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A Few Words from a Friend

May 1, 2018 //
1

Sometimes it’s not enough to reflect. Sometimes it helps to reach out and talk things over with a friend. That’s not always easy; our friends tend, as often as not, to support us as if we are reliably correct, and as if our choices, themselves, can’t be questioned. It feels good to be supported in a 100% accepting and encouraging way, even when we are indeed the person “in the wrong”, or in circumstances when our own explicit choices directed our path, but it may not be healthy. It’s complicated. Feeling supported still feels good, and has real value.

Sometimes, I find it helpful to merely have the words of a friend. Their thoughts, day-to-day, to present a counterpoint to my own, just… generally. My own words are plentiful, but sometimes not enough to gain perspective. I’ve got a couple other blogs bookmarked for that very purpose… I bet you do, too. 😉

I was recently introduced to a blog of far viewer words than mine. Sometimes I need that. Brief perspective. Like a mental coffee break. Strictly Minimal. No, no – I mean, that’s the name of the blog, “Strictly Minimal“. 🙂 Enjoy.

This morning I woke to the discovery that I’d allowed myself to run out of coffee. (What the hell??) It’s quite early, and I’m not yet at any particular risk of a headache later. Rather than panic (an old habit I’ve learned to let go of, generally), I more simply decide to get coffee on the way to work, and handle restocking as an errand on the way home. I’ll need to run a couple of errands anyway; it’s a camping weekend coming up. There are things to do in order to prepare. For me, it’s the first camping weekend of the year. 😀

It’s a lovely morning. Entirely suited to all manner of new beginnings. I’m smiling, rested, ready for the day, and feeling fairly prepared for life. Generally, in the past, this sensation and state of being have usually preceded some horrible turn for the worse. I shrug that off; each moment is its own moment, and the future is not written. I have a great many reasons to be smiling today – one of them is that it is my anniversary with my Traveling Partner, celebrating 7 years married, 8 as lovers, even longer as friends. It’s a wonderful journey, and fully worth celebrating. Celebrating more, together, will come later – for now, I sit smiling. It’s enough.

Day breaks gently, beyond the studio window. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, Words

Rested and Random

April 29, 2018 //
0

I crashed early yesterday. I was tired, and also, sleepy. I figured it had to do with the combination of being sick recently, and also waking up before 3:00 a.m. I went to bed and thought nothing more of it, expecting to be awake very early. At almost precisely 8:00 a.m. this morning (about 12 hours later), I finally woke. It’s rare for me to sleep so deeply, so restfully, for so long.

I still haven’t made coffee. I’m so recently awake that I’m not quite awake enough to care to deal with that more complicated task. Writing is easy, and I’d left the computer logged in over night (fuck, how tired was I??). I am hoping that by sitting down to write, I can more easily prevent myself from randomly going off on some unscripted adventure – the result of not being awake, with car keys in my hand. (My driving and such are just fine before I’m fully awake; my decision-making, generally, is far less so – see “haven’t made coffee” as an example.)

I have the notion to drive to the coast. (I have other things I want, and have planned, to do.) It’s not very far. (It’s a bit more than 2 hours from here). It’s not that I have a plan or intent, or real something-or-other in mind that I’d like to do so see… (So, it’s not a legitimate desire to go there for some purpose, is what I’m saying.) I think I’d just like to have my morning coffee by the sea. (And it is a very bad idea for me to wait another two hours to have my god damned coffee! LOL) This? This right here? It’s a bit of my TBI in action; lack of impulse control. (As with many of the things associated with either my TBI and my c-PTSD, there are similar sorts of things that everyone may go through from time to time, though usually the magnitude of the challenge is quite different, and they are occasional experiences versus characteristics of every day life.)

Lack of impulse control used to run my life. It no longer does – at least, not full-time. It would be, probably, harmless for me to take the day, go the coast, come home in the evening – hell, it might be a lovely spring adventure, indeed, although I haven’t budgeted for it, or accounted for that use of my time in my planning for the week. I like a nice trip to the coast. It’s just not what I had planned, and amounts to undermining both my self-care, and my ability to get shit done that I would not want to be having to deal with immediately prior to heading down for a long weekend with my Traveling Partner, next weekend. So. No. Just “no”.

It’s bitter-sweet to tell myself “no”. Pretty much always. I’m both really good at it, and have done so many times to my detriment, building a sense of unworthiness and self-directed privation over time while others benefit from my nurturing and generosity, and I also suck at it completely, capitulating to whims that have cost me dearly with no legitimate benefit. Also a bunch of stuff in between. I practice hitting a sweet spot with my self-care, and personal decision-making about my life, that results in feeling supported (by my choices), nurtured (by being able to enjoy who I am), able to grow (through novelty and adventure), able to get to my goals for future me (by being discerning about what I allow from myself, and making skillful use of my resources)… you know, all the adulting things and stuff. It’s a lot of fucking practice. This morning, I admit, I cheated a bit by dropping my ass in a chair, fingers over a keyboard, eyes on a monitor; I likely won’t redirect my attention until I have finished writing. Which means I have bought myself the time required to fully wake up (meaning all cognitive functions are “on”), and do the best adulting I am able to do for myself. 🙂

…I am now awake enough that coffee is most assuredly my priority. I way overslept when I usually have my first cup, and the resulting headache would be only an hour or two away, unless I make some fucking coffee pretty soon… What stopped me earlier? I feel puzzled about it now, but at the time it seemed so much more work than I wanted to do, and throwing on pants and sandals and driving up the road for a cup of coffee definitely seemed easier (isn’t, in fact, any easier at all). If I’d done that, I may or may not have actually stopped for coffee, and would almost certainly be on the road to… somewhere… by now! No telling what the impact would be to my time – or my budget.

Coffee now? That seems the thing. I’ll be right back… Here’s a great bass line while you wait…

…Aaand, I’m back. With coffee. I rediscover that the quality of coffee that generally results from effortless (or near effortless) coffee is reliably less good than coffee I really put my attention toward, with great care. LOL This cup? Drinkable… at best. That’s not going to stop me from drinking it; at this point, it’s medicinal. Funny/not funny. I’ll make a better cup later. When I’m more awake.

Mmmm… yeah. Coffee was definitely a better choice over driving to the coast before I was awake. LOL Here I am, lovely morning ahead of me, work laid out in the studio, most of the housework already handled… I don’t actually want to go anywhere. Not really. This is where I want to be; in the studio, enjoying a chill Sunday, painting – I’ve been looking forward to it all week. 🙂 I found learning to discern between “things I actually want to do, no really” and “momentary whims driven by impulse that seem briefly very interesting” actually a rather difficult process. I still have to really work at it. It’s so easy to react. It’s so easy for impulse to take over. People seem, at least in my social network, personally, to place higher value on spontaneity than on planning, and to be far more interested in tales of whimsy and adventure than of plan, structure, and practice. Our attention spans have grown short with our increased use of devices. It is so easy to shirk the details of what must get done in pursuit of something shiny, and unexpectedly entertaining. The burden of deciding what I value, myself, is on me, though. The choice is my own. The verbs, too, are mine to labor over. The reasons have to be my own, as well, otherwise the will to stay the course is easily sacrificed in a moment of chaos, or whimsy. We become what we practice.

This morning I’ll be practicing the practices of a working artist, following a plan, and living the life I choose, quite willfully. If you need me, I’ll be in my studio…

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Black Coffee at 3 a.m.

April 28, 2018 //
0

I woke early this morning. Like… really awake. Rested. Alerted. Not sleeping. Inconveniently enough, at 2:17 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I wandered around the house in the darkness for a few minutes. Finally decided to go ahead and just be up and retrieved my glasses from the nightstand. I am up too early to take my morning medication. I make an iced coffee, black. I set a reminder about the medication.

I scroll through my “news feed” on Facebook and wonder if maybe Facebook should stop calling it that? I close the app, done with it, and committed to avoiding the old practice of just… endlessly scrolling. There’s nothing new to be gained in doing so, and much time to be lost. I sip my coffee. Cold, refreshing, served in a wine glass.

3:00 a.m. It has its own feel, doesn’t it? It does for me. The “quietest point in the night”. Stillness. Darkness. It’s rare to live with people who are awake at 3:00 am. I often am. I knew someone once who referred to it as “the bottom of the night”. I don’t remember who.

Other people feel differently about “the strange hour” of morning. Is it night? Is it morning? Should I be wakeful? Oh no, I’m not sleeping! I used to find maximum anxiety sleepless at 3:00 am… that was rather a while ago. Maybe a long time. These days… if I’m awake, I’m awake. I’ll sleep another time. Clearly not now. I sip my coffee in the studio and look over the work I have laid out, work in progress, the open sketchbook on the extended work surface created by storage cabinets filled with paintings. I smirk at my artistic productivity and feel a moment of sympathy for whoever has to deal with that when I’m gone. I make a note to keep better notes, to archive more meticulously, to practice better practices as an artist, not just as a human being. I am awake, being me, at 3:00 am. Who else would I be?

