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The Morning Macabre

December 18, 2016 //
1

I woke from a restless interrupted sleep earlier than I’d have liked to, and feeling very little sense of being “rested”. My dreams disturbed me. My wakefulness, whether caused by noisy neighbors lacking any sense how loud their car stereo sounds at 1:22 am, or the persistent whine of a freight train paused on the siding on the other side of the park, or the contents of my own dreams, rendered the night more or less pointless from the perspective of resting. I woke in pain, too, as stiff as a tiny wooden artist’s figure, new from the box. My head aches.

Beyond the patio, the meadow and marsh are hidden by a dense mist that suggests something mysterious, even sinister, beyond. It’s unlikely there’s anything legitimately amiss anywhere out there in the park besides litter left carelessly behind, and walkways covered in ice where there would usually be a puddle. The mist itself doesn’t seem at all sinister or hazardous, it’s just a mist, a foggy morning, a new day… but the obscured view puts my imagination into overdrive making something of nothing. I startle myself with my own reflection twice, from across the room, thinking someone is looking in at me from fairly nearby. The power of my imagination increases when I am not well-rested, and I am less well-defended against misinformation, influence, or deception. (Is that what happened, America? Where we all just that damned sleep-deprived?)

As the sky continues to lighten, I see that it snowed a bit more during the night; the meadow and the patio furniture are dusted with it. With daylight, the meadow mist is more distinct, and a firmer boundary between what is obvious, and what is accepted but unseen, a gray backdrop not yet painted with scenery. I watch the morning in the park develop like a Polaroid.

If we take time to see it, the view is continuously changing.

The view is continuously changing. We don’t always notice.

Today is a good day to take care of the woman in the mirror, and this fragile vessel, and to be mindful that lacking the rest I need, my awareness and thinking may be colored or distorted in unpredictable ways. Today is a good day to check assumptions, confirm expectations, and take my time, mindful of the weather – and aware that weather changes. Today is a good day to approach every interaction with consideration; I am not the only person who didn’t sleep well last night, who hurts, or feels headache-y. We are each having our own experience. Today is a good day to make the choices that make it a good one. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

One Thing and Then Another

December 16, 2016 //
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I’m home. The busy work day is behind me. The week is finished. I sit quietly taking it in; I don’t work tomorrow. I am home. I am alone. Tonight… I’m even lonely. It happens. Just using the word, my eyes tear up a bit. I’m okay, just very human. Tired. In pain. Frustrated by the world every time I hear an adult conversation in passing, or read the news. “Stick a fork in me…” I sigh out loud, the sound of it in the room seems oddly out-of-place with the quiet.

A shower later, and a change into comfy clothes, I’m still in this strange place, poised between contentment and despair. There’s no particular reason for it, really… it’s winter. It’s been a busy week at work. Is that all this is? Am I just tired? I’m struggling to manage some of my self-care basics with the new job. I’m pushing “too hard”, taking too few breaks, getting too little rest… but I also love the job, feel passionate about the progress we’re making, and feel very valued and appreciated. What do I do with that? The long commutes make the days very long indeed, and the evenings very short.

I feel myself sort of… pull back. From everything. Closing the door on “extra people” – as if the friends and loved ones outside the workplace are not in fact far more important to me, day-to-day, moment-to-moment, than even my most esteemed colleague. I come home at the end of the day. Close the door. Sit down. Being fair to my self and my circumstances, it’s rare to feel other than contented on a quiet evening after work, these days. Tonight is different. I remind myself that the sensation of “always” that feels so dull and bleak and immovable is, itself, a part of this feeling – and every sad strained drop of it is pure emotion. Chemistry. Lacking in real meaning, or substance. It’s more a drug than an experience. Squashing it doesn’t help – never has. Venting… meh. I’ve had mixed success there, and my suspicion is that it is the camaraderie of sharing the tale, the connected moment, that results in any apparent success – and fuck, I already know that experiencing an intimate emotional (positive) connection with another human being is a fast track to losing the blues. This is not news.

