Archives for posts with tag: I am my own cartographer
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Ain’t We Funkin’ Now?

March 18, 2017 //
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Well… ain’t we? Er… are we? I am. It’s Saturday morning and I really don’t need to sit very still all day stressed out about health concerns neither confirmed nor crossed off some secret list of shit that goes wrong with aging. lol Cue music! Better to funk hard, enjoy life for every breath I breathe, than to wait quietly to die. 😉 So, no shit, I’m jammin’ the old school funk tracks that sparked my love of bass, and bass guitar, and have followed me through life to the newest, strangest, bass-est digital music of the current age. Why not? It’s after 6 am on a Saturday… I’m sure the neighbors won’t mind my embracing life through music at this hour… right…? (I’m not actually that inconsiderate, and I’m grateful for headphones.)

Are you still funkin’ with me? Do you know the funk legend behind that bass line? Human. Just like me. Just like you. Just like Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Just like your grandma. Just like Grandma Funk. What I think I’m getting at is… don’t wait to be a legend. Just be. Enjoy you. Maybe you level up to Legend at some point, but as with “happy”, chasing it comes at a cost – and that cost is often the goal itself. Each so human, so precious, so wonderfully quirky and weird and unique… do you.

This morning I let the irresistible nature of the funk distract me from pain, from worry, from an uncertain future (all futures are uncertain, are they not?), and I let go and let… myself enjoy the fucking funk, for as long as I can. Will you miss me if I were to drop dead in some now moment unexpectedly, without the courtesy of a heads up that I am mortal? Would my words outlast this fragile vessel or die with me, losing relevance over time without a connection to a living consciousness? All men are mortal… women, too, I hear. lol I sip my coffee and contemplate the unknowns still ahead of me in life – and at its end.

I think about the house hunting ahead this morning. I think about love. I savor my humanity. I appreciate yours. The morning feels easy on  my consciousness and my heart, in spite of… worries. Don’t we all have at least one or two? Isn’t it totally the most basic of human challenges to learn to balance our experience in the moment with our concerns of moments not yet now? Who will you turn to for comfort? Your friends? (Good choice.) Your lover(s)? (Another good choice, although I am assuming you choose lovers who are down for providing you comfort in tough times… perhaps that’s not what you choose of the assorted humans dear to you?) Will you choose the talking heads on the idiot box? The comment section of a favorite forum? Facebook associates? (That’s all the rage in the 21st century, and there’s a fairly impressive selection of social media alternatives.) Your professional associates? (That gets harder, sometimes, doesn’t it?) Your parents, elders, children, or siblings? (That can be a mixed bag where comfort it concerned, right? lol) This morning, I am turning to The Brothers Johnson, Whiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Skrillex, Daft Punk… sure, I know exactly what they’ll be telling me, because I’ve heard it a million times, but… I also know what they’ll be telling me, because I’ve heard it a million times. 🙂 It’s what I need to hear; we continue. There is now. Always now… And yet, somehow, we continue; if in no other way, we continue as a presence and a recollection in the consciousness of all those we have touched – good and bad and indifferent. Valar Morghulis.

I can’t escape my mortality – at least not with current medical science or technology (will I live to see that change?). I could sure get mired in waiting around to die, if I chose to do that instead of living. There are verbs involved, regardless. Today, I tell mortality – or at least the fear of it – to funk right off. It’s Saturday – there is a living world just beyond this monitor, and this keyboard, and my coffee is finished. 🙂

It’s totally understandable that death might stop me in my tracks – it is less understandable to wait around for it to do so. lol. Today is a good day to live, awake, aware, and present in this moment, now. It’s enough. 🙂

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

Eventually The Storm Passes

March 16, 2017 //
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It’s been raining a lot. There have even been landslides. That’s something that definitely gets me thinking differently about homeownership; houses perched on hillsides hold less appeal. Mostly, though, I think about the rain, when it is raining. I enjoy the sound of it, the smell of petrichor, the strange changes of scene as storms sweep through town. I watch off and on, all day, through endless windows that wrap the office.

I left the office at the usual time, which is “later than I meant to”. Some of the most productive conversations seem to begin as I leave the building. I’ll work on that. 🙂

Rain in the distance.

It was raining when I left, but it was that gentle misty rain on a warm-ish evening; it seemed of little consequence, and I enjoyed the feel of it. The skyline on the other side of the river was obscured in places by low hanging clouds clinging to hilltops, and a certain gray sort of moving density that hinted at an approaching shower.

I walk on. It keeps raining.

Sure enough, the shower caught me just as I reached the bridge. I smiled in spite of being caught in the drenching down pour long enough to be soaked in spots. I smiled as I waited out the worst of it from beneath the bridge. I smiled as I walked on, once it had passed. It seemed an easy enough journey home.

It makes sense to seek shelter from the storm.

I headed home eager to enjoy dinner. I arrived home to discover I was out of literally everything I had considered making. I shrugged it off, had something different, and looked forward to a relaxed, quiet evening. What I actually had was quite different; I had noise. A lot of noise. I had the noise of a professional carpet cleaning service (the sort with a loud van operated vacuum and pump system of some kind), which commenced sometime after 7 pm, and was still at it well-past 8:30 pm (on a “work night”). The parking spaces are just steps from front doors and thin walls that keep out basically no noise, so it sounded more or less like that truck was parked in my kitchen. I spent the evening wearing hearing protection. It rattled the walls. It rattled my consciousness. It was inescapable. The headache and anger were pretty nearly inevitable. Because I am up at 4:30 am, I’m usually at least trying to get some sleep by 8:30 pm, most nights, or at least making my way in that general direction for the attempt. That wasn’t going to be possible; it took more than 90 minutes from when the noise finally stopped (at 8:47 pm), for me to be sufficiently at ease to sleep. Meditation helped. Meditation (almost) always helps (me) with a great many things associated with emotional reactivity, regardless of the cause.

