Archives for posts with tag: incremental change

Working With a Blank Page

July 18, 2023 //
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Several times lately I’ve sat down to write and … didn’t write. I started with a notion, a thought, and idea, or a few words or the sight of something I could describe, but nothing came of it. This morning almost went that way, too… I sat down with the recollection of the pale pastel pink and baby blue dawn sky, and the words to attempt to share that, here, and quickly drifted to a piece of music, with a cool video. I let the music carry me away. The “eye candy” of the video filled my senses, and I lost the thread of my thoughts. LOL So human.

After my last therapy visit, I’ve been sort of “in my own head”, thinking about painful inconveniences like self-directed misogyny, and progress-yet-to-be-made, and… pain management. I wasn’t sure why with the dry summer heat, but my arthritis had flared up significantly (like, wet winter levels of pain), and until the heat dissipated yesterday with a cloudy mild day with hints of the threat of rain that it was a puzzle. Now I get it, but… fuck pain. Pain complicates things, and makes it hard to focus on what matters most (it surely isn’t the pain).

I sit here listening to music and sucking down my morning coffee with little attention. I’m doing my best to focus my thoughts on something other than the pain I am in. The music helps, but it’s not really a remedy. I’d hoped that building a habit of going to the gym and adding strength training to my fitness endeavors would do more (sooner) to reduce my pain. I haven’t gotten that far on my fitness journey, yet. Incremental change over time takes… time. I do my best to manage my pain with care, with various reminders to check in with myself throughout the day so I don’t end up like I did yesterday; at the end of the day and wrung out from fighting pain, because I rather stupidly hadn’t slowed down long enough to actually deal with it properly for hours. Fucking dumb. Very human. I got caught up in the excitement and momentum of the latest home improvement project, which is the front lawn. I forgot to manage my pain until quite late in the day, too late to get ahead of it at all.

Today I start things off similarly, and working on different outcomes as the day progresses. First, the gym, then a walk. I took my first-thing meds… first thing. lol I glance at the time. Time for the next Rx. I don’t delay, or snooze the reminder for even a moment. I take my medication. Small thing. Still progress. It’s a critical detail. This second couple of “first thing” medications need to be separated from the others, but a short-ish interval (like an hour) is sufficient. It’s peculiarly hard to get this one right (for me), and it sets up the medication dominoes for the day. lol So I keep at it. I’ll get this right. 🙂 I’ll finish my coffee, take a walk, and then get started on today’s meetings and calls. Today, I’ll take my medications 100% on time. Today I’ll manage my pain properly. Goals.

…I notice the the fingernails I broke yesterday. I don’t remember when. The rough edges draw my attention; that’ll be something to be mindful of all day, in order to avoid tearing at my fingernails absentmindedly through the day…

I breathe deeply and exhale slowly, feeling my heart beating, and letting my shoulders relax as I exhale. Looks like a pretty summer day beyond the window of the co-work space I’m in. I’m excited about my short week, and my upcoming roadtrip and camping along the coast. I’ve got my Thursday night site booked – now it’s just a matter of getting there! My Friday night is planned, too, and I’m eager to visit with an old friend (and bonus, it sounds like I’ll also get to meet a long-time reader of this blog as well). I still need to sort out my Saturday night, although I’m stuck on the route, because I have options and don’t know what I’ll want to do about it yet. Can’t really plan a camping location until I know the route I’m taking. 😀 I could proceed … without a plan… LOL

Thursday seems simultaneously “so far away” and also “almost here”. Funny. I’m already almost completely packed, which is pretty convenient. I still need to grab a couple items and my camera bag, but beyond that I’m ready. So ready. I’m looking forward to disconnecting from the world and following my thoughts for awhile.

It’s time to begin again.

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

Steps, Choices, Thoughts, & Feelings

May 16, 2023 //
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I’m sipping my coffee thinking about work. Thinking about life and love. Just sitting here thinking. Yesterday wasn’t a great day… but it also wasn’t actually a bad day. Neither my Traveling Partner nor I had slept well the night before. We were both more than a little cranky as a result. We managed not to snarl at each other to the point of being insufferably unpleasant, though we were also not super cheerful or inclined to be close, and it showed in our interactions. Prickly. Terse. Irritable. We could have done better. So much better. Even after a decade of living and loving, we have room to improve on how we treat each other, how we behave under the influence of stress or fatigue, and how skillfully we heal and soothe each other. Still, we spent much of the evening hanging out together more or less contentedly. That was nice. Looked at through a different lens, it was actually a pretty good day, generally.

Another sip of coffee, my thoughts turn to work. Sometimes I love this job. Sometimes I see myself as just another “corporate whore” making a go of it, earning a paycheck, and keeping that going to keep bills paid and food on the table, doing my best but also understanding that it’s a paid gig because I would not stick around doing this shit for free. Practical. Pragmatic. Still doing my best, because that’s what I’m paid to do.