…But I ache, and I’m tired, and… I’d also like very much to be alone. Now isn’t that a bitch? Feeling lonely, and still wanting to be alone. What the fuck do I do with that?? Well. In this particular instance, I light a fire in the fireplace. I put on some soup. (I made a tasty robust 15 bean soup yesterday in the slow cooker, while I worked from home. It’ll be even better today.) I put on my fuzziest, comfy-cosiest, softest spa socks. I did some yoga. Took some time to meditate. I started choosing to let the stress fall away. I looked the loneliness in the face, and let it be what it is, without piling self-criticism, disappointment, or additional demands on top of it. I lit the lights on the Giftmas tree – and grudgingly made room for the awareness that I was smiling, at least a little. One thing at a time. I started treating myself better, one thing at a time. Rather than continue down the unpleasant path of criticizing my crappy treatment of myself, I’m making a point to go ahead and treat myself better. Right now. Only that. We become what we practice.

Soup will be ready soon. It’s later than I generally have dinner, but I’m also not sleepy. Just tired… and the kind of tired that is mostly brain-tired. Giving my brain a rest isn’t always about sleep. My fingers find the edge of the book I am reading… soup first, though. Later, sleep.

Tomorrow I can begin again.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Snow Day!

December 15, 2016 //
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I woke to the alarm, and fell asleep again. It was a delicious extra four minutes of surrender, followed by the stern advisement from somewhere watchful in my consciousness that the alarm had actually gone off, enough to wake me. The world beyond the patio window is not-quite-blanketed in white. Yesterday’s evening snowfall is still with us. The parking lot is smooth, white, and icy. Checking the weather report and the public transit schedule confirms my choice to work from home is a good call.

My first peek at the new day.

My first peek at the new day.

My morning suddenly shifts, slows down, and my priorities adjust, as I wake up more. I’m working from home today. I gain 2.5 hours back in my day (usually spent commuting) and prevent the loss of 2.5 additional hours I’d have lost to the inclement weather (last night’s commute home was 2.5 hours, itself, instead of the usual 1.25 hours). I’m not even bitching – the walk through the snowy night was lovely, and the commuters on the light rail were fairly merry in spite of circumstances.

A hazy skyline on a snowy night.

A hazy skyline on a snowy night.

I smile in the darkness. I opened the patio blinds first thing to gaze out across the snowy meadow. The only light in the room now is the glow of the laptop monitor; I have not yet turned on any lights, even making my coffee in the dim twilight of a pre-dawn snowy morning. This moment is mine. Well…mine, and of course, yours, and even that of the raccoon who visited during the night, to check for treats left behind by the squirrel and the birds.

We are each having our own experience. Perspective matters.

We are each having our own experience. Perspective matters.

I sip my coffee thinking about the weather. I let my mind wander to “snow days” of childhood. We rarely stayed entirely home from school, but often school would start later. I lived in a different region. It snowed more often, and there was more, deeper (also dryer, fluffier) snow; people are more prepared for snow there, too, and this makes a difference to how well they cope, and how serious it seems. Here, in this community, even a small amount of snow causes real panic. The snow here is sticky, wetter, icy. The tendency toward warmer winter temperatures, generally, often results in brief warming sufficient to melt some snow, then refreezing everything as the temperature drops again (often with both changes happening during the same night). The result? We wake to a world glazed in ice. I have seen this entire city coated with an icy shine, every surface, every blade of grass, every branch, every lingering blossom. I have heard the somewhat bizarre and musical crackling and crinkling as every icy surface begins to fracture with the slightest breeze. It is a wonderland… a rather dangerous wonderland, actually, and people who live here often just call out from work rather than deal with risking their cars or their safety, and schools basically shut down if there is a flake falling. Last night, the train was crammed with commuters who, in frustration or impatience, or fear, parked their cars in the city somewhere along their commute and finished their trip home on public transportation.

