I’m waiting for the sun. Daylight will arrive, I’ll walk this local trail, then it’s job search activities, appointments, and errands. I’m grateful that planning and task management are among my skills; the fatigue of what I’m presently going through finally caught up with me yesterday. (I even snapped at my Traveling Partner in a misdirected moment of frustration and cognitive overload.)
There’s nothing noteworthy about a human primate feeling emotional or overwhelmed by stress, or distracted by competing priorities. Hell, there’s nothing noteworthy about having to manage stress, or needing to reinforce good self-care practices. It’s not even noteworthy that I finally reached the tipping point between purposeful action, and disabling fatigue. Just happens to be that I got there yesterday.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I needed the deeply restful sleep I got last night. Today feels a little less overwhelming. I sit waiting for the sun, drinking water, and thinking about a recent conversation with a friend (who is also a former colleague). I may not be out of work very long, which is reassuring. I’ve even gotten a couple of “lucky breaks” this week that serve to reduce my stress quite a lot. I’m more okay than not, just very human and enduring a stressful circumstance.
I watch the sky lighten to a dishwater gray. The hills to the west are hazy from smoke of distant wildfires. A walk will feel good. I remind myself again how critical good self-care is, especially right now. I’m fatigued from managing stress, and I’m in pain from my arthritis. The physical discomfort piles on with the background stress, and in spite of a good night’s sleep and good self-care, I feel rundown and quite exhausted. Hilarious that I see more physical work as something to re-energize me. It probably will, though, for some little while. Eventually there has to be a reckoning and I wonder what else I can do to help myself through this?
I can almost hear my Traveling Partner’s voice reminding me, “don’t forget to breathe”, and realize I was indeed holding my breathe. I exhale, and breathe deeply. The summer air is sweet and floral with the scents of summer flowers and mown grasses. It is a pretty morning, pleasantly cool, and very quiet.
Nice morning to walk with my thoughts.
I lace up my boots and grab my cane. The beautiful summer morning calls me to come walk and enjoy the moment. I’m grateful to be reminded that I don’t have to hustle frantically from task to task and moment to moment. Better to take things one by one, to be truly present, and really enjoy things as they are. This won’t last, and overloading myself with self-imposed stress and nonsensically strict obligations is just silly. Life is best lived, savored, and enjoyed!
I smile and sigh to myself, and stretch. I look down the trail and think about it as a metaphor for forward momentum and progress, and this journey that is life. It’s time to walk on. Time to begin. Again.
I am in some pain this morning, but nothing like the worst of the pain I am sometimes in. My coffee is good, better than average, not my best cup of coffee. I sit quietly with my thoughts and my coffee, after my walk, giving my illness-weakened body a little time to recover from the walking, before I get started on the housework. It’s a cycle, this thing we call “life”. Many cycles, actually, on a journey without a map. It’s easy to narrow my focus to just this space, here, and to allow life to become the cycles, and little more: sleep, walk, coffee, write, work, rest, cook, clean-up, sleep again. We are so much more than the practical task-handling endeavors that are necessary to build and maintain the quality of life we enjoy. Getting ahead sometimes means so much more work, and doesn’t always feel “worth it”. Falling behind happens in an instant of thoughtless ease. Finding balance is sometimes difficult, and I sometimes sacrifice self-care on the alter of providing for others (not a healthy approach long-term).
…I am fortunate and grateful for a partnership that encourages self-care and provides mutual respect…
My Traveling Partner inquired about the towels this morning – were there more clean washcloths somewhere? I’d fallen behind on the laundry, and committed to doing that today. When I arrived home, he’d already started a load of laundry. Having help feels good. Going into the kitchen, I see dishes piled in the sink… no one thought to do the dishes while I was down sick. I frowned at the dishes while I made my coffee. I’ll get those done, too. (Definitely feeling better.) Pride of place, a sense of responsibility, and a desired quality of life tend to be enough to keep me at it, but omg, sometimes it is just much. (I will admit that one practical factor in my lifelong decision to remain child-free was my total lack of interest in doing all that work for some other human being, most especially without help!) It’s hard to take the breaks I sometimes need, to maintain my own health. Finding balance is complicated… Why is that so complicated?? I think it comes down to a couple of things: perceptions, perspective, and reality.
