Archives for posts with tag: emotional self sufficiency
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So Many Love Songs

December 4, 2023 //
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I am sipping my coffee and reflecting on the day. It’s my Traveling Partner’s birthday. We’ve managed to celebrate 13 of these together, now. Hilariously, it’s been more likely that we’ll be together for this day than any other one holiday on our shared calendar. Over the years, we’ve missed a Thanksgiving or Giftmas or two, and a couple of my birthdays, and quite a few Equinoxes and Solstices… but generally, we’ve managed to be together for his birthday. I’m glad. This is a hell of a partnership, and he’s a pretty great partner (and person), generally – worth celebrating.

“Communion” 24″ x 36″ acrylic on canvas w/ceramic and glow. 2011

I’m listening to love songs (that are meaningful to me – or us – in the context of “us”). A younger version of me wouldn’t have found this at all comfortable. There was a time when my cynicism was so profound, and my disappointment in humanity ran so deep, that I just didn’t “understand” love – or believe it even existed in any real way. Certainly not the fairy-tale forever-romance version of love that infuses every “bodice buster” romance novel or Hollywood rom-com. I’m not sure I think that sort of thing is at all commonplace, even now, and if a person is so fortunate as to find such love, nurturing it and maintaining it over time is a whole other monstrous challenge. We’re human creatures. We reason poorly. We lead with our emotions without understanding our emotions. We bumble through our lives chained by our bullshit and baggage, and holding ourselves back with flawed assumptions and unstated (and unreasonable) expectations. Messy.

Sharing the love, and sharing the building. Destruction is far less joyful.

I’m in a different place with Love these days. I’m a believer. It’s funny how it hit me, too. We were commuting together pretty regularly, and one day, after we got off the light rail together to change to our (different) buses, we exchanged a hug. I had a Lady Gaga song stuck in my head for hours after that hug. LOL I will probably always remember that moment as the moment I fell for my Traveling Partner. Hard.

So much of life is about love and loving.

It’s been a wild ride this thing called love. Sometimes poignant. Sometimes sexy (mmm-hmm… 😀 ) So, I sip my coffee and think about love. We’re happy together, generally. We have our trying times and vexing moments… doesn’t matter, really, the love matters more. We work it out. We’re reliably “there for each other”, supporting each other’s dreams and goals. Having fun with it. Growing together.

So many everyday things in my life were made for me by my Traveling Partner.

I sip my coffee as the love songs play on. So many memories, together. This day? It’s celebrating him. Like I said, worth celebrating. 😀 I already miss him, and it’s only been two hours since I left the house this morning. LOL It’s autumn, but I’ve got summertime in my heart – flowers, sunshine, and a deep and abiding love.

I’d say more about my Traveling Partner as an individual, but his privacy matters. He’s strong, capable, funny… he’s one human being that I’ve fallen for heart and soul, and I can’t even say “why” – I only know it feels right. It’s not always easy (for either of us; I’m a mess!) My greatest regrets in a long life well-lived? Hurtful words or thoughtless actions by which I’ve wounded my Dearheart, more than most anything else. What a rare and beautiful love. What a cherished partnership. 😀 I’m eager to end the work day and head home to spend time with him. ❤

(If you read this over your coffee, Love, I hope it makes you smile. Happy birthday, and I love you. I’ll see you in a couple hours.)

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, breathe, gratitude, inspiration, Love, Moments, Perspective, Relationships, The Big 5

Small Luxuries, Big Joy

November 30, 2023 //
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I’m sipping an afternoon coffee. It’s delicious. I chuckle to myself very much aware that I may “pay for it” later, with degraded sleep quality, but… hell, my sleep quality was crappy last night, anyway, so maybe I’ll just wind down toward the end of the evening and sleep just fine in spite of the coffee? Maybe not. I shrug it off and enjoy my coffee – there’s no need to overthink it, or sacrifice my joy for a concern that is not now. 😀

Work is good. Life is good. I feel okay – sure, there’s pain, but it’s generally manageable. The view from the office is pleasant. This space is quiet. It is quite a nice afternoon, productive and relaxed. It’s a good time to take a break, and just… enjoy the moment.

