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Contentment and Solitude

September 10, 2017 //
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I woke late. Slept in. I made coffee and stepped gently through the apartment in no great hurry to begin the day. I opened the windows and let in the cool morning breezes. I smile at the recollection of yesterday evening’s twilight rainstorm. I sat a long while as darkness settled, listening to the rain on the leaves of the big leaf maples just beyond the deck. The fine ash that had fallen everywhere when the winds carried smoke from the wildfires into our area has been washed away. I carry my coffee and a smile out to the deck and linger there for some moments.

I had left the windows of my bedroom open all night, and the sounds of rain, and peeping frogs, lulled me into such a deep restful sleep. I feel rested this morning, content, and even willing to use the word “happy” to describe this moment. A rare moment of utter delight, satisfaction, joy, contentment… and solitude. I’m okay with the solitude, which works out nicely for enjoying the moment. Nonetheless, when my Traveling Partner replies to my good morning message, a bit later, when I took my seat at the computer, my smile deepens, and my heart thumps happily, reminded of Love.

This too shall pass. Some other evening perhaps, tears will fall instead of rain, and some other morning I will wake with a headache, or heartache. 🙂 It’s a thing. Life requires living – even the challenging bits are best if I am present, and the delightful bits are inevitably fleeting. So, I enjoy the morning, my coffee, this smile, this moment, this day… no idea what tomorrow holds. I’m sure there will be verbs involved. I’ve no interest in a do-over just now, or beginning this one again; it’s quite lovely as it is. I think I’ll just enjoy this, until sometime later. 😉

For just a moment, from this narrow perspective, it feels as if we’ve changed the world…

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

Check the Settings

September 9, 2017 //
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I had a weirdly difficult day yesterday. My mood quickly soured during the morning commute, though I couldn’t pin down quite why; it wasn’t that bad. I made good time. Drivers were the usual assortment of human beings being entirely human. I shrugged it off and restarted my experience with a cup of coffee, and the completion of some relatively easy-but-tedious tasks that had been pushed off earlier in the week. Satisfying.

My day continued as a rollercoaster ride of along a spectrum of emotions, hitting lows of vague frustration and irritability, riding brief highs of satisfaction, contentment, or eagerness. Up and down. Again and again. Hours of it. Day’s end found me eager to begin the weekend, but the commute home was an unpleasant continuation – more of the same. It was a bit like playing the game of living with all the settings on “difficult”. lol

Something was definitely nagging at me, keeping me irritated, and as much as I wanted (very much) to blame something external, I have come to terms with how often whatever is “up with me” is generally something both within me, and within my own control. So… I went looking for it in the one place I know to check, my meditation cushion. 🙂

Search within; it’s closest.

Yeah…so… I didn’t get anywhere definite with that, but I did feel better. Calm. Content. Balanced. I let go of the irritation. I regained my smile. Throughout the evening, I still caught myself punctuating unexpected moments with a discontented sigh, or a deep cleansing breath. I didn’t take it personally, and the evening was quiet and pleasant.

I woke this morning with a smile, a calm heart, and a clear awareness of what had been aggravating me so deeply in the background; I was thinking about buying a new car. I was considering it with a great deal of excitement. I was taking steps in that direction without really considering all the consequences of the decision. I’ve embraced having a car, and the convenience of getting around with greater ease than public transit allows, but it is a bigger car than I’d ideally like, if I had chosen it for my own needs. I’d love a sub-compact SUV, something with some guts, maybe a little sporty… I pre-shopped over days, and made plans to do some test drives this weekend, with some eagerness (I can just go do this!)… Although… I’d already also planned a quiet productive weekend at home, taking care of home and hearth and meeting other needs, that do indeed need to be met… The conflict implied in that bit of planning nagged at me all day yesterday without really being sufficiently obvious to resolve with any ease. This morning? I get it. I don’t need a new car. I don’t need a different car. I have a car. It’s in good condition. It’s comfortable. It is fuel-efficient. It is safe. It is enough. (More than enough.)

