Archives for posts with tag: begin again
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The Brain Attacks! Again.

September 9, 2016 //
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It could be that some of my challenges will be part of my experience for as long as I’m experiencing things. It sucks more than a little bit to dwell on that, so I move on with my thinking as quickly as I can, but without cruelty or dismissiveness. I am human, after all. This morning I woke, and quickly found myself reduced to tears…over… nothing. Nothing whatsoever that has any substance in this moment, I mean. Emotions. Dreams? Maybe.

"The Nightmare City" 8" x 10" acrylic on canvas w/glow

“The Nightmare City” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas w/glow

I woke feeling angry with my traveling partner, which is odd; one of my challenges is feeling safe about, and comfortably expressing, anger in my closest relationships. (It’s baggage that isn’t about my traveling partner, but he’s had to endure me lugging it around all this time.) I woke feeling angry that in our first years married, illness held him back from doing a lot of cool things; we stayed home, a lot. Now he’s well, and feeling fully himself, and he lives a busy life of adventure, going, doing, experiencing new things… and we no longer live together, and these are not our shared experiences. The anger I woke with quickly threatened to become a tantrum, a storm of unrelenting strong emotion knocking me off-balance with hurt feelings, and regrets. The anger became grief and sadness as soon as I let myself feel my feelings with compassion, and recognized the simultaneous feelings of resentment, sadness, and insecurity. My heart cried out “what do we have that is ours?” and I couldn’t answer it – not because there is nothing with which to answer, but because I can’t easily find the answer (through tears, through heartache, through the fog of just waking up, before my coffee…) without considerable thought. I let the tears come; it would be a genuinely sad thing to share nothing with one’s lover, and were that the case, there would be no failure in these honest tears.

It's okay to put some of that down, for now.

It’s okay to put some of that down, for now.

Later, I sip my coffee aware of the authentic feelings at the root of my difficult waking moments. I’m deeply in love with this particular human being I call my traveling partner, and at least for now we live very separate lives. Sometimes that is a painful experience. Sometimes it holds some relief that this human being so dear to me doesn’t have to struggle under the weight of my chaos and damage full-time. Right now, in this moment, I just miss him and find myself wondering rather hormonally what value I have… (Fuck you, Menopause, I’m supposed to be past having to deal with hormonal bullshit!) It’s rather foolish. It’s very human.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

Seasons change. Over the long summer I’ve come to miss him greatly, after enjoying living with him through the winter. I’m eager to enjoy the autumn and winter months together, celebrating holidays, enjoying the company of friends… but… there is something real here that may want my attention, and getting past the tears I’m aware that most his “go” and “do” activities in the past 2 years have developed in other relationships than ours. We spend very little time together; he’s busy elsewhere. (It’s quite possible the time we do spend together fully meets his needs. I’m not sure I’m ready to ask that question…) I woke up hurting over it and wondering what value “we” have for him. It’s not something to stew over – that’s a fast track to misery. I’ll just ask when I see him again, and he will tell me, and then I’ll know. I’ll be back to work soon… there won’t be time for fussing about how little time we spend together, then; there won’t be time left in the days for it. The time we spend together will be limited to the time we have.

My calendar is very full for the next several days. Appointments. Brunch with a friend over the weekend. Friday night with the guys from my previous work team. My last week of leisure will probably be filled with “getting ready to go back to work” activities. It’s not likely that these will be days filled with sadness or passing emotional storms, there’s too much to do, and life to be lived. I feel some regret that my traveling partner wasn’t available to enjoy more of this time away from work with me… but it was time I took for me, as it was, and it has been well-spent on healing, growing, and practicing good self-care. Worthy endeavors, good outcomes. (So, hey, Brain, stop being such a bitch to me, please?)

A gray dawn greeted me so gently I barely noticed it had become day time while I wrote. I’m not crying now, or even sad really. I’m sipping my coffee, listening to music, and feeling a contented smile tug at the corners of my mouth. I think about other friends. Other loves. Other moments of great joy – or great sorrow. Impermanence is a very real thing, and change is, too. I smile thinking about my traveling partner’s good times to come, and his journey here and there. I’m already eager to hear about it – and he hasn’t even departed. lol He’ll take approximately no pictures at all, but my imagination will fill in all the details in the telling. 🙂

Today I don’t opt into loneliness, and once my tears have dried it’s another lovely morning, heading into another day of living a life built mostly on contentment (and bits and pieces of chaos and damage). Today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

 

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

Pulling My Own Weight

September 8, 2016 //
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In life, generally, there is an implicit expectation that we each “pull our own weight”, or “handle our share of the load” – basically, to do our part in our family life, our community, and even our world to create, maintain, and nurture the world we want to live in, and that we want to provide for our loved ones and descendants. That seems almost effortless compared to the more practical, less metaphorical, pulling of my own literal weight around each and every day.

