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Contentment or Perfection?

September 11, 2016 //
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It is a lovely morning. I woke rested and feeling content and comfortable in my skin; it’s a nice feeling with which to start the day. I breathe the cool morning air deeply. I sip my coffee. I think of friends. I think about my traveling partner, wishing him well wherever he is this morning.

I eye my fitness tracker suspiciously, irked by an obvious lie; it says I slept well, continuously through the night*. I didn’t at all. I was up a number of times because I foolishly drank 3 glasses of water in the last hour I was awake! I start down the path of troubleshooting that, reading user reviews and forums, and finding myself “inactive” on my tracker – so much so that a hummingbird lingers for some time at the feeder, watching me not doing anything. I have a thought, at that point… am I really investing time teasing apart this puzzle, now? Does it matter that much? No, seriously – am I actually going to require atomic-clock accuracy from a value-priced piece of wearable technology I bought on a whim primarily to count steps and monitor activity? (Well? I’m really asking here…) Do I actually need that to achieve my goals? (No.) Is approximate relative precision enough for my own purposes? (Of course it is.)

This image is not "accurate"; it was taken on a different day, at a different time, and it is not "now".

This image is not “accurate”; it was taken on a different day, at a different time, and it is not “now”.

It’s funny/not funny how easily I can be tempted by discontent. How quickly “enough” can become seemingly inadequate – over expectations and assumptions. I was surprised by the sleep feature yesterday, because of the level of detail. This morning I woke having assumed it would reliably do precisely that, daily. It didn’t. I could curse the device, become dissatisfied, cling to wanting more until it feels like I need more, then rush to spend more money on a more expensive device because it seems like more is necessary to achieve “enough”. It’s a trick. A lie. Enough is actually enough – that’s sort of how sufficiency works, actually. 🙂 For me, and it is very much an individual thing, it is enough to be mindfully aware of how my devices are actually working, and account for that in my understanding of the data they provide. Done. Troubleshooting over. Satisfaction with my morning restored. So easy. 😉

(No, it isn’t easy. Yes, it takes practice. Sure, there are verbs involved. Of course, your results may vary. It may  not be obvious, but it  is worth the practice…well…it has been for me.)

Isn’t it funny how easily misled we are by marketing, by the media, by the stories we tell ourselves about what is, what isn’t, and what we think we have to have to get by? Something to think about…

Today is a lovely day to let go of untested assumptions. Today is a good day to be aware that my expectations have no effect on reality. Today is a good day to walk away from arguments – even with myself. Today is a good day for brunch with a friend… It won’t change the world, but I do like brunch. 🙂

 

*Followup note: as of some three hours after I woke (well, that’s when I noticed), my devices are now all fully synced, and the sleep tracking has updated. I’m pleased by that, and more pleased that I managed my primate drive for immediate gratification with some skill this morning. We become what we practice. 🙂

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Categories health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Parables, Perspective, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets, Words

There’s an App for That

September 10, 2016 //
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No matter what the challenge is, there’s probably a solution. Every puzzle piece fits somewhere in the puzzle. There’s a tool for every job – or the potential to make one. In the 21st century vernacular, “there’s an app for that” rings true.

Yesterday, in a moment that could have been filled with waiting, I found myself exploring solutions to problems, and seeking the right tool for a very specific task; my own fitness, and long-term wellness. 🙂

A very long time ago, when I once began the long journey toward better physical fitness (and wellness), I bought an inexpensive pedometer and found that it really did function well to help me keep my activity level up. I began to explore the most rudimentary gamification of my fitness challenges, and I made a ton of progress. It remains a journey with a lot of chances to begin again, and I’m not alone on this one; there’s an entire industry built on our dissatisfaction with our fitness and our physical appearance. I consulted with my traveling partner, who wears a fairly state-of-the-art wearable device. His experience proved valuable, when I went to shop in person, shortly afterward.

Although it was late in the evening, I got pretty excited about the idea of having a fitness tracker to support my progress toward my personal goals, and it actually worked immediately; I walked up to a retailer who stocks such things, even though it was later in the evening, adding about 2 miles to the days’ walking. 😀 I didn’t even have to buy a fitness tracker to benefit from the idea! (I’m still giggling about that, hours later.) I selected one that had the features I figure I’m most likely to use (and value) that is also aesthetically pleasing (it’s right there on my arm where I have to look at it all the time), and affordable. I took it home and stayed up far later than usual, charging it, and doing what minimal set up there was to sync it to my phone.

