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Choose Your Adventure

May 27, 2017 //
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I slept well and deeply, I woke “too early” out of habit. No stress there. I got up, took my morning medication, opened up the house to the pre-dawn breezes, and gently wondered at how light it is these days at 4:19 am before returning to bed. I love summer sleep. 🙂 The mild early morning breeze and scents of the meadow fill the apartment, and I nap a little while longer before waking to greet the day. A wholly lovely start to a summer morning of sunshine, and dewdrops sparkling on the lawn.

I will brave Memorial Day weekend traffic at some point today… but I might ride the bus downtown for my salon appointment… The convenience of the car is not sufficiently enticing when I fill out the details with the holiday traffic, the fuss and bother of finding downtown parking… I vacillate. Car? No car? Convenience? Ease? Quick? Low stress? It’s a small enough choice, one might expect it to be an easy one. lol

A lot of life’s choices seem to work this way; seemingly simple until I look beyond the superficial if/then, yes/no elements of the decision. Life can sometimes seem an elaborate prank. I find value in shifting my thinking to consider it more as a “choose your own adventure” game… and as it happens, it very much works that way. I make a choice, the choice dictates what other choices, experiences, and opportunities develop in my new, altered, future… another choice, another change, and so on. At any point, I can completely alter the course of my life with a choice. I think I implicitly know this on a very fundamental level, because when I feel life going sideways, spiraling out of control, or need to “back track” to sort something out, I go looking for the choice that brought me to the place I’m in. I think, though, that I’m pretty terrible at being correct about which choices lead to which outcomes. I mean, some are easy; I got married, therefore I am married to my Traveling Partner. Choice, outcome, done. It’s just that easy…only… is that really the choice I made that was the one that resulted specifically and directly in having that opportunity? In being in that place at that time? In being situated in life in circumstances that put the idea in front of us both in a positive way?

It’s hard when I’m existing in some unhappy distressed moment, or feeling discouraged and beat down, or when I am grieving, frustrated, or raging, to be mindful of how much of my experience is legitimately within my control. That’s not a moment in which I want to be reminded of it, either, honestly – like a child, I need to “have my moment” and get over that bit, but once my head clears, and I’ve taken time to process my emotions and settle down to dealing with things properly, it’s generally my own choices that lead the way to relief, to contentment, to change, to fulfillment… to the place I choose, wherever that may be. Life is interesting in this way; we have this immense power all along, but it takes some of us a lifetime to be aware it was ever ours in the first place, and then we’ve still got so far to go to learn to use it well, in service of our needs over time, in service of becoming the person we most want to be, in service of greater good in the world – or other less savory choices. It is a choice. Actually, it is a lot of choices.

What will I choose today? Where will the journey lead me? How will I become more the woman I most want to be? How will I right wrongs in my life? How will I change the world? Where will my story end? Will the narrative of my life be an incredible adventure? Will it be lovely poetic prose? Will it be a rousing call to arms? Will the narrative of my life foment revolution or beg for change? What about yours? Right now, right here, this morning – are you the person you most want to be? What will you do about that?

Neither too early nor too late.

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

What Are You Doing About It?

May 26, 2017 //
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Remember that day I said I need to get some rest? (Was that only yesterday?) I eventually arrived home from work, bone tired, brain tired, so tired… that down deep, long gone toward stupid & clumsy tired. I careened around the apartment for some little while. I don’t recall when I went to bed, but I can gauge my cognitive fatigue, specifically, by the disarray I woke to.

My cell phone was left on a side table and never recharged, fitness tracker carelessly left on its charger and never put back on, half a dozen coffee mugs left behind pretty much everywhere I paused thinking I’d have a cup of decaf…tea…broth… forgetting as the short evening proceeded that I’d already made something, and left it elsewhere. As I changed from work clothes to comfy clothes, I carelessly left things laying about, which is not my habit. My hiking boots in the living room, my socks oddly left draped on the shoe stand by the front door, my jeans draped over the side of the bathtub (?!), my top dropped on the floor and left there, my earrings on a bookcase… I can follow the path I took, from the front door, to the neatly stacked yoga pants and t-shirts in my closet, back to the kitchen – the cupboard with the coffee mugs was left standing open. When I did I go to bed? I don’t recall that at all, but I don’t guess my state of mind counts as “awake” to begin with. lol

I woke at 5:15 am. I slept in! (Yep, it counts.) I slept deeply, dreamlessly, restfully, and I had no intention of getting up so early… so I went back to sleep. When I woke again, to sunlight streaming into my room between the slats of the blinds, I eagerly got up for coffee… no coffee. I’d meant to go to the store last night. Clearly, though, I was in no condition to be operating a car, so I’m rather glad I didn’t. I throw on some jeans without any particular effort to be particular, and grab the nearest clean top and drag my brush through my hair, step into my sandals, and make a quick trip to the store for coffee, salad greens, and… tangerines. Why the tangerines? Why the hell not? (Actually, it is in part a rather practical thing; they are the right size for a serving without being cut in half, and they are quite delicious in recipes, too.)

