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Gray Skies, Questions

May 19, 2020 //
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The morning unfolds quietly. I sip coffee, watch a couple videos. There’s some amazing pandemic content, honestly. Like this. I mean, maybe you’ve got to be a fan of Cowboy Bebop… 🙂 Hard times produce great art. Great art is often about hard times. I feel fortunate to be an artist, myself.

Yesterday was a good day, busy with work, busy with life, and a relaxed leisurely evening of love and conversation to finish it off. I can’t bitch about any of that. I sit here with my coffee and a smile. It’s enough. I mull that over a bit. I didn’t understand “sufficiency” for a long time, and really had to work at that. It took practice to be content with “enough” – and to learn to recognize it. It can be hard not to be overwhelmed by acquisitiveness and yearning. It’s pretty easy to want “more”. And more after that. The pursuit of “more” keeps a lot of people enthralled. People wreck their lives in the here-and-now chasing something other than what they’ve got.

I’m not saying there is value in asceticism. (I’m not saying there isn’t…) I’m just saying finding balance between “nothing” and “everything” has the potential to be fairly easy; it’s a big spectrum. Lots to choose from. One major challenge is simply understanding what really is “enough” for me, as an individual. What do I truly need to live an acceptably good quality of life? How much farther than that must I truly go to live comfortably well? Once I’m there, how much more do I really need? What is enough?? What is excessive? When does desire for a thing or experience cross the threshold from interest to greed? Where does the painful character flaw of “a sense of entitlement” fit in to all of this?

(Note: I won’t be answering these questions for you. That’s on you to do, for yourself. We’re each having our own experience.)

I sip my coffee and think about what I have, and what more I may want in life, and wonder where the line is, that separates these things and experiences into categories like “need”, “want”, and “excessive”? What is “enough”… for me?

I still very much want a home of my own. “How much home, at what price?” is a seriously important question. How much square footage is enough? How many rooms meet my needs? How luxurious does it need to be to feel “comfortable”? I sit with my coffee and ask the questions. I consider the answers. It’s a familiar bit of internal discussion with myself. I’ve house-hunted before. I still don’t own a place of my own. More often than not, the cause of my lack of success moving forward from renting to owning has come down to not having enough to go further on the path of getting more. lol Renting, as it turns out, is generally, functionally, more or less “enough”. Mostly. I often experience moments of discomfort or aggravation that could easily be eased with some small change to my dwelling… that I can’t do, because I don’t own it. LOL Reason enough to want “more”, in this sense, but again… how much is “enough”?

This is just one example. Most people want something. We’re wired for it. Our desires drive our forward momentum, don’t they? So many questions to ask myself on a Tuesday morning. It’s not necessary to answer them all right now. Asking them is enough.

…Enough on which to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being, Uncategorized

Life Can Change Fast

May 16, 2020 //
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Change is a thing. Life can change as fast as contagion spreads. It can change as fast as a single decision, made in an instant. Life changes with our choices, with our thinking, with our actions. Change is powerful stuff.

…Fighting change is often quite futile…

…Change is often more positive than it feels in the moment of “impact” when our state of being feels disrupted most…

I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about change. A rainy gray sky suggests the day will be on the cool side. My arthritis is not arguing with the weather; I ache. I have things to do. I have changes to embrace. Decisions to make. Verbs to put into action. It is a Saturday, and I am taking my time, over my morning coffee. (Funny to call it that these days; nearly all my coffee is “morning coffee”, since drinking coffee in the afternoon wrecks my sleep. lol)

I think about life. Life now. Life at other times. The life I’d most like to have, at some point in the future. I’m not feeling maudlin, blue, stressed, or anxious – I’m simply aware that whatever “this” may be, at pretty much any time, in any moment, that “this” too will pass. No kidding. That’s how powerful change is.

Where would I like to live, if I did not live here? Where would I choose to work, if I were to choose to work somewhere else than where I work now? What sounds good for dinner later, and do I need to shop for ingredients for that? Do I “have anything to wear” (having lost some weight), and am I going to do something about that, one way or another? Small changes can add up to big changes. Sometimes seemingly “big” changes turn out to be less of a big change after all.

Early morning on a Saturday. I sip my coffee and think about change, and how well or poorly I deal with it, and why that may be. I think about choosing change, and managing change, and putting my will and my verbs fully into action, in support of the changes I want most for myself.

Changes. Change is.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, inspiration, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Spring, The Art of Being

Morning Comes

May 11, 2020 //
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Lovely long weekend finally ended. It’s back to work this morning, somewhat reluctantly, maybe, or just a bit disengaged… It’s Monday. I’ll get through this. More coffee? More coffee.

After meditation and yoga, I sit down with my coffee, mulling over the cost of vanity. There’s even YouTube content that’s relevant. Well, generally speaking – it may not be the ideal fit to all circumstances, but it tends to lend itself to general thoughts on the cost of vanity. lol Vanity is expensive. I mean, well… more expensive than being wholly practical. That seems obvious. Aesthetics matter, though; we each have an idea of what we find “beautiful”, and a lot of different things go into that.