I generally just go about my business regardless. I dress for the weather. I make my way with great care. I put on Yak Tracks, bundle up in my cold weather gear, even wear a winter base layer under my work clothes. This morning, I will work from home… Unless it starts raining, and the snow melts away before my eyes (which could, has, and does happen in this region), in which case I’ll quickly dress and head to the office. I make a point of extending my awareness to include compassion and sympathy for workers who don’t have that option, who will either lose a day’s wages, or have to make their way across the ice, through the traffic, to jobs that will be seriously inconvenienced by the call outs of coworkers. We don’t all have the same choices available to us. We don’t all make the same choices when we do. We are each having our own experience.

It’s about that time… if I were going to the office, I’d be pulling on my boots right now. Wrapping my scarf around my neck. Pulling on my hat, my gloves, and grabbing my hiking staff. Instead, I make a second coffee – it’s still more than an hour before I get started for the day. It’s early yet for squirrels or birds, and I check the feeders, refilling them before visitors of the furred or feathered sort arrive. It’s a snowy day, a tougher one for foraging I expect. I add walnut halves, pecan pieces, and pine nuts to the usual corn kernel-sunflower-peanut mix I put out for the squirrel. The winter suet feeder has a seeded block for winter birds looking for seeds, and another block with meal worms and such for birds looking for something different. The winter seed bell is all black sunflower seeds. The blue jays and red-wing blackbirds aren’t so picky, but many of the small birds seem very particular. I enjoy being a good hostess. 🙂 I set up for the day facing the patio.

Today? It’s a snow day. 🙂 Today is a good day to make the ordinary quite extraordinary. Today is a good day to enjoy the moment I’ve got. I think about winter weather and childhood snow days. I recall being told to bundle up, and to be careful out there. I sip my coffee and wonder how I can bring that same quality of consideration and care to all my relationships – and to the world.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Changing a Mood is So Easy!

November 29, 2016 //
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I got off work yesterday in a good mood, tired, enthusiastic about the walk through town and over the bridge at twilight, and looking forward to a quiet evening at home. The commute wasn’t merely uneventful, it was also a miracle of coincidence and great timing. I arrived home, still smiling.

Some enchanted evening...

Some enchanted evening…

What follows is a cautionary tale about emotional health.

As I waited for dinner to cook, not wanting to wander off or be distracted, I picked up my phone, and opened my news feed. I noticed there seem to a be lot of articles about hate, hate crimes, and the general mistreatment of human beings toward one another. I dove right in and read one, then another, and another… over minutes, I read several. I was also cooking, and pretty focused on that. As minutes passed, I found myself no longer smiling. Feeling somewhat discontent. Generally a bit aggravated. A few minutes further on, I was feeling annoyed. Irritable actually. I sat down with dinner, finding fault with small things that typically don’t bother me at all. (Damn, are the guys next door going to be so noisy all evening? Seriously? Is that a leaf on the floor from where I came in, earlier??)

I ate my dinner in a mood of aggravation and discontent. It seemed a mysterious change, and it was some minutes before I connected my roiling stew of negative emotions looking for a fight with reading the news some time earlier. Then I did make the connection. I put down my device. I tidied up the dinner dishes feeling a bit thoughtful and pre-occupied. Had I really made a point of willfully turning a lovely mood sour by my own hand? What was I thinking? I sigh, recognizing the temptation of turning my negative emotions on myself, rather than helping myself into a better emotional place with at least the same effort I brought to wrecking the pleasant mood I was in, in the first place; it’s easier to be hard on myself than it is to change.

I gave the news a rest, and renewed my commitment to not treating myself so badly in the first place. News retailers are in business, and business is focused on profit, and what is profitable is holding consumer attention, and what holds consumer attention is… outrage. Yep. We gobble up news about hate, about fear, about the outrageous and “what is wrong with the world” – and then wonder why we’re angry, outraged, or frightened. We’re some fancy fucking primates – not all that smart about some things, but damn, we’re fancy. We write news, put it in front of other primates, sell what we can – and write more of that. Think about that for a minute – if the point is sales, and profitability, and what sells are the stories about hate, doesn’t it seem quite obvious that more stories about hate will be written? I’m not saying that the world isn’t full up on hate these days, but I am saying that whether or not it were, if stories about hate are what sells the most views, clicks, and subscriptions, then aren’t there going to be just a whole bunch more stories about hate? To read. To be consumed. To set an impression of the world we live in, generally?

