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Reading Proust

February 9, 2016 //
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I purchased “Remembrance of Things Past” (an alternate title in some editions is “In Search of Lost Time“) by Marcel Proust. I suspect most people are familiar with Proust’s writing indirectly, and possibly often only through the fairly well-known “Proust Questionnaire“. Maybe in college a few people read “Swan’s Way“, or flipped through a condensed version, guide, or graphic novel of the author’s great work. I say ‘great’ because… wow. Yeah.

I don’t know why I’ve put off reading Proust. “Remembrance of Things Past” has clung to the edges of my personal ‘must read’ list since I was much younger (at a time when books were my escape from the unbearable). I read Milton. I read Plutarch. I read Rand. I read Tolstoy. I read de Beauvoir; I am not fearful of weighty tomes, nor voices other than my own. So…what’s been the hold up? Perhaps I have been waiting for a moment; I’ve only just begun it, and even a mere handful of pages into Swan’s Way (vol 1), I am completely blow away by the beauty of it. There’s the thing of it right there; it is singularly beautiful writing. Powerful. Complete. Authentic. I am not putting it off even another day, having tasted it and found it beyond worthy.

So… 2016. The year I read Proust. 🙂

How many ways exist to view the world?

How many ways exist to view the world?

I slept well and deeply last night, setting aside my reading some time before bed; these beautiful words are worthy of the respect and consideration of not falling asleep over them, and potentially missing even one shred of meaning over drowsiness. I woke this morning, smiling, with a heart filled with lightness, and empty of weight. My coffee is good. My yoga sequence felt helpfully pleasant, and comfortably eased the stiffness in my joints. I am not missing the opiate painkillers, and I suspect that more often than not any queasiness in the early mornings was due to the opiates, based on how I feel in the mornings since giving them up. Strangely, on the thought of painkillers, my consciousness both tries very hard to veer away from the thought of them, and also delivers a powerful moment of peculiar disconnected yearning. Craving in action. I breathe deeply, and let my thoughts move on.

This morning, the new place feels much larger than the modest increase in space measurably involved. Life is beginning to fit into the new space more fully. Morning is beginning to evolve to fit the space, routines adjusting to the changes in object placement, and room arrangement – for one thing, I have an actual dining room now, and I find myself now inclined to eat at the table, away from other things, rather than perched on the couch, which was the way of it for many of my adult years. Similarly, my studio is both real, and quite separate from the remainder of the household – and my desk is here in my studio, but the majority of my morning is not. It’s interesting how this one change actually changes so much; I do not spend time sitting for hours, fussing at the keyboard, scrolling through feeds, articles, tinkering with pictures aimlessly wondering if another email will come. Unproductive time is kept to a minimum here; I am in the studio only when I am in the studio, and at my desk only when I am actually writing. I seem to ‘have more time’ when truly, I’ve only stopped wasting so much of it … (wait for it…) mindlessly. 😉

Having moved from somewhat less than 650 sq ft, to somewhat less than 1000 sq ft, I sort of expected the feel of things would be mostly pretty similar… How incorrect was I?? lol Very. Vacuuming in the apartment I moved from took me about 15-20 minutes to do a nicely thorough job of it.  Yesterday, after 45 minutes of vacuuming, and the sense that it would never end, I still find myself wondering how an increase in square footage of less than 400 sq ft still results in more than twice as much time needed to vacuum?! Realizing, as I sip my coffee, that being quizzical about housekeeping matters signals how very moved in I really am, I relax and smile and enjoy the moment; I’m okay with a few extra minutes of vacuuming, floors, windows, and tidying. This is a really cute place, it suits me well, and I am taking care of the woman in the mirror by investing my resources in very good quality of life day-to-day. Sure, there are choices, but it is in these choices that I find my way to being the woman I most want to be, living a life of contentment and sufficiency. Isn’t that enough? 😉

Today is a good day for taking care of me – even if that means vacuuming. Today is a good day to read Proust – because I earnestly want to experience his words. Today is a good day to live authentically, and to face the woman in the mirror with honest acceptance, and real enthusiasm – simply because it is time well-spent. Isn’t that also enough?

