Archives for posts with tag: happy new year
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Caring and Coffee

January 2, 2026 //
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This morning I’m writing from my home office. It’s later in the morning than I usually wake, and I’ve a short work day between me and the weekend, but it begins a bit later. This is time I’d usually spend out on a trail somewhere, walking with my thoughts. This morning I am at home. Still dealing with lingering symptoms of illness, especially first thing, and yesterday evening my Traveling Partner took notice when I described my plan for the next morning.

“What kind of symptoms are you still dealing with?” was quickly followed by “I don’t like the idea of you being out in the freezing cold and dark when you’re sick, please stay home tomorrow and take care of yourself.” So… Here I am. Taking care of myself, and enjoying an excellent cup of coffee at home. Of course, I managed to wake my Traveling Partner when (or after) I woke. He greeted me in the kitchen as I attempted to prepare coffee quietly, and checked on how I was doing. My congestion, weak voice, and occasionally coughing validated his concern (and confirmed his suggestion that I stay home was a good one). He doesn’t grief me over waking him; he is sympathetic, caring, and concerned for me. I retreat to my office space to drink coffee and deal with my symptoms, and work on breathing comfortably. I go through a few tissues. I drink my coffee.

…Before the work day even begins, my Traveling Partner checks on me, and notes that I “sound awful” and that he really doesn’t want me wandering around out in the cold early in the mornings, encouraging me to just stay home for a couple days and take care of myself. He reminds me that either he or the Anxious Adventurer can go to the store for anything we need and handle whatever has to get done, while I put my energy into getting well. I know he’s right. He gives me more suitably useful advice, which I am grateful for; my thinking isn’t too clear, and the longer I’m up, the more aware I am of how much I’d rather be in bed. LOL

… I decide to call out sick and just rest and work on getting well…

… My Traveling Partner encourages me to take a hot shower to ease my congestion. It’s a good idea and I’m grateful to have clean water, reliably hot, whenever I want it. I’m fortunate. It wasn’t so long ago that indoor plumbing for bathing, drinking, and cooking, were real luxuries only available to a privileged few. I stood in the steam under the running water, wondering how many people in the world still lack safe drinking water, and indoor plumbing. Too many, I’m sure (since, ideally, that number would be 0 in any truly fair world in which resources were appropriately distributed to maximize quality of life for all). I knew people who had only a well for water, and an outhouse for waste, when I was a kid, though it was becoming rare anywhere in the US besides way out in the country by that time.

I felt some better after a hot shower, for a little while. Eventually, my body reminds me I am not well yet, in the form of fatigue. Yep, I tired myself out taking a shower, putting on clean clothes, and sitting up for half an hour. I don’t actually fathom how I thought just pushing myself harder/further day after day was going to be the best approach to taking care of this fragile vessel. That was dumb, but holidays are special and I “wasn’t sick enough” to just skip it and go back to bed… and so, here I am, three weeks into what began as a relatively mild flu, now forced to take it seriously, because my symptoms haven’t cleared up and even seem worse this morning. Fucking human primates – we are pretty bad at admitting we’re ill and properly taking care of ourselves. Well, a lot of us are. lol I am. I meant to do better by the woman in the mirror, but I failed.

S’ok. It’s a journey. I’m having my own experience. I can choose, change, and choose some other change some other time. Today I’m choosing self-care, and going back to bed. I’ll begin again later.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, The Art of Being, winter

Step One…

January 1, 2026 //
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It is New Year’s Day, January 1st, 2026. I woke up early, no hangover, feeling pretty relaxed and comfortable in my body after a good night’s sleep. This is only surprising because quite a few of the neighbors were up well into the night setting off fireworks and celebrating the end of 2025. Sounded like quite a lot of enthusiasm to see it end.

I’d gone to bed early, still struggling with lingering symptoms of recent illness and just not feeling up to a lot of fuss and bother. The sound of fireworks did not prevent me from sleeping. No parties, no drinking, no fancy dinner, no company over to ring in the new year; it was a quiet evening at home. It’s not surprising that I slept well and woke without a hangover.