“Baby Love” in bloom, May 15, 2023

I think about how far I’ve come, for some minutes. 15 years ago, life did not look like this. I lived in a seriously run down apartment in an area characterized by economic struggle (and mostly inhabited by students, and people who could not afford a nicer place or something closer to work). I had a job with a title that sort of impressed me when I took the job, but turned out to be camouflage for dirt wages and a toxic work culture. I was surviving, but definitely not thriving. My mental health was in bad shape, and I was pretty heavily medicated without great results. My relationship(s) were suffering my lack of good mental health care. My self-loathing and despair had become a quagmire of sticky trauma preventing me from making changes. Change was coming… but I didn’t know it, couldn’t see it, and for sure was in no condition to make wise rational choices about how to best move forward from where I stood. My life had reached some sort of steady-ish equilibrium of misery that had enough to sustain itself for whatever remained of a lifetime, and I had mostly sunk into a deep apathy about it – the resulting persistent anhedonia and general misery oscillated with occasional (frequent) explosive tantrums.

15 years later, I barely recognize myself as the same woman. I have a nice little house in a pleasant suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of a cute town in a country county. I’m surrounded by good neighbors, working-class skilled laborers, machinists, makers, professionals… you know, people. Good-hearted people, mostly kind nice people. Good neighbors. It’s a nice town. My job title? These days it rarely reflects the complexity of the work, and it doesn’t much matter; I’m paid fairly for the work I do. I work for companies, generally, that treat folks well. My mental health is in a great place, relatively speaking. I could be healthier. I could be “saner”… incremental change over time is still something I count on. Slow progress, steady progress. I feel hopeful, generally, and positive. I make changes fairly often, rarely really large changes – doesn’t seem necessary, generally. Small things make big differences. There’s no “equilibrium of misery” – misery feels incredibly shitty these days, because it is rare. I’m fortunate that I’m rarely miserable. Anhedonia? No thank you. Explosive tantrums? Rare enough these days that they are not a feature of my experience, just an occasional and unfortunate circumstance that trips me up when shit goes sideways. CPTSD. It’s not going to “go away”, it just gets better, slowly. 🙂 I’ve got better tools. So many tools.

…Then there’s love. This partnership. One of the best “tools” in my toolkit is my partnership with my Traveling Partner. Healthy relationships may not “fix” everything… but unhealthy relationships? Surely capable of destroying progress and emotional wellness! I’m glad every day that I’m so fortunate to have this partnership. I feel cared-for and supported day-to-day. We’ve got our issues and challenges; we’re still human primates, we still lead with our emotions, we still fuss over vexing bullshit and blow small stuff completely out of proportion now and then.

It’s been a hell of a journey. In May, we celebrated love together, 12 years of it. In June we’ll celebrate that I’ve stuck around to see 60 years of sunrises. Wow. That feels like a bigger deal than 21, 30, or 40, by far.

…I guess the entire point here is, taking things a step at a time becomes, at some point, an entire journey. Choices, verbs, steps, decisions, circumstances, events… time passes. This too will pass – whatever “this” is. The journey is the destination. There’s value in trying to make it a good one, one change at a time, one choice at a time. Begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Sleepless Nights, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

How Hard Are You Working?

July 8, 2019 //
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This morning over coffee I watched a clip from a Joe Rogan interview on the topic of “How to Workout” and found myself contemplating the concepts of consistency, intensity, and flow. A worthy start to my day. I pause long enough to send the link to my work email, to share with my team; the concepts easily apply to cognition, and workload management, too. A healthy consistence pace does reliably result, for me, in an enjoyable experience, with better long-term results. 🙂 Applying that everywhere I successfully can totally makes sense – why haven’t I considered this sooner, and more often??

…Why are we so eager to seek fatigue?? Where did we get the idea that working that hard is necessary or even good?

The weekend was filled with flowers, and love. Making a point to enjoy them matters.

I got in a good walk yesterday. (It’s not really a hike, is it, if I am on a comfortably paved suburban trail, no pack, wearing sandals, and just strolling along?) I hit a personal milestone, getting my distance back up nicely, and getting back home without feeling completely wrung out; I felt great! There were so many flowers along the way. It was lovely.

Pause for flowers. (It’s a metaphor.)

The hole in my jaw seems to be healing… I try not to overthink it. Reliably good self-care seems the way to go.

“Consistency”. Something new to contemplate further. It makes so much sense; it is precisely why practicing some simple healthy supportive practices results in incremental change over time. Why I haven’t applied this concept to way more things in life is less important than recognizing this is the case, and making some changes. 🙂 No point wasting time on “troubleshooting” this one; I have choices, choices that result in change, changes that can result in improved quality of life – with potentially reduced intensity of effort day-to-day. 😀 Easy.

…It’s definitely time to begin again!

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Categories Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets

Sometimes There’s No Stress

August 18, 2016 //
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I don’t observe the occasional utter lack of stress in a critical way, and I try to simply savor those moments, delight in them, and enjoy them while they last. My walk yesterday morning was one such experience; beautiful from end to end, with several really choice delightful moments to look back on now as memorable.