…I think those words and my brain lobs a half-assed attack my way (“You must be overlooking something… what haven’t you done?!?!”). I shrug it off and sip my coffee, watching the raindrops slide down the recently cleaned office windows. I breathe, exhale, relax, and enjoy this break and this coffee, utterly guiltlessly without self-consciousness or doubt. As I said; work is good.

I sit with my thoughts awhile; another small luxury (having this quiet space in which to reflect). I feel my afternoon anxiety medication kick in – it’s much more obvious when I don’t seem to be needing it. A leaf falls slowly beyond the window… I’m puzzled by that, since the urban tree tops are below me. I watch it fall, as if in slow motion, caught on some breeze, perhaps. The rain falls, gently, still drenching everything on the streets and sidewalks below. There are puddles in the park across the street. The sky is an even neutral gray. I sip my coffee, and sigh contentedly. It’s a good day to be this particular human being, in this particular moment, now. I enjoy it while it lasts. (“This too will pass.”) The quiet is luxurious. I feel infused with simple joy.

…I miss my Traveling Partner, and commit to working from home tomorrow. I smile, pausing to feel the luxury of having this option, and the opportunity to choose when and how to exercise it. I’ve been tied to a desk, or punching a clock – I did it for years. Decades. The feeling of autonomy in my working hours, and even in the location from which I work, is a pretty wonderful luxury. While I do hope I “always” have it for the remainder of my working adulthood, I hope even more to unfailingly appreciate it while I do – and hopefully not be grumpy about it if circumstances change. (I’d like to be my best self, generally, and for me that woman is gracious, understanding, adaptable, and pleasant to be around… I do my best. My results vary. lol)

I take a last sip of my coffee and sigh. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being

Find Joy or Make Some

November 26, 2023 //
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It’s evening. The long holiday weekend is over. Pie has been eaten. A holiday meal has been enjoyed. Thanks have been given, and the holiday season has begun. The tree is up – and even decorated. It’s a lovely quiet evening.

One of the new ornaments, made with love by my Traveling Partner.

I’ve managed to irritate my Traveling Partner in some small way. Not with any intent to do so. Not even sure what exactly has annoyed him, but I don’t care to make it any worse, and we have spent the entire weekend together almost continuously. lol I head to the studio to work on the holiday cards; they need to be in the mail within the week to reach everyone before the Giftmas holiday. I look over my materials. Pick out some patterns I like and get to work on my layout. Using the Cricut gets easier with every project (even for me! lol).

It’s a nice sort of break. I make time for a moment of writing, too. It’s been quite a lovely weekend, and I’d like to make a point of appreciating that, and reflecting on this tremendous quantity of joy – soak in it, and soak it up, and fill my heart with all this love. It’s a nice way to spend a few minutes.

Making time for creative projects also fills me with joy. It’s a way of creating joy out of chaos or conflict that I find useful; step back from the mess, and create something new and beautiful. It’s a form of tidying up, I suppose, which also calms me and fills me with joy. Creating order from disorder is, for me, a self-care practice. 😀

How was your holiday? Have you taken time to cherish the moments of joy? Have you shared them with others in conversation or correspondence? If the holiday was less than ideally joy-filled, putting focus on the things that did work is a nice way to bring some balance to your recollections. I breathe. Relax. Smile. It’s been a lovely holiday, and it doesn’t require much in the way of effort to reflect on the joy it brings me – but what does require effort is to make the time to do that willfully, with intention. So, I do that while I’m taking time for myself in the studio. Creative work. Emotional work. They “play nicely together”. 😀

Tomorrow? Monday. Time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being

Raindrops & Anxiety

November 22, 2023 //
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I woke to my silent alarm this morning feeling vaguely uneasy. It developed into a pretty notable moment of anxiety in the time between getting dressed and making my way to the living room, where my Traveling Partner was sitting, already awake, headphones on watching something or other on YouTube. I’d planned to work from home, although he had more than hinted that it would be a good day (for me) to go to the office (for him). I figured I’d just get a walk in, early, let him sleep awhile, then work from home, but… why the hell would I drag him along if my anxiety was going to flare up?