My open inbox on an alternate browser tab sits ready in case my Traveling Partner is also awake. It is undisturbed except for the trickle of spam emails from businesses and whatnot, arriving one by one during the wee hours. As they come in, conveniently one at a time, I unsubscribe. It seems too much effort when faced with a full inbox at 5:00 am on a week day. 3:00 am on a Saturday morning, one at a time? Ideal for unsubscribing (your results may vary).  (Turns out my Traveling Partner is awake, and he pings me back cute loving emoji; he’s working the trailing end of a Friday night gig, too busy for more, even at 3:00 a.m.)

This delicious quiet time took years to develop; it exists beyond the anxiety about sleeplessness, beyond the anxiety about “why am I awake?”, beyond the anxiety about “how will I go on?” and beyond the anxiety about all the things that plague a tired mind struggling to sleep at 3:00 am. This delicious gentle peaceful quiet time only exists because I created it for myself. Yep. You get to create this experience – choose it, build it, enjoy it – if you want it. Or, alternatively, you can also choose to dwell in anxiety in the wee hours. 😉 Not my call to make for you.

There are other versions of 3:00 a.m., of course. The Party People know what I’m talking about. The performers know. Ravers. DJs. Bands. The graveyard workers know too. The breakfast cooks and bakers getting the day started before the dawn, they know. So many versions of 3:00 a.m. Sitting in the quiet darkness of suburbia, windows dark in the neighborhood, and only the eerie light of occasional streetlights glowing, marking the way for the stray early morning traveler, all I hear is quiet. The busy street at the end of my driveway is silent. It won’t last. The Saturday adventurers headed for fishing, hiking, camping or road trips, will begin to make their way up the road around 4:00 am. The community will slowly wake, a bit at a time, as the dawn unfolds. But right now? The stillness wraps me, effortlessly. I linger in it, luxuriously.

Coffee #1 for the day is almost gone. Coffee #2 is only a daydream, a hint of a plan, a thought that perhaps a lovely hot mug of coffee out on the deck, in the chill of pre-dawn darkness, listening to peeping frogs and early birds waking, would be a nice start to the Saturday. I laugh, realizing I started Saturday some time ago. Before 3:00 am. I hear the traffic begin and notice the time – 3:56 a.m.

It’s time to begin again. 😉 It’s 4 in the morning.

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being

One Step, One Choice, One Moment

April 27, 2018 //
1

Ready for it? Here it comes… The next opportunity to make a profound change, or improve something, or embrace something (someone?), or “make that next move”… coming up any second now… Watch for it…

Oh. Wait. I don’t mean to be a let down, or to mislead you… but… that’s literally every single moment, ever, and right now. Seriously. Don’t like your life? Make some different choices than you have been making. They don’t even have to be huge choices. I’m not talking about “leave-your-mate-quite-your-job-move-across-the-world” changes, here, although those exist, too; it’s the small every day changes. Does your quality of life leave something to be desired? Let’s just start there, with something small.

Look around you right now (I’ll wait).

Okay. Based on what you see, from your vantage point right now, what could you be doing differently that may improve the quality of your life? Just that. No need to overwhelm yourself, just some small thing. Maybe “there’s clothes all over my floor” becomes “I’ll stop dropping my clothes on the floor”, followed by “Oh, hey, I’ll just pick these up right now, too”? Small stuff. Not all of everything all at once. Just… something. Practice it until it becomes “natural” – and by “natural” I mean that it will, over time, become something that is just part of who you are, you just do it, and it doesn’t really occur to you not to. That’s a thing, and it really happens.

By the way – it already has. Take another look around you, and hold that thought; you practiced everything you do that results in the life you live, over time, until it became who you are. Yep. Dishes in the sink? Clothes on the floor? Books you never read? A job you hate? Even things like screaming tantrums and hormonal rages. Chronically shitty attitude about life? Yeah, you can practice a mood or state of mind, too, and omg that can feel so hard to change – I mean, aren’t you “just who you are”? Nope. Not a thing. We are a product of our choices over time, our environment, our genes – lots of things – but we can definitely change a lot of it. It’s our choices that make that possible. We’re highly adaptable. We become what we practice, even if that wasn’t who we were when we started our journey.

