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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

The View from Here

August 11, 2016 //
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My view of the meadow, covered by morning mist rising from the marsh, is obscured by condensation on the window, left open during the night. My view is obscured by my perspective. Something to think about, generally.

Low mist on the meadow before sunrise.

Sometimes I have to change my perspective to enjoy the view…

Today my traveling partner [figuratively, metaphorically] becomes my literal traveling partner, headed to a favorite festival. I smile every time I think about him enjoying himself there. I come back to the thought frequently; I enjoy his joy. 🙂

I caught myself getting caught up in the news… the usual horror and tedium, frankly, and fairly dismal. Getting mired in it does no one any good, and doesn’t change things. I can change only those things that are precisely and specifically changeable by me. It’s entirely a worthwhile endeavor to be the best human being I can, without bothering with the day-to-day stress and drama of comparison, or competition. Yeah, life?  It’s so not a competition. What a lie I’d been sold there! When I allow myself to be distracted by how well you are doing, or how well that famous person over there is doing, or how well a motivational speaker suggests I could be doing, or any number of other frankly revenue-generating (for someone) bits of bamboozlement, I lose precious time on my own authentic journey. Sometimes the journey is difficult. It’s mine. Sometimes the journey is a disastrous maze of detours. It’s mine. Sometimes the journey is fraught with confusion, sorrow, or anger. It’s mine. Sometimes the journey is delightful, joyful, and fun. It’s mine. My journey to make on my own terms; I am my own cartographer, having my own experience. Sure – we’re all in this together, and that matters, too. Still my journey, on my terms, in my own time – and similarly, yours belongs to you. We don’t gain much when we try to use someone else’s map… and we lose a lot when we’re sold on someone else’s destination. Just saying. Do you.

The mist begins to lift, the sky to lighten. I hear crows discussing their plan for the morning. I see the earliest hints of autumn in the trees on the far side of the park; shades of yellow and orange beginning to show in the summer green foliage.

Today is a good day to wish the world well, and my traveling partner too; each of us having our own experience. Each of us on our own journey. Today is a good day to be authentic, genuine, and also the very best of who I am able to be. (Each of us doing so would change the world.) 🙂

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

Welcome the Day

June 8, 2016 //
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I woke with my calendar on my mind today. It’s not quite so hot, and the thing most prominent in my thoughts is an interview scheduled a little later in the morning. The cool pre-dawn chill easily cooled off the apartment before the sun made its appearance.

A new day, a new beginning; each dawn potentially the cusp of an entirely different future.

A new day, a new beginning; each dawn potentially the cusp of an entirely different future.

My ‘to do list’ this morning looks very different than it has for some weeks. I already have butterflies in my stomach, and feel vaguely as if I am ‘waiting’ for the time to arrive, and then to be behind me. Good self-care practices serve me well this morning, and I go through the routine details of an ordinary work day with reliable comfort; it’s only an interview, but it is my work day as well. I feel prepared. There are last-minute things to fill my head with, like re-reading the details of the job posting itself, and reviewing interview notes from the prior interview call. My clothes are ready, my jewelry selected with care, my nails are done. I am entirely this person, and in this particular instance I am a person hoping to be a good fit – and not out of desperate need to be employed in this moment, but delightfully enough because the position itself looks like it may suit my nature, my skills, and be work I could be proud of, on a team providing a valued service to the community. That sounds pretty amazing… to potentially come home at the end of a long work day, feeling accomplished and proud of what I do, rather than exhausted and resentful of the drain on my physical resources, would be a remarkable (and welcome) thing.

Well…I could write all day to avoid the inevitable reality of getting my “work self” together for this interview I am actually eager to do. (What’s with the foot-dragging, Woman?) Delaying the tasks and activities supporting the morning and the day doesn’t really serve me well, and today I definitely need my best from me. 🙂 Wish me luck? I wonder where the day will take me? What does the future hold? Hang on… I’ll go find out. 😉

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Perspective, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Love and Verbs

March 25, 2016 //
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This morning was lovely. It’s enough to enjoy the moments, and linger on them in my recollection, later. The day begins well, and that is also enough for the moment I find myself in. Later will be here soon enough to matter when it gets here. Days old irritation with work is, for the moment, eased. It’s a comfortable moment, this one, characterized by contentment, and a certain comfort with the routine of the work day, modified by an early finish for a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, and by having completed a significant task with a few minutes in the day for writing a handful of words before moving on to the next significant task.  There’s not much more I would ask of this moment, it is quite enough.

This lovely morning, every moment enough.

This lovely morning, every moment enough.

I read an article this morning that tells readers somewhat alarmingly that ‘CBT is a scam!’. I move past the irritation with some humor, but I am irked by the tone of the article, which suggests that unscrupulous unnamed individuals have put one over on governments, care-providers, and patients with the suggestion that CBT (specifically) and other 3rd wave cognitive therapies (implied) are bullshit scams that don’t help anyone, leaving vulnerable people to continue to struggle with symptoms a couple of years down the road, no differently than similarly disordered peers who didn’t get any treatment at all. I’m annoyed because what is not being discussed is a fairly transparent thing, left unaddressed by the article; there are verbs involved. As with ‘dieting’ to lose weight; mental health treatment, however promising, requires practicing some practices. There are verbs involved. Stop doing the things that help, discontinue the practices that resulted in treatment efficacy, halt the growth and change initially being pursued when treatment began, and sure – the human being seeking wellness loses ground, potentially resulting in a return of all symptoms (and then some). That sucks. It sucks even more that a professional in the mental health care industry would overlook one potential root cause for treatment failure after two years; failure to continue practicing the practices that the patient found effective, initially. We do, however ill we may be, have some accountability for our growth and progress (unless we are so disordered that our impairments put choice and action out of our reach)! The suggestion that CBT itself is a wholesale failure without examining the effects of compliance/non-compliance is a little silly – as with switching from diet to diet to diet, without actually sticking with what worked long enough to see and hold onto the desired changes, it completely ignores the free agency of the person receiving treatment. There are verbs involved. There are choices to be made. Period. Do the verbs. (Reminder: the excuses we choose also communicate our choices –  to do, or not do, the necessary verbs involved in what we say we want from life.)

Better to pause for flowers than be immersed in borrowed stress.

Better to pause for flowers than be immersed in borrowed stress.

I finally shrug off my irritation; we each walk our own path, make our own choices, live our own experience, write our own narrative – my words are filtered through my own experiences, breaking like waves on distant conscious shores, sometimes soaking into the sand, sometimes splashing against the rocks. 😉

Isn't it enough to find balance?

Isn’t it enough to find balance?

Love, too, needs an investment in doing the verbs. Love isn’t a passive thing. This morning, I chose love over words, and a shared experience over solitary time writing. It was a worthy choice, and my mood is enhanced by the love I feel. I am carried through the morning on soft wings of enduring affection. There’s nothing much more to say about it for the moment; the experience is still very much ‘now’.  There will be time to contemplate it with broader perspective much later. Today, ‘now’ is more a doing than a thinking. This, too, is enough.

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, Words

A Weekend Off – A Week On

August 3, 2015 //
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It’s Monday morning. I woke with some effort, to the alarm, and still struggle to ‘really wake up’. I slept well and deeply, and woke up only once, and at an unusual hour. At 3:17 am I woke, thinking I heard a noise. The noise was the sound of a front door buzzer pushed twice in rapid succession “bzzzt bzzzt”. It seemed an actual sound, but whatever actually woke me didn’t do so with any ease. I was incredibly groggy and dizzy, and there was nothing at the door – or elsewhere that I noticed – and I returned to sleep so quickly that I wonder now if any of it was real – even the waking up and getting up, parts.

I’m having trouble waking fully and getting my brain online. I am groggy even now – more than an hour after waking. The sky is still quite dark. Dawn has moved later into the morning. I am impatiently waiting for my coffee – which I am having some trouble making with skill, because I am not quite awake. I take my time with it – and successfully stop myself from rubbing my eyes while I am making coffee, avoiding rubbing coffee, coffee grounds, or hot water in my eyes. This morning, that feels like a major success. 🙂

