he was making his own. I wanted to tell him all I knew about it, but he stopped me. “I want to keep the mystery of it,” he said smiling, “I want to love the work in spite of anything to do with the artist”. When I woke, the thought that lingered was “how much of an artist’s signature is simply ego, nothing at all to do with the work? What might the signature take away from the work?” A lot of my work happens to be unsigned, not for any lack of intention to sign it but only because it’s generally the thing I do last – after the piece is entirely finished, the paint dried, and the work ready to sell or to hang, and because I’ve more or less lost interest in continuing to work on it at that point… I forget to sign it, until it’s necessary because the piece has sold. lol Now I’m wondering if there may be value in not ever signing some pieces, at all, and leaving that mystery intact? I sign quietly to myself, and a bit cynically; if I took that approach, sooner or later someone else would likely claim some particularly good or interesting piece as their work… and my ego rebels. There’s something here to think about… maybe later.
I sip my coffee quietly. This morning it feels… medicinal. I’m so damned groggy. Head still foggy from my dreams, feeling not quite awake, yet, though it’s been nearly two hours since I woke. Everything seems to take longer, and feels somehow less “fluid”, less routine, and taking more than usual concentration and effort. Putting words together feels a bit cumbersome and awkward. My morning oatmeal is an exercise in will; it is 100% quite disgusting this morning, and I wonder why I bother. Nothing “sounds good”, and I am noise-sensitive, and a bit cranky – I’d rather be painting. lol I have in mind a particular piece I saw in my dream… my fingers itch to put it to canvas or paper, to see it come alive in front of my eyes. (Was I actually using the heads of thumb-tacks in that composition – or were those sequins? Where did I get so much gold dust??) I chuckle softly; now is not that time. Even as the thought crosses my mind, I recognize that trying to create that piece today would only be a dim copy; it is not of this moment. I don’t work in that style or with those materials, these days. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and let the dream fade away as I sip my coffee. This coffee is so good this morning, and I am grateful to have it.
I look at my reflection in the window, a mirror in the predawn darkness. I look tired. (I feel tired.) I watch myself stretch, and gently rub the frown lines from my forehead. This too will pass, I remind myself. It’s already time to begin again, anyway…
“What the hell? They’re demanding workers return to the office, but they’re closing offices? That doesn’t make any damned sense…” No, no it doesn’t make sense.
“No one has ever heard of Lesotho”, said the President of the United States (an individual who claims to have a college education). He wants to close the Department of Education. None of that makes any sense.
“We’re going to cut 15% of the VA workforce.” Um… the VA is known to be chronically understaffed, to the point of putting veteran healthcare at risk. This doesn’t make any sense.
These are just samples from today’s news. I’m sorry – I am going somewhere with this, so I wanted to get started with some “crazy world” samples. If you need an intellectual “palate cleanser”, I recommend this outstanding opposition rebuttal speech by Elissa Slotkin, from the night of the (absolutely batshit crazy, error-riddled) President’s address to Congress. (Senator Slotkin’s speech is definitely worth a read – it gives me hope.) I don’t prefer to go on about politics; we each have our own opinions, some well-informed, some less so, all based on what we each understand about the world, and our own personal values. I’m not here to argue those points with you, I just want to take a minute to address the stress, and the feeling that the world has gone crazy around us, and maybe offer up some practices for maintaining our own individual sanity in the face of it. So, let’s do that, eh?
One practice I’m pretty committed to, that does help me manage my background stress is to avoid “doomscrolling” the news media – any source, any platform, any talking head (favored or not). It gets ridiculously repetitive, and is often explicitly intentionally crafted to drive our emotions – to get clicks and views. “Engagement” is the point. Profit. This is how news organizations make money; by grabbing and holding on to our attention. That doesn’thappen to be good for us, though, so… I avoid it. Just skip it. I get enough news filtered through work conversations, and “did you hear…?” remarks from acquaintances, family members, and friends. About twice a week I skim the headlines, once over quickly – and I find that generally this is enough to give me the factual points. I don’t read articles that use “clickbait” headlines at all; I have to assume what they have to say (and their reason for saying it) is either dishonest, or not factual, or they would just say it. I haven’t noticed that this strategy deprives me of any timely awareness of current events, and it definitely reduces my stress, generally.