…There are more urgent matters. Life in the time of pandemic affects a lot of things we don’t necessarily experience directly, ourselves.

I sip my coffee and my thoughts move on. My mind wanders, seeking any reasonable distraction from the work day ahead. It’s an important day (for my team and I), and a major project moves another step forward. It’s also the busiest day of the week. So much going on! I face the day feeling fairly prepared… but I don’t really want to deal with it yet. Part of the push-pull of my attention here and now is my mind trying to reach for that “work stuff” now, when I have an hour or so still available for me. I breathe, exhale, relax, and let that work stuff go – again.

Good coffee this morning…

I open up my “to do list”, which is entirely focused on things I want (or need) to do (for me, or here at home, but definitely not employment related).  This list has definitely gotten smaller, even though I add to it almost every day; I do more than I add, every week. I look over the list with a certain feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. A lot has gotten done since mid-March, when the pandemic “shelter in place” advisement came for us, here. I eye those “least approachable tasks” with some reluctance. I’m running out of other shit to get done. LOL I give some thought to each remaining task, and consider what about each one has that task still sitting on this list after weeks of doing things here at home. There are things to learn about myself hinted at (shouted?), and it’s worth learning those things.

Another Monday. Another chance to begin again.

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Categories Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

This Moment, Here, Now

May 9, 2020 //
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The sun is up. I slept in a bit. Sipping coffee, barefooted, on a weekend morning, late in the spring. It’s a lovely moment. I’ve got nothing to bitch about. Nothing nagging at my consciousness. No drama. No baggage (in this moment). No chaos. The morning is quiet. My mood is calm. My outlook on life is merry. I’m okay, right, in every sense of the word that matters. 🙂 My coffee tastes good. My roses have begun to bloom. My aquariums are thriving. The computer my Traveling Partner built for me while we share Life in the Time of Pandemic, together, is working beautifully – and by that, I mean it is both a wonderful upgrade in performance, and also a beautiful technological piece, aesthetically. I smile every time I sit down at my desk, feeling very loved. I feel content.

“Baby Love” blooming in a pot on the deck. 🙂

Let’s be super real on this notion of contentment and ease; I’ve worked years to get here, and there have been many verbs involved, and many tears shed, over time. My outlook matters more than material details. I could live this life, identical in all practical details, and be mired in misery. PTSD has that power. Healthy emotional wellness practices really matter that much.

No click bait here, no “secret practice your therapist doesn’t want you to know about” in an eye-catching thumbnail. I’m not about that. I’m just saying, perspective matters. How I treat myself matters. How I treat others, and how reciprocal those interactions are, matters. It’s been a long journey, and I’ve often felt I was stumbling haphazardly through the darkness, quite alone. I’ve known despair, and futility and frustration and sorrow and, yes, madness. I’m not alone in that – and that’s why I write. Reminders for me, and maybe, just maybe, a light in the seemingly endless darkness for someone else. Someone that I’ll likely never meet. There have been so many such souls on my journey… human beings on their own journey, helpful co-travelers, sometimes unrecognized until much later, because I simply wasn’t ready to hear what they were saying to me, then. We all walk our own hard mile. (You too.)

Life is pretty good these days, even in spite of the pandemic. It’s not about material success (I’m not wealthy), or finding one true love (I’m fortunate to enjoy a great relationship with someone I love very much, but in dark times love does not “cure” our sorrows, or ease the weight of our baggage). Life is pretty good these days because more of my choices take me in that direction, than choices which don’t. Verbs. Choices. Beginnings. Perspective. Sufficiency. These are only words, but the words represent concepts I’ve found key to making my way, a bit at a time, to a life that feels, generally, characterized by contentment, and joy.

I’ve put in many hours of therapy and study. Reading books isn’t enough; the ideas have to become changes in behavior and thinking. The epiphanies and “ah-ha moments” have to become new practices. Practices that work have to be sustained over time. There is a commitment to treating oneself well involved – this may be the biggest challenge (it has been for me).

Where this really started, back in 2010, and a moment of gratitude for the love of the man who shared it with me, then, and remains with me, still.

I think I’m just saying… “you’ve got this!”. Unhappy with life? Choose change. Rethink your most basic assumptions. Re-examine your expectations of life, of people, of yourself. Try a new combination of real kindness and firm boundary-setting. Ask the hard questions. Consider all the options. Take care of yourself – because you matter to you. No reason to expect it to be easy, or that you’ll never cry again, or that “the world” will ever be “fair”. Be your own best friend – and your own best self, because you can make that choice from moment to moment, and when you fail (and you will, I promise you that), begin again. Just begin again. Don’t beat yourself up over your fundamental humanity – examine your errors with some emotional distance, gain understanding of yourself (and others) from your mistakes, learn, grow, and move on with increased perspective. Accept that you are human – then also accept that everyone else is, too. Make room in your thinking for what you can’t know, or don’t understand; there’s nearly always something new to learn. Check your assumptions.