That time I photographed a hummingbird... A lovely memory. :-)

That time I photographed a hummingbird… A lovely moment. 🙂

The entire day was pretty enjoyable. I have no recollection of any difficult or challenging moments. I don’t say so to brag, or to imply that I’ve found some magic cure to being human; I make a point of saying so, because I need the awareness of it, myself. Taking time to appreciate the beautiful day, the lovely walk, the choice photographs, the conversations with friends, birdsong, merriment, a really good nap – all of it – tosses a positive pebble into the vast still waters of my implicit memory, and over time, enough of that sort of thing holds the power to reduce my “negativity bias“, generally. (It’s a great practice!)

These days, I also make a point not to dig around in my recollections to find troubling or difficult moments I no longer recall; the reward for letting them go is an improvement in positive outlook on life. Totally worth it. I can trust that they may surface if/when needed, and that they do not need reinforcement; negative experiences are sufficiently powerful without additional reinforcement through repetition or rumination. I find refraining from reinforcing negative experiences is also a useful practice. (It takes much less effort to tear my thoughts away from lingering over what sucks, or what hurts, or what went wrong than it once was; the power of incremental change over time.)

The day ended slowly, a pearl moon rising in a cotton-candy sky.

The day ended slowly, a pearl moon rising in a cotton-candy sky.

Between the start and end of the day, yesterday, life was lived, a beautiful journey was taken, and this morning I look back and recall it a wholly delightful day. Today… I get to begin again. Those beginnings? Not all of them need to be a departure from something difficult, and not all of them are. 🙂 Some new beginnings are simply next in a sequence of many. I entertain the notion that over time, many more could be delightful days with beautiful journeys than were previously, accumulating beautiful memories over time, like vast treasure, held within my heart for safe keeping… shared generously, because in sharing, love becomes multiplied. 🙂

There are days when I find myself pushing a few verbs off my “to do list” in favor of doing… less, sometimes because I’m just not up to doing more, other times… well… I’m pretty human. It feels good to slow things down and take it easy… or at least, easier. Over the summer, I found myself sometimes hurrying through my walk, sometimes skipping it altogether, not really seeing the scenery, not really hearing the birdsong, sort of stuck in my own thoughts, but committed to a process. This past week, something clicked. I began again. My walk yesterday morning built on that beginning, and this morning I find that I am similarly eager, encouraged, hopeful (hope-filled, more specifically), and enthusiastic about life and the day, and particularly my morning walk.

A tangerine sunrise infuses the morning sky with sherbet shades of orange. I smile, thinking ahead to the moment I will put on my boots and reach for the front door.

Where will the day's journey take me?

Where will today’s journey take me?

My morning walk does not require a plan – or a map – and I’m generally quite close to home. There are still so many opportunities, and choices, and verbs involved…

Will it be a narrow side trail on life's journey that entices me today?

Will it be a narrow side trail on life’s journey that entices me today?

I think about how brief lovely moments seem, and how endless my sorrows sometimes feel. I think about perspective.

Life's helpful signage sometimes isn't very helpful at all...

Life’s helpful signage sometimes isn’t very helpful at all…

We are each having our own experience. I smile thinking about the sign in the marsh, helpfully provided to caution visitors about… something; the sign points out into the wetlands, and the text is not visible to any human being walking by. It stands in a section of the park cut off from the main trail. Will the ducks and geese find it useful? I think about the metaphor, and I think about the aisles and aisles of self-help books helpfully offered up by one human being or another, who found their own way on a complicated journey. It’s nice to have a map on a journey, an itinerary perhaps, and some good expectations that compare favorably to likely real-world outcomes… we don’t, though, not in life. What works for me, may not work for you – we may approach things differently, and reading about a great practice isn’t anything like practicing it, over time. There are verbs involved. Results do vary. Most of the self-help books, and a lot of suggested practices, are like that sign in the marsh; well-intended, but facing a less-than-helpful direction. We are each on our own journey, finding our own way, doing our own best. Fortunately – and this is one of the easy bits, I find, myself – we become what we practice. We have choices. We can begin again. 🙂

I once walked the paved trail that is no longer here to walk...

I once walked the paved trail that is no longer here to walk…

We each make our own journey in life. The trail I took before may no longer remain to guide another; I may not be able to walk those steps again, myself. I am my own cartographer, because the path traveled by another may no longer remain to guide me. My choices are not your choices. My steps don’t fit neatly into the steps of someone ahead of me, and are not left behind with anyone else clearly in mind. Still, it’s a worthy journey, and although I am having my own experience, it’s easier to recognize how clearly we are also all in this together, than it once was. That’s a nice change. I used to feel (pretty chronically) so alone… that’s more rare these days, even in the stillness of solitude, and even wading through the worst of the chaos and damage that still remains.

Figuring out the obstacles is part of the point.

Figuring out the obstacles is part of the point.

Choices. Perspective. Awareness. Where will today take me?

What will I choose?

What will I choose?

Today is a good day to enjoy the journey. 🙂

 

 

 

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words