I returned home, wandered about the place putting things right, and getting myself organized for a day of… getting organized. LOL I find creating order from chaos very relaxing when there is no deadline or agenda, so a day of tidying up, laundry, and housekeeping sounds just the thing for a relaxing day. At some point, the windshield replacement technician will show up, do that thing that needs to be done. I hear a contented sigh in this quiet room. Me. A side glance confirms what my lips reported last time I took a sip from my coffee cup; it’s empty. It’s a good time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, health, Healthy Living, Post Traumatic Stress

Noisy Summer Morning

May 23, 2017 //
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I woke ahead of the alarm after a restless night. The apartment was 77 degrees when I woke, which was 5 degrees cooler than when I went to bed. Even some strategic open windows and a fan going were not enough to cool the place down much. Now I sip my coffee, all the windows wide to the pre-dawn breezes and cooler air. I’m hoping to get the indoor temperature down to 70 or less before I go to work; it’s another hot day, but forecast to be only 82. Tonight won’t be so stifling hot in here, if the day is no hotter than that, out there. 🙂

Because the windows are open, I am listening to the chorus of birds waking as the sun rises, and it is now, in every practical sense, summer. The birds were up before the sun. The cacophony of peeps, chirps, tweets, whistles, calls and responses, twittering, and trilling become a more complex grander song of morning than any one bird could sing. The commuter traffic beginning in the audible distance, and the sound of a later-than-usual freight train on the siding a mile or so away are not enough to drown out summer birds. 🙂

Just before the sun breaks over the horizon, I see the slimmest crescent of moon just at the edge of the treetops. As the sky begins to lighten, it disappears. The lawn at the edge of the patio is revealed with the sunrise; it is covered with geese and ducks contentedly sleeping in, heads tucked down, just one sentry looked out for cats and kids.

Summertime

My Traveling Partner checked in yesterday, just at about that time when it had become more difficult to stave off worrying, having not heard from him for more than 24 hours past the end of the calendar event. The timing was most amusing. I’d barely completed my thought, “how long would I wait before doing something about nothing hearing from him reasonably becomes a thing I’d want to do…?”, when my phone buzzed with a message from him, letting me know he was on his way back. Well…so… clearly the answer to my question was “a little longer”. lol I feel more at ease now, in some subtle way, just from knowing he’s okay. I definitely don’t enjoy having doubts about that, real or imagined. 🙂

The sun is not yet quite “up”. The sky is light, a pale wash of cerulean blue, with a hint of orange along the horizon, showing through the trees. No clouds. Still… it’s a good moment to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being

Snapshots & Puzzle Pieces

May 17, 2017 //
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I woke a bit early this morning, still smiling from the lovely evening spent with my Traveling Partner last night. I’ll probably be smiling for days, unless something entirely different knocks the smile off my face at some point. Hot coffee, headphones on, great playlist, smiling… this is a beautiful moment, as I start my day, still warm from a leisurely hot shower, still comfortable after my morning yoga… did I mention I’m still smiling?

What we see is often determined by what we’re looking at – and how we feel.

This moment is delightful. It’s still just a moment. Mindfulness is only part of this peculiar puzzle that is my journey from surviving to thriving; perspective matters every bit as much, I think. Take that lovely blue sky moment shot yesterday, pictured above, for example. It’s not an entirely frank image… I zoomed in on a small bit of blue sky, and some tree tops at the edge of a parking lot, downtown, near the waterfront, surrounded by concrete overpasses, framed in traffic, asphalt, and homeless people. I grabbed that sliver of beauty and blew it way out of proportion. I think I do that often, even without a camera. It’s also possible to do that in quite the reverse (and exceedingly common), zooming in on the suffering, the unpleasantness, the litter, the damage, the pain, the violence… life has a lot to offer, and it isn’t all pleasant happy fun stuff.

Still…

How we view the world, how we experience our own lives, does have to do with our perspective on it. We filter our experience through our perspective. We give the details context, even going as far as making up, or filling in, missing narrative.

Still…

Don’t miss out on the fun of life, or it’s whimsy!

We have choices, even about what to look at, and how to see it. Those choices matter, too. Balance matters. Perspective matters. Being “real” matters – and it matters how we define “being real”.

I don’t have anything super useful here, I’m just saying… perspective is a thing, and it’s useful to have some. Moments are moments, pleasant and unpleasant, and there will be some. 🙂 Taken together those ideas don’t stop life (and moments) from being rather like a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle which has pieces that are all shades of gray, and each piece uniquely shaped. Assembling such a thing into something that is ordered seems complicated. I don’t actually know if it is complicated…

…I’m just going to dump the pieces out of the box, and get started on this puzzle. 😉

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub!!

