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There’s Got to Be a Lesson Here

March 5, 2018 //
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Friday was efficient. Purposeful. Carefully planned. Strictly and professionally executed to plan. Wrapped up neatly with a clear-headed, safe, and calm drive down the highway, arriving at my destination “on time” (meaning to say I got there when I said I would).

Saturday was beyond complete. Spent in the company of close friends and loved ones, the sort of assortment commonly called family by a great many people, it was a day of sunshine, of laughter, of heartfelt worship, of sharing, of celebration, of healing, of wonder, of joy, and of music. It was a fantastic fucking day all around.

Sometime in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I grabbed a nap, knowing I would be heading back up the highway in just a few hours. I woke and enjoyed being surrounded by warmth, good humor, and merriment before packing up the car to make the journey back to this place that I live. I had a good cup of coffee. I shared the morning sunshine. I cuddled dogs, and hugged friends, and held my Traveling Partner so so so close, for an endless moment of such intense love that I feel it still, even now.

What a perfectly lovely weekend!! I sip my Monday morning coffee soaking in the memories, smiling.

I’d kind of like to erase my memory of the drive back…but that’s not really how having a shitty memory actually works. Not quite. Being able to simply choose to erase a memory isn’t so easily done with wisdom, anyway; there’s something to learn here. It’s the hard bits that teach us the most. So.

The drive home sucked. lol It’s that simple. What can I learn from that? What can I learn from the juxtaposition of the deliciously loving weekend with that shit drive? Could I point the finger to having made the trip on less than ideal sleep? (Not really; I was feeling well-rested when I woke, and I was very-well-caffeinated when I started down the road.) Was it the weather? (Clear weather, dry pavement, sunny morning, partly cloudy – so, no.) The traffic? (Traffic was light, and generally moving at or faster than the posted speed, so… it’s hard to say it was the traffic.) Was it… the people? (Here’s where it gets complicated…) I had some of the most hair-raising experiences on this particular commute. I maintained a comfortable (for me) speed without much difficulty, and was generally in good humor and patient about moments of congestion near cities and towns, and I want very much to say it wasn’t the people… because… if it was…? I was one of those, too. Was it… me?

By the end of the drive, it is enough to say, I wasn’t just glad to have parked the car, and finish the journey, I was sort of feeling regretful that there would soon (this morning) be yet another requirement to get behind the wheel at all. :-\ (It was that bad, yeah.) I feel nervous and reluctant. I feel anxious in advance. I feel hesitant and insecure.

Fuck, that was a shitty drive. lol

That drive was also just a blip on life’s radar. Just a moment. A single journey from point to point, and completed demonstrably safely inasmuch as I am safely here, and no collisions, no tickets, nothing “really happened” that had any lingering obvious consequence on the participants of the day. I’m okay right now. I take a deep breath and let it go (again). Making myself mindful that it is behind me, and aware of how spectacular the weekend was in other ways. I think about those things, and make a point of thinking more about them than about the aggravations of the drive back. That’s what works.

A few minutes into this practice, and it becomes easier to acknowledge my own role in the drive back; I was feeling annoyed to be leaving what now feels like home to head to a place that doesn’t at all. To live a life that has begun to feel more lonely than solitary. I was feeling more energetic than enthusiastic about the drive, and that energy was more artificial (caffeine) than natural (mood). I felt a strong visceral sense of real frustration anytime my speed or flow of movement down the highway was impaired or constrained by another driver’s “shitty decision-making” – nearly always defining that as “getting in my way”, without taking any time to consider the scenario from their perspective, what they hoped to achieve, and what the purpose of their decision really was. I was taking shit exceedingly personally – which, by the way, makes for an incredibly crappy drive. Few things feel as irritatingly unpleasant as the perception of a hostile universe undermining my experience in the moment. Few things that feel that unpleasant are also so entirely and completely made up and “all in my head”… right?

There was one guy, one moment, one time out of my weekend driving which clearly was indeed “personal”, intentional, and an attack on my perceived self by another human being (definitely having his own experience) who – rather randomly and at great personal and community risk – slammed on his brakes on the highway, in the fast lane, at high-speed, immediately in front of me, while flipping me off, after I flashed my high beams at him as a request to move to the right hand lane when it was clear (to me) that I was closing in on him pretty fast, and he was “just camping out” in the passing lane with no traffic alongside him, ahead of him, or anywhere near him at all. I did so from many car lengths back. He waited to execute his potentially deadly maneuver until I had closed the distance to about 2 car lengths. When I moved to go around him (figuring slamming into him made a lot less sense) he whipped into that lane immediately ahead of me, still flipping me off. He did this twice more, accelerating, then slamming on his brakes, and blocking my ability to safely get past him. It was clearly personal for him. He was definitely having his own experience. That also happened on the trip down, not the trip back. When I think back on the drive home, there’s really nothing of significance to consider. Turns out, as it happens, my crappy experience yesterday may have been 100% purely entirely my own. I feel the looks of puzzlement and awareness try to form on my face at the same time; that angry man was likely having a shit drive, or a bad day, himself. It wasn’t anything more to do with me than my drive yesterday was really anything to do with anyone but me. Huh.

I laugh and finish my coffee. We covered this in the very beginning, I tell myself, with a smile and a shake of my head. It’s in The Four Agreements. It’s at the top of my reading list. lol

A new day. A new commute. And also – not new, or different, at all. Routine. Practices. I have another chance to be a better human being behind the wheel of my car. So do you. It’s a good day to begin again. 🙂

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Now, Again

February 21, 2018 //
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I finished the work day at long last, satisfied to have gotten quite a lot done. I worked from home due to snowy weather.

I wandered the house feeling disconnected, distracted, and wholly unsettled for some minutes, feeling uncertain of what, if anything, I might do with myself that wasn’t somehow still working. It was a challenge to disengage from thinking about work. I had a similar challenge in the morning; it was on my mind when I woke, and I got started early as a result… since I was working from home anyway. Not my healthiest choice, I admit.

I restarted the evening with meditation. I still find myself feeling a bit restless, even now, some time later. My tinnitus seems louder than usual. I take a deep breath and a moment to really “hear myself think”, in the sense of actually paying attention – my entire attention – on how I am feeling, for just a moment. Slow things down. Breathe. Relax. I already know I can’t chase what I’m after and reach it – it is more correct to say I would do well to stop everything, and allow it to catch up to me. So it goes. My restless monkey mind benefits from meditation, but this evening it wasn’t enough to go through the motions of my meditation practice. I also really need to keep coming back to this moment, here. I need to really listen, to myself.

No matter how often I look behind me (or around me) and see things I want to change, and no matter how often I look ahead to what I want to achieve, it’s this moment here, now, that I’ve got to work with. 🙂

I set off with a smile, to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, winter

Easy Does It

February 2, 2018 //
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The evening ends gently. I’m tired. I’m in pain. Every doctor’s appointment feels like a re-run of some previous appointment. My frustration continues.

I take a deep breath and relax as I exhale, taking a moment to recall the squirrel visitor I watched for some while. I didn’t pick up my camera, just watched. I was sitting quite close. The squirrel didn’t seem to mind my presence on the other side of the glass, even though it was clear that I was quite visible. The memory of it makes me smile.

It’s not late. It is, actually, rather early. The last couple evenings it has been no effort to go to bed early enough to get a complete night’s sleep, and I have done so. So. Of course, this means that I also woke quite a bit earlier than necessary, each of the mornings following an evening on which I went to bed earlier. LOL I feel most decently well-rested, more or less. I’ve only just started having nightmares a couple nights ago, and so far they aren’t terrifying me into sleep aversion. I silently mock myself quite tenderly, without ill intent. I’ve come a long way. I can recall a time in the not too distant past when just contemplating the possibility of sleeplessness becoming a cycle of nightmares would disrupt my sleep, and result in precisely that dreaded scenario. I can look that one in the face these days. Even when I start with the nightmares again, most recently it has been the case that I manage to hold onto a sense of order and manageability for many days and nights, only beginning to fall apart just at the end, when normal sleep returns, and some sort of life I call “normal” resumes.

I shake off the thought of nightmares; it doesn’t do me any good to start up days and nights of nightmares by investing precious limited lifetime in playing reruns of my nightmares in my waking thoughts. No good at all.

I observe that I still managed to nudge myself into a mild feeling of uneasiness, and decide to finish the evening on my meditation cushion. Tomorrow will be soon enough to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, War and News of War

Practicing Anger

February 1, 2018 //
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“Fuck Portland.” It came out as a snarl. I said it more than once. It was an unpleasant commute. I said much worse as I crept east on Division at less than 10 miles per hour. I waited at least twice at all but one intersection on my usual route. My GPS mocked me by pointing out it was “the usual traffic”. “Oh, Google,” I sneered, “I disagree.” Construction delays? Nope. A freight train halting traffic at important crossroads? Nope. Bus traffic? Nope, not this time. No, this time it was… Portland. Yep. The very culture itself combined with certain specific circumstances and… commuter hell.

