Archives for posts with tag: emotional self sufficiency
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Pain & Winter Weather

February 19, 2025 //
0

I’m sipping my coffee on a rainy winter morning, feeling cross and irritated and in considerable pain. It’s the pain making me so cranky, but it’s “only” my osteoarthritis (and my perpetual headache), and there’s not much to do about it, really. I live with this. A lot of people live with pain, that’s a real thing. I sigh to myself, as I pull my posture more upright. It helps a tiny bit, though barely noticeable in the moment. The moments add up. I’m grateful to have gotten a good night’s sleep. I’m grateful to have what limited Rx pain relief available to me that I do (and am willing to use).

My reflection stares back at me from the window; it’s not yet daybreak, and I see a middle-aged woman with slightly tousled carelessly-kept long hair, glasses, wrapped in a warm (if a bit frumpy) sweater, looking back at me. She looks pleasant and approachable, relaxed, with a soft smile hinting at a life well-lived, and maybe some interesting stories to tell. She looks just a bit… amused. I don’t see the pain, just the smile, which reaches her eyes. At the corners of her eyes and her smile, laugh lines, no frown lines. She looks… capable. She looks ready for the day and unbothered. I find myself liking what I see reflected there in the window. I sigh again and think “you’ll do”, and take another sip of my coffee. I’m not at all sure how I got “here” – it’s been a difficult journey in spots, and I’ve often wandered off my path – but I’m okay with where I am, and that feels like a win.

I sip my coffee thinking about friends. Thinking about love. Thinking about errands I need to run. I think about hearth and home and all the things that add up to this life I live. It’s not perfect; there’s the pain, obviously. That’s its own difficult experience. I try not to take it personally. Things could be so much worse. Instead of living with this pain, I could have rejected having the surgery to repair my shattered spine, and taken a chance on things “just healing up” more or less, and most likely ended up in a wheel-chair, unable to walk at all. It can be hard to trust the opinion of an expert; we live in cynical times. I’m glad I did – I walk every day, and often see the sunrise from some favorite trail. The pain seems like a price worth paying for that privilege, most of the time. My irritation slips away. I chose this with my eyes open. I may not have understood the full measure of the price I’d be paying when I lay there sedated in the ICU so many years ago, but I knew there’d be a price. TANSTAAFL.

One cold winter night 40 years ago, I ran from a knife wielding man to save my own life. I took the only route available to me, that I could see in the moment, which led me to dangling from a balcony rail, dangerously high above a beautiful tiled patio, slick with ice. That man was my then-husband, who rushed to the balcony to plead with me not to let go. I looked back at him in a moment of unexpected clarity and calm, aware of my agency in a new way. The choice was mine. “I have to,” I said, and I did. The explosion of light in my head and the sudden pain that shot through me and my breath knocked out of my body overcame me only for seconds before adrenaline and terror drove me to my feet to seek help. It was a moment of profound change. One choice. One moment.

I sit with my thoughts a while. “I had no other choice” is reliably a lie. We have choices (many) – I know I’ve made a lot of them. Probably the worst choice(s) I’ve ever made? Telling myself I’ve no other choice, and and following the path that took me down. The menu in The Strange Diner is immense. We choose, on our own, to keep it folded, and to narrow our options willfully. Refusing to consider all the options is also a choice.

We’re born “a blank page”, and although we have little to say about our introduction to life, we have so many choices as we grow, and more once we are adult and free to do as we will. What will you do with it? The menu in The Strange Diner is impressively vast. What will you choose? Will you make your world (and your life) a better place in which to thrive? Will you walk a path that leads you somewhere beautiful? Will you take the steps that carry you to becoming the person you most want to be? Who is that? What will your legacy be? You have choices. Choose wisely. Pay the price. Don’t take the pain personally.

It’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

Necessary Self-Care Sometimes Feels Like a Luxury

February 18, 2025 //
0

Last week’s snowstorm feels like a long time ago, not the short 4 days that it was. The long weekend I was so fortunate to enjoy stretched time and gave me an opportunity to really rest, to get a few things done, to enjoy my Traveling Partner (and my life) – and I took full advantage of it. I stayed up later. I slept in a couple times. I even took an afternoon to dive into a long-waiting personal project to do with sorting and filing and tidying up my many digital images of my art work. That was incredibly satisfying. I cooked a couple of really good meals. I enjoyed breakfast or brunch with my beloved each morning. Time well-spent. It wasn’t “fancy” or costly or exotic, it was just… mine. I needed that.