One perspective on a morning walk.
How we perceive things around us changes when we’re ill, or under stress, and our priorities may change in the moment. How people around us perceive things may be something we have to consider, too, depending on their needs and expectations. When we’re sick, we may care a lot less about the vacuuming, or clean kitchen counters. When we’re exhausted, we may not care at all about whether the shower is actually clean. All very human, eh? But, once we’re back at our best, those things may suddenly matter quite a lot, and begin to be something causing us stress or a sense of urgency.
…I really dislike the “catch-up cycle” after I’ve been ill; I feel like I have to get it all done immediately to make up for any allowances and accommodations I made while I was ill (a thoroughly internalized lingering consequence of growing up in a culture of misogyny that treats the unpaid labor of women as a given, and a notable bit of baggage I am still dragging around)…
A very different perspective, focused on the details.
Our perspective on the details, large and small, is a big piece of how we set our priorities. Do the dishes in the sink matter a lot – or just matter a lot to me? Is it a health concern, or just something I don’t like to see? (Some people don’t care that much about having a handful of dishes in the sink that need to be washed and put away, other people have literal break-downs over a dirty glass sitting in an otherwise clean sink. Care to guess which one I am?* Which one are you?) Sometimes, keeping an orderly house feels more like self-care than it feels like manual labor. In circumstances such as that, it’s pretty easy to “stay caught up” and handle those tasks as a sort of meditation. Things do take the time they take, though, and housekeeping workload stands in defiance of creative endeavors. Again with the challenge of finding fucking balance. I sip my coffee and laugh at myself. I do what I can. I get a lot done – often more than I think I’m capable of, because even there – my perspective may not be a close fit to reality.
What we turn our attention to, and how we think about what we perceive, changes how we understand the world around us.
…Reality always gets the last word…
When I had cats years ago, I was quite convinced that my cats didn’t do any damage to my home, and that I kept things sufficiently tidy that there was “no cat smell”. That’s perception. I felt that the benefits to having my (much loved) cats far outweighed any concerns about cleanliness or health – lots of people have, and love, cats. That’s perspective getting involved. We don’t all see the world the same way, nor do we all share the same understanding of it. Still, the world is the world – reality largely ignores our perceptions and perspectives and just does its own thing. My apartment full of cats (and many of my belongings) definitely “smelled like cats” – but I didn’t perceive it (acclimation) and didn’t understand what I didn’t see as a potential concern (lack of adequate perspective). The reality of it was unmistakable when I moved out. (As well as difficult and costly to remedy, due primarily to my lack of awareness over time.)
I’m just saying – I have a shitload of housework to catch up on, after a camping trip, several days in too much pain to do housework, and then being sick. I can chuckle over how human that is, now. It is what it is, right? Now I see the need, because my perspective has shifted with my improving state of wellness. I feel the internal pressure to make it a very high priority – putting myself at risk of poor self-care. Cycles and balance. Fuck. Adulting is hard.
…We do become what we practice…
I sigh to myself and glare into my now-cold coffee. I’ve got a to-do list ready, and it’s a long one (but I’ve got the entire weekend to work on it). It’s already time to begin again – I’ll just be over here doing my best.
…
…
*Both. I’m rather inconveniently both of those types of people with regard to the dishes. Baggage is heavy… I remind myself to put some down.
I’m sipping my coffee on a routine (for most values of “routine”) Monday. I consider checking the news feed for whatever might be genuinely newsworthy, but decide against it; I don’t feel like wading through the bullshit sponsored content, partisan lies and ill-intentioned spin, and clickbait intended to grab my attention while some unknown other grabs my data. None of that shit rises to the level of “news”, and I definitely don’t need to be told (again) that billionaires are self-serving, or that “the government” is corrupt.
