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Words Failing Me?

October 25, 2016 //
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I woke ahead of the alarm by minutes, feeling rested, and not particularly groggy. The morning has proceeded with logical elegance from task to task, and my coffee is hot, tasty, and welcome. I have nothing much to say. In a life so rich with words much of the time, I guess that’s okay, too. 🙂

The week begins well, and that’s enough. I could use more time in my day, but the new work environment is one in which I thrive, and feel appreciated. I can’t complain about that – and the commute is not the longest one I’ve endured since moving to the area. My longest was the original commute I traveled daily for some 13 years without questioning it. Moving closer to work didn’t feel possible; my (ex) partner was unwilling to travel to and from school, and the result was having to choose between what I needed, and what she demanded. When she’d finished earning her degree, the expected shift in priorities “didn’t happen”. I did not yet understand that I would have to take care of me. I allowed life to go on, without choosing change, and did so for a very long time. Resentful, exhausted, neglected and unhappy, I trudged along in life surviving on wishful thinking and daydreams of a future that wasn’t likely – since I wasn’t building that. We become what we practice – and I was practicing some very different things then, than I do now.

My choices, even then, were vast and assorted, and had many potential outcomes. I didn’t see the whole of the menu, as though refusing to turn it over and see the rest of it, limiting myself to just “today’s specials” – which, as it happened, weren’t that damned special. I’m not bitching, I’m just making a point of pointing out that I carefully crafted the experience I was mired in, by refusing to choose a different one. My choices mattered greatly – and yes, I’ll go ahead and say so sooner than later, when I did start making different choices, some of my relationships were changed, and some ended (including a partnership of 15 years, and a job with a company I’d worked for, for 13 of those). Choices have consequences. Remember reality? Yeah – reality doesn’t care what we think we’re choosing. We are each having our own experience, each filtering that through our own perspective – reality doesn’t care about that, either.  😉

This is not actually a picture of a rainbow filling a building with gold, however much it may appear so.

What it appears to be does not change what it is.

Choice and change and verbs and perspective… it’s busy in here. I find myself pondering the “meaning of life”. It’s that sort of morning. A good morning for meditation as the sun rises, and a leisurely 2nd and 3rd coffee…and it’s also a work morning. I’ll watch the sun rise on foot, as I walk through downtown to the office. I’ll see it reflected, perhaps, on the city from the other side of the river, where I stop each morning to reflect on life, and take a picture. It is a moment of perspective with lasting value.

Misty

Giving myself time to reflect…

 

...allows my perspective to deepen...

…allows my perspective to deepen…

 

Giving myself time to reflect allows my perspective to deepen and change with experience.

…and change with experience.

We are each having our own experience. We choose a lot of it. We carefully craft a lot more of it within our thoughts, even sometimes avoiding confronting what differs from our so carefully crafted narrative. Expectations and assumptions can be built on accumulated experience of reality – but they don’t have to be, and often aren’t. I set myself up for failure when I build my expectations and assumptions on my internal narrative, without checking in with reality. Funny thing (maybe) that reality seems so much more variable than expectations and assumptions…

My mind wanders. I’m enjoying the morning over my coffee, listening to a freight train roar past on the other side of the park. I think of my traveling partner, and life and love and time; perhaps I shall see him this evening? Perhaps not until tomorrow. We have evening plans for Thursday, and I “know” I will see him then – is that an expectation? An assumption? Is it reality? Certainly it is planned…

A wordless moment of clarity... a picture as a metaphor.

A wordless moment of clarity… a picture as a metaphor.

Today is a good day to be present in this moment, here. I think I’ll go do that. (Your results may vary…)

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Categories autumn, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Words

What Sunday Looks Like at 4 AM

October 23, 2016 //
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I am awake ridiculously early, for no obvious reason other than I apparently got enough sleep to be awake now. I have no emotional position on the matter of being awake at 4 am on a Sunday morning. I woke thinking perhaps it was quite late on Monday night and that I’d slept through the work day. I’m glad it is Sunday morning. So… in spite of the early hour, the morning starts in a good place. 😀

I woke in pain. My lower back is still aching from an unfortunately very comfortably (in the moment) placed small pillow yesterday evening that resulted in very poor positioning of my spine (although I didn’t feel it until later). I’m still dealing with the pain of my careless mistake. Reality works like that; it literally does not care – or account for – our opinions about good, bad, comfortable, uncomfortable, win, lose, best, worst – any of it. Reality simply is.

