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Contentment and Solitude

September 10, 2017 //
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I woke late. Slept in. I made coffee and stepped gently through the apartment in no great hurry to begin the day. I opened the windows and let in the cool morning breezes. I smile at the recollection of yesterday evening’s twilight rainstorm. I sat a long while as darkness settled, listening to the rain on the leaves of the big leaf maples just beyond the deck. The fine ash that had fallen everywhere when the winds carried smoke from the wildfires into our area has been washed away. I carry my coffee and a smile out to the deck and linger there for some moments.

I had left the windows of my bedroom open all night, and the sounds of rain, and peeping frogs, lulled me into such a deep restful sleep. I feel rested this morning, content, and even willing to use the word “happy” to describe this moment. A rare moment of utter delight, satisfaction, joy, contentment… and solitude. I’m okay with the solitude, which works out nicely for enjoying the moment. Nonetheless, when my Traveling Partner replies to my good morning message, a bit later, when I took my seat at the computer, my smile deepens, and my heart thumps happily, reminded of Love.

This too shall pass. Some other evening perhaps, tears will fall instead of rain, and some other morning I will wake with a headache, or heartache. 🙂 It’s a thing. Life requires living – even the challenging bits are best if I am present, and the delightful bits are inevitably fleeting. So, I enjoy the morning, my coffee, this smile, this moment, this day… no idea what tomorrow holds. I’m sure there will be verbs involved. I’ve no interest in a do-over just now, or beginning this one again; it’s quite lovely as it is. I think I’ll just enjoy this, until sometime later. 😉

For just a moment, from this narrow perspective, it feels as if we’ve changed the world…

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

TBD

September 6, 2017 //
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I am slow to wake this morning. The alarm roused me, but I sat quietly for some minutes trying to understand why I was awake, and why the light was on. I have trudged through the morning so far, mostly spent looking over my camping plans for an upcoming weekend of beach camping spent meditating, walking, and observing the autumnal equinox, but not really getting anywhere with my thoughts; I haven’t any.

I notice my first coffee is nearly gone, and more than an hour of my precious limited lifetime too, and still I am not really awake. I add another item to my “to do list” for the upcoming weekend, which I plan to spend on quality of life improvements, generally, and housekeeping, tidying up, and things of that sort. A relaxed weekend of taking care of myself and my living space seems like just the thing to follow a weekend road trip.

I make another coffee. I make some oatmeal. I remind myself to start the dishwasher when I leave for the day. I wonder briefly when I will actually feel awake, and “why today?” I could so easily just go back to sleep… a rare thing for me. I find myself wishing it were already the weekend so that I could – also not my usual approach to morning. A loud irritated sigh punctuates the silence. I definitely need to begin this one again…but…where to start?

This is a very physical experience, so I begin in a physical place. I get up and stretch, and take some deep cleansing breathes, make my way to the kitchen and pour a big glass of water, and take a multi-vitamin. Oatmeal is my common breakfast, but it can’t be said to be nutritionally dense as it is. Coffee? Isn’t water. I walk from room to room drinking my water, and adding a few things to the list of planned weekend tasks. I make a point of being aware of my posture, and holding myself fully upright as I move through my space. I make a point of being aware of my breathing. Hell – I make a point of being aware.

…In time, being “aware” becomes being awake. Beginning again? It’s a thing we get to do, if we choose to do it. There are verbs involved. My results vary. Still… as often as I’d like to do so, I can begin again.

There were other things on my mind to write about as the evening ended last night. Oregon is burning. It’s sort of on my mind, you know? The air is hot, sort of humid or thick feeling in my lungs, and irritating to breathe. The smokey sky has worsened over the past two days, as has the fire in the gorge. I chuckle when I think of the POTUS awkward hurricane Harvey photo-op; I know he won’t be coming to Oregon to be pelted with rocks by black bloc protesters. For some reason, that makes me smile in spite of the terrible natural tragedy of the many wildfires destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of forest as days pass (at least one of which was caused by careless people who didn’t think the fire safety restrictions applied to them). This too will pass. The fires will dwindle, or burn out once their fuel source is consumed. The weather will change, as will the climate. The land will be re-seeded, and will bloom again. More likely than not, the Earth will survive us.

Will we? 

Isn’t that what we’re really all afraid of? It’s less about the Earth than it is about our own experience on it. Perhaps we are seeing the end of our human infestation on the Earth…? Grim thought. We could do better with our resources, with our conservatorship of this fragile singularly lovely world, and with each other. We could choose to save the world…

Will we begin again?

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, health, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Big 5, Washington Trails

Then the Alarm Went Off

September 1, 2017 //
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Not my alarm – I woke up ahead of that one, this morning. We had a fire alarm go off in the office yesterday and evacuated the building. Turned out to be a mistake by a construction worker, I heard. These things happen. What came next was hard; it had triggered me.

My anxiety and symptoms of my PTSD flared up. The noise of the alarm itself worked my nerves over as I calmly and efficiently left the building with haste. What got me, though, was “civilian behavior”. My anxiety continued to increase the longer I was exposed to the chaos and disorder of folks ambling down the stairs in distracted confusion, chatting about the day, and milling around outside very close to a building they had no reason to believe was still safe. I began scanning the crowd for an unseen enemy – we were all so exposed, to vulnerable, they seemed so unaware. The hyper-vigilance lasted the remainder of the day. My startle reflex was turned way up. My chest felt tight. My mood had become detached and mildly aggressive, “battle-ready”. By the time the all clear was given, I was no longer “safe for work” in some difficult to describe way, but had meetings left in the day, and workload to attend to.

I did my best. I went home as soon as I could. The commute was just more verbs and more practice. My startle reflex is dangerous in commuter traffic; cars or people approaching from my periphery reach my consciousness as an imminent threat. My hyper-vigilance combined with my agitation, anxiety, and aggression, result in a seething mess herding powerful machinery capable of killing, down crowded streets, too slow to feel satisfying, frustratingly slow, and being wholly made of human, I really just wanted to go home and cry quietly until the feelings passed.

My face still hurts this morning from gritting my teeth the whole way home.

I’m okay. I did get safely home. No one got hurt. No fender bender. No angry tirade – either on the road, or in the office. I managed to keep my shit together, and that’s something to pause for, to be aware of, to value – and this morning I sip my coffee focusing on the recollection of what worked, and how well, and less on the alarm itself, or the “civilian behavior” – people are people. My coworkers are not machines. They are not soldiers. This is not (no, seriously, it’s not) a war zone. My coworkers were the ones being rational; there was no cause for (the) alarm. 🙂 Admittedly, I still think they would do well to move with purpose in an emergency, to gather in an organized fashion and take a count of folks on their teams to be sure every is safely away from danger… but… they’ll probably need to actually experience danger to understand how important that actually is. So. There’s that.

This morning is so much more ordinary. I take a moment to be mildly irked with myself that my mental health situation last night threw off my timing getting ready for the weekend. I’m behind on my “to do” list. lol I’ll get over it. Yesterday was hard. I’ll get over that, too.

The sun is not yet up… I think I’ll get an early start on a new beginning. 🙂

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Frustration, grief, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, War and News of War, Words

Hand-Crafted Moments

August 30, 2017 //
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The commute yesterday was ugly. I was calm. People drove badly. I drove calmly. The trip home was slow, traffic density was high, and it was a hot, muggy day. I arrived home… still calm. New. Nice. It was almost a pleasant drive in spite of the shitty traffic and terrible driving behavior of some of the other drivers. This was not a coincidence, or serendipity; I built those moments myself, with mindful awareness, non-judgmental compassion, and frequent reminders that we each see ourselves at the hero of our internal narrative, generally, and are each having our own experience. That jackass ahead of me, weaving back and forth over the yellow line? Human. Like me. Probably trying to see ahead – past the large truck ahead of him. Perspective. (I was still super glad that he finally turned off that road, and it was most definitely a bit annoying to see him stray over that yellow line again and again, but my annoyance was my own to deal with, and literally nothing to do with him.) The entire drive passed in this fashion.