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Categories Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, The Art of Being, Words

Being Committed

January 27, 2016 //
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Sipping my coffee I look again at the title and chuckle. No, I have not lost my mind, nor am I ‘being committed’ in some involuntary way in some moment of desperation. I meant it as ‘being committed to’ a concept, opportunity, event, plan, or task. In this case, I might even quite reasonably expect that I could be talking about being committed to the move, or to change, or some other loosely move-related experience, since today is Moving Day. Well, a moving day; I’ve got more than one. (A nice feeling.) Actually though, this morning I am taking time over my coffee to explicitly reinforce my personal commitment to treating myself well, and to general contentment and sufficiency.

Boxes, bags, bins, a cart, a van, some help, a sense of purpose, and three days ahead.

Boxes, bags, bins, a cart, a van, some help, a sense of purpose, and three days ahead.

I am excited about the move, and noticed at some point yesterday that the excitement is causing me a certain amount of dithering in my decision-making processes. Silly things like ‘what goes first?’ and ‘should I just go ahead and move the kitchen?’ – when in the simplest most obvious terms, everything will be moved, and it will happen over the next 3 days. There is no need to attempt to prioritize this room, over that; I can literally (if I wish) simply start walking items downhill one at a time. I would be moved in 3 days – I don’t have that much stuff.  🙂  This morning I awoke more clear-headed on the challenge; it’s not about the move at all, as much as it is about feeling fearful of giving up this state of general contentment, comfort, and security which has become my ‘normal’. It is an important realization that has allowed my morning to progress peacefully and without further stress (at least so far).

I continue to sip my coffee without further thought about the move or the moving; no further thought is required at just this time right here, and I very much need a few fearless calm minutes of contentment over words and coffee. Taking care of this fragile vessel and the being of light within is every bit as high a priority as this move. 🙂

I notice the deep quiet of early morning, and listen; there is the usual hushed coming and going of distant commuter traffic, and the buzz of the overhead light in the kitchen. I remind myself to alert the manager that the bulb is ready to be replaced – and realize I am ‘moving’ in my head, again. I breathe, and let it go. I put on my ‘moving playlist’ and enjoy a morning filled with music; I’ll be unplugging things today, and a house filled with music may be a day or two away once I do. lol I remember I’ll want my headphones, and put them next to my phone. Damn it. Still moving in my head. LOL Clearly … I am committed.

It's still 'about' contentment and sufficiency.

It’s still ‘about’ contentment and sufficiency.

Today will be a good day for balance, and a good day to keep checking in with the woman in the mirror. Today will be a good day to take things task by task, and to treat myself gently. Today is a good day for practicing good self-care, and being kind to myself. Today is a good day to change… apartments. 😉

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being

So Many Right Ways

January 26, 2016 //
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Another morning. I sip my coffee and breathe through the sensation of unease that begins to develop each time my thoughts land on moving; I have the keys, the lease is signed, and for the moment I live between places, in the thoughts of going from one to the other. It’s peculiar.

One day, one moment, of many.

One day, one moment, of many.

Today moving begins in earnest. Do I move the kitchen first? Maybe the bathroom? Just start with the farthest closest? Patio garden first to get it out of the way of carrying things through the convenient patio door? Across the muddy strip of winter lawn? These are not new thoughts, and they drift past in more or less the same order that they do each time they get my attention, again. The repetition I rely on to firm up good practices is a nuisance this morning; I have been here and it does not need to be revisited. It’s the unease; there is anxiety in the magnitude of changes, and a fear of ‘doing it wrong’, even though the only person making the call on whether it is going well or poorly is me. My home, my rules, my way; I am the sole architect of my joy or discontent on this move – and I’m a tad irritated with myself to be throwing my heart into turmoil over something I approached with eagerness and enthusiasm from the outset. These are the emotional circumstances that develop for me around change, and the greater the change the higher the likelihood that I will find myself, at some point, weeping or raging – lost in a storm of uncontrolled emotion, unable to function until it passes.