I weigh more than I’d like, more than I find beautiful based on my own aesthetic, and more than is ideally healthy for me, personally, based on my own experience of movement, fitness, and comfort each day. This morning I am sipping my coffee and rather rudely chastising myself for finding losing a few pounds (and keeping it off) more difficult than building world peace, or overcoming poverty, privation, and disease. Ludicrous. So… while we all work on those other much larger issues, I’ll also work on making my issues with my weight much smaller – and thereby making myself somewhat smaller, and probably quite a bit healthier, and even reducing the burden on global resources in some minuscule way simply by consuming less, and more wisely. Some of my chronic health concerns would be eased, possibly resolved, if I lost the excess weight I’m dragging around, too… which sounds like a great way to reduce my health care expenses, as a further “value add” to getting fit.

So. Another journey begins again. This is a hard one for me, for a number of reasons that are intertwined with the chaos and damage. It’s time to set down more of the baggage, shed unnecessary pounds, and walk on. I even know I can do this – because I’ve done it before; I haven’t always been overweight. This morning, I practice bringing more mindfulness to my yoga, and to my physical therapy routine. It’ll be an every day commitment to be successful, and I expect to begin again any number of times… there are verbs involved, and I know my results vary. I’m very human. Still, it’s a worthy endeavor, so I begin again. Again. I fall back on practical basics that I know work: gamification (SuperBetter is a great tool!), accountability (talking about it reduces ‘get away with something’ opportunities), and mindfulness – both with regard to consumption and with regard to tracking data. “What gets measured gets managed” still works for me. And… there are still verbs involved.

…In the three plus years I’ve been writing this blog, I could easily have reached my fitness goals several times (and got really close once). I’m frustrated by that, sure, but I understand that incremental change over time does really work – it’s those pesky verbs! The verbs are not avoidable, and must actually be lived, done, performed, acted upon, otherwise they remain only words in sentences, becoming, perhaps, thoughts and never becoming achievements. It happens. I know – I happened it. 🙂 (Or, rather, I didn’t.) It’s time to begin again – it’s nearly always quite an ideal time to begin again. It’s not necessary to save it for a Monday, or first thing in the morning, or perhaps on the first of the month, or for a New Year’s resolution, and in fact I’ve often been surprised to find that handling something that way (by selecting some opportune seeming beginning point in the future) resulted in failure more often than success. Failures are okay – steps on a journey – but they can be quite a buzz kill, and that’s more to deal with.

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

It’s funny something so practical as losing some weight can be such a challenge… I think we probably all understand that doing so requires fewer calories, more carefully chosen to meet nutritional needs, consumed in the context of the most active lifestyle we can comfortably maintain for our overall fitness. So many verbs…but hey, no fancy diet is actually required, and it doesn’t cost anything more to eat far less, generally. Choices. Verbs. Incremental changes over time. It’s tempting to see this journey as being “about” the destination (losing the weight), but this too is more about the journey itself, is it not? 😉

Practical thoughts on a Thursday morning, likely the result of practical thinking generally as I begin to shift gears from living largely at leisure, painting and writing, toward something more commonplace, with a commute, regular hours, an income, expectations… and yet another beginning. It’s enough to be who I am, in this moment. It’s enough to be here, now, content and relaxed, and still aware that there is more to do on the journey of being the woman I most want to be. I’m okay with that; it’s about the journey, after all. 🙂 Today is a good day to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Uncategorized, weight loss secrets

Waiting

September 5, 2016 //
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Today is an odd sort of day. It feels like one of those filled with moments filled with waiting. I’ll wait another day to see my traveling partner. I also wait to begin work. With a background check in progress, I suppose I also wait for that outcome, in the background. 🙂

This morning I wait for the hour to be late enough to do laundry without disturbing neighbors who must share a wall with the laundry room. I wait for the next opportunity to hang out with a new friend. I wait for friends nearer at hand to wake for the day, or find a moment to drop by. I wait for water to boil for my second cup of coffee. I wait for the sun to rise a little higher so I can open the blinds and see across the meadow without going blind from the sun in my eyes. None of this is new, or a big deal; waiting is a thing we do. I do it most often when I am not here, now, fully present in this moment. I do it when I am focused on some future moment that is not now. Waiting is expensive, in terms of time and time management; it is generally not productive time, if left to be solely what it is.

I smile into my empty cup of coffee, having already forgotten I am waiting for water to boil, or that I was on my way to make a second cup of coffee. I am engaged in this moment, here, and these words. I’ve already moved on, in fact, from the thought of waiting to writing about waiting – and am no longer waiting, at all. Waiting is not only not productive, it isn’t particularly engaging, really. It’s the thing I’m waiting for that holds my attention, I suggest to myself, but I’m not sure that’s really true – haven’t I often fussed over the waiting, itself? Anticipation feels different from waiting.