The year ended somewhat painfully, with one final “fuck you” from circumstances delivered on the last day of the year. My parked car was sideswiped by something while I was working yesterday, which I discovered when I left the office to return home. Fuck. For real?! I cried. I pinged my Traveling Partner for comfort and guidance (too upset to easily process next steps), then called my insurance company to file a claim, and then local police department to file a report. By the time I got home, I was merely annoyed, and managing to feel grateful it hadn’t been worse. The damage to the car is cosmetic, and I wasn’t injured. It definitely could have been worse!

I sip my hot cup of cheap gas station coffee, listening to the rain falling at this trailhead, and thinking about how much my choices create my experience in some circumstances, and how circumstances sometimes create an experience I didn’t see coming, in others. I still have to deal it, with regardless of my previous choices or circumstances. It’s a journey. I do have choices and something to say about the experience I have. Powerful. Knowing this does nothing to prevent me from being upset when things go poorly, just reminds me there’s a lot about it that remains within my capabilities to handle, manage, control, or deal with properly.

… I’m still mad, though, I mean, for real? I have lingering “why me?” feelings, but I’ve done what I can for now…

I left the house this morning feeling a muted sense of purpose, and undecided on what trail to walk. It was early. I’ve got options. It is a cold morning, but not freezing. As I get into the car, it begins to rain. My nose is running and I’ve started coughing – taking my noisy sleepless self back into the house would only serve to wake everyone else, too. I don’t feel like dealing with that, so I head out in spite of the rain. It’s not cold enough to snow – I guess I’m grateful.

Now I’m sitting here at the trailhead, waiting for a break in the rain, and maybe for daylight. There’s no traffic beyond the parking lot. The morning is quiet and suited to meditation and self-reflection. It’s a gentle beginning to a new year. I make a point not to look at the news; I don’t want to do anything that might break this fragile moment of peace and contentment. Not yet. Later will be soon enough to begin again.

…

…

…

… I can’t believe I’m still dealing with being sick… Maybe I’ll just go back to bed after I return home? Anyway… Happy New Year!

First light on the trail, first morning hike of the new year.
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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, winter

New Day, New Year, New Chance – New Choices

January 1, 2023 //
2

Here it is. New Year’s Day. Another year wrapped up and a new year beginning.

…the new year is a blank page…

I’m still working through disposing of my old journals. It’s an interesting project, although it has tended to be a bit more emotionally engaging that I’d ideally like it to be. There are a lot of opportunities to make a willful point of letting some small bullshit detail go. Choices to be made to put down some baggage. I shred page after page, poignant moments, moments of rage and disappointment, moments of frustration and doubt, moments of discontent and disillusionment, moments of profound insight and great delight…memories of love and anger, and bearing witness to the passage of time.

Sometimes it’s necessary to let something go before I can truly begin again.

I’m glad I found so many little sketches. Saving those matters to me more than the words I’d written about whatever events they captured (or were inspired by). Some of these, though, were done on the reverse side of a page I don’t care to preserve… those I photograph, before shredding the page. They’ll live on as a digital image, now, and nothing more.

“Glow Opera Ballerina”, 5″ x 7″ ink on paper, 1999 – shredded.

I’d inserted various bookmarks and objects as placeholders between the pages of some volumes. Photographs. Notes. Love letters. A CD-R. Wait…what? A CD-R? (I wasn’t even certain we had a media reader that could read that, after all this time.) The name on the disk was not particularly revealing… almost as if intended to obfuscate the contents from casual view. I asked my Traveling Partner if we had a means of reading a CD-R? We did. Taking a look at the contents without opening any individual item, it was pretty clear this was a disk that would do best to join the various journals on the path to destruction. I thought to shred it, but… the shredder wasn’t happy about that choice. My partner suggested microwaving it for a couple seconds.

Unreadable by intention.

There were quite a few other interesting items in the bin with the journals. Old manuscripts, never finished. Individual pages of poetry that had been scribbled on napkins, note paper, or legal pads. Correspondence I have saved over the years – letters from my Dad, from my Granny, from old friends, and a largish manila envelope of the letters exchanged with my first husband while I was away at war, both his to me and mine to him. Some of this I’ll no doubt keep, but I’m starting to view some of this old stuff – explicitly anything to do with my first husband – as a sort of malicious “horcrux” (if I may borrow that notion) that has the potential to continue to be toxic for my day-to-day experience of myself, just through existing. Maybe it is time to destroy all of that, too. (I kept it for years because I was fearful I might someday need to prove what I’d been through.)