I am, however, quite human, and sometimes I still get “sucked into the crazy bullshit”…
Roses don’t mind the rain.
So, another practice I use to manage my stress in this crazy world is to spend time really present and engaged with real life events and circumstances right here at home, with real people who matter to me, and that are nothing at all to do with whatever nonsense is going on in Washington, D.C. right now. The world could begin to burn down around me, but I enjoy a quiet ordinary life in a quiet ordinary suburb in a quiet ordinary small town tucked between agriculture and industry. I have a garden to tend. There’s housekeeping to keep caught up. The weather has been quite mild. My Traveling Partner “has my back” and loves me deeply (and I feel the same about him). There’s dinner later to consider. There’s blue sky beyond the windows of the office, today. Life. My life. You have this powerful advantage too; the opportunity to anchor your emotional stability and your sanity to the humdrum ordinary details of the life you live and the choices you make for yourself. That’s more powerful than we tend to realize, when we’re faced with the craziness of the world beyond our own life and the moments in it. Getting mired in the stress and fear and worry of craziness beyond our lives that we can neither contain nor control is a shortcut to madness – I know this first hand. My PTSD griefs me with it, when I fail to provide myself with adequate self-care, or fall short of maintaining healthy practices for managing my own chaos and damage. That’s just real.
Once we choose our path, we’ve still got to walk it. The journey is the destination. 🙂
We’re so human. This shit is hard, because crazy is scary. We know some of what we’re seeing go on in the world if fucking wrong and terrible – and yet it is going on. What can we do about it? Sometimes… nothing. Sometimes the most important and powerful things we can do about it are to walk our own path, provide ourselves with good self-care, speak truth to power fearlessly (and call the ridiculous shit out for being as ridiculous as it is), and be kind to the people around us who are hurting. The will to action withers when we don’t take care of ourselves and maintain our individual good emotional health. It’s hard to have the energy (or feel like it matters) to write the President directly by snail mail an actual letter that says “what the fuck??” and “this is what I expect and want from my government” – but if 100% of each and every citizen did so, it would be an avalanche of civil action, of protest, of involvement, and might actually change something. I think about that often. Taking action needs me to maintain my own sanity, though, doesn’t it?
I’ve gotten distracted by the crazy, once again, it’s out there lurking, waiting to sneak up on the unwary. Breathe, exhale, relax – bring the focus to here, to now, to this moment that you’re in. Whatever it is, it matters more to you right now than the actions of a distant madman and his cohort of corrupt billionaires. Just saying – finding what matters most to you, right now, has real value. For me? Right now? It happens to be this bit of writing. This cup of coffee. This quiet moment for myself carved out of a busy day. It’s enough. I’m worth a moment of my own time. (You’re worth a moment of my time, too, and thank you for being here with me.)
I look up from my laptop, across the quiet co-work space (so orderly, so calm, so empty). It’s still just me, and it’s quite early in the morning. I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a good time for a few minutes of meditation – another useful practice. I have a favorite spot for it, here, that is reliably comfortable and quiet. I have it on my calendar so I can be sure not to miss the opportunity. Even something as small as 10 minutes of meditation does a lot to build and maintain my emotional resilience. There are verbs involved; it’s quite necessary to do it, not just observe that it is a good practice. lol That’s the way of practices, generally – doing them is the key to success. “Practice” is a verb. It’s also an ongoing thing – a step on path, on a journey that does not end. The journey is the destination.
