Archives for posts with tag: life is a banquet
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Real

February 11, 2026 //
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I’m sitting at the halfway point on this local trail, enjoying the moment of rest, and the quiet of the predawn darkness. It’s not cold, only chilly. The pavement is damp from recent rain. I breathe the rain-freshened air contentedly, and sit in this moment. I don’t need more, not right now, anyway. This is enough.

I am briefly distracted from this real life moment by a notable urge to uninstall apps from my phone. 😆 Like a lot of people, I’m over so much of this deceitful invasive bullshit seeking to scrape another dollar from my bank account. It’s gross. Sell me a product or service and let me enjoy it – or at least use it without interference or hindrance, and definitely without a fucking subscription, or mining my personal data.

When did you last read a bound book? When did you most recently meet up with a friend in the real world, and spend the time talking with each other without ever touching your smartphone? Take notes on real paper? How about board games with friends? Drinks and conversations by a fire outside? Window shopping in town, on foot, for the fun of it? Real places and real experiences with actual human beings have so much more depth and nuance than text-based interactions online, or anything at all to do with LLMs and chatbots. Real world experiences may feel a bit less “safe”, (mostly due to the potential for contagion or gun violence) but the nuance and authenticity are worth risking a head cold, and with some care and situational awareness gun violence is relatively rare and generally avoidable. The virtual spaces we frequent have risks of their own. We’re making choices. Choose wisely. Choose human.

No AI here. No subscription (for you – I do pay for the hosting and services on this platform). Just one human being sharing thoughts, experiences, and practices with other human beings. (Thanks for taking the time!) … But seriously? You could be having a real conversation with another person on this very same topic, right now.

… I’m even suggesting it…

How many hours a day are your eyes on a screen, instead of the horizon? How many interactions with others are through some user interface on some digital platform, instead of looking into the eyes of that other person and hearing their words? Many hours probably, and dozens or even hundreds of people. Isn’t that a little sad? Go outside! Talk to your neighbors! Make actual friends of other real human beings… while you have the option, and the social skills. I’m just saying the digital world is a dim substitute.

Our mortal lives are too short as it is, please don’t waste yours as a consumer cog in a billionaire’s infinite money machine. Life has so much more to offer you. Books, movies, flowers, clouds, flavors, trails, shops, cafes… An entire world exists for our enjoyment. Don’t waste your moment.

I sigh to myself. These are not new thoughts. I often turn my ringer off to allow myself to focus on my lived experience in the moment. I’m not inclined to be bullied by a device. Two years of caregiving meant leaving my notifications on almost 24/7, and it has been hard dealing with the constant other pings on my consciousness while staying alert for my Traveling Partner to reach out if he needs me when I’m away from the house. Necessary for the time, less so now. It is a difficult habit to break, but it is important not to allow these devices to determine what I put my attention on. It takes practice.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. The sky lightens to a gray-seeming dawn, although the sky is clear. There’s a smudge of dirty orange on the eastern horizon. I hear footsteps and tense up momentarily, as I turn to see the night watchman from the nearby construction site approach on his end of shift walk. “Good morning, young lady!” he calls to me, “Almost didn’t see you there.” I wave and wish him a cheery good morning as he passes, and watch as he disappears around the next bend.  I continue to sit contentedly awhile longer. It is a work day, but I’m in no hurry. This moment is mine.

Real.

The clock ticks on. Winter is already slowly becoming Spring. I gaze into the tangled treetops, no specific purpose or thought on my mind, just enjoying the moment as it is. It’s enough. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and get comfortable for meditation, before I begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, thoughts on AI, winter, women, Words

Don’t Forget To Breathe

August 28, 2025 //
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I’m waiting for the sun. Daylight will arrive, I’ll walk this local trail, then it’s job search activities, appointments, and errands. I’m grateful that planning and task management are among my skills; the fatigue of what I’m presently going through finally caught up with me yesterday. (I even snapped at my Traveling Partner in a misdirected moment of frustration and cognitive overload.)