This morning I woke to my artificial sunrise and prepared to head to the office. I didn’t notice until I was almost half way into my commute that I had somehow set my wake up time to… 04:00. Good grief, really?? I definitely did not need to be up that early. No traffic, though… pleasant, quiet drive.

Now I’m at my desk, drinking my coffee, trying to stretch enough to feel… different than I do. I don’t know what I’m going for, maybe, but I think “comfortable” would be good. I feel unexpectedly sleepy, in spite of the coffee (because of it?). I didn’t sleep particularly well last night. I am paying for that, and the early wake up, in physical discomfort and restless sleepiness. My back aches with my osteo-arthritis. My neck aches from degenerative disk disease. My headache is with me this morning, too. My shoulders feel tight in spite of adjusting the height of this adjustable desk several times. The delicious relaxation of the weekend gives way to the subtle tension of the work week. I stay away from the news; it’s all pretty bad, and none of it is “new information”. It’s all stories about shitty people doing terrible things to make a name or profit for themselves, in some cases out of nothing more than pettiness and spite, other people standing around wringing their hands and not doing much of anything helpful about any of it. The usual. Human suffering. Human greed. Human cruelty. No superheroes.

…And I’m fairly fucking over hearing about Elon-fucking-Musk. I mean, seriously? That fucking guy. How he’s managed to con so many otherwise rational-seeming people is just beyond me. Why keep giving him more money for products he will not ever make? Can we not also let him tear down our fucking government? Are his substantial and obvious conflicts of interest not enough to make that clearly a terrible idea?! Fucking hell. Just how fucking stupid and gullible are we?

I pause my writing to hunt for a tissue in the quiet empty office. Noticing how good it feels to actually move around, I wander a bit, and take a walk around the building, outside, stretching, and taking deep breaths as I walk. I bring my attention back to “now” – where I am. This moment, here. Daybreak has come, dawn is here, the sunrise is imminent. It is a new day, filled with new opportunities. I amuse myself with observations of how good self-care sometimes feels. Funny that it can feel so hard to make time for those practices…

I sigh to myself and return to my desk, along with my aches and pains. Typical shit. Most of us deal with some measure of pain, some of us deal with more. It’s part of the human condition, and I try not to take it personally, and also do something about it and get on with my day. I smile fondly when my thoughts return to my Traveling Partner. I hope he gets the rest he needs. (He’s also been sleeping poorly.) I look at my calendar, check over my email, plan my workload for the day… It’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Love

February 14, 2025 //
0

Valentine’s Day. Pretty serious “Hallmark holiday”, I know. It’s also, paradoxically, a wonderful thing to see a celebration of carnal and romantic love on a holiday calendar mostly controlled by fairly repressed, repressive, puritannical minds. It’s about the love, not the candy, not the cards, not the children in classrooms exchanging tokens and favors years before they have any capacity for romantic love (and isn’t that just a little weird?). I’ve said it before – all of it. Worth repeating, but maybe not for re-writing. lol

So much love it regularly spills onto canvas. 🙂

It is about the love.

I slept in. Snowy morning, no work, cozy quiet home – it’s lovely. My Traveling Partner woke about the same time I did. I made breakfast and coffee, we enjoyed the moment together. He gave me a little something for the holiday, I added something to the shop that he wanted very much. It isn’t about that, though, it’s about the love. It’s not about the breakfast together. It’s not about the gifts (we often don’t give each other anything at all). The love stands on its own, enduring and sweet and deep and passionate and warm and nurturing.

Love, smiles, coffee – a pleasant start to the day doesn’t have to be fancy.