Old manuscripts and correspondence will need attention, too, another day.

It’s a lot to process. I think the commitment to getting it done as part of my individual new year’s celebration keeps me from getting overly involved in the raw emotions poured out onto these pages, at least a little. So many pages. So much rage and hurt and sorrow. Yeah, I definitely don’t need to drown myself in the hurts of the past – quite the contrary. It’s time to let it go. Page by page, volume by volume – this project has been overdue for a very long time, and it feels like quite a relief to finish it.

What about you? Are you ready for a new year? A new beginning? New practices, or resuming useful practices you’d let fall by the wayside as time went by? Will you be making a big change?

…Are you ready to begin again? I know I am. 🙂 Happy New Year!

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, War and News of War, winter, Words

Like a Blank Page

January 8, 2022 //
0

It’s a new year, eh? New cup of coffee here on my desk, too. New morning, new day – a Saturday. The season has turned, and Winter is truly upon us. Here that mostly means cold, wet, and rainy, with occasional flooding, and the sounds of trees cracking when the wind blows on a freezing day. Other places, other weather.

Out on a nearby trail, taking note of the recent winter storm damage; fallen trees open up new views of the sky.

It’s been a few days since I sat down to put words to a blank page. The holidays passed, as holidays do, and this is a time when best intentions set boldly of a New Year’s Eve begin to fall to the mundane, the routine, and the unexceptional – change is quite a bit of work. Did you commit yourself to some specific change or improvement in life for this new year? Are you already frustrated? I try to avoid “resolutions” – it just hasn’t been a successful approach for me, personally. Still, this year I do want to “do more, better” – and be more that person I most want to be. It wants a new beginning, though, because I am deeply flawed, fundamentally very human, and entirely capable of bad decision-making, errors, and falling short of expectations and commitments. I’ve disappointed myself a number of times this year, once in a serious, significant, and painful way. So, as is so common, I set myself to putting things right as the new year approached, and tried to sort out what really crap-tacular shit is holding me back, and what baggage I can maybe put down , and what things I can do better, generally. I’m back in therapy, working on difficult specifics.

What sorts of changes am I looking for, this year, myself? It’s an assortment. Last year I got in 1 mile per day (average) over the second half of the year (started in July, finished on 12/31/21). This year I’m going for 2 miles per day, all year. 730 miles. On foot. I mean… it’s not “all that”. People do through hikes that are far longer, and conquer those in shorter time. 🙂 For me, working from home full time, during a pandemic, 2 miles a day on foot still manages to feel like a (healthy) stretch, particularly if I am making a legitimate attempt to do some portion of that every single day. So. I’m doing it. I’ve at least started. I sip my coffee and wonder if I’ll give up, or feel inclined to “cheat”. (There is no “cheating” on such things; either I succeed or I fail. Miles on foot are miles on foot. Doesn’t mean there won’t be something within me inclined to wonder if I could “find an easier way”. I’m very human.) Various other small things; get more done with less bitching (housekeeping shit, I mostly mean), really embracing the direct personal value to my quality of life that those efforts have, and maybe stop fucking resenting the necessity. That gets super tedious for me, even from within. “Do more, bitch less” seems a good place to begin. So far this year, I’ve been hitting the mark there pretty well, just making a bit more effort, with a bit less resistance to the effort required. It does seem to make things actually easier.

I’ve got bigger changes in mind, too. This partnership means the world to me. My Traveling Partner is special in my heart. Surely I could be a better partner? Better friend? Better human being to make a life with? I mean… there may be some things about me that may not improve much, however I fuss and practice, but that can’t be what stops me from growing and improving in all the ways I can improve, right? PTSD and brain trauma are for sure ass-kickers, as life challenges go, but I’m not without potential, and I’m pretty wonderful in so many other ways – there’s no legitimate reason to allow my issues to define me, or hold me back from making more progress, and walking my path with future successes in mind.