And that brings me to another approach to maintaining sanity when the world is going crazy; perspective. Observation, and experience, and the awareness that however bad it seems, this too will pass. I’m not saying that complacence is a wise approach (it is not), just that we can pretty reliably be certain of one thing – change is. The madman in power now is as mortal as anyone else. Change will come. Be part of the change you wish to see – and doing so by living your truth, your values, and staying on your own path. Be the person you most want to be. By doing so, and maintaining a sense of perspective, the contrast between you and the crazy in the world becomes clearer. You stand within your moment less affected by the crazy in the world, and more able to sustain yourself through to the next season of change.
It’s hard to go wrong with good basics…
It’s not perfect as strategies go, I know. I’d love to have a real cure, a solution, a reliable durable fix to what our world is going through right now. I only have this; my certainty that I’m okay right now, for most values of “okay”, and that it is (mostly) enough. If I can maintain my own sanity, I can be part of what is sane. Should work for you too, with practice. It’s something. It may not change the world, but it can be a small part of making things right in little ways. That’s definitely something. I’ll gladly take something over nothing – wouldn’t you?
I sigh quietly, and finish my coffee. It’s time to begin. Again.
I am waiting for the sun, a bit impatiently. I don’t have to wait; it’s a mild morning after a rainy night, and my headlamp is right here. I’m choosing to wait, and I’m not in any hurry. The sense of restless energy and impatience aren’t so much a choice as they are a temporary state of being. Feelings. Sensations. Emotions. I observe them, but don’t make decisions based on them. I choose the quiet waiting. I am eager for the day, and in pain, but neither of these things are decision-making details. They merely are what they are, part of the experience of this moment in all its unrepeatable richness. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I wait.
A smattering of raindrops falls briefly, tapping the roof and windshield of the car excitedly. The shower passes quickly. It’ll be another fifteen minutes or so until daybreak. I’ll start down the trail then.
I sip my coffee content with the waiting, thinking my thoughts, experiencing this moment. It is enough. Each sip of my coffee carries along with it the scent the barista wore today. Where her perfumed fingers had pressed the lid down onto the cup securely, the fragrance lingers. Flowers mostly, and a hint of something classic I can’t name, and each sip makes me wonder again what the name of the perfume is. It is familiar and I can almost remember it.
…At intervals, brief rain showers pass by as I wait…
I don’t bother looking at my news feed. This isn’t the day for that and it has no power over me. No anxiety. No chaos or damage. No anger, frustration, or drama. Just a quiet watchful moment, waiting. It’s a pleasant beginning to a new day and it is enough. Later I’ll run some errands, work on finishing the move from one storage unit to another, and get some routine housekeeping tasks out of the way, but none of that needs my attention now.
Eventually, a new day.
Day breaks, gray and rainy. An enormous flock of geese, uncountably large, passes overhead, unconcerned with the rain. Me, though, I continue to wait – grateful I’m not out on the trail already, caught betwixt rain showers out in open. Now I wait for a break in the rain, watching daybreak become dawn. I smile, content with things as they are. This too is enough.
I look over my writing. “First person, singular,” I think to myself, unbothered by that. I check for spelling mistakes, with care. I breathe, exhale, and relax. It is a new day, a new moment, and a new opportunity to make my choices and live my life. I am here, now, and it is enough. I smile and sip my coffee. This too will pass; moments are fleeting.
It’s a Friday. The headlines in my news feed are pretty horrible; more human cruelty, more corruption and greed, more vain human stupidity. I sigh and move on; I don’t have time for that bullshit. I have things to get done, a life to live, and an opportunity to do better, myself, than all of that nonsense. I decide to focus on what I can do as an individual to make life better for my family and my colleagues, and stay present here, now, and attentive to what I can do something about, personally. It feels more productive, and emotionally healthier.