I put myself in a gentle time out and spent much of the evening meditating. It was a significant improvement over reading the news. I ended the evening feeling soothed and balanced. Hate in the world is not eased or relieved by fear, or anger, or more hate. Awareness that hate in the world is an issue is something to cultivate, but succumbing to it myself is to be avoided. That seems practical and obvious (to me). I don’t need to read even one more article about some human being treating another badly “because Trump” – I am aware that human beings mistreating each other is a problem. It was a problem before the election, and it will likely continue to be a problem after the next four years is behind us; some people choose some really vile verbs. Hate exists. Fear exists. Anger exists. People having those experiences are probably having them in fashion that seems justified, reasonable, or even appropriate to them in the moment. There are some hateful things going on. There are some scary circumstances (and scarier people) in the world. There are good reasons to be angry, and things worthy of being angry about.  It remains a worthy endeavor to treat people well, nonetheless – including the person in the mirror.

This morning I woke to the alarm. A new day. A chance to begin again. I don’t start with the news. I renew my commitment to myself to choose what I read with great care. Sensational headlines get my attention; that’s why they work, that’s why they are written that way. It’s generally enough to read the headline, sass it silently, and move on. Advertising and color commentary masquerading as actual news can be distracting – and emotive. I remind myself to avoid it. Hell, at some point, continuing to read and reread the same tired bullet points spread across media outlets, being used to stoke new outrage and keep reader engagement high, actually takes time away from taking action on causes that matter… in some cases, the very causes that are so engaging to read about. (How many news stories have you read about DAPL? Have you taken a leave from work to get out there and help? Donated money? Written letters to congress? Any verbs at all – or just reading along? How about the lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan? Local homelessness? Foreign wars? Just saying; there’s plenty in the world that could use some well-chosen verbs.)

I’ll point out that all the same choices and practices that soured my mood could be made more selectively, more skillfully, and used to build a great mood from a bad one: intellectual distraction, investment in a specific emotion by choosing experiences that tend to reinforce and enhance it, repetition, and mindfully engaging that emotional experience deeply.

Today is a good day to put down the news, set aside the outrage machinery, and choose some verbs. If the point of life is to live it… why would I be spending my precious limited lifetime reading the news, anyway? 😉

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, War and News of War, winter, Words

Staring at a Blank Page

November 15, 2016 //
0

The alarm woke me. I wasn’t sure what that seriously irritating noise was, initially. I was in motion, uncoordinated and stumbling, before I was quite awake. I remind myself to grab my hiking staff before I leave for work; on the slick pavement I do well to have the additional support. Uncertain footing over rain-slick autumn leaves has been slowing me down.

Uncertainty has been slowing me down. Oh. Right. Yes, actually, it has.

On the other hand, feeling certain is not necessarily of value, on its own. If I embrace a bullshit idea, and bolster it with a feeling of certainty and conviction, my feelings don’t change the character or quality of the idea itself, and my feelings are not enough to make a bullshit idea a great idea, or to convert belief into fact. How I feel about something and the thing about which I have feelings are quite separate, and independent of each other.

a random picture from along the morning commute

a random picture from along the morning commute

I smile and sip my coffee. My thoughts move on.

This morning a steady rain falls. I open a window to listen to the rain. The rain stops. Yesterday that might have peeved me. I never did develop a clear understanding of what was on my mind yesterday, though. It seems to have passed at this point, like a rainstorm in the darkness; unseen, but still affecting me, until it finally passes by without revealing itself.

The rain-fresh air fills the apartment. My coffee tastes good. There are dishes yet to do, and some tidying up before I head to work. There is still time for it, and time to meditate, too. One morning among many… I wonder where this one leads?

 

 

 

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