I am relying heavily on myself on this move. I generally do, then get tangled up in the help of friends in moments of humanity, things lost or things broken, feeling frustrated when real-life doesn’t meet expectations. This time I am leaning on lessons learned in the most recent 3 or 4 moves; I will handle what I can, and reach out only for the specific help I really need, when that time comes. I have professional coming to handle the very heaviest pieces. The satisfaction in self-reliance is pretty profound, and I am in a place in life where living focused more on contentment than on profit has resulted in household goods of fair lightness, with only a handful of pieces I can’t lift or maneuver on my own. I expect to ‘work my own way’, which often means sipping coffee between tasks, sitting down for a minute quite frequently, and taking my time – but also working in an organized way, and quite continuously at my slow steady pace from waking to crashing at the end of the day, passionately involved in creating order from chaos. Embracing change awake, and aware, and mostly fairly fearlessly… well… except for the occasional moment of nauseating unease.

I am missing my traveling partner. I am not regretting my decision to handle the move without his help, though. Every move we have done together has taxed our relationship during that period of time between beginning the moving, and finally getting entirely unpacked and settled in; I don’t handle change well, and it is uncomfortable to live with. (That’s putting it mildly, based on what I see reflected in my journal notes.) I don’t know what to expect from this particular move, emotionally, and I endeavor to set myself up for success by being okay with the unknown, on this one, rather than attempting to nudge myself in line with some specific expectation or another; maybe this is the move that shows me it doesn’t have to be such a disruptive experience? I’ve come pretty far. Still… I do miss him. I think about him often. Love anchors me to the move with a sense of purpose and security.

New perspective.

New perspective.

One more work day… then, The Move, and only The Move. I figure I’ll be living in the new place more or less full-time by Thursday afternoon… which also means I will be disconnected from FiOS for a handful of days until the provider cuts over my circuit to the new location some days later. I consider it – is it an inconvenience? I can tether with my phone, so it isn’t as if I am facing being without connectivity completely… Funny that internet access feels like a necessity in life, like drinking water and secure housing, or medical care; it is the unimaginable future of my childhood.  Still, maybe some digital downtime while I move is an opportunity more than a headache? More room and time to simply breathe, simply be. There will be time for dissecting lessons learned and having meta conversations later, and there is much to be said for having the experience I am having.

Today is a good day for time…and motion. Today is a good day to ‘walk on’ in life, with eyes wide with wonder and a playful sense of purpose. Today is a good day to remember that plans are not the goal – just as the map is not the world. Today is a good day to live life.

 

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Bliss Point

January 24, 2016 //
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Suddenly the apartment is so very quiet, almost unnaturally still. To be fair, I turned off the stereo some minutes ago, precisely for the quiet and a few still minutes. Silly primate – it  hardly makes it at all remarkable, when it is chosen. 🙂

My traveling partner spent the better part of the entire week with me, this past week, and it’s a rare delight. It’s been quite connected and wonderful, easy, and intimate; we work, and it’s an experience I enjoy greatly. We enjoyed this last morning (at least for some days to come) gently, over coffees and music, and baking cookies together before he took off for the company of other friends in other places. I am excited and hopeful that he enjoys an experience worth having, and I know that his own good choices will put him on that path. On the other hand… I already miss him.

Love in the kitchen.

Love in the kitchen.

I still have work to do, a journey ahead of me, with the woman in the mirror; it is still so easy to thoughtlessly defer immediately to any whim my love may have in the moment without also considering what I need for myself, and too easy to rest gently by his side, doe-eyed, without expectation, wrapped in warmth in some romantic Land of the Lotus Eaters, no needs beyond his presence. I actually have quite a lot more I’d like to get done, day-to-day, as pleasant as that is. 🙂 He left some minutes ago, and for the first several of those it was rather as if I had had something precious torn from me – the pain was quite peculiarly visceral, and very real seeming. So I turned off the music. I sat quietly. I took time to breathe. I took time to enjoy and savor the recollection of the lovely time we’d shared together this past week. I recalled some wonderful humorous repartee exchanged, and some heart-felt emotional moments. I gave further consideration to his gentle suggestions for improvement in the layout of my space, and some efficiency and safety recommendations. I thought over some cool quality of life improvements he suggested I do further research on that sounded quite good to me. I remembered his kisses, his touch, his loving gaze. I began to feel quite calm and secure and steady, and smiled remembering I’ve specifically asked to have some time to get the move out of the way, and that he has graciously made that work in his current plans – he’s that guy; it matters to me, and he respects my ability to plan and execute this move, and understands that there is value for me in handling it for a number of reasons. He is considerate and supportive of my needs. He’s a partner.