There’s a “heat warning” for this area, over the next day or two. This is a type of weather warning that did not exist when I was a kid. This kind of heat, in a lot of places around the country (and the world) did not exist when I was a kid. For me, personally, this defines “climate change” – the heat. Hotter summer days and more of them, in an area that once laughed about summer’s lack of warmth in “June-uary” and enjoyed fairly frequent drenching rain, even in summertime; there’s a lot less laughter about that, now, and a lot less summer rain.
I’m finding the outcomes of the terrible (and cruel) decision-making of the current US administration pretty disheartening, and thoroughly objectionable. From refusing to regulate AI or protect creator IP, from censorships to tariffs, this government is succeeding… in bringing about a new dark age. What to do about that, though? I sip my coffee and think about how to bring the light of the world to the dark future unfolding right now… I probably sound overly dramatic. Still, here we all are, eh? So…what to do? I have some thoughts…
Read (and buy) actual bound books written exclusively by human authors. Talk about them.
Consume content (while the internet is still available at all) created by human creators. Share that.
Enjoy, support, and buy real (original) art created by living human artists – and buy it, where you can, directly from the artist(s).
Learn practical skills and buy the tools required to do the things. Especially skills that don’t rely entirely on electricity, internet connectivity, and the existence of the power grid – people with useful skills always have a place within their community. Learn to make things.
Be curious and seek information (ideally from vetted sources with reliably recognized expertise).
If you have land (even enough for a small garden, or containers on a patio) grow food – particularly heirloom varieties unburdened by patents, or reproductive restrictions.
Connect with other real human beings in IRL places as frequently as you can – and have real conversations about real world concerns and circumstances, and current events and find common ground together. Yes, even with strangers.
Practice good self-care – for yourself – and practice kindness and compassion – for the rest of the world.
Spend your limited financial resources in your local community on goods and services made by local people, wherever/whenever you are able (or can afford) to do so.
Explicitly communicate your expectations, your “wishlist”, and your “demands” or dissatisfaction to your elected representatives – even if they are not of your party or don’t share your beliefs. Do it often.
Lift each other up. (There are already more than too many people and agencies out there in the world tearing people down.)
Don’t let your voice be silenced. Consider your options, and do your best to make choices that will tend to create the world you wish to see. Don’t let your fears or insecurities, or your petty biases or hostility to this or that cause or belief system cause you to become a monster that you can’t face in the mirror each morning (or, you know, don’t become a monster at all). Choose, each day, to be the person you most want to be, regardless of how vile and terrible the world around you seems to be becoming. Who you are is about you, not them. Do you – for you.
I guess the tl;dr is… don’t just bitch about the shit going on around you, make choices that are different than that, and speak truth to power. (I say that like it’s easy – it is not; it requires constant effort and practice.)
I breathe, exhale, and relax. The landscapers are already mowing this morning, likely due to the extreme heat expected later. If ICE showed up right now and started hassling those landscapers… would I take any action? Would you? It’s a worthwhile thought exercise. You should probably know what your values really are, there. What would you want of bystanders if ICE came for you? (Because, you know, at some point they may – we’re living in dark times.)
Where do you really stand in this new dark age? Here’s a test of your values and ethics that you may find interesting… a simple thought exercise. If you were offered a job (just a salaried job, no guarantees for continued employment) for millions of dollars in annual salary, with the explicit understanding that the results of your work would be directly responsible for putting thousands of people in poverty, reducing the quality of life of many millions of others, and likely result in a notable number of actual deaths…but you would be lifted out of poverty (for as long as you held that job) and live in comfort with your family, debt free with the world’s goods at your fingertips – would you take that job? I don’t need to know your answer – but you do. Are you one of the good guys, or just another self-serving asshole prepared to destroy the world so you can have a [fucking yacht, or Lamborghini, or whatever your symbol of fantastic wealth happens to be]? It’s an important question, and whether you answer it in words or not, the consequences of your actions and choices will tell the world what your values really are.