There’s a lot of baggage to put down. There’s a lot of bullshit to let go of. It’s easier to give yourself closure than to seek it elsewhere. Don’t drink the poison. Tame your own barking dog. Consider your outlook on life, generally. Yes, it’s a lot of work, I know. It probably seems so much easier to get a prescription for some boldly advertised new drug. I’ve tried that, myself. It didn’t work reliably well for me, which is how I found myself at 50, filled with despair, trying one more therapist, one more time, unconvinced that life was worth living. A huge stack of books and a few years later, life looks (and feels) very different to me. I’ve made a lot of changes – to practices, jobs, relationships; I rebuilt basically my entire life (and lifestyle) to better support becoming the woman I most wanted to be, living a life of contentment and joy. Worth it. So worth it. (Not infallibly perfect – that’s not on life’s menu, right?)

So… what do you say? Are you ready to begin again?

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Categories Allegories, anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Here’s the Thing About “Going Back to Normal”

May 5, 2020 //
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Lots of stuff in the news recently about “getting back to normal” and “opening the country back up”. Are you eager to see that happen, or dreading it as potentially premature? Personally, I’m sort of just watching things unfold with a measure of interested curiosity.

I’m pretty sure there will be a “new normal”, and that we would not be wise to simply hit a reset button and go back to irresponsibly not washing our hands and carelessly coughing into open air, or shopping while we’re sick and contagious. One fairly notable thing about “going back to normal” – we can each choose to live a more healthful, safe, life. We can individually continue to commit to exceptional consideration with regard to contagion and personal space. We can continue to wash our hands regularly. We can continue to properly cover coughs and sneezes. We can continue to not go out into the world when we are sick. These all seem like good practices. Why would anyone choose to give them up? Seriously.

This seems a good time to really look into the mirror and acknowledge where my individual practices and habits do (or don’t) support good community health, generally, and make the corrections needed to see that I do practice behaviors that support good community health – and that I am actively promoting those within my relationships, and my community, generally. We’ve had the nudge we all needed, in the form of a pandemic for fuck’s sake, so now it’s time to build reliably healthy habitual long-term behavior for the good of our communities. It’s not that hard, it just needs practice. 🙂

I sip my coffee and let my thoughts move on.

I sit and wonder about our fantasy notions about “normal”, and what we think that means. Isn’t “normal” simply a matter of what we’re most used to, most of the time, rather than any reliably true perception or statement of what may actually be a healthy state of things? I mean, if I live somewhere where there is trash in the streets everywhere I go, that would probably seem to be pretty “normal”. It would not, however, be a healthy situation, or in any way perceivably good. I’m just saying; there’s an obvious difference in meaning between “normal” and “something worth seeking”. “Normal” is often used to limit and control people’s behavior – through shaming them using comparisons to that stated “normal”. I sip my coffee and think about how often I am, myself, out of step with some individual’s concept of “normal”. I think about how individual our perceptions of “normal” actually are. I wonder about where those perceptions actually come from, and how or why we may reinforce them – even when we disagree with them. It’s a weird system. 0_o

It’s a weird morning.

I sigh quietly and update my “to do list” with a couple additional tasks my Traveling Partner asked me to take care of. I think about the long weekend ahead, and the camping trip that I’m not taking because all the state parks are closed. I find myself missing the anticipated solitude more, simply because it is now the week that I would have been camping. In fact, I’d be headed for the forest right now, car packed, ready to hike in, set up camp, and while away some hours just listening to the wind in the trees. The plan was 5 days… come back, spend a day with my Traveling Partner before returning to the work routine. Hell, when I made my camping plans, it wasn’t even a given that my Traveling Partner would actually be in town to spend that 1 weekend day with me, after my camping trip. lol We’ve been together basically 24/7 for something like 60 days now – I was at home sick with a cold for several days leading up to my employer’s decision to have the company working from home “until the pandemic is over”. I’ve enjoyed a lot of the things to do with spending this time together. I miss solitude. The challenge is finding the balance between cherished solitude and joyful intimacy. It’s there, but there are some verbs involved.

My view shifts to include the computer at my desk. The keyboard under my fingers. The monitor in front of my face. My glance sweeps the room surrounding me, and all the things within it that comfort and nurture me, support my hobbies, my art work, my writing, my job. I pause for gratitude. This good quality of life is a team effort; my Traveling Partner and I add more to each other’s experiences than we subtract, by far. For now, solitude is an out of reach luxury, and it’s in very short supply. That serves to make it quite precious, worth savoring the experience when I get to enjoy it. I admit to myself that if I had a surplus of solitude right now, and no time with my Traveling Partner (an experience I have endured in the past), it would be just as hard, just as frustrating, just as unsatisfying as any moment right now ever is – and on top of all that, it would also be quite lonely. I shrug off my bitching with this bit of practical perspective, and move on with my morning, aware that he is having his own challenges with these circumstances. (It can not be easy to be with me 24/7… I’m a bit much, sometimes.)

I become aware of the clock. Aware of the time. I guess I’ll begin again. 😉

 

 

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being
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