I have been putting quite a lot into deep listening, and slowing down and giving my partner room to be, room to talk and to share. I sit now, quietly, considering my partner’s words about his comfort, likes, preferences, needs, and the new place I am moving into. I feel supported and cared for, and reciprocate even in my planning; I look for ways to ensure the space suits his comfort as much as mine, without regard to whether we cohabit permanently or full-time. Whether he lives there is not relevant to my desire that he feel ‘at home’ in my space every bit as much as I do, myself. I don’t think I can explain why I place importance on his comfort, but it is quite important to me, and I have difficulty understanding how anyone can say “I love you” to someone else without also being willing to reciprocate actions of love.

Sometime around mid-morning, I realized we’d simply hit our ‘bliss point’ as humans together; doing things we love with someone we love, having a shared and intimate connected experience unique to this particular combination of humans, only. Not because no one else could share a small kitchen baking lemon shortbread, or because no one else enjoys coffee in the morning with their lover, but because no other combination of human primates would be precisely us, with our values, with our individual and shared histories, with our individual ways of viewing the world and communicating that to each other… we just happened to be, in that moment, the most wondrously, joyously, easily, happily, romantically us that ever tends to be – and it was enough. More than enough. For that short shared beautiful time, it was everything (in its own delightfully limited way). So much so that when the door closed, and he was gone, in that instant of real anguish… there was also joy. It makes sense that I needed some quiet time to sit and smile and let it all soak in. 🙂

Yes. Quietly. Meditation. Study. Rest. I’ve got a busy week ahead filled with change; change is sometimes hard on me, even when I embrace it so eagerly. It will be important to take care of me. This is all happening so fast…

I am walking my path from another perspective, and there is more to learn.

I am walking my path from another perspective, and there is more to learn.

…I smile, and remind myself it is entirely okay to slow it down. I notice the time and realize that aside from having a ‘test cookie’ with my traveling partner, my calories today have been pretty minimal. I pause to hope that he is having the same thought, somewhere along the way, and stopping for a bite, himself – although I find myself regretting that I had not thought of it before he left, I can tell I needed the quiet, having finally reached ‘my bliss point’ and become perhaps even a bit overwhelmed by the power of love. I don’t beat myself up over needing a little space to handle the move; it’s complicated enough handling me handling the move as it is – it’s a lot of small changes, and tasks to juggle, and details. It’s time to be focused on good self-care, and to be reminded that I am enough. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Uncategorized, winter, women, Words

So Tired, So Much to Do

January 23, 2016 //
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I am enjoying another quiet morning, and the joy of spending more precious time with my traveling partner. We both sleep much more easily, more deeply, and generally better when we sleep alone, each for our own reasons. I have, over days, been getting less sleep than I need, and averaging only about 5 hours a night, and rarely more than 2 or three uninterrupted hours. My typing and spelling are affected; I can see that as I write. My emotional balance is taking the hit this morning, although it has not yet expressed itself in any noteworthy way. I feel it.

I'd rather be sleeping...

I’d rather be sleeping…

I’m so tired. I’ve got days of fairly intensive manual labor ahead of me for the move, and more critically still; i have days ahead requiring my planning, cognitive, and judgement making skills be at their best. I can’t really afford, logistically, to spend the weekend recreationally in its entirety, there is simply too much to be done. The more of it I can do myself, the less expensive the move is. The less expensive the move is, the more available funds I have to ensure the bedroom in the new place set aside for my traveling partner when he stays with me can be furnished nicely straight away.