Our value judgements are as made up as a lot of the rest of our experience, and align to reality by varying degrees depending on our level of awareness, and willingness to recognize reality’s hard surfaces, sharp edges, and unexpected corners, when we could choose the softness of our dreams, and the soothing poetry of our internal narrative.

Very few people seem to actually want to live their lives awake and aware, present and engaged in this moment, here, now. Some people talking about being awake, awakening, and other such assorted verbiage for being more “on” than “off”, more clued in than clueless, are talking about other dreams, rather than being simply mindfully with what is (as much as our senses allow us to be). Some people use statements of awareness as accusations that others are less so. I have even read articles suggesting some people use basic mindfulness practices to distract themselves from life’s practical realities needing their attention. It is perhaps useful to avoid those pitfalls. I have no particular constructive solutions or suggestions to offer. Awareness is a fairly personal state of being. We are easily misled, sometimes by our own thinking, and it is tempting to think that our notions are a matter of “being awake” solely because the thinking is new, ours, or because few others share it. What is “awake“, anyway?

This morning it is enough to distinguish sleeping from waking, and to consider this state of being literally awake sufficient to define the term. 🙂

It will be hours still before day break. I sip my coffee, relaxed, enjoying this moment without anxiety, stress, or weirdness. 4 am doesn’t have to be loaded with baggage, fear, stress, existential angst, or the residual emotional load from nightmares. It can be, and is, simply a moment. To be sure, it’s a moment I could be sleeping through, were circumstances different, but the circumstances are what they are – and I choose how I experience the moment. 🙂

Weekends seem short now, just two days, with firm borders of work days keeping them in place, like bookends. Making best use of the time seems to matter much more than it did only weeks ago. Today will be spent mostly on housekeeping, meditation, reading, playing my guitar… I can’t complain, that sounds like a great Sunday, to me. I’ll make a point of getting a good walk in sometime in the morning, after the sun is up; in only months this nearby trail won’t be so nearby – I may never walk it again once I move.

Oh good grief - not again?!

Oh good grief – not again?!

Moving is hard on me. Departures, leaving, breaking free, letting go, “never again”, endings generally just don’t feel as delightfully welcoming as beginnings. I had the thought last night that with regard to moving, if I were to look upon the process as a prolonged beginning, instead of a prolonged ending, perhaps it would feel different overall? Would I grieve less to view this move as a profound beginning, a delightful choice to be embraced, a unique adventure whose time has come? It seems a promising notion, and I decided to begin putting it to the test today, by beginning with a list of the small things that have been less than ideal, compromises of aesthetic, unsatisfying logistical necessities, things that haven’t worked well, or have continued to be problems yet to be solved. If nothing else, I expect it to reduce my level of attachment to this place, and these circumstances, and perhaps reduce the emotional baggage associated with moving. I guess I’ll find out once I do it. Practices, and practicing them, tend to work that way for me; they are an idea with intent before the verbs are put to work, and only in the practicing is the result evident. Sometimes it is necessary to practice regularly, continuously, frequently, and with some persistence (like meditation), others sort of “just happen” and continue on auto-pilot once I practice them a few times and find it a natural fit for who I am. My results definitely vary – they vary by practice, they vary by day, they vary by moment. I’m very human.

I get distracted by a favorite track on my playlist and lose my train of thought. Perhaps it is for the best? Some mornings I can continue to hit “enter” and start a new paragraph more or less indefinitely and find some hours later that I’ve got a few thousand words to cut down to size – and haven’t said much. Sometimes a distraction is helpful.