I woke rested, and in a good place. Tired. Not enough sleep. This too shall pass, like a rain storm. The rain passed. The noise stopped. Sleep happened. Lack of sleep will also resolve, in time, because change is a thing. In most respects, an utterly ordinary Thursday.

I look over the new list from my Realtor, and smile, sipping my coffee; even this “will pass”. Eventually, there will be a house, there will be an offer made and accepted, there will be a closing, and there will be a move. There will be excited bliss, a sort of relief, great contentment. There will also be paperwork, and small moments of homeowner reality-checking-frustration-driving-angst-making moments of doubt and inconvenience, and there will be a home, nonetheless. It’s what I am working towards, and incremental change over time, and the inevitable outcome of practicing suggests that if I simply keep at it, patiently, persistently, refraining from taking a process personally, I will find myself transformed (into a homeowner)(with massive debt)(and a mortgage)(instead of renting)(and the freedom to really make a home that meets my needs over time).

Another day. Another beginning. Another opportunity to make the choices that bring me closer to being the woman I most want to be. Today it’s enough.

 

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being, Words

Letting It Rain

March 15, 2017 //
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It’s getting easier. Morning, I mean. The alarm went off, and seemed more just a sound than an affront to my sleeping consciousness. I turned it off. I continued to just lay there quietly, and sure enough, I nearly went back to sleep, confused about the day, the time, and the purpose of my wakefulness. I teetered on the edge of that moment when dreams become more real than awareness, and sleep returns, not quite waking. With an audible groan that seemed unnecessarily loud in the room, the human body I am wrapped in, threw back the covers and sat up. It felt disorienting and strange, but I was no longer at risk of falling back to sleep.

A recent rainy morning. It has been raining for days.

I stood in the shower for some long many minutes, just standing, letting the water fall on and around me. Still not quite awake. Thinking about the rain falling outside, whimsically wondering how different it would feel to simply step out on to the patio, into the rain, naked, before dawn?

Coffee is welcome this morning. I savor it. I think about other coffees, other mornings, other moments on rainy days. I am, at least, awake. The rain falls. It is loud on the roof, the eaves, and the flue cover. The rain falls. I let it. I mean, it’s not like I could legitimately do anything to stop it falling. I waste a few more words, delete them. Listen to the rain fall.

I swallow the last of my coffee, while hastily deciding to spend what is left of the morning meditating, and listening to the rain fall. This morning, it’s enough.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Spring, The Art of Being

The Monday After DST

March 13, 2017 //
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I drag myself from bed with the alarm clock still in my hand. I slept poorly, and only for about 5 hours. The sleep I got was interrupted, restless, and not all that restful. I groggily take my morning medication, entirely forgetting I’d promised myself to take it a bit later to ease the transition to living an hour out of sync with the past many months since the last time the government arbitrarily put us all through this ludicrous bullshit that has no benefit I can single out as an obvious reason to do this weird thing twice a year. Why the hell do we mess around with time? You just know who ever had this idea in the first place thought it was awesome… I always wonder how they convinced everyone else.

I yawn over my coffee, feeling uninspired, and looking for a moment on which to build the day…something small to delight me… something to motivate me to continue on and begin again, however many times it is necessary to do so… I’m not quite there, yet, and feeling very human.

I’ve got quite a few tools in my toolkit these days. I put on my headphones, cue up a playlist, and tackle the morning from another perspective. There is, after all, an entire day ahead of me…and so many choices.

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Categories Brain Injury, health, Healthy Living, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, Spring

DST BFD EIEIO

March 12, 2017 //
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Another Daylight Savings Time change to get through. I don’t feel like going on and on about it, though… so… here’s 2013, 2014, and 2015.

In 2016, living here in this gentle space, I was living my experience on a different axis, in a sense, and DST change came and went unobserved; I was focused on rapidly increasing feelings of burn-out and career fatigue, and the need to take better care of myself in a larger way (a month later I would exit the workforce completely for 6 months or so, to paint full-time).

Here’s today, though, gray and quiet. The sun occasionally tries to break through the gray spring sky. I’ve been up awhile, although it felt like sleeping in to see the clock advise me that the morning began at 7:14 a.m., the indisputable “truth” that it was actually 6:14 am has nagged at me. I could have slept later, except I wasn’t sleeping well as it was, and there was no point continuing. lol I got up and made coffee, and it’s been a rather slow morning to get started with.

I make a second coffee, smiling and thinking about the afternoon spent with my Traveling Partner, yesterday. Romantic, connected, intimate hours spent with this singular human being I love so much (and hopefully also so well); it was time well-spent… I know this, because I am still smiling, even now. 🙂

A spring morning, suitable for beginning again.

I sip my coffee watching little bird flit about between the two young pines near my window. I think about the day behind me (house-hunting) and the day ahead (housekeeping), and wonder how best to also take care of me before another busy work week begins. A simple day of sufficiency and self-care seems the thing…laundry and dishes and vacuuming, sure, but also meditation, reading, yoga, and a lovely walk through the park under cloudy spring skies. Today, that’s enough. 🙂

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