…I have a list of things to do…
First things first, I take care of myself. Coffee. Meditation. A moment for reflection. Then thoughtful time spent on the household budget for the new pay period. I smile to myself, thinking of my Traveling Partner and how helpful he was when we got together, sharing his (much better) approach to such things. I’ve come a long way since then. During the time I lived alone, although we were still together, he wisely “kicked off the training wheels” and insisted I handle my own affairs financially, feeling that I was ready for that (and wanting to feel certain I could take care of myself in this way, come what may). Having a brain injury had long presented significant challenges for me in that area; managing money was hard for as long as I could remember, when I met my Traveling Partner. Making and following a budget was hard. Understanding when and how to flex on a plan was complicated. I didn’t make much money and it always seemed like I needed to stretch it further than it could go. I’d been disadvantaged by relationships with individuals willing to exploit my inexperience or my brain damage for their own benefit. I didn’t understand my worth. I am grateful to my beloved Traveling Partner whenever I sit down on a payday Friday to look over the numbers, make a plan, and prepare for another cycle of bills, expenses, and living life. Paydays used to be terrifying and filled with anxiety – now they’re just days that begin with a spreadsheet, some thoughtful choices, and some notes to share with my partner, and the chance to get his thoughts on the plan and make changes based on those. He has good ideas and we’re a team. I smile, feeling fortunate and loved.
I look over the things I need to get done over the next couple of weeks, and over the coming weekend. Pick up new glasses. Get the oil changed in my car. Grocery shop. Finish the storage move. Prepare the garden for the coming of Spring. I sigh to myself; I failed to properly winterize the garden last autumn, busy with other things that seemed a higher priority at the time. I’ll pay for that now. The Spring prep tasks will be a bit more complicated, a bit more laborious, a bit more tedious. Choices. I laugh softly to myself and sip my coffee. We make our choices and pay the price when we choose poorly. That’s just real.
…I’m excited about having new glasses, my prescription has changed and it’ll be good to see clearly again…
I sip my coffee and do a quick “personal inventory”. My tinnitus is loud in my ears this morning, but I’m not in much pain. I’m feeling the chill of morning, but I’m not especially uncomfortable. I feel relaxed and ready for the day. My chronic headache is only a 2 on a 1-10 scale, which is almost pleasant, all things considered. It’s a good start to the day. I feel rested and calm. It was probably a good choice to avoid the news feed – nothing good comes of added unnecessary stress over terrible shit I can’t change to my sense of self first thing in the morning. Being “present”, and having a sense of “where I’m at” at the start of the day is a useful practice, for me. I’m less likely to unexpectedly find myself mired in chaos and damage, or having some problematic tantrum over bullshit. I can take better care of myself when I know what I need. (That probably all seems pretty obvious…)
Daybreak comes, then dawn, and I see the suggestion of a sunrise behind dense gray clouds. A new day. Looks like a good one, so long as I don’t think about things to do with governments, politicians, billionaires, corporate greed, exploitation of vulnerable populations, or climate change. I sigh to myself and get ready to begin again.
I have a lot of pictures. Too many. Some of them are no longer meaningful. Some of them are reminders of times and people perhaps best forgotten or allowed to fade into the seldom recalled past. It’s strange that most of these pictures only reach back into the relatively recent past, around 2004 or so, and most are since 2010, when I got my first smartphone. Technology allowed me to accumulate clutter in the form of images. My hard drives and cloud storage are further cluttered by copies of backups, trying to preserve something meaningful of a life lived. I spent a lot of years struggling to account for the risk my poor memory represents, and admittedly overreacted quite commonly by saving yet another backup of something I’d forgotten I’d already backed up.
…More than 50k unique images, in 2800+ folders, across multiple drives, a cloud storage service, and a NAS on our home network, amounting to about 2TB of stored images, and a few gigs of written work, and I’d lose it all if humanity lost the power grid upon which we are so reliant….
Like a paved trail on a sunny day, some of this may seem obvious; it doesn’t hurt to check the map once in awhile, anyway.
