Archives for posts with tag: good self-care
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Laughing at the Monsters

January 26, 2017 //
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I love my friends. In these frightening trying times, watching a great nation descend into fascism is hard enough without people being gloomy 100% of all of the minutes of every day. My friends have adopted the weapons of wit, intellect, and a sense of the ridiculous, to cope with it all. It’s brilliant. I find myself laughing every day – and some days more often than my brow is furrowed with the weight of my concern. I’m no less concerned on the days I am laughing – but I sure do feel “safer”, empowered, and more able to cope with the fear of what may be to come.

Don’t forget to laugh. 🙂 Scary sure, but if there is an element of the ridiculous or unbelievable, there’s probably also a great joke or moment of amusement easily within reach, too. 😉 Monsters hate laughter. I plan to keep humorous, insightful programming at the top of my viewing list. There’s a reason shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Last Week Tonight do so well; we need to laugh at our fears. South Park provides a surprisingly astute take on the affairs of the world, too. Our monsters need to be taken to task in the most amusing ways possible.

Then, too, there’s music. Art. “The Arts” are the soul of the resistance – any resistance. No doubt American artists in all fields will be doing some of the most amazing work of their careers over the next 4 years. Enjoy it! Support it! Patreon is a great way for everyday people to also patronize the arts – don’t leave America’s soul to the terrifically wealthy, it also belongs to you.

There is more than what is going on in life, and the world, than our momentary individual fears, doubts, and struggles. We are each having our own experience. We are also all in this together. Again and again, I find that taking the very best care of the woman in the mirror requires that I also do my very best to be the person I most want to be out in the world. Small mirror, big picture. Staying whole and well and emotionally healthy is pretty important for me, myself. I hope not to lose sight of how important it also is for how well I am able to support my family, invest in my community, and support the overall “social wellness” of my country. (If there are “social ills”, there must therefore also be an idea of “social wellness”… right?) I’m just saying – take care of you, too. If the grand freak-out on Facebook, and the depressing heinous fascist bullshit coming from Washington D.C. is wearing you down, take time for you. Chill with a cup of tea. Put the news over there to the side for another time. Breathe. Invest in your own self-care and quality of life. Take care of you. “Put your own oxygen mask on first” is a good basic idea; when we care well for ourselves, we have are more likely to have the resources to also care for others. I’m just saying… pace yourself, it’s going to be a long 4 years. 😉

This morning sipping coffee, listening to music, reading the hilariously humorous posts and comments by my very witty friends, and feeling for the moment rather… hopeful. It’s a nice morning. It’s enough. Today is a good day to laugh; our laughter can change the world.

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Categories Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, winter, women, Words

Shit Gets Real

January 24, 2017 //
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Well, no more so today than any other, really – think about that. On the average… things are pretty… average. Typically routine. So, if it’s a routine you don’t favor – change it. Just saying. I know about the verbs; it can take a lot of them. And choices, too, it takes a ton of those. The practicing – yeah, that’s an ongoing thing, and certainly I fail often enough to enthusiastically begin again – often.

It was helpful to let go of being frustrating by the slow progress of change and just sort of… go with it. Just be.

Things often seem to get harder, more complicated, more unpleasant, before new practices result in durable, reliable, positive change. Change is, though, and we do become what we practice. I only mention it because as angry as some of us are about American politics right now, as fearful as we may be about losing our rights, our health coverage, our quality of life, or our sense of place in the world, we will most assuredly become what we practice. Don’t choose “the dark side” – continue to choose in favor of becoming the person you most want to be. Yes – definitely – even in these trying times, and yes, even under such testing circumstances. Study winter all you want, until you walk in the snow, brave the ice and feel the cold, you don’t know winter – and winter doesn’t care at all how well you understand the situation if you wander out into the weather unprepared. All that study, preparation, and practice does matter, though; because you’ll know to bundle up against the cold, and you’ll have the gear to do so. 😉

Enough about all that. Are you taking care of you? Don’t let the political madness change who you are – whether in Washington or on Facebook – take care of that precious fragile vessel, and the being of light within. You matter. If you’re feeling on edge, anxious, and struggling with emotional balance “for no reason”, consider that you may have exhausted your emotional resources such that you legitimately need a little down-time. Take it. Turn off social media, even for a few hours, and the TV, and put down the news, and yes, even your handheld device. Have a cup of tea in a quiet room. Look out the window awhile. Breathe. Let your thoughts drift past unengaged, and unexamined, in a state of calm awareness. Just be – give yourself that. This is your life! Surely some handful of gentle hours are yours for the taking. 🙂

Today is a good day to take care of the person in the mirror. To breathe. To relax. To be. It’s enough. You’re enough. 🙂

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

My Results Vary

January 23, 2017 //
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The alarm just kept beeping at me. Eventually, I had to wake up. My coffee isn’t quite cool enough to drink. I keep sipping at it anyway. I am so groggy this morning. Some mornings I get a slow start. It is what it is. I make room for myself to be a little clumsier, a little slower, I try not to rush myself. Learning to be patient with myself has, over time, also made me kinder to other people. I found it damned difficult to be any nicer to anyone else than I was able to be to myself.

Taking time, making room for this moment, now.

Taking time, making room for this moment, now.