May 16, 2017 //
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I woke feeling merry – then moved to get out of bed. Holy crap, why the evolutionary-hell did it seem utterly necessary to develop arthritis pain?? I sigh, and ease myself slowly from the bed to something more or less like a standing position and make my way to my yoga mat.

(There’s a chance I watch too much Rick and Morty…)

Yoga helps. I’m not so stiff afterward. My coffee is tasty and hot. I’m still smiling and aside from being in pain, I “feel good”. I am learning to define  how I feel by qualities other than physical pain… it definitely makes a better experience, day-to-day. I suspect this will be a valuable trait as I age. lol Besides… fuck pain!  I put my headphones on, crank up some favorite dance tracks, and keep moving. I may be a plump, curvy, middle-aged fat chick with some wear and tear, but I’m fucking smiling, bitches – and I feel wrapped in love and smiles this morning in spite of pain. 😀 Wubba-lubba-dub-dub!!! 😉

Finding my joy has been a journey all its own, and part of “all of the everything” along the way. I can recall being a deeply bitter, disappointed cynical shell of a human being, a dry rotting husk where my heart could have been. Unpleasant. (That describes both me, I think, and my experience, itself.) It wasn’t surprising, knowing what I know (which is most of everything) about my experiences. What surprises me even now, though, is how much I yearned to be someone completely different. Not “different from the woman I am” as much as “a woman having a different experience than I am” – and looking back it took a long damned time to figure out (with help, frankly) that my own choices were a large part of where I landed in life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming poor people for poverty, or rape survivors for having PTSD and trust issues, or domestic violence victims for struggling with repressed rage and learned helplessness; no victim blaming here at all, implied or explicit. What I am saying, is that I didn’t recognize how much personal control I have over my own state of being. I could always make choices that change the quality of my experience for better or for worse – that’s a lot of power, and carelessly wielded it results in a lot of emotional chaos. We do have choices. A lot of them. So many choices it can be a little overwhelming… does it matter if I wear a dark blue wonder woman tank top under my sweater this morning? Not so much… but it’s a choice. The choice whether or not to budget my finances is a much bigger deal, as choices go. Or, the choice whether or not to labor away in a job that defies my values, and working for a person I don’t respect, and who treats me poorly – that’s a big deal for sure, and yep, also a choice (and a choice I am very glad I made differently, at long last).

The music keeps playing. I keep dancing in my chair while I write. Now and then the music moves me such that I’ve got to get up between paragraphs and enjoy a particular track in a more physical way. I love to dance. I make no claims of skill – I just enjoy movement, and music, and the way they go together so well.  At 53, and more than a bit self-conscious about … something… I don’t comfortably dance with ease and freedom in public spaces (anymore/yet). It can bring me near to tears to brush too closely to plentiful recollections of being young, fit, sexy, flexible, and so easily able to be the music in a physical form. Stiff from arthritis pain, back broken in two places, fused and wired back together, and too heavy to feel light on my feet for very long has talked me into a level of self-consciousness about being seen exactly as I am that I’ve not yet sorted out, and which creates conflict in my sense of rhythm, which adds to my self-consciousness. At any rate, it’s a source of emotional discomfort that I rarely discuss. It’s part of my journey these days; there is so much music I want to see live, and I want to be comfortable in that world, too.

The unexpected frankness with myself this morning, on this tender sore place in my heart labeled “too fat” opens my eyes to how much I’m hurting over this, and the tears spill over my cheeks like tiny waterfalls. The worst of it is the sting of knowing that the mocking skinny girl lurking in my thoughts isn’t about experiences I’ve had of other women; she’s the woman in the mirror, at a much younger age, that woman so easily able to dance, lacking any awareness of where life would take her, and brutally insensitive about others. Straight up, it’s not about treating other women badly over matters of weight, appearance, or beauty. I know my own heart. I know that woman. I know what she was about. I know her. I find myself acutely aware of who I was and the content of my thoughts, then. Life itself got tired of my shit, and now I am faced with all manner of many things I was uncomfortable with as a younger woman. lol Well-played life. You’ll make me wise, yet. Perspective matters, and it can be painful to develop.

Kindness matters too. And compassion. My tears dry as I savor the wry humor of being so carefully placed in life to experience a broad range of experiences. Gnothi seauton. I could have been a better person than I was in my 20s, but I wasn’t – and I wasn’t even aware of what a basic and shitty human being I actually was. Self-awareness demands a lot of me, and this morning it demands that I acknowledge how much I yearn to feel as comfortable on the dance floor as I do in my living room. As comfortable with my partners as I do when I am alone. Funny… until I became aware I felt otherwise, I didn’t realize this is a journey I also very much need to take… so… I guess it begins here? In a blog post I didn’t realize I was going to write, about an issue I find more personal than my sexuality… my emotional comfort with my physical self. Again. Still.

I’m still smiling. Still sipping my coffee. Still dancing through the pain. All good things – and there is further to go on this journey, and I suppose that is also a good thing. 🙂

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets, women
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