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This morning, again, I find value in it as I look down and notice how long I’ve actually been here at my desk, first thing, with my coffee, writing. It’s time to get up, time for a walk, time for more than sitting still… Today is a good day for something besides sitting still, isn’t it? Today is a good day to go, and to do. There is an entire world to explore! I smile over my coffee, enticed away from my writing by a new toy… It feels like a good fit. 🙂

(Incremental change over time is enough – there are still verbs involved.)

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Categories Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, solo hiking, weight loss secrets

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

Seasons Change

September 4, 2016 //
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It’s been a busy few days. Appointments, friends, interviews… there has also been time for stillness, although I’ve taken fewer of those opportunities than I could have, I know. Today is a day to recover, to regain balance, to let new knowledge and changed thinking settle in to be considered in context.

"Baby Love" on a rainy morning.

“Baby Love” on a rainy morning.

A misty rain falls this morning, as it did yesterday, as it likely will tomorrow. “Is summer over?” I wonder to myself. We can expect another handful of summer days before autumn firmly takes hold. Spring and autumn are the longest seasons in this area; by the time it seems reasonable to complain about summer heat to friends living in genuinely hot climates, summer here is over. The rain has come. A gasp of winter weather follows, then the drenching we can expect for spring begins, and seemingly endlessly showers us with all the different kinds of rain I’ve known, in some quantity or another, before the wheel turns again, back to our brief summer.

Life works very similarly, I find, changing like the seasons if only I give it time. More often than I’d like to count, some situation or another causing me stress just… goes away, after a time. Things change. Change is as much a passive seeming thing happening around us continuously as it is a tool with which we can craft our experience through our choices and actions (and reactions). That’s pretty useful sometimes; no matter how stuck in some one moment I may feel, regardless how terminally miserable I think I am, things do change. On the reverse of that coin, however, is the reciprocal truth that our moments of greatest and most intoxicating joy will also, inevitably, pass in favor of some other moment to come.

Yesterday was wonderful. I hung out with my new friend, although for now I’ve no convenient nickname or characterization to use to bring her to mind, here. Soon enough, I’m sure. We had made plans to go to the farmer’s market together (she hadn’t been). We both had things we’d intended to do after that… but chose to spend the day together, because we were simply having too much fun to let go so soon. She hugs easily. I want to learn to be so approachable, while still maintaining such clear boundaries with gracious firmness. Powerful. We share ourselves easily, together, and I find incredible joy in being so relaxed, and so un-self-consciously myself with another human being, at a time in my life when I am quietly plagued by self-consciousness about small quirks, and unexpected deviations from obvious norms. She’s not frustrated by my definite over-use of fancy language; she laughs with delight, and good-natured humor, happily “correcting” my verbiage along the way, with more laughter. (We rode the light rail through an economically under-privileged community, which I noted as unfortunate, and she laughingly corrected me, “ghetto” with a grin and a hug. Like my traveling partner, she favors simple clear language.) We have interesting conversations about the use of language to convey subtleties of meaning, and conversations about brain injuries, child-rearing, and surviving. We spent 8 hours together, talking. Yep. I can talk for 8 hours – ask anyone. LOL (I’m sitting here suddenly hoping very much that I listened for at least half of that time…)

My traveling partner is in my thoughts, too. I wonder how his weekend is going? He’s been away during the days, and we’ve been out of touch. I’m eager to get together and share how our days have been until we feel we’ve been together. I’m eager to “talk for 8 hours” – there’s a quality to such an experience that I thrive on, and I definitely miss our days of long conversations together, when love was new and neither of us had all the answers about the other – or any notion that we might have that kind of complete and thorough understanding, in the first place. I will do well to be mindful how we differ, and how we’ve grown, and make a point to listen for long luxurious hours of story-telling and anecdotes of exotic adventure – without interrupting, if I can manage it. (That would probably be a lovely treat for him. lol)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. ;-)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. 😉

There are things to consider and reconsider from the week’s conversations. New perspectives on life, on love, on being human, on being vulnerable, on work, on family, on the future… it’s been a very busy week, and my mental buffer is filled – over-filled – with things to think over. Today, I’ll stop being so busy, and just be, instead. Today is a good day for it. Today is a good day for meditation, and for mindful service. Today is a good day for consideration – if we’re all considerate at the same time, we could change the world. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, 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
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