One of the things I least appreciate about the area is the odd practice of extending courtesy to who or whatever is directly in one’s view, while utterly disregarding the existence of anything else at all. In this case, very polite drivers yielding the right of way of other drivers who have no interest in so doing, and haven’t consented to giving it up; a car waiting to turn, dense commuter traffic on a primary road that has the right of way, and lo! The oh-so-polite Portlander just fucking stops dead still in the middle of the road to allow someone whose turn it is not to go ahead and make their turn – sometimes, even if doing so requires just sitting there awhile as the perplexed driver who recognizes they do not have the right of way wonders what the hell is going on, until they finally also recognize that this polite clown is actually no kidding going to fucking sit there until eternity – unless that turn gets made. This is an experience over which I just seethe. I get very angry. Anger is hard on me. I’m not good at it. I have to practice the best possible anger-related skills and practices, or risk utter failure at adulting with skill. So. I practiced all the way home.

I did say “fuck Portland” a bunch of times, I won’t even minimize that – but I said it. I didn’t scream it while beating my fists on the dashboard, or throwing myself against the car door, or throwing shit. I just said it, and I totally meant it in the moment, too; fuck Portland. Fuck city convenience. Fuck traffic. Fuck the endless badly maintained pothole covered pavement. Fuck the multifamily housing being added to even the smallest available remaining city lots. Fuck the high rent. Fuck having to listen to neighbors through thin walls. Fuck being far away from family.

Oh.

Oh, hell. Is that what this is? Am I feeling lonely, and it is erupting as anger? Why the hell would I find anger a more comfortable emotion than loneliness?

I got home, and sat awhile in the parked car in the driveway, listening to the rain fall and the shhh shhh of passing traffic. I checked the mail, and tossed the pile of nothing into the recycling bin on my way to the front door. I let myself in, expecting to feel at ease, and when I didn’t… I sat down to write. My “safe space” isn’t always a meditation cushion next to a patio door, or a fireplace, sometimes it is pen and paper, or a keyboard and a text box.

My writing is interrupted by conversation with my Traveling Partner. It’s funny. I’m already totally over being angry. Definitely more invested in this conversation with this human being I love so much. So… I think I’ll do that, for awhile, and see where the evening takes me. It’s a nice way to begin again.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Did I Not?

January 30, 2018 //
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Wow. I suck at writing in the evenings. I mean, I apparently don’t approach the matter with the same rigid commitment, or discipline, or…? Whatever it is that drives me to write before dawn is clearly lacking. lol Perhaps, there’s more of other stuff that tends to redirect my attention to the living of life versus the consideration of all of the many details that could go into doing so, for the purpose of committing a handful of words on the subject to a text box, online?

I write less in the evening, but in making the observation, I find myself also wondering if that were the point, in the first place? More may not be better…or… even at all good or worthwhile, and potentially just… time-consuming. lol It’s not about a word count, to the point that someone else once had to point out to me that I’d begun writing such long posts they’d discontinued reading them. (I don’t think that resulted in my changing my writing style as much as simply alerting me that I’d likely lose a few readers. I write, generally, very much the way I talk. 😀 ) Still, I’d much rather write when I feel most inspired, and write about things that matter most to me in some way that is meaningful or revealing or… somehow worthwhile to have taken the time to jot it all down.

The oven beeps to let me know it is pre-heated. I pause and stick dinner in the oven (a foil packet of veggies chopped into bite sized pieces, cubed meat – the type varies – some seasonings, a drizzle of olive oil, and stuff it in the oven for about an hour at 400 degrees; it isn’t fancy, but it’s easy, tasty, and requires little further attention). I take a deep deep breath and relax as I return to my writing. I notice my boots are still on, and suddenly they feel confining. I remove them. I’m not really following a set routine, lately, in the way I am most comfortable, and small distractions like boots, dinner, my hair falling in my face, the buzz of a message notification on a silenced ringer, really throw me off and I feel disorganized and unskilled at enjoying the evening. It’s comical in the abstract, frustrating in real life…but, and this still feels rather odd to me, I’m not particularly freaked out by either the frustration, or the feeling of being disorganized and unskilled, which is pretty cool. Incremental change over time. 😀

I look at the words with a weird feeling, realizing that at some point real lasting emotional and mental wellness may overtake me – will I stop writing? I mean, stop writing this, here, a blog about feeling my way through life’s chaos and damage in the relative darkness, and hoping to improve on my experience ever so slightly, in increments, over time, using borrowed wisdom, meditation, and mindfulness practices? Will I have anything to say, generally? Will I, instead, seek to enjoy my contentment silently as life’s evening light fades gently over time?

…I burst out laughing out loud when I realize I’m basically wondering what the future holds. lol Definitely a question for which I have no answers. The future is… out there somewhere, as yet unformed, to be built on a matrix of my choices and yours, and coincidence and circumstances, and tricks of our thinking, filtered through what we think we understand. Yeah. I have nothing for that one besides the awareness that if I’m fortunate, I’ll get to see it. 😀 What happens after that? I’m no help there either. I don’t know at all. Maybe we begin again? 😉

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Words
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