Yeesh. So grim and grounded this morning. lol I sip my coffee grateful to have a moment of time to explore thought exercises, and questions of ethics and values. The whole picture of my own adult life has not been characterized by wise ethical decision-making, or consistently living my values well. It’s been a very human journey, and when I set off down this path I not only didn’t know where it was leading me, I didn’t have a clear understanding of who is this “woman I most want to be”, in the first place. I suffered from a lack of honest self-reflection, and a lack of useful questions to light my way. Sometimes I still find myself “wandering in the dark” – and there are certainly those among us who would greatly prefer that we all “wander in the dark” without finding a sense of ourselves or understanding what we value, and what we want to see in the world. It is sometimes possible to vanquish those monsters simply by shining a light on the path.
I finish my coffee hoping to succeed in being my best self today. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do my best on another day. It’s time to begin again…
I’m sipping my coffee grateful to have it, and grateful to be done with the budgeting and payday stuff. I didn’t sleep as restfully as I’d have liked; my sleep was interrupted by my Traveling Partner (I think? Was I dreaming it?) who woke me up for some reason, in the wee hours. My sleep after that was less than ideal, restless and plagued by strange dreams of stress and failure. I woke up feeling cranky and anti-social – and I’m grateful that so far the office is empty of other voices. It’s just me, here, now. I’m good with that. I’m not really “fit for company” quite yet.
…So cranky…
I sip my coffee and find myself vexed by “what ifs” and “if onlys”, and this headache (which is reliably worse when I sleep poorly). I’m cross with myself for doing such a shitty job of adulting when I was younger, and I’m annoyed that I failed completely to “look after” my future self, from that youthful vantage point. I didn’t make much money back then… Hell, I don’t “make much money” now – just an amount that covers the expenses with some small amount left to protect against emergencies to come, and I’m grateful for it. It could be worse. I do okay these days, though I’ll never be “wealthy”. This morning, I find myself wishing and yearning and frustrated that I’m not in a very different place (for example, already retired and living contentedly in my “leisure years”, spending my hours painting, writing, reading, and gardening). These are the sorts of thoughts and feelings that often develop out of restless nights, fatigue, poor self-care, and the sour moods that result from those experiences. They aren’t any more “real” than the dreams that plagued my sleep – and certainly they have no power over me that I don’t give them myself. They are the sort of thing that can generate a fuck-ton of “second dart suffering”, or become the kernel of discontent that can later become a major meltdown or moment of drama “for no reason”. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and do my best to let that shit go. There’s no value in letting it fester.
Breathe. Exhale. Relax. Repeat as needed.
I sigh to myself. Things are not “perfect”, but they’re okay for most values of “okay”, and I’m fortunate – and grateful for my good fortune. I’m also pretty cranky, and I’ve got a headache. I work on keeping those experiences separated from each other, in my emotional experience of the moment; they are not in any way actually related to each other. Human primates are weird. When we’re cross or frustrated there’s this odd tendency to make it about “everything”, connecting dots that aren’t really connected, conflating one thing with another, and blowing shit way out of proportion over… nothing much at all. No doubt it served some evolutionary purpose intended to ensure our survival as a species, but it sure as shit isn’t very helpful now. lol
As with any choice, there are verbs involved.
I drag my consciousness back to this moment, right here. This moment in which I am 100% fine, thanks. It is an ordinary enough Friday morning, an ordinary enough summer day, the beginning of some new moment unrelated to the moments I’ve left behind – a new beginning. I’d honestly like to begin it with a damned nap – or some sort of notable relief for this fucking headache – but realistically, there’s this work day ahead of me, and I’ve got shit to do. “Nap time” is not now. I sip my coffee and remind myself that resources are always limited in this finite mortal life (for most people). It is the nature of resources to be limited. Time or money, or precious goods cultivated or dug from holes in the ground. Limits exist. So, we budget, and plan, and do our best to make all the pieces fit in our lives. It’s a very human experience.