How do I know it’s love? How does anyone know? I’ve been wrong before – most of us are wrong about love eventually. It’s easy to mistake lust for love. To mistake fondness for love. To confuse codependence with love. To confuse habit with love. Funny (strange) how easily we’re wrong about love, when it is so incredibly important to creating a life to thrive in. So… how do I know this is love? Because I’ve got options, and I’m comfortable with that knowledge – and I’m here because here is where I most want to be. Same is true for my Traveling Partner, and I feel comfortably confident in that, too. We’re here because here is what we choose, because we want to be here. Together on this journey. Love. Neither of us “has to be here”. Neither of us is trapped in this relationship or this life – we could walk on if we chose to. Options. It’s not tragic. It’s not a threat. It’s just real. We choose each other out of love. It’s not always perfect or perfectly easy. We’re individual human beings with our own perspective, our own experiences behind us, our own thoughts on life, love, and the world. Sometimes we disagree. Sometimes we hurt too much to be kind or patient. We still go right on loving each other.

Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?

I have a love for this particular human being that has exceeded my understanding of what love could be. I enjoy that, and I work to live up to what love requires. My Traveling Partner is my best friend, and my muse. My enduring source of encouragement, and perspective that isn’t my own. He brings balance and fun to a life that might otherwise lack it (have you met me?). I often think about “how we got here” – more than I think about “where we’re going”. I am surprised that our paths crossed more than once in our busy lives, and that we are so connected now. Love endures. I’m glad that it does. I’m grateful.

Be love. It’s a choice. Love is a verb.

I’m glad I didn’t let myself stay trapped in relationships that weren’t built on love. The best gift I’ve ever given myself has been freedom from bad relationships – the choices to walk on. Sometimes I’ve been too slow to make those choices, holding on to hope for too long, but I did get there. Love is worth working towards, and worth choosing. No substitute is adequate – better to have nothing than to endure less than real love (my opinion).

Love matters most.

I smile to myself and finish my coffee. I grin when I see the plush “mochi cat” pillow-toy my beloved gave to me – reminds me how much I am loved. I don’t know what the future may hold, but I hope that it holds a lot more of this. The love. However long love endures, I am grateful to have had it. There’s nothing else that feels like this.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, joy, Love, meditation, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words

What’s Next?

February 13, 2025 //
0

I sip my coffee quietly, head aching. Back aching. Sort of “waiting on the next moment”, in the morning stillness. No walk, no commute, this morning, there are ice storms in the weather forecast and my Traveling Partner asked me to work from home, rather than worry about my safety on the road. So far this morning, the temperature is unexceptional, there is no rain falling (freezing or otherwise), and it’s a dry and clear winter morning. I did sleep in, though, which was quite nice.

My beloved wakes, and asks me if I would make his coffee and some breakfast? I step away from my desk, unsurprised, and do so, feeling contented and loved. He seems to be in a decent mood, but I can tell he’s also in pain. I remind myself to be patient and kind as the day wears on. As I make his coffee, I am reminded that the dishes need doing (hard to avoid that reminder; they’re in the sink, and I dislike that so intensely it’s hard to put words to it), and also that I have a prescription to pick up at the pharmacy if the weather holds out. Later. Later. I make myself some oatmeal, and get back to my desk and let my just-woke-up partner finishing waking up while he enjoys his breakfast.

It’s an ordinary enough morning, for one built on exceptions to the routine. In spite of the pain I’m in, I’m in a good mood, and feel pretty well-rested. Funny how much difference good sleep can make, isn’t it? I breathe, exhale, and relax. I take my morning medication. I eat my oatmeal. Walnuts and dried fruit with a bit of ginger, this morning, and it’s pretty good. My coffee is excellent. Good beans. Careful pour over that I made myself. It is, of course, precisely the way I like it. lol Sometimes little satisfying rituals, like making a cup of coffee “just so”, can be so intensely soul-nourishing. Definitely a fond practice, for me, although too often I rush through things or grab whatever coffee is near at hand and call it good enough – it’s not at all the same experience as taking the time and care to do it skillfully, with intention. There’s something to be learned in such things. Will I ever learn it? I hope I at least keep practicing. lol