I sit up straighter, thinking for a moment about my commitment to better health and fitness; no waiting required, just verbs. I breathe deeply, and relax, feeling my shoulders return to their natural place. Definitely no waiting needed for breathing deeply, or for relaxing. This moment, here, in the present – in whatever form it takes in this moment, now – isn’t at all about waiting. Time well-spent is rarely spent waiting, and far more often spent being.

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment.    ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

This morning there is no time to wait. Today is a good day to be here, in this moment, engaged, present, available, connected… and not ‘device connected’, either – connected heart to heart, connected through eye contact, through shared conversation, through hugs, touches, kisses. Connected through mindful awareness. Connected through consideration. Connected now, because we’re all in this together. Today is a good day for a shared experience. There are verbs involved (and people). Your results may vary. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Troubleshooting Life’s Challenges

September 3, 2016 //
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It’s been an interesting morning, so far. Yesterday’s appointment wasn’t particularly telling, and it’s enough to say that I don’t know more than I knew yesterday, and have received further confirmation that medical professionals will go the extra mile to pacify someone in distress, but actual answers are not necessarily in their mandate. lol

A change of perspective on a misty morning.

A change of perspective on a misty morning.

This morning, I am pre-occupied with words in a different way; I don’t understand everything the same way everyone else does. (You don’t either, that’s just a thing.) This morning, an article shared by a friend revealed that some people think the advice to ‘work on yourself’ rather than frustratedly seeking love is communication that if only we are not too broken, we’ll somehow be more worthy of love! 😦 Wow. What a crappy perspective on self-care, and self-worth. I wasn’t viewing the common suggestion to work on oneself rather than chasing partnership as anything other than a very practical suggestion that life is finite, and that wasting time yearning for what we don’t have is… wasted time. Live! Live, for fuck’s sake – and do so in spite of the lack of day-to-day physical affection and contact in our electronically connected, emotionally disconnected, society! Perhaps most importantly then. Your life may literally depend on it (or at least its quality will.) It’s not about ‘being better so someone will love me’! It’s also not about ‘improving your relationship worth’ by having or being more than you are today. It’s about not wasting precious lifetime mourning what isn’t, when there is so much that is! Sure – troubleshoot the hell out of your issues! Fix what you find to be truly “broken”, or make something new and wonderful of the wreckage left behind! (A process, I’ll point out, that is often most efficiently managed solo.) It’s not about what anyone else may value in who you are – or who you may become – it’s about YOU, what you want of that human being in the mirror, who you choose to become. It’s about living life, having your experience, investing in your own heart, lavishing yourself with authentic affection – your own high regard – and investing in good self-care. When we treat ourselves well, treating others similarly well becomes a natural thing, and although there are no guarantees in life, it does seem to be a thing that when we are not desperately earnestly heart-wrenchingly focused on forcing love to happen within the context of our existing experience, it sometimes happens quite unexpectedly on its own… and if we are truly caring for ourselves, living authentic deeply rewarding solitary lives, it may be less painful to be alone. Mostly. (I can at least confirm it has been my own experience so far that enjoying my life without specific regard to pursuing physical or romantic affection seems both more enjoyable generally, and also more likely to result in satisfying sexual and romantic relationships. Mostly. You would not believe the verbs involved – and my results do vary.)

Being alone more than I want to be, going without physical affection, sex, romance, and intimacy in moments when I would greatly prefer to be enjoying one or more of those things, being alone for an event or holiday which is generally celebrated among family or loved ones; these are emotionally difficult experiences. That’s one truth. It is what it is. Making the best of the life we live may not mitigate that truth, may not be helpful specifically in that matter at all in some one desperately lonely moment – but it beats sitting around getting fat on the couch and crying about being lonely. (Which I have also explored; as strategies go, it seems very unlikely to produce better results than enjoying my life – even if I am doing so alone. 😉 )

Now – having covered that, the rest of the morning seems to be pre-occupied with figuring out why, 13 weeks ago, my WordPress posts started posting to Google+ to me only, instead of ‘Public’ – where they can be read. lol I don’t recall changing a privacy setting on either side… but I also have a brain injury, and sometimes lose track of small actions I didn’t necessarily notice. (There is some occasional right side/left side weirdness for me, moments in which I literally took an action with one hand, that I wasn’t aware I was taking while my attention was focused on what the other side of my body was busy with. Oh yeah. The fun never stops. LOL) So, first things first – is there a setting? Did I know that? Have I changed it? If it doesn’t appear to source with me (it doesn’t) – is there a software change on one side or the other? (Both.) Did that affect security settings? (It seems so.) Can changing those settings restore order? (We’ll find out today!) Is there help available? (Hahaha! Fix it yourself, we’re busy, thanks. ~The World) (…And actually, by the time I finished writing this one, help had been provided, so… yeah. Assumptions. lol)