It is interesting to watch the sky through the open blinds of the studio window. When I sat down the sky seemed a milky shade of some sort of orange, pale and peculiar, and the pine just beyond the patio was silhouetted boldly. It was quite striking. I look up now, and more than hour later (less than two), all is darkness without feature or form, nothing to see of the sky, the pine, or the imminent dawn besides some distant streetlights shining through more distant trees, invisible on the horizon. It is strange that the sky seems darker now than when I woke, much earlier. Reality does not care what I think about it. Hasn’t ever cared. Isn’t likely to care in the future. Reality is. 🙂

Today is a good day to be here, now. Today is a good day to embrace change. Today is a good day to practice practices, to be, and to become. It’s time to face a blank page.

imag8161

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

One Misty Morning

October 22, 2016 //
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I’m up earlier than I need to be; it’s Saturday and I could sleep in. Only… I’m awake, so… that isn’t happening. 🙂 Being attached to that outcome (sleeping in) has messed up so many beautiful mornings on which I earnestly wanted to sleep longer and couldn’t. I think, generally, I’ve let that go. It feels pretty good to be awake, okay with being awake, and simply enjoying the additional minutes or hours of the day.

The treeline obscured by fog; I assume the world exists beyond although I can't see it.

The treeline obscured by fog; I assume the world exists beyond although I can’t see it.

Last night was strange. I was not in the mood for company at all, and by the time I got home all I wanted was the peace and stillness of solitude. I started a fire in the fireplace, and sat down with a rare treat – a glass of sherry.

Just as my nerves started to unwind, and I began to relax into a state of lasting contentment, the smoke alarm went off. Okay, startling, but I silence it and settle down. It goes off again. The room does not appear to be smokey at all. I silence the alarm. I sit down, pick up a book. Smoke alarm. Okay, damn it, this is bullshit and I begin to feel agitated. It was an effort to pause the fast-building rage that is my purely animal reaction to frustration. I open windows, doors, and turn on fans. Clearly the smoke detector thinks there is smoke… why don’t I?

I step outside into the cool rainy night air, and breathe deeply; it is by far fresher than the air in the apartment. Okay… maybe there’s something to this? I look out into the night, it doesn’t seem any clearer… I turn and look back into the apartment, still not seeing “smoke” at all. I go inside and head for the little cloth I use to clean my glasses. Ah. Yep. That’s it; my glasses are so smudgy I couldn’t see that the air in the apartment wasn’t entirely clear – it was, in fact, a bit “smoggy”. Well shit. I keep airing out the apartment, feeling a bit aggravated – why tonight? I take time to sit down directly in front of the fireplace to watch it crackle away merrily – it cares not one bit about smoke alarms. I listen to the wind and wonder if it might be preventing the smoke from going up the chimney? Then I notice that the flue lever is much farther “open” than I generally open it, and also that reliable small curls of actual smoke are indeed rolling past the opening of the fireplace and into the room. So, while not billowing out in a definite noticeable way, there has definitely been smoke making it into the room since the fire got started. (Hey – smoke alarm, I’m sorry I was mad at you; you were right.)

Adjustments made, rooms aired out, windows returned to their closed position, fans turned off, alarm silenced… I can sit down, breathe, and relax. Well. I can choose to. I can make the effort. I can begin again. I can also quietly sit until the evening feels quite late, before being overcome by fatigue and calling it a night. Aside from dealing with the smoke alarm, I really didn’t do anything last night. It was exactly what I wanted out of my evening. No television. No music. No people. No fuss. No media news. No conversation. No. Just no. None. Not any. Only the quiet, my glass of sherry, and the stillness.

It was quite lovely, once I finally got to really settle down. I make a point of remembering that I did get to settle down and relax, quiet, content, without stress or fussing – and it’s important that I do that, because as I wrote about all the rest, all the rest became more prominent in my memory, reinforced in the telling. Amusing anecdotes about stressful things can work like that, too; we tell the tale, and it becomes the larger part of our recollection. It is one of the terrible truths of PTSD; the more our trauma haunts us, the more prominent the recollection of it becomes, the more significant in our implicit memory, the more “real” – even compared to other factually real events and experiences that may be going on now. Yikes. So, this morning I make a point, once the tale is told, to also savor the portion of the evening that followed, because the stillness and contentment can be a bigger portion of my experience, if I choose it to be so. Verbs. Choices. Practice. I enjoy the stillness more than the stress.