The clock ticks off the minutes. I sigh again, frustrated by life’s limitations. Frustrated by feeling tired and cross with the world. Vexed by humanity.
…I let all that go, again…
Finding a pleasant distraction in recent photographs can help lift my mood.
I flip through pictures from my camping trip to distract me from my irritability. I feel my face soften into a smile, and my shoulders relax. Some moments feel harder than they really are. We make so much of our own stress, and behave as if it is external to us. I know I can choose differently – it’s just not always easy to shift from intention to action. The effort matters quite a lot. The choices too. It’s necessary to accept that things can change – and that I can change them.
…I’m almost out of coffee…
Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn
The clock ticks on. Limitations do exist. Choices and opportunities for change exist. The journey is the destination. In practical terms, I create my path as I walk it – the route is mine to choose. So… yeah. I’m cranky right now, but I can choose differently. Fuck I wish saying as much made it easier to do the verbs! There’s real effort involved, and I’d frankly rather just take a nap and begin again later… that’s not on today’s “menu”. lol It’s already time to begin again – and I’ve got choices to make, and verbs to do.
I’m sipping this excellent cup of coffee and enjoying one more morning off of work before resuming the day-to-day routine of work-errands-chores-cooking-sleeping, and hoping to keep up on everything before something unexpected goes awry. Real life. It’s nice to get an occasional break from the routine.
A new day, a familiar view.
I woke to a rainy morning. No surprise; it was the rain in the forecast that brought me home a day early. “Good fold”. My walk was slow and careful this morning – the hiking miles of the previous days have left me sore and aching, and my arthritis has flared up painfully (predictably enough). I still got out on the trail; it just doesn’t do to let good habits slide (for me) even for a couple days. Actions have consequences, and I try to choose wisely and work around my limitations.
…My results vary, of course…
Practices are about repetition – sometimes even things that I feel I’ve “mastered” need reinforcement, and frankly, when I think about those tasks I feel I’ve acquired some mastery over, I often find there’s more to learn. Practices are also about effort and will and consistency, and overcoming my own reluctance to change or inner resistance to coming face-to-face with things that really just don’t work, however much I may favor them. Humans being human, we tend to cling to what we think is right or true or useful, without examing our results too closely. It’s an unfortunate characteristic of human cognition; we like to take shortcuts. Sometimes I fail myself or fall short of my expectations. Human. When I do, I begin again.
“We become what we practice” is so very true it almost goes without saying, except that by not acknowledging that truth, I create the risk of stepping into some trap that is built on practices that are less than ideal. Doesn’t matter what I’m practicing; the more I practice that thing, the more it becomes characteristic of who I am. True for you, too. Unavoidably true. What are you practicing? Does it lead you to becoming the person you most want to be? If it doesn’t, then why are you practicing that?
Sometimes it helps to look beyond the obvious.
I sip my coffee and reflect on self-reflection, and the value of incremental change over time, for some little while. There is no one walking this earth who is utterly perfect without potential for change or growth. The journey is the destination, and if it were “easy” a lot of people would still manage to fail, somehow. Practicing the practices that make any one of us the person we most want to be still requires work, real work, with effort. This is more effective when we practice in a willful, self-aware way. This further requires self-reflection – an examination of our successes and failures, independent of the opinions of other people, reliant on our understanding of ourself and our goals. Each experience thus examined and understood, and explored for potential to learn and grow becomes another step on a path. The map is not the world. The plan is not the experience. We each have to walk our own mile – wherever that takes us. It’s easier to make a journey – any journey – with eyes open, and some light on the path.
Like it or not, you’ve got to walk your own path – and get somewhere.
When you stumble – begin again. Examine your failure, learn from that, do a little better than you did yesterday. Over time, you will have made a journey, and gotten yourself somewhere. Where does your path lead? This is your experience. Your life. Choose wisely. Keep practicing.
Evening Light 