Funny that this proved to be such a distracted morning. I woke gently enough, started the day easily, and shortly will make my way downtown to share the morning with a friend, and visit the farmer’s market, which sounds much more engaging than futzing with computers and blog posts and security settings and all manner of modern-day bullshit – how is it that this takes so much more time than changing a light bulb? (Get off my lawn, ya damned kids!! 😉 )

Today is a good day to take a step back from assumptions, from complacency, and from what I think I know. Today is a good day to explore the world from another perspective. Today is a good day to smile at my frustration with small details, and embrace the moments in life that actually matter most; the time we spend in the company of our friends. 😀

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

Ready? Set? Now!

September 1, 2016 //
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I woke during the night, at 2:35 am. Maybe something woke me. Maybe I just woke up. I got up and wandered through the apartment room by room, not for any particular reason. I think I could have rather easily gone back to sleep. I don’t have a clear idea why I actually got up upon waking. I wasn’t awake long, only long enough to wander through the darkened rooms, illuminated, enough for eyes that opened in the darkness, by the outdoor community lighting along walkways filtering through the closed blinds. I stood in the open patio doorway for some minutes, breathing the cool night air, and watching the clouds scoot past overhead. I went back to bed afterward.

With no alarm set, and no requirement to wake at some specific morning hour to hasten for a building elsewhere, to take a seat among working peers, to process tasks and complete workload for an employer, I slept until I woke, rested. I savored my waking moments with sensuous delight, aware how imminent the return of the alarm clock’s harsh no-nonsense beeping may be. It’s a lovely morning to enjoy what is. What is not, or is not yet, or is no more, is… without consequence in this moment. Well, maybe some of the “is no more” stuff has lingering consequences… our choices matter. Our choices now become our circumstances in our as-yet-unknown future. Sure, that’s pretty much how it works, generally. The future, however, remains firmly not “now”. Our past choices may have consequences we deal with presently, still… our past is also not “now”. I’m enjoying this “now” moment, and it is a lovely one. Quiet. Calm. Content. This is enough. Enough for “now”, and “now” is what I’ve got to work with. 🙂

This particular "now" is a lovely one.

This particular “now”; one moment among many.

The busy week still feels fairly well-managed, not quite “effortless”; there have been many verbs involved. Small breakthroughs, too, in areas of long-time struggle, confusion, or chaos. Something clicked for me, and my approach to food is healthier, and feels less conflicted. Something else clicked for me, and some verbs became easier, more natural parts of my experience. The specifics are less meaningful to share than that life continues to be a journey – with steps, without a map, with choices, without guarantees; we become what we practice. Incremental change over time is very real. Sometimes, change is as “easy” as flipping a switch. Sometimes change is more a matter of choosing. Choosing again. And yet again. And practicing more. Being frustrated now and then, and continuing nonetheless.

Choices, context, coincidence, circumstances, all adding up to this experience of “my life” and “who I am”… this morning over a simple coffee, black, in a plain porcelain cup, white, on a chilly morning somewhere between summer and autumn, it all seems rather simple and uncomplicated. I smile, reminded somehow of impermanence, inevitable and real. Change is. I’m okay with that, too, on this simple quiet morning of enough.

Later will be soon enough for busier moments. A night out with my traveling partner and a friend. “Breakfast” afterhours? An afternoon of doctor’s and tests and imaging, before the weekend can begin. A weekend outing to the farmer’s market with a new friend who’s never been. A lazy Sunday of rest, and study. Moments. Each an opportunity to connect more deeply, share more openly, and savor life. This life. My life. Now. Learning to enjoy and savor my experience has been one of the very best improvements I’ve made in how I live my life; most moments are quite delightful. It used to be that I didn’t notice that, or take the time for anything less than a catastrophe – or an obligation. All the things that hurt and troubled me, and the things that I “had to do”, took all the time I had. There were definitely choices and verbs involved. It required practice, and the change over time was rather slow. It started here. Or… was it here? Here? Here. Oh, maybe… here? What I’m saying is; there are verbs involved, and practice, and without the practice and the verbs, we leave change to chance. 😉

There is so much value in being present in this moment, now, as it is.

There is so much value in being present in this moment, now, as it is.

Today is a good day to be here, now. Today is a good day to practice being who we wish to become; we become what we practice. Today is a good day to choose change; being leads to becoming. 🙂

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, Words
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