So, this morning, one thing at a time. A second cup of coffee, maybe a third. The safety net of routine and habit – and self compassion. This morning it is enough to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, The Big 5

Appreciating What I Can

January 19, 2017 //
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Appreciating what I  can in life seems best paired with not taking the shit I don’t appreciate at all personally. It is a decent arrangement, generally, resulting in considerable calm and contentment. This morning, I am appreciating sleep – the sleep I didn’t get last night – and I’m not taking at all personally that I didn’t get the sleep I needed, which, while I don’t appreciate that, wasn’t at all personal. Sometimes I can’t sleep through the goings on in the world, however local or remote, and sometimes I can’t sleep through what’s going on in my head. I really do enjoy deep restful quality sleep, though. 🙂

With regard to the sleep I did not get last night, it matters far more that I am awake now, alert, feeling merry, and more or less ready for the work day. With just Friday (and today) between me and the potential for sleeping in (on the weekend), this is doable. There’s no tragedy here, and barely any inconvenience. My lack of sleeping is not associated with anxiety or tinged with negative emotions. I am in a manageable, minimal, amount of pain. “My glass is more than half full”, meaning to say that I enjoyed the evening in the company of my Traveling Partner, and feel cared-for and well-loved. Even with the poor night’s sleep, the day begins well. I definitely appreciate that. 🙂

The snow melted away slowly in yesterday’s steady rain. The commute to work was treacherous and slick; the thin layer of water on all the accumulated ice was far more slippery than ice or snow alone ever could be. I skated awkwardly along the walking portions of my commute, appreciative of bus service that kept the walking portion shorter than usual, by far. As the day went on, the snow continued to melt. The journey home wasn’t especially treacherous, slippery, or complicated – just wet.

Coming home to real partnership is something I appreciate, too. My cardboard recycling had begun to pile up, bins were full after the holidays, and later an icy parking lot I could not safely cross on foot with my hands full prevented me handling things. I felt uncomfortable with the clutter, and it had begun to aggravate me. I arrived home to find that my Traveling Partner had taken care of it, and any number of other things: putting away clean dishes, hanging the closet door that so recently came loose unexpectedly in my hands, installing a replacement external hard-drive (he’d also taken time to locate as many of my old back up files and images archived on his network as he could identify, and had already put them on the new drive for me). My quality of life when I returned home was notably improved over when I departed for work in the morning. It’s lovely to be cared for. I appreciated, too, the sweet relief of connecting and sharing time in the same physical space after two weeks of being kept apart by circumstances, pain, or bad weather.

Small things that frustrate or annoy me may have been piling up over time… now, this morning, embracing a moment of appreciation for what is working, what is going well, and what I enjoy in my life, it’s hard to give any weight to small frustrations and inconveniences. It’s a nice change.

My thoughts turn to moving and I find myself wondering if my frustration with not yet finding a new place have been stalling other healthy processes; frustration is my kryptonite, and I try to be mindful of its sway over my thinking when it becomes prominent in my experience. The lease here runs out at the end of the month. The weather has been intensely crappy for house-hunting, or searching for a rental home closer to work, and there are so few hours in the day available for the purpose, at all. There is little time left. Do I sign a six month extension on the lease here? I don’t want to live here anymore. I want a place of my own – really mine, a home. I know so much more about what I want, and what I need, and what is enough… and I haven’t found it, yet. I’m also… not quite ready. I meant to be. The holiday season got in the way of being more prepared, and I made a practical decision about supporting my Traveling Partner’s goals ahead of my own, short-term. We do that for each other now and then, because… love. So… yeah. Six more months here now seems the pragmatic choice, the practical, feasible, doable decision with the least upheaval, for the time being. I would, in all honesty, prefer to move during the summer months, anyway. Less rain falling on paintings being exposed to weather, carried from residence to moving truck, from moving truck to residence. Thankfully, I have options – and an awareness of options. I make an appointment to sign the lease next Thursday, on a day I will be out of the office on other personal matters. I have another week to keep looking. Hell, I found Number 27 less than a week before I moved, back in May of 2015. 🙂

Today isn’t “perfect” – what ever is, really? It’s enough, though. Today is a good day to appreciate having enough. Being enough. Doing enough. I am content with sufficiency. Today that’s enough. 😀

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

Still Smiling

January 12, 2017 //
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It snowed enough night before last to set the record straight on winter in my area; it’s a thing, and it means business! I worked from home yesterday, and will do so again today. I’m grateful I have that opportunity. The unsteady, swerve-y tracks in the snow report that at least one of my neighbors is not so fortunate. Some people make the choice to brave the poor driving conditions. Some people have to. Some people think they have to. Some people just do.

Eerie pre-dawn sky, on a snowy day.

Eerie pre-dawn sky, on a snowy day.

I had worked out a strategy with coworkers. We planned how to handle the inclement weather together, in advance. It was efficiently done. We’ll do it again that way today, figuring since it worked yesterday, it will therefore work today. As reasoning goes, it’s not the best, but we’re starting there nonetheless. The days in question are different in small ways already… Yesterday, I woke at 4, before my alarm went off. This morning, my alarm drags me from a deep sleep with considerable reluctance, groggy, and struggling to wake. Yesterday, there was no question this was necessary, from the moment the day begin. Today, although our plan seems likely to be well-chosen, I didn’t cross the city personally, yesterday, and don’t realistically know what it might be like to cross it today. The portion of guesswork is larger, although I suspect I will have chosen wisely… It’s hard to be  sure so early. Yesterday, my morning flowed smoothly although I wasn’t set up in advance. This morning, I am completely set up, but I stumble, often. I am having my own experience, and it varies. There’s probably a metaphor buried in all that snow.

I sip my coffee. Some things don’t change. lol

Today is a good day to approach each task with as much care as I did yesterday. Today is a good day to work efficiently, and to take care of this fragile vessel along the way. Today is a good day to give myself my undivided attention, at least now and then. Today is a good day to practice.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words
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