I wrote a bunch more words, deleted those when I noticed that my mind was wandering, and my words had become… unfocused? Purposeless? Too… something. My Traveling Partner stops by to invite me to share an experience with him later – doesn’t matter what sort, really, it’s the invitation to enjoy each other that matters most. Sounds like fun. I enjoy his company, and sharing time and activities. I smile after he walks away; we’re both pretty grumpy first thing in the morning, and don’t always want to “deal with people” – including each other. It’s a wonderful morning when we’re already exchanging smiles by 8:00 am on a Saturday, and making suggestions for shared experiences to enjoy.

Other than one errand I plan to run this morning, I’m hoping to spend most of the day here in the studio (painting, instead of writing). It’s a good day for it, I think, rainy, cold, dreary… the bright lights in the studio are probably good for my emotional wellness in winter months. 🙂 I’ll make cocoa… and begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

A Backward Glance

December 31, 2020 //
2

The last day of 2020. There’s no point arguing that, and unless we abruptly change calendars, there’s no turning back now; the year is ending. 🙂 I’m okay with that.

This is a season of change. There are choices and plans to make. There are past mistakes to contemplate, to learn from, to avoid in the future. There are future opportunities (and pitfalls) ahead, on which to build still further into the future. My results will surely vary. There will be verbs involved. Practices to practice. Choices with surprising outcomes, upon which to reflect further. It seems like there is almost always “further” to go.

This blog, this humble instrument of expression, these handfuls (fistfuls? bucketfuls?) of words have been incredibly helpful for me, along this strange journey of healing and growth, as I head toward being the woman – the human being – I most want to be. I sip my coffee, flavored with a bit of the buttered rum batter I made this morning, for later this evening, when my Traveling Partner and I toast the new year together. It turned out pretty good, and I’m pleased with the flavors. Pretty good in coffee, too. 😀

I started this blog on January 8th, 2013, as I teetered on the edge of life’s most final decision; whether to go on living. (Breathe. This is all about hope and promise and continuation – it’s not a sad tale.) Since then,

I’ve published 2232 posts here.

I’ve received 10,020 spam comments (blocked by Akismet).

I’ve received 1060 legitimate comments from readers. (Thank you for reading.)

2914 days have passed.

11,304 views of my page were recorded.

When I look closer, I see that some of my posts are hundreds of times more popular than all the others… by far the most popular (in the history of my blog) is “Be My Valentine? How About I Be My Own Valentine?“. It’s followed closely by my reading list. The Parable of the Barking Dog, and The Parable of Poison have also been very popular. When I re-read these, myself, I still find value in them, and room to grow as a person from reflecting on observations made long ago. (That’s sort of how writing works, I guess. lol)

This year, the most popular posts still include my reading list and The Parable of the Barking Dog. Beyond those, the favorites seem to reflect the times rather a lot. Reflections on this journey-of-self, musings about finding balance in challenging times. Thoughts on the passage of time, and shifting perspective, on a birthday.

I take a look at the recorded search terms that took people to my blog this year (it’s always worth a giggle):

…”Don’t be a dick light”? What does that mean?

I find myself mildly frustrated that I can’t see the “unknown search terms” – I bet they are interesting. lol I take another look – search terms over “all time” (I mean, since this blog started, right?)… It is an interesting look at what drives traffic to my blog, and maybe why.

I’m clearly not the only fan of Rick & Morty. I’m interested in what it is about “inspirational word” searches that bring people here… I hope they find something worthy to sustain them on their journey.

2020 has been a wild ride – one of the most peculiar seeming years of my adult life, as far as I can recall. Right up there with 1981 (joined the Army), 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall), and 2010 (it’s complicated). It’s not that other years don’t stand out as significant, it’s just that these were “big years” in some harder to pin down way (for me). 2020? Monster year. Plague (well, pandemic). Election year. Black Lives Matter. Australia on fire. California and Oregon on fire. Presidential impeachment. Climate change slowly stops being debated and starts being acknowledged. The “Me Too” movement. RBG died. My Traveling Partner and I bought a home. I mean… yeah. It’s been a big year. I’m glad it’s over.

What about you? Have you taken a moment to reflect on times past? What will you do with the year ahead? Will you fulfill a dream? Reach a goal? Will you persist? Will you let go of old baggage in favor of a new direction in life? Will you change the world?

…I guess we don’t know until we begin again. 🙂 See you in 2021. 😀

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Categories forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter
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