… What is it all good for? What will become of it when I am gone? Will any of it matter at all? Who even gives a fuck about a random photograph from a walk along a trail on a sunny summer day, or yet another picture of a rose?
Roses on a sunny day. Impermanent. Like moments.
The pictures are not the experience (or even the memory). The map is not the world. Moments are unavoidably fleeting, and each is unique like a step on a trail, or a rose. Trying to capture them all in pictures so that I “don’t lose my memories” is (rather sadly) a wasted effort. I catch myself surprised again and again when I look over old pictures. Where was that? Who is that in this picture? Where did I live then? What was I doing at that time? Oh! I remember that – I’d forgotten all about that. The details are lost, in spite of having the picture. The pictures, then, would likely benefit from somewhat stricter curation, perhaps? I have too many pictures of some given moment, and too many that I’ve kept in spite of being poorly shot, out of focus or composed badly. In some cases, the backups of backups are (hilariously) nested within each other, pointlessly taking up digital space. Very few exist in any printed format at all. Once I’m gone, more than likely, someone at some point will simply “hit delete”, and it will all be gone.
I thought about this a lot over the weekend. I spent time cleaning up my archive of art images specifically, and while I was at it, I deleted several redundant backups (after checking carefully that they were truly copies of the one valued, useful backup). I looked at pictures of moments I’d forgotten, and enjoyed the refreshed recollection. I found moments for which I’d taken far too many nearly identical pictures, and kept the one I liked the best and deleted the rest. I found pictures of times long past I’d just as soon forget about, and deleted those without concern or trauma. I found entire folders of pictures that weren’t actually my own; I’d held on to them for some other person no longer part of my life, and happily deleted those too. No rumination, tears, or heartache, it was simply time to let a bunch of this garbage go. Digital hoarding is just as objectionable and problematic as any other sort; evidence of chaos and damage. I let a lot of stuff go, and it felt good.
The strangest ones were moments captured that lacked any sort of context at all. Why had I taken that picture of that moment? It wasn’t always clear what the point was, or what was going on. A picture of a lovely flower is reliably a beautiful thing of its own, and needs no explanation, but… a picture of a thing, place, or person that isn’t well-composed or interesting or beautiful on its own? What then? What was that about? What have I forgotten – and does it even matter now?
What was I hoping to remember?
Creating order from chaos is nearly always time well-spent. It provided helpful perspective to be reminded that there will always be things forgotten, and that not everything is worth preserving. Moments are fleeting – and it is a common characteristic of a moment. Fighting it doesn’t change that. Living the moment creates the memory. Being present is what matters, I think. I smile over my coffee, remembering the peculiar feeling of satisfaction and sanity that came of tidying up my digital archives. There’s more work to do there; there are so many pictures. I take fewer, these days, and I think about that too. I’m more likely to select a well-considered few on a particular theme, and create a wee photo book for someone (or for myself) to keep or share the memories that matter most, and provide them with some amount of context along the way. One day, perhaps when I’m quite old, those photo books will be a lasting thing I can hold in my hands and enjoy, and the digital images may be long gone and forgotten. There’s something to learn from that.
As the calendar turned toward 2023, I took a moment to let my paper journals of many years go. It was a process of “putting down baggage” and letting go of past moments and trauma, and beginning again. It was a way of reducing the clutter in my life and in my mind. It was about giving up a body of written work that had become “content without context”. As with the photographs, those journals had lived beyond their value to me. It was a strange moment to reach, and I’ve rarely regretted the choice at all. This process of sorting through old images and doing some digital “tidying up” feels quite similar, with fewer tears being shed, and less hesitation or uncertainty.
We become what we practice. If we practice clinging to images and words (or objects) without context or value, we become… hoarders. That’s not healthy. Isn’t sufficiency enough? Creating order from chaos, and keeping only what is useful and what matters most seems a much healthier practice. I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. Useful perspective.
Evening Light 