There’s nothing noteworthy about a human primate feeling emotional or overwhelmed by stress, or distracted by competing priorities. Hell, there’s nothing noteworthy about having to manage stress, or needing to reinforce good self-care practices. It’s not even noteworthy that I finally reached the tipping point between purposeful action, and disabling fatigue. Just happens to be that I got there yesterday.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I needed the deeply restful sleep I got last night. Today feels a little less overwhelming. I sit waiting for the sun, drinking water, and thinking about a recent conversation with a friend (who is also a former colleague). I may not be out of work very long, which is reassuring. I’ve even gotten a couple of “lucky breaks” this week that serve to reduce my stress quite a lot. I’m more okay than not, just very human and enduring a stressful circumstance.

I watch the sky lighten to a dishwater gray. The hills to the west are hazy from smoke of distant wildfires. A walk will feel good. I remind myself again how critical good self-care is, especially right now. I’m fatigued from managing stress, and I’m in pain from my arthritis. The physical discomfort piles on with the background stress, and in spite of a good night’s sleep and good self-care, I feel rundown and quite exhausted. Hilarious that I see more physical work as something to re-energize me. It probably will, though, for some little while. Eventually there has to be a reckoning and I wonder what else I can do to help myself through this?

I can almost hear my Traveling Partner’s voice reminding me, “don’t forget to breathe”, and realize I was indeed holding my breathe. I exhale, and breathe deeply. The summer air is sweet and floral with the scents of summer flowers and mown grasses. It is a pretty morning, pleasantly cool, and very quiet.

Nice morning to walk with my thoughts.

I lace up my boots and grab my cane. The beautiful summer morning calls me to come walk and enjoy the moment. I’m grateful to be reminded that I don’t have to hustle frantically from task to task and moment to moment. Better to take things one by one, to be truly present, and really enjoy things as they are. This won’t last, and overloading myself with self-imposed stress and nonsensically strict obligations is just silly. Life is best lived, savored, and enjoyed!

I smile and sigh to myself, and stretch. I look down the trail and think about it as a metaphor for forward momentum and progress, and this journey that is life. It’s time to walk on. Time to begin. Again.

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Categories Allegories, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, joy, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, Uncategorized

It’s Only a Moment

April 7, 2025 //
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The soft drizzle stopped at daybreak and I stepped out of the car onto the trail. This local trail passes alongside a big parking lot, empty at this hour, and through a grove of oaks trees, wrapping around vineyards, and curving around those to head along a creek in a forested space. It’s a pleasant walk, partially lit, mostly paved. This walk is quite local and convenient, managing to feel remote in the very early morning, due to the solitude. Dog walkers and other people getting some miles in generally don’t begin showing up until well past sunrise. It’s nice to have the trail to myself.

One moment of many.

I walk with my thoughts until I reach the bench at my preferred halfway point. I sit awhile to listen to the birds, and watch daybreak become dawn. The dense clouds overhead are moving by quickly and there is a hint of a breeze. The blue gray of the clouds hint at more rain, and the bits of blue sky that show through tease me with the potential for afternoon sunshine, later. I sigh quietly, contentedly, and for a moment I am lost in thoughts of my garden and forgetting the pain I am in. It’s a chilly morning and my arthritis is already complicating my experience. I don’t focus on it, and for the moment it fades into the background.

It’s a Monday morning. A work day, still. I frown, wondering how some people can view life through a lens that defines good quality of life as “employed”, unable to understand how much more there is to living than working to acquire enough money just to pay for the basics. lol I’d certainly rather be sipping my coffee and planning some other sort of day. I’ve got plenty of things to do that aren’t work at all!

… I’d rather be in the garden, or reading a book, or painting, or laughing over coffee with a friend, or catching up on the housework, or enjoying the companionship of my beloved Traveling Partner, or walking miles on new trails, or visiting distant old friends, or sipping coffee in the garden listening to birdsong, or just about anything else besides swapping hours of my life and energy for a fucking paycheck… I’d have retired in 2001 (at 38), if I could have afforded to…

…Hell, I’d retire today, if this paycheck weren’t 100% required to pay the bills. 😂 I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute; I’ve got plenty of other things to do that bring me immense joy (they just don’t happen to pay the mortgage, gas, or for groceries).