So… today? Today my devices don’t control what I’m doing with my time, and aren’t permitted to pull my focus from “real life”. I use them, they don’t use me. I’m not a life support system for a fucking phone. 😉 That’s my change today – it’s actually pretty huge. I did okay with it yesterday. My notifications are off, and my ringer turned off during the work day, and when I’m driving (really anytime I don’t care to be interrupted by it). I don’t “need” Facebook, either, really, and the day went just fine setting firm limits with myself. I look at my phone when I need something from it. It’s not a tether that requires me to interact with the world on other people’s terms or timing. More practice today. 🙂 Every day. All of the minutes. Nothing but practice. I expect to fail some. That’s okay. I’ll just start over. Endless new beginnings, and we definitely become what we practice. 😀

Language matters too; put the past in the past tense. Put the person you want most to be in the present tense – then be that. (It does still take practice.) Don’t be tempted to let others define you. Definitely “use your words”. 😉

Time to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, Words

I Can’t Fix You

April 24, 2018 //
2

Oh hey, good morning. 🙂

It’s true, by the way. I can’t “fix” you. (Maybe you aren’t even actually “broken” in the first place, however “broken” you may sometimes feel…) Similarly, you can’t fix that person who is dear to you, or even that yearning stranger seeking support. We are not machinery. What is entirely possible and totally within reach is to change our experience. We can change our choices, change our reactivity, change our potential for resilience, change our actions, change our words, and even change our thinking – which, as it turns out, is a very big deal. We each (all) have choices.

“Be Like Water” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow and India ink. 2018

Pro-tip: If you regularly feel like you are spinning out of control and “have no choices” or “lack options”, taking some time to explore potential choices and options you have previously set aside as “impossible” or in some fashion unworthy, may be really worthwhile. If you’ve narrowed down the vast list of potential choices and options to just some small handful that from your present vantage point “all suck”, you’ve made at least one choice already; the choice to disregard some possible choices. I’m sure you have your reasons. Maybe handle that differently? Be open to more than what you, yourself, think is “obvious”.

Sometimes we need to step back to see things in context, or to gain perspective.

I spent the weekend delightfully, mostly painting and hanging out with friends. I provided comfort and support where it seemed needed. I felt valued and appreciated for “being there”. Realistically, I also know that I didn’t “fix” anything at all; I simply took time to allow friends to be fully heard, and supported their good hearts. Where helpful, I shared the practices that support me most, myself, hoping that these would be similarly helpful for my friends. I am aware, because this is how I roll these days, that very few of my friends will adopt practices that require real accountability, self-awareness, reflection, and… verbs. A lot of verbs, and slow incremental change over time, don’t sound nearly as enticing as a fad diet, or a horoscope, or a quick fix, or someone willing to tell us it’s “not our fault”. In a moment of emotional crisis, anything at all that helps calm the storm is welcomed. When the storm passes? Well… few people really want to do a lot work, though, right?

“So Deep” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow, glitter, and India ink. 2018

I’m not mad. I already knew I couldn’t fix you. I just want you to be well, and to be whole, and to care for yourself. 🙂

I maintain a certain healthy distance from OPD (Other People’s Drama) as much as possible. This works for me. It doesn’t make me less sad, when I see a friend in tears, to maintain such boundaries – it does tend to make me less frustrated that I was not able to “fix them”, by allowing me to remain mindful that honestly I never could, and also, there are verbs involved – not all of those are mine. 🙂 We each have to walk our own hard mile. We each have to face our own dark night. We each “hit bottom” our own way, in our own time, over the things that hold most meaning for us individually – our dearest loves can not save us from ourselves… But we can. No kidding. It’s just those damned verbs, and the slow passage of time, and the lies in our heads that tell us any differently. It’s just one more bit of resistance (within ourselves) to overcome when we undertake healing and change.

“Down by the River” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow, glow glitter, and India ink. 2018

Over the weekend, I also received the rest of my art work back. My Traveling Partner picked it up for me. I felt very relieved to have them returned to me. I find myself wondering about my attachment to them. It’s something for me to think over; it may be less than ideally healthy to treat them as literal pieces of myself.

“Because…Love” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow and gold leaf. 2018

Here it is, time to begin again. Working from home, still sick, but I am at least sufficiently improved to work. That’s progress. 🙂 What about you? What will you choose to do differently to improve your experience? What will you change to become the person you most want to be? What practices will you commence to become, over time, someone other than you are? Are you ready to become the person you most want to be? There are verbs involved… I can’t do them for you.

Here’s a great place to begin again. You’ll still need to practice. 🙂

 

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, grief, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, Words
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