The garden calls to me; there are roses to deadhead, weeding and watering to do… and moments to enjoy.

Feeling like lost balance has been restored. I canceled test-drive plans. It isn’t “time” to buy another car, or a different car, or a newer car. I have what I need. There are other things I would use limited resources for, financially, and it would be an exceedingly frivolous move to buy a new car right now. I decide to put my attention on my actual needs, and take care of the woman in the mirror with greater skill – by telling her “no” on this one. 🙂

I haven’t even finished moving in yet! The studio remains unfinished, and not yet work-ready.

I finish my coffee while I finish reviewing my budget and looking for opportunities to be comfortably frugal, more focused on legitimate needs, and things I can take care of that would be significant quality of life improvements (a car would not qualify; I have a nice one already). I’ve got quite a list of such things, as it happens, and a weekend to do some of those things. 🙂 It’s a good place to begin, again.

 

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

Be You Instead

September 8, 2017 //
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Are you a Republican? A Democrat? An “Independent”? A “liberal”? A “conservative”? “Right wing”? “Left wing”? Progressive? A “nationalist”? A “patriot”? Among the “faithful”? An atheist? A “free-thinker”? Cis-gender? “Gender queer”? Non-binary? Are you a “social justice warrior”? A “snowflake”? A capitalist? A socialist? A communist? An anarchist? Neurotypical? “On the spectrum”?

Are you fused with an identity, seeing yourself as part of a specific limited group with specific challenges, limitations, requirements, rights, or burdens to bear that no one else can understand, and everyone else stands against? Have you divided the world into “us” and “them”?

That’s a lot of work. Maintaining the details of identity moment to moment, protecting it, shoring up the details of that internal narrative overtime and through conflict sounds like a lot to take on. Does it have real value? Are you that, and only that? Really? Are you even actually definably that at all?

I woke up this morning thinking about pigeonholes, identity, definition, and the way  I can so easily limit myself by becoming fused to just one element of my experience, potentially even building road blocks on my journey through life that may not have been there, in fact, at all. We make up most of our understanding of our own experience (and who we each are) out of “thin air”. Who are you? What matters most about that person in the mirror? If life ended in this moment, right now, no time to prepare – and in the next, strangers were going through your things – what would they learn about you? Is that the legacy you want left behind? What is your truth?

Who are you? Who am I?

My visit with my therapist yesterday was productive, and peculiarly comfortable and celebratory. I heard words I’ve never heard from a therapist before. “Well… do you want to just give me a call in a few weeks, if you want to see me again? I don’t think we need to schedule anything regular…” That’s probably not verbatim. I recall the moment more than the words.

Well. So, I guess I adult decently well these days. That’s… scary and cool. Who am I? The woman in the mirror doesn’t look different to me. There’s a thread of recognizable self that reaches back all the way to my earliest memories. I’m not any of the things it is so tempting to grasp to fill out some sort of “profile” of self-ness, though. It’s a strange awareness. I could say “I am…” and begin a long list of all the qualities and characteristics that could be used to identify me, but I am not any one of those things. If I allow myself that moment to fuse with some one characteristic or quality of my experience (“anarchist”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “survivor”, “veteran”, “woman”, “artist”…), I seriously undermine my experience of self. There’s so much more to me than any one quality.

I decide to stop wearing any labels, at least today, and enjoy that feeling of wholeness, of being human, of simply being. If we could each stop dividing our experiences into “us” and “them”, we could begin to change the world.

Isn’t it time to begin again?

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Words

Road Trip!!

September 2, 2017 //
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It’s not yet dawn. The sky is dark. The busy street I am on is still and quiet. No traffic. The neighborhood sleeps. Well, except for me – and of course, anyone else who is quietly up before the sun on a Saturday morning. 😀

My “bug out bag” is packed. The morning suddenly slows to a chill and relaxed pace; I’m already ready. I smile thinking about the drive ahead. On the other end of that drive – Love. Road trip!!