I got home. I spent the evening relaxing, doing a couple things around the house – but mostly relaxing. I may have needed that more than I understood; I also went to bed a tad early, and without reading, or meditating, or any sort of dilly-dallying, was fast asleep so quickly I didn’t have time to consider the day. I woke to the alarm, rested, and feeling mildly distracted, as if torn from a pleasant dream. It’s been a lovely morning. I’ve taken good care of this fragile vessel, and the day starts well. I think I’ve finally come to a comfortable decision about the change in my transportation resources (having a car) and what kind of commuting options I have (both the driving sort, and the transit sort), and I’m finally ready to update my budget and my planning with the necessary details.

This morning, adulting feels rather comfortable and natural. It’s a nice change. I smile and sip my coffee and enjoy the moment of acknowledgement, and the feeling of ease. My smile deepens as I allow the awareness that, yes, “this too will pass” – even the pleasant bits are really fairly temporary. Always were. It’s totally okay. They come and go, and holding on ferociously can’t prolong them, it only makes the pain of their impermanence linger. So. This morning I feel light. I enjoy this carefully hand-crafted moment, as I did the moments in commuter traffic, or standing at the sink washing the dinner dishes, or standing in the shower feeling the water flow over my skin, or looking through my closet for something to wear and feeling content that anything I choose – I am still this person that I am, and I am loved. It’s nice. I highly recommend enjoying moments – and making the choices that result in more pleasant ones than unpleasant ones. There may be some verbs involved. Your results will likely vary (I know mine do). No doubt, you will have your own experience.

I look at the time. I’m eager to begin again. 🙂

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Doing the Verbs

August 29, 2017 //
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An utterly routine and fairly effortless workday faded away and became a challenging commute – challenging, frustrating, and provoking moments of temper, until I realized I could use it as a way of practicing some good practices, like… responding versus reacting, and letting go of attachment to an outcome, and just… breathing. Commuter traffic as an opportunity to practice mindfulness…? Sure, why not? I was in the damned traffic, it was a suitably difficult experience, and honestly – I recognized I could handle it differently than I was handling it in that moment that caught me snarling at the driver ahead of me for being an asshole – doing what I’d just done myself a few blocks before. Not cool. Practice needed. lol

I got home full of intentions and planned to take on a full measure of self-care and housekeeping; I’d planned it that way, and I had the time to do it. Funny thing about plans, intentions, and time… they don’t naturally combine to result in achievement, without the addition of will and some verbs. Action is required. Movement. Process. Task completion. Again and again I sat down to chill. Again and again I got myself back up to do something that I wanted to see through to completion, either because it seemed needful or because it would enhance the quality of my experience of the moment. I definitely also wanted to just chill. lol The result was a strange mix of planned tasks being done, and an assortment of other more engaging (in the moment) things getting done instead of some of what I had planned. It seemed just fine last night. This morning I am irked by the things I didn’t get done, that’d I specifically wanted to do – and didn’t. (Like emptying the little trash cans that are tucked here and there all over the house… planned to do that, didn’t do that, irked about the one next to my desk right now not being emptied last night. lol)

I found time to enjoy the garden. Time well spent.

It remains true that getting anything at all done requires some verbs. I have to do the verbs. Put my plans in action. Follow through on my choices with activity that brings my plan to life as an outcome. It always sounds so effortless, in spite of the fact that I am specifically talking about the effort it does require. lol It’s that real-life effort that sometimes stalls me.

This morning, I write instead of emptying that fucking little trash can (and the others like it), but it is Tuesday – the last day to take the trash out before pick up on Wednesday morning. I smile and finish my coffee. There’s time to begin again. There are verbs involved. Sometimes adulting skillfully is every bit as much about just doing as it is practicing. 😉

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