I’m tired. Very tired. I have ‘that headache’ – it’s the TBI headache most common when I am deeply fatigued. I have to think through the headache. I have to work through the fatigue. I have to communicate through the cognitive challenges cropping up as I get more sleep deprived. Maintaining my emotional balance and self-sufficiency, and also managing to remain quite flexible to the constant changes of plans around me is becoming seriously difficult. In part, these challenges are inflicted by the lack of consideration or willingness to plan of a person not only not here in this lovely quiet place, but also not even actually part of my life. My traveling partner’s plans get messed with by his Other, and the ripple effect hits me. At this point I am sufficiently fatigued to be less civilized about that fairly irritating reality, and in an effort to address everything I could, I dragged my unable-to-sleep self out of bed far earlier than a Saturday demands and spent an hour meditating, before the anticipated time my traveling partner’s alarm would be due to go off. I personally find that while it is wholly understandable to be feeling uncivilized, I am not comfortable with behaving thusly; meditation helps tremendously, and I get my perspective back.

Sometime later, I check the clock. The sky is beginning to lighten up quite a bit. It’s not so early now – and definitely after the time I expected my partner up and about, preparing to be on his way. No alarm. FUCK – this hits one my oldest childhood triggers hard. Memories of my hungover alcoholic father passed out as his alarm rings, Mom unresponsive beside him, and my childish dread that something terrible will go wrong if Daddy doesn’t go to work, and reminders to “Be a good girl, Baby, if Daddy doesn’t wake up, you make sure I do.” Panic. Anxiety. But… My traveling partner is not my father. He’s a free will adult with an alarm clock of his own. I dither. I’m too tired to think clearly. What to do? Anything? Will he be annoyed if he oversleeps? Did I not understand his plans? Shit. I gently wake him and just let him know his alarm did not go off. He confirms he changed his mind about his plans. I mumble something I hope is reassuring and exit the bedroom, hoping he can at least get easily back to sleep and catch up on his own deficit; he wasn’t having an easy time of sleeping next to me last night, just as the night prior I struggled to sleep next to him.

I closed the door quietly behind me. Now what? I haven’t had as much uninterrupted leisure of late for writing, and sit down with my thoughts in my mind, and let the morning unfold. I have no idea what the day holds. Don’t know what my traveling partner will do. Don’t know whether I will also have to change my plans, and don’t even know whether I am frustrated, annoyed or disturbed by any of it… I’m just so tired… and there is so much to do. I may just wrap myself up in a cuddly bathrobe and crash out on the rug, and let fatigue-stress tears slide quietly down my cheeks until I manage to sleep…

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

Or… I could make coffee. It’s Saturday. There’s no rush; that’s harder to remember when I am so tired. Most of the timeline planning, and basic strategy around how my move is organized so far was planned before I went short of sleep. I can trust my skillful rested self to take care of my less skillful fatigued self – we’re good at this now! I check my earlier notes; Saturday is identified for reservation making, changing over services, doing basic housekeeping – and getting the rest I need for the week to come; I don’t start moving until Tuesday.

Some solutions are practical.

Some solutions are practical.

I could do without the headache. I decide to put self-care first today, and take the day as it comes. I start water for coffee, and push the morning forward a bit at a time. It will require kindness with myself, and regular reminders that I have reached certain limits that can’t be ignored without putting me at risk of having some unpleasant emotional experience. It’s been a while since I have been at such risk on this level. Life’s curriculum includes pop quizzes. Sometimes things we want, or enjoy, come with ‘strings attached’ – other things that must be managed, mastered, or endured. Before anything else, I remind myself that the beloved human being in the other room is also tired, and being twisted into unexpected disorder by yet another being with her own challenges and agenda. I remind myself that my traveling partner is – beyond any of that – someone I love greatly, and who means me no ill will whatever. It’s a lovely morning, so far. I think I’ve got this. 🙂

 

 

 

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, Words
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