I sip my coffee and check off the last-minute details. I’m up early enough there is no need to skip any of the self-care niceties, and I am hopeful the drive itself will be pleasant and relaxed. It’s even a long weekend. 🙂

My coffee is just dreadful this morning. I find no “perfection” outside my acceptance of my experience, my willingness to embrace sufficiency, and my relaxed nonjudgmental awareness of circumstances. I’m not the slightest bit distressed about my shitty cup of coffee this morning, it exists in the context of an otherwise nearly ideal moment. 🙂 Will this mood last? Only as long as it does – like anything else. It’s not forever. Not the good. Not the bad. Not all of everything in between those two arbitrary points on an imagined spectrum snagged from one perspective of a carefully crafted narrative. lol What can I even know about “the true truth” or “the real reality”? I am mortal. A human primate with physically and cognitively limited senses. 🙂 I’m okay with that.

I smile and sip my coffee, aware of the bitterness of the now-tepid brew, and still indifferent to it. Today, love. And love. Well, and… Love. That there is love matters so much more than a moment of bitterness. 🙂

Metaphors in moments. Life lessons built on words and music. It’s a beautiful morning to travel. See you soon, Love. It’s time to share a bit of the journey. 🙂

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Categories Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being

Then the Alarm Went Off

September 1, 2017 //
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Not my alarm – I woke up ahead of that one, this morning. We had a fire alarm go off in the office yesterday and evacuated the building. Turned out to be a mistake by a construction worker, I heard. These things happen. What came next was hard; it had triggered me.

My anxiety and symptoms of my PTSD flared up. The noise of the alarm itself worked my nerves over as I calmly and efficiently left the building with haste. What got me, though, was “civilian behavior”. My anxiety continued to increase the longer I was exposed to the chaos and disorder of folks ambling down the stairs in distracted confusion, chatting about the day, and milling around outside very close to a building they had no reason to believe was still safe. I began scanning the crowd for an unseen enemy – we were all so exposed, to vulnerable, they seemed so unaware. The hyper-vigilance lasted the remainder of the day. My startle reflex was turned way up. My chest felt tight. My mood had become detached and mildly aggressive, “battle-ready”. By the time the all clear was given, I was no longer “safe for work” in some difficult to describe way, but had meetings left in the day, and workload to attend to.

I did my best. I went home as soon as I could. The commute was just more verbs and more practice. My startle reflex is dangerous in commuter traffic; cars or people approaching from my periphery reach my consciousness as an imminent threat. My hyper-vigilance combined with my agitation, anxiety, and aggression, result in a seething mess herding powerful machinery capable of killing, down crowded streets, too slow to feel satisfying, frustratingly slow, and being wholly made of human, I really just wanted to go home and cry quietly until the feelings passed.

My face still hurts this morning from gritting my teeth the whole way home.

I’m okay. I did get safely home. No one got hurt. No fender bender. No angry tirade – either on the road, or in the office. I managed to keep my shit together, and that’s something to pause for, to be aware of, to value – and this morning I sip my coffee focusing on the recollection of what worked, and how well, and less on the alarm itself, or the “civilian behavior” – people are people. My coworkers are not machines. They are not soldiers. This is not (no, seriously, it’s not) a war zone. My coworkers were the ones being rational; there was no cause for (the) alarm. 🙂 Admittedly, I still think they would do well to move with purpose in an emergency, to gather in an organized fashion and take a count of folks on their teams to be sure every is safely away from danger… but… they’ll probably need to actually experience danger to understand how important that actually is. So. There’s that.

This morning is so much more ordinary. I take a moment to be mildly irked with myself that my mental health situation last night threw off my timing getting ready for the weekend. I’m behind on my “to do” list. lol I’ll get over it. Yesterday was hard. I’ll get over that, too.

The sun is not yet up… I think I’ll get an early start on a new beginning. 🙂

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Frustration, grief, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, War and News of War, Words
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