I’ve no idea what today holds. It is the weekend, and my traveling partner is far away. There is no chance we’ll see each other today. I’m okay with that; although I miss him, I’ve been needing some reliable consistent quiet, and have been struggling to create that within myself in his company. There has been so much busy-ness in my calendar (and my life) since I returned to work: a visit from my step-son, a couple of parties, my traveling partner coming and going a bit more than usual, OPD, a new work routine, a new commute… Every detail of my everyday life was completely overturned when I returned to work. Life has been so busy – and so social – I’ve been left with no time to sort it all out. The timing of my partner’s trip in this instance could not be better. 🙂

I still miss him, greatly, and it is one source of my background stress. I’d very much like to have a living arrangement in which he could come and go utterly freely without concern. Another source of my increasing background stress is my commute; it consumes 10 hours a week of my precious limited lifetime. The transit portion of that commute is rarely pleasant, and puts me constantly at risk of illness. I make a point of living close to work for a reason, and that reason is that I dislike wasting my life commuting. I want that time back! By itself, this is not a big contributor to my stress, it’s a small thing; it drives thinking about moving, though, which causes me major stress.

Mist obscures the autumn skyline of the trees on the far side of the park. I assume they are still there.

Perspective matters. Letting go of attachment helps. 

I remind myself “this too shall pass”. I breathe. Relax. Sip my coffee, and look out across the meadow, into the misty morning; I will have to give up this view in favor of another. More upheaval. My anxiety kicks in, and I breathe through it. This will be something to face, to deal with, and to process for months to come… and that’s okay too. I feel things, and I have tools to process my feelings. 🙂

Today is a good day to consider what I have, what I need, and what I’d choose to change. Today is a good day to embrace that change and make wise choices. Today is a good day to begin again.

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

Thinking About Planning

October 21, 2016 //
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This morning the minutes slip away as I consider my next move. I dislike moving, but the lease here is up just a bit more than 90 days from now. It’s time to give the matter some thought.

I woke on time, and as was the case yesterday, feeling a bit groggy. This morning’s okay though, as was yesterday, and I’ll get through the day just fine on the rest I got. I’m still feeling some stress, but I am also more aware that some of that is simply circumstances forcing my attention onto the need to move, again. I dislike moving. I sometimes find it difficult to enjoy traveling. I like to feel “at home”, safe, secure, and content. I can’t recall if this is something that has “always” been characteristic of my sense of self, or a newer thing, or the “why” of it.

One thing I know, although it took me a long time to figure it out; “home” is something I build for myself, and I can do that almost anywhere, given an opportunity to settle in and do so. I’ll probably grieve this lovely safe space 100 times before I ever actually move, but it’s not the building I’m attached to, nor is it the address, or the location, or the community – it’s the home I’ve made for myself here. I can do that again, someplace new. I even know that I enjoy and find deep satisfaction in that process of home making. I just dislike the process of moving. 🙂

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“Home” moves with me, even my garden waits in pots for a different arrangement, in another place.

This year the holidays will be lean and carefully managed in order to prepare logistically for a comfortable move. If I am ready to buy, and find the right little place, that’ll be the thing – if not, I’ll find a suitable rental nearer to work, and get back some of the time in my day while I look for a more permanent residence, something that suits my needs, and those of my traveling partner. I feel some of the anxiety and stress recede with a few moments of internal planning dialogue.

Today is a good day to remember that I am my own cartographer, and this journey really doesn’t have a map – or a destination. Today is a good day to plan, and to let go of attachment to places – and planning, too. Change is. Impermanence is, too. I’m okay right now. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being

How Far Does This Road Go?

October 19, 2016 //
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It’s an odd sort of morning following a somewhat peculiar evening. It was a pleasant evening, and it is a pleasant morning. It would be easy to lose sight of how pleasant it is to focus on the oddity. The pleasantness, for me, is more important.

Evenings are quite short these days, a common experience for people who work and commute some distance. I arrived home about an hour earlier than usual, yesterday, which is enough time to make a difference. I enjoyed a bite of dinner, and meditation, and was headed to the shower when my traveling partner arrived. A whirlwind of greetings, moments, departures, and arrivals later, and the apartment was full of people, laughing, talking – it’s fairly easy to find a party breaking out at my place when both my traveling partner and I are at home; we two enjoy both company and solitude, and if we’re already together (and thus not alone) it’s a handy time to get other friends together, too. Parties happen. 🙂

I sip my coffee and for some moments think about far away friends, and long for their company, too. Magical thinking could intervene here, and leave me feeling lonely, or annoyed, or even inappropriately “abandoned”, or sad over what is not. It’s a choice, and I choose not to head down that spiral. I cherish my far away friends over my coffee, smiling with grateful delight at technology like Facebook, that so easily keeps us all in touch over the years. Any perceived distance melts away like morning fog as the sun rises, when we get together again. In the meantime, there are pictures of life, of new babies, of dance recitals, of fun and adventure, of love – all shared with affection, preserving a long-distance connection.