My Traveling Partner pings me a greeting. It’ll be nice to work from home today. Maybe I’ll get some time in the garden on a break? A soft rain begins to fall (again) and I’m grateful to have worn my rain poncho. I chuckle to myself as I get to my feet. The clock is ticking and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, joy, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being

What a Terrible App

January 30, 2025 //
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How often do I say that, lately? Seems like a lot… I am reminded that the “enshittification” of the internet is a real thing, and not just “the internet”, but a lot of services, apps, media, seach tools, and things that rely on such things seem to be suffering from a very real process of degradation over time (and more so recently). I could more politely (and possibly more clearly) refer to the phenomenon as “platform decay”. From Wikipedia’s article, it is described thusly;

…the term used to describe the pattern in which online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.

Yeah. That’s a thing, for sure. Welcome to Capitalism, y’all – where we put profit over product quality, and people, in order to extract maximum “value” for a handful of already-wealthy shareholders. Gross. We could do so much better. What can I do about it? Maybe there’s real value in using some of these garbage apps a whole lot less in favor of more real-world experiences in the real world? Real life seems somewhat less prone to rapid enshittification… not entirely immune admittedly, but the odds of having a good experience seem a little better. Bound books. Pen and paper. Walks in the forest, and along the beach or marsh. Conversations with friends. I don’t know – I definitely don’t have all the answers, just some thoughts on other things to do with my time. This may be relevant. (The irony of suggesting online content is not lost on me. You could read this instead, but maybe buy it from a local book store, eh?) When was the last time you went into the world to enjoy the hunt for some specific thing in real places? I know, I know, super inconvenient, and so time-consuming! Only… It’s your life. Are you living it – or are you just scrolling through the minutes waiting to die while some app harvests the data from your likes, clicks, and views?

…I “throw the alogorithm a curve ball” and put on music I don’t usually listen to…

I smile at the thought that when I am out on the trail, the things I like are not visible to an alogrithm. When I see the world through my own eyes, my “views” aren’t recorded anywhere. When I turn my attention from one thing to another out in the world, alive, alone with myself, there are no “clicks” that can be captured – I’m just a human, being human. I enjoy that. When I pick up a book in a bookstore, and read the back cover and flip through the pages, no data is recorded about how long my eyes lingered on the words. When I share conversation with a friend or colleague, using my actual voice, in a real place, it’s ours – and there is no financial benefit to be gained for the shareholder class. I like that.

There’s a price to be paid for convenience – whether we see it coming out of our bank account or not. Are you prepared to pay that price? (Am I?) It’s something to think about. It’s the 21st century – what do you want out of your experience? What paths do you want open for your children?

I sigh to myself, and sip my coffee. Here, now, it’s just me and this moment – but I find myself yearning for a typewriter that isn’t connected to the internet, and a medium of communication that isn’t digital. Convenient for us both that we’re here, now, in this digital place… but at what cost? What price are we paying for this “convenience”? Is it worth it? I’m not monetizing this content – but you can bet someone is, in some way. (Why are we not being paid for our data? Can someone explain to me why, if it has such value, we aren’t being paid real money for the data about us being collected every day? “Basic income” isn’t a handout in the digital age; it is a potential means of compensating us for our data – maybe it’s time we took that step?)

I think again about long-time plans to publish some of this work in a more durable medium; a bound book. I smile to myself. There are verbs involved, and it’s just daydreaming until I am prepared to make a clear plan, apply the will to connect that plan to action – and do the verbs. But… what is lost if this whole thing were to come crashing down? Am I prepared to see it just… gone? I sit with my thoughts awhile longer.

…What will I do about it, when I begin again?

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Categories breathe, Free Will, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Practices, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Waking Up to a Plan

January 7, 2025 //
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This morning I woke up feeling subtly different about “things”, generally. It wasn’t a huge obvious change of heart or significant shift in mindset, but there was definitely a hint of a sense of purpose that feels more focused. I like having a plan. A bit of self-reflection can go a long way toward “lighting the path ahead” – like wearing a headlamp on a dark trail. It’s no substitute for sunlight, but it’s better than wandering around in the dark.