The morning is cool, and I feel the cool air filter in through the open patio door and the vertical blinds. I am drenched in sweat after making coffee and feeling peculiarly overheated. Hormones? Please, no, not today…it is, after all, Monday. I take a deep breath of the cool morning air, and fill my thoughts with the memories of the weekend as I fill my lungs with fresh scents of this summer morning. I took the additional ‘taking care of me’ step of un-syncing my work email over the weekend, and resetting my smart device so that my work email will only sync manually outside of work hours, reducing the likelihood that I will waste precious life-time on work-related matters by reflex or habit during leisure hours. It is powerfully freeing to return to a lifestyle when work is limited to those occasions that it is scheduled for. I needed the break, badly, and don’t easily set those boundaries with myself unaided – which definitely makes setting those boundaries with colleagues challenging. My traveling partner had observed rather firmly quite recently that I was not taking the best care of myself in this area; change was needed.

Yesterday I spent the better part of the morning with my traveling partner, unexpectedly, and to my great delight. It was a lovely treat, although he arrived distressed and agitated. The level of day-to-day drama in his experience at home is much higher than mine, here at Number 27. I did everything I could to support and soothe him, and even though we shared some [perhaps unnecessarily] emotional moments together, I cherish the time with him. He made a point of following through on his commitment to provide me with some technical support (my bluetooth wasn’t working, and my own troubleshooting did not resolve the issue), and in the process uncovered the likely cause; I had peripherals plugged in to USB ports in a sort of willy-nilly random way, primarily intended for cable management, without regard to USB 3 ports, or always-on ports, or what devices need what sorts of ports, and having no particular understanding that those details were important I had created conflicts. I feel a moment of sympathy; it’s probably just as hard on my laptop to be mine, as it is for people to live with me! This morning, though, there is music. (And yesterday evening, too.) 🙂

Change is. Progress happens. We are at a disadvantage if our understanding of the world becomes 'set in stone'.

Change is. Progress happens. We are at a disadvantage if our understanding of the world becomes ‘set in stone’.

We enjoyed coffee together, and conversation, and laughter, once the technical work was finished. It was hard coming to terms with one facet of aging; I am struggling to remain current with technology, now. Poignant and emotional for me, frustrating for my traveling partner; there is no room for crying during technical support. He’s a decently good sport about it, and although somewhat impatient with me, and frustrated by my emotionality, he makes a point of hearing me. That’s enough. I got by on that, and we moved on with the morning. The high point of my afternoon was soaking in a hot bath, listening to Barry White, and talking on the phone with my traveling partner – an experience I could not easily have had the day before (my stereo sounds way better than music played over laptop speakers). 🙂

My point is that the ups and downs don’t have to be tragic, or an unrelenting buzzkill; we’re all people, having our own experience, and it is sometimes an emotional one. How we treat each other – how we treat ourselves – can be accepting and supportive and aware, and emotions pass. The respect we give each other – each having our own experience – and consideration we give each other while we do so, are a big deal; they define our character, and define the love we share. An honest apology, no excuses, goes a long way when we are not at our best. Our loves are not a dumping ground for emotional toxic waste, and when we share hurts, strong emotions, moments of anger, it’s urgently important that we follow-up with consideration, with compassion, with recognition of their difficult experience sharing that moment with us. Being open isn’t solely about sharing who we are, and how we feel – it’s also a willingness to listen deeply, to be present in the moment when our love sets boundaries, or tells us we’ve caused them pain, and accept the consequences of our actions with honor, with respect, and providing reciprocal support. In this, too, there are practices to practice, verbs involved, and room to grow – and incremental change over time can seem so slow…because that other person can matter so much.

I am taking the morning slowly.

I am taking the morning slowly.

It’s a Monday. This one begins, for me, on a foundation of adequate rest, and good self-care. It would be lovely if that were an absolute assurance of a great week, but I know that there are verbs involved, and plenty of decision-making, and opportunities to communicate with clarity and practice good practices that support my needs over time. This morning, waking so slowly, it is as if I have a head start on slowing down, perhaps there is greater potential there than I understand?

Today is a good day to take things one at a time, with consideration, listening deeply, and recognition that each of us is utterly and entirely human. Today is a good day to be aware that the relationships matter more than the challenges. Today is a good day to ask for help when I need it, and accept help when it is offered. Today is a good day for beginnings; a good beginning has all the potential to change the world. [Note: there are verbs involved, and your results may vary.]

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Epsom salts, Free Will, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words
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