"Long Distance Connection" 18" x 24" acrylic on canvas w/glow, 2010

“Long Distance Connection” 18″ x 24″ acrylic on canvas w/glow, 2010

Last night I crashed pretty early, and the party moved next door out of respect for my working hours and early mornings. I actually slept well and deeply. I woke with the alarm, feeling comfortable in my body, content with the woman in the mirror, and ready to start a new day. No noteworthy pain – so I make a point of noticing the lack, and making that, itself, noteworthy by being aware of how good I feel right now, savoring it, lingering over it, enjoying it without any dismissive internal commentary. I take time to be okay with being okay. Being miserable can become a very bad habit; we become what we practice.

I sit quietly, sipping my coffee, living my life gently, feeling contented. It’s a lovely start to a work day. I think about the  years and years I didn’t start my days this way, and then the years that I tried… and tried… and tried… and often found some delicate fragile moment of contentment or delight would skid unexpectedly sideways off life’s highway, leaving me stranded in tears by the side of the road, unaware that I only needed to dust my self off and walk on. There are so many choices, and so much of my experience is in my own hands. It can be daunting. Then, too, there’s all that “positivity” stuff out there, and “faking it until you make it” encouragement; those things didn’t work for me at all. Authenticity is demanding, and some of the moments of a life well-lived are… challenging? Unpleasant. Some of life’s moments are frankly awful. Still… I couldn’t force positivity down my own throat, and no amount of repeating scripted affirmations or pasting fake smiles on my face got me anywhere. I gave up, and in giving up felt even worse about myself and my circumstances.

I tend to be a very positive person these days – but I didn’t start here, and getting here wasn’t the goal. I started with taking better care of myself (physically and emotionally), and took up practices that supported my wellness, and nudged me gently towards my long-term goals by improving my self-care, my awareness, and my willful actions, over time. I suppose someone could respond that they feel like a screaming spoiled toddler, and if they are (mis)behaving it is merely an expression of their authentic self… I guess that’s where having a conscious awareness of my values is helpful for me; I don’t think to justify bad behavior on the basis of “authenticity” – because that isn’t the woman I most want to be. I don’t find myself having to “fake it” – I do find that choices are necessary, and there are verbs involved. I begin again, regularly. When I fuck up and hurt someone, I apologize sincerely and without reservations or excuses.

It’s been a long while since I had some terrible meltdown. I take a moment to appreciate that – because, honestly, realistically, and being so very human? This too shall pass. 🙂 It’s likely that sometime in my future I will be frustrated, or angry, or childishly disappointed, and I will have to deal with it appropriately.  I may hurt someone’s feelings and have to apologize. I’ll be wrong about some things. I’ll fail at some others in spite of trying. I may kick myself while I’m down, or revert to a bad habit unexpectedly. Still… we become what we practice. I’ll begin again. Over time, in small sometimes hardly noticeable increments, change will occur.

We do become what we practice. I stopped practicing having relentless temper tantrums and yielding to primitive frustrated rage – but not by “quitting”; I began practicing something different. That’s my own version of “positivity”. More a doing than an undoing. For me, it started with the most basic mindfulness practices, a few minutes each day for myself that I could really count on, and the will to begin again day after day, as if my life depended on it. (From my perspective, it very much did.) My reading list is built on the resources that got me here, now. I can share titles of books forever, and perhaps you even read them – but without the verbs, the practicing of practices, and the will to begin again, they’re only books filled with mere words. Just saying.

My coffee has gone cold. It’s almost time to head to the office. I’m still smiling. Life feels different than it did three years ago, in a number of very good ways. We become what we practice. My results vary – but I can begin again, often. Today is a good day to practice. Who will you choose to become? 🙂

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Categories Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being
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