“Anxiety” 2011

I could hear the rain hitting the rooftop vent while I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. There’d be no walk this morning – that was when I decided to make the drive into the city after all. Maybe traffic would be light, being the day before a holiday? (It was.) Maybe the office would be quite comfortable since the HVAC was repaired yesterday? (It is.) Maybe I’d feel more focused, and less inclined toward being anxious if I were wrapped in the peculiarly routine mundanity of “the office”? (So far, so good.) So, off I went…

PDX on a rainy Autumn morning.

I sigh and sip my coffee. The day started with that moment of anxiety, but it hasn’t continued, and I feel okay. Absolutely ordinary self-doubt and second-guessing and bullshit that I can certainly get past, given some time and attention, and the appropriate self-care tools. Is it “holiday anxiety”? I mean, honestly, it could be… pretty ordinary human stuff right there. I’m prepared for the day (and the weekend), more or less. We’ve decided on a simple fairly traditional holiday meal to kick of the season, and it’s just the two of us this year, so the modest meal should be manageable for me to tackle on my own, which is necessary this year; I expect my Traveling Partner may spend much of the weekend actually working due to a fairly important project that dropped on him earlier this week (very exciting). Seems likely to be a lovely little holiday.

…I remind myself that his birthday is also coming up fast, and although I’ve already done something for that in a manner of speaking (“…Let’s call this your birthday/Giftmas present, then!”), I’m not the sort to let his birthday pass with not a single actual gift on the day, and I think I’d like to do something special for dinner and dessert… I amuse myself briefly considering the matter, and looking over his gift wish list and wondering how current it actually is. (I’ll have to ask.)

I make a mental note to remind my partner I’d like to get the holiday decoration stuff down out of the attic space, and find myself wondering if that stuff would be a better fit for the storage unit, where I could more easily retrieve it myself without help…? I generally spend the latter part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend decorating for the Yule season and preparing the holiday “pudding”.

…I’m feeling very festive this year, but also feeling very much “behind on things” somehow…

Funny. When I paused to write, this morning, I had very different thoughts in my head. Something altogether else, that I found perhaps more suited to something I might write on Thanksgiving… something about gratitude, about friends cherished over years, about sharing recipes and memories. But these ended up being the words that tumbled out and landed on this page. I’m okay with that. I’m feeling festive and grateful, and I’m pleased that my anxiety has receded. I find myself hoping that my Traveling Partner went back to bed after I left, and wondering what woke him so early this morning (and hoping it wasn’t me, somehow).

I sip my coffee and “take inventory”. I’m in pain today. It’s the weather, and my arthritis, and the sort of “nothing to see here” bullshit to do with aging and old (physical) trauma. I take something for it, and move on with the moment – it’s already time to begin again, and I’ve got shit to do to get ready for the holiday cooking (tomorrow) and work (today).

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights

You Can Plan All You Want

November 19, 2023 //
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Sometimes life throws a curve ball. Our path may take a detour we didn’t see coming. Sometimes unexpected circumstances are a big deal, with a lot of upheaval or moments of adversity and tears. Sometimes it’s just a rainy morning that makes an early walk less feasible (or at least less pleasant).

Waiting for a break in the rain.

I woke early and tried to slip away without waking my Traveling Partner. It wasn’t raining when I left the house, but it clearly had been. By the time I got to the trailhead and parked the car, it was raining pretty steadily. I sat contentedly listening to the rain fall, spattering the car, meditating and watching the dawn become day.

I managed to get a half mile in, between rain showers, then another after warming up in the car. It’s somehow very satisfying and I find myself thinking “nice morning for it”, in spite of the rain and the autumn chill. What a lovely weekend.

I think of a distant and very dear friend who is ill, and wonder if I should make the drive down to see her again, very soon? I worry. She’s going through a rough time and has COVID on top of that. 😦

The sky continues to lighten. I watch the few soggy leaves still clinging to branches flutter in the breeze. Now and then a gust of wind rocks the car. I wait for another break in the rain and think about love.

… Nice morning for it…

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Categories Allegories, autumn, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being
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