I’m sipping my coffee and taking a look at my notes from yesterday. It’s not a detailed plan, just a handful of notes. Something more like a notion of what landmarks to look for on a memorized route than an actual map. For example, “read more bound books” isn’t very specific at all – but I also have an actual stack of books to read, and a list for more that I’d like to read once I’ve finished the stack I’ve got. Now that’s a plan. Well… no. That’s an intention, backed up by physical tools to get the thing done. My plan is to take advantage of quiet time in the evenings to read a bit, and on weekend mornings when my Traveling Partner is sleeping in (when I can’t quite start on housekeeping chores and such because I’d make too much noise), those are good times for reading. If I wake during the night, I’ve got another good opportunity to read a chapter or two, before returning to sleep. That’s a plan. Making it all come together is about the actual actions, and as I said, this morning I woke feeling focused and purposeful – and not just about reading more bound books, there’s more to my notes than that, more that I’d like to do, to live, and to change. So… there are definitely verbs involved. Life to live. Choices to make. We become what we practice, and I’ve plenty of practice ahead of me in the new year.

This morning I am feeling hopeful and encouraged about life, in spite of the chaos of the world. Yes, there’s a lot of distressing horrible shit going on in the world, but very little of that is happening in my little town, and none of it in my home or at my job, and I don’t mean to be selfish or self-centered about this, I’m just saying there’s more to life than the outrage machinery of the media, or the horrors of foreign wars. It’s okay to also embrace hope, and enjoy… joy. In fact, it’s probably healthy, and helpful. So, I make a point of it. I’m not ignoring the shit that needs changing in the world – I’m merely “filling the tank” so that I have the endurance for this race, and the resolve to speak truth to power, and the will to do what I can to make positive changes, even if that is only raising my voice without shame to say “this is wrong, we can do better”.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I’m already thinking about distant trails, and afternoons camping in forested places. It’s winter now, but Spring will come again. I think about my Dear Friend for a moment. She “gave up” too soon, I’ve often thought. A great many things that we human beings do are more than a little “use it or lose it” in practice. You can love hiking, but if you don’t hike, it slowly becomes more difficult until it’s not easily done at all. This is true even of movement, generally. I don’t want to follow that path, myself, don’t want to “give up” too soon – so I keep walking. I keep camping. I keep working in my garden. (Well, that last is presently a bit aspirational; my untended garden full of weeds vexes me every time I walk past. I can do better. It’s on my list.) It’s easy to feel the fatigue and the pain and to want to just… rest. It’s a risky choice to rest too often for too long. It can too easily become a sedentary life of inactivity and malaise. I keep walking. I keep beginning again. One more step. One more task. Another project. Life is full of verbs.

I look at my calendar – I see a new physician next week. The week after that, an old friend (The Author) will visit – I’m excited about that. I haven’t seen him since… 2016? 2017? 2018. It’s been too long. The week after that I get my hearing aids. Busy January. The path ahead unfolds step by step. I look over my notes; it’s not about “ticking boxes”. It’s my life. I want to live it. I’m enjoying making time for more reading. I’m enjoying refreshing my Czech language skills. I’ll try out a new recipe tonight – probably. I skipped my walk this morning, and it serves as a powerful reminder that consistency is also a practice. (Every day that I don’t walk a trail is a day that reduces the likelihood of hitting that 1k trail mile target, I remind myself unnecessarily.)

I sigh quietly to myself, and stretch. I’m 61 as I sit here – 62 in June. How much time do I have left? What do I want to do with it? How do I live my best life for the longest amount of remaining time? What matters most? I don’t “feel old” – but I also don’t feel young. Today’s a pretty good day – I’m not in a lot of pain (call it a 3 on a 1-10 scale, which is honestly pretty good for me). There’s more yet to do – and doing it from a perspective of presence and mindful awareness changes the experience for the better. I smile and sip my coffee and push up my sleeves. It’s time to begin. Again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, War and News of War, weight loss secrets, winter
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