I sip my coffee, grateful to have it. I am grateful for this warm cozy home, and the sound of my Traveling Partner getting his morning started in the other room. I’m grateful for this work space, which my partner set up with me in mind, measuring things and getting the ergonomics just right for me so I would be most comfortable, even on long work days. I’m grateful for the convenience and warmth of “quick cooking” oatmeal, and a pantry stocked with nuts and dried fruits and things with which to prepare meals. I am fortunate. It’s worth a moment of gratitude, however ordinary these things may seem. Running water. Indoor plumbing. A gas fireplace. Carpets and rugs over well-maintained floors. Electric lighting. You too? Probably – for most of these things – they aren’t all that out of the ordinary for a family in a small suburban home in the United States. It’s not a lavish life of luxury, generally speaking, although I have some things other people may not have for themselves, there are also a great many things some people have that I go without. There’s a variety of human experiences. I’ve lived worse off than I do now. Some people are by far better off than I find myself. It’s not a race or a competition, and I’m content to simply find my joy in sufficiency, and appreciate what I’ve got, without striving aggressively for luxuries “within view” but beyond my means. This is not a time for that. (Is it ever? Greed is an ugly quality.) There’s no knowing what the future holds, so I enjoy this “now” with appreciation and gratitude.

I sip my coffee and think about “the future”. With so much chaos, destruction, and despair in the world (and in this country) right now, it’s something I worry over a bit. What does the future hold? How do we create a world in which everyone can thrive? The wealth of the world would provide for us all, if it were not held in the hands of a small few who do not make use of it, just pile it up and point to their pile and remind us all how very privileged they are, while others struggle and suffer (and often at the hands of those very wealthy hoarders of privilege). It’s not a good look. I keep expecting humanity to do better. (Don’t you?)

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s time to start the day. Time to do my own best, moment to moment. It’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, War and News of War, winter

Toxic Frustration

February 12, 2025 //
0

I’m working on beginning again. A perfectly adequate reasonably pleasant ordinary sort of moment was poisoned so quickly by frustration. Frustration can be such a toxic thing – it hijacks my experience completely, if I allow whatever momentary bullshit to take over. In this case? The camera on my work laptop. I’m so annoyed by this. Somehow, the “privacy shutter” on this stupid thing is now toggled on, and every help file or article l I look at references some physical or software detail that is not at all how this particular laptop… is.

One suggests I use the small slider above the camera. There isn’t one on this laptop.

Another directs me to use the function key for the camera. This laptop does not appear to have that function key, specifically, and I haven’t yet found any clear guidance on what combination of other keys might get that result.

There are pages and pages and lists and lists of steps I could take, based on operating system – not one of them appears to match the details of this version that I’m using on this laptop.

…This difficulty only presents itself when I am on meetings, and has only done so since the meeting I had yesterday – on Zoom. (“Fuck this stupid bullshit” I snarl to myself, resenting having been talked into installing Zoom for one damned call in the first place.) I sigh to myself. Clear cache. Clear cookies. Uninstall Zoom. Reboot. Check all the privacy and camera settings I can find. All the basics. Minutes tick by unproductively, my frustration builds and spills over to… everything. I am annoyed and cranky.

“Stop.” I tell myself, gently. “Just stop. Give up on it for now, you don’t even have any more meetings today. Let it go. Reset. Begin again. Focus on other things that matter more. Fuck all this noise and bother over nothing.”

The view out the window, a different perspective on a moment.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I put myself on “pause” and look out the window into the blue cloud-streaked sky.

I sip my afternoon coffee, pleased that it is better than the cup I had this morning. I let that be my focus, for now, just me, this view beyond the window, this cup of coffee. It’s enough. It’s this moment, right here.

The hardest part of toxic frustration is choosing to let it go. Now that I have, though, I can properly begin again. I sit awhile, watching the trees on the other side of the parking lot swaying in the winter wind. They wave back and forth steadily, like inverted pendulums, rocking, waving, hinting at a cold wind I’m grateful I don’t feel. The sun streaming in through the window gives an impression of warmth, though if I put my hand on the glass, I feel the cold come through. Definitely winter.

I remind myself to leave the office early enough to stop at the store for my beloved Traveling Partner and pick up a few things he’s asked for. I’m eager for him to be driving again – soon – but I also greatly enjoy doing little things to be helpful. It’s a small way to show my love and appreciation. I feel needed when he asks for some little thing. He feels loved when I handle it capably. It’s an exchange. I smile to myself, feeling the way our love “balances the scales”. We complement each other in so many ways. We’re so similar, and also so different – we share so much, and enjoy life together so much more than we would without each other. I sigh contentedly; this matters so much more than the earlier frustration.

I finish my coffee, and begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, anger, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Love, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »