Archives for posts with tag: breathe

…I woke up during the night, a couple times. Feels like I may be coming down with the ick that has been going around. It had spared me, but late last week, a colleague definitely exposed me to it… I was hoping I’d gotten lucky, and that good self-care would be enough to stave off illness. Not this time. I find myself hoping I picked up a bug down south, instead, though I don’t recall anyone being ill while we visited; it’s just a scenario that does not put me probably taking some terrible contagious ick down there to a whole other community, which I just may have done this weekend. 😦 I hope not.

I don’t yet feel “don’t go to work” sick; may end up returning and working from home, or doing so later this week. It is hard to say. I teeter on the edge of being sick. Stuffy head – treated with the limited cold medicines I am comfortable using, seems well-managed. Tickle in my throat – well, that could just be dry air, right? Snoring all night, or? Maybe I’m not getting sick! (Why do we play this game?)

The weekend suddenly feels distant. The work day imminent, and fraught with anxiety, acid reflux, and unknowns. I take a deep breath and relax, reminding myself that pre-setting the day to any particular emotional quality likely puts me on the path of creating that specific experience. I can do better. I can choose differently.

I smile and notice that I never made coffee, which gets me thinking about the lovely mornings over coffee together my Traveling Partner and I shared over the weekend. This is a better starting point for my day, which is convenient, since it is already time to begin again. lol 🙂

It’s the Monday after Daylight Savings Time ends. I woke up an hour earlier than my alarm was set, because, of course I did. It’ll be weeks of it before I adjust. I got ahead and get up though, and take advantage of the opportunity to more gradually delay my morning medication. It’s the sort of thing I should take at the same time each day, so I’m sure it’s helpful that I am making that change gradually.

Seated on my meditation cushion, enjoying that quiet time soaked in contentment, my mind strayed ever-so-briefly to the recent work project consuming my consciousness for so many weeks. Well, shit; my blood pressure increased, and now I have this knot in my stomach radiating tension through the rest of my body. Oh yeah. Probably gonna be weeks of that, too. Fucking hell. I breathe. Relax. Repeat. Bring my mind back to meditation, and do that again, repeating the whole sequence a number of times. Working to steady myself in this moment right here, instead of allowing my consciousness to creep forward in time, preventing it from creating a new reality of disaster that doesn’t exist. Halting the process the terrorizing myself using my own insecurities and anxiety and stress about change.

I begin again. Actually, I begin again a couple times, in a very short period of time, before I am really back to meditating.

Weird morning. There’s no real way to determine how much of my anxiety this morning is truly about the completed work project, and how much is actually the literal physical experience of the end of DST. Quite probably a mix of the two, with some extras thrown in. Sitting here at my desk, I’m forced to consider more of the minutiae of what is driving my anxiety when I get a polite automated reminder from my healthcare provider to schedule some routine maintenance. This, too, causes my anxiety to flare up in the back ground. So much adulting to do! Fuck.

Did you vote? Will you? Please? Fucking hell, please don’t let’s have to go over, again, why it matters (so much). I know, I know, it’s a rigged system – but if you don’t at least vote, you get literally no opportunity to participate in the most basic of processes that is useful to change it! Just vote. Then do all sorts of other stuff, too: write letters, emails, make phone calls, protest, vote with your dollar by supporting the merchants who also support the candidates and changes you do – right now even fucking businesses count as people, so support only those that truly support you.

Another Monday. Another moment. Another chance to begin again. 🙂

Another morning. Another day. Another opportunity to change what isn’t comfortable, or doesn’t suit my needs over time. Another moment to be present. Another chance to choose wisely, and to begin again.

Honestly, it’s also just a Wednesday. 😉

I take a deep breath, and relax. Life is exceedingly busy right now, almost unpleasantly so, although still manageable. Uncomfortable at times. Other times intensely rewarding. Goals, and plans carefully made, achievements within reach, and strange unexpected twists in circumstance sending other whole towers of carefully built plans cascading down into… just memories of plans. Life.

I sip my coffee. I’m back to carefully crafted pour overs after a summer of chilled infused cold brew in cans. lol. More frugal? Hardly – well-selected, locally roasted coffee beans are still a bit of a luxury, honestly, aren’t they? Hell, generally, coffee beans aren’t even sold by the pound any more; 12 oz is the standard bag size now, and it’s easy enough to spend $20 for 12 oz of coffee. More for something really special. Commonplace to spend $15 for 12 oz of whole bean coffee. I could, instead, choose a 30 oz can of some name brand, pre-ground, medium roast finely ground coffee manufactured for a very consistent reliably modestly awful drip coffee experience for less than $7. The difference in price per cup is pretty staggering. It’s 60 cups of potentially great coffee, compared to 180 cups of potentially (definitely) not-as-great coffee, but the difference in how those experiences compare isn’t actually about the money at all. A rushed expensive latte handed through a drive-through window is both costly, and also far less likely to deliver a noteworthy moment, than a fairly terrible cup of bad drip coffee taken in a quiet place, present, and able to immerse myself in a moment of contemplation and contentment. It’s not about the money. Really. It’s time to let that shit go.

Choose your experiences wisely.

Take time for moments that matter. Pause to reflect.

Morning coffee as a metaphor for choices? Every day. 😉

Today I’ll make my choices in a thoughtful way. It’s time to begin again.

I guess, being so close to Halloween, I can’t really bitch too much about a good scare… but… I sure wasted some precious writing time having a wee freak out. lol

I sat down this morning with my coffee, a bit groggy, still waking up… A small white-ish spider scurried from under my laptop and raced along the edge to the desk and disappeared. Ick. Not a fan, really. I don’t suffer from arachnophobia any more, but I also definitely do not want spiders in my immediate personal space, or… on me. Ick. Nope. All the nope.

I was keeping half a wary eye out for that spider to come back. This was not sufficient to prepare me for Spider-geddon, at all. Oh yeah. It was… extra. Definitely more than enough spiders, when that one wee white-ish spider zipping along became what seemed like fucking dozens of wee spiders spilling out from the keyboard tray, just behind/under my actual damned keyboard. No. Nonononononononono. Not any of this. At all. Fucking hell. ICK. Fuck no.

…It wasn’t Spider-geddon because there were spiders and I object to that. No, not really. It was Spider-geddon because of all the murders that immediately ensued as I began my campaign of death against them. Yeah. Straight up. Killed mostly all of them, and wiped their ancestral home from existence. I left no survivors – or so I told myself with grim satisfaction. Yikes.

My morning is interrupted. One last panicked shiver runs up my spine as I wash my hands, after also re-applying a barrier spray where needed. Autumn in Oregon. Showers of spiders. Avalanches of spiders. Corners, crevasses, and dark spaces filled with spiders. So not okay. Stay off my desk, damn.

Weekend project? I’m definitely tidying up my fucking desk!

It’s time to begin again. 😀

It’s today, already? Again? Wow – a whole entire new day ahead of me to get started with. I’m not feeling especially ambitious about it, but… there are certainly more than a few things I’d like to start, start over, work on, or finish… so… there’s that. lol

…I could so easily go back to bed for a few more hours…

Well. It somehow manages to be time, already, to get my things together and head to the office. The weekend was quite delightful, and still very much present in my experience of this moment, right here. Time to let that go, while still enjoying the sensation and recollections of it. 🙂

This moment, now, is very much enhanced by remaining firmly within it. Present. Here. I finish my coffee, ready to begin again.