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A Day of Travel, A Time of Love

January 20, 2018 //
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Right now this is my life. I’m up early on Saturdays, preparing to hit the highway for another trip down to the family home. I drive down. Chill in the company of good friends, fam, and loved ones. I stay up way too late. I sleep decently well in spite of the excitement of just being there. I take some pictures. I walk the hillsides. I pet the dogs.

More than a beautiful view.

Each such weekend, I consider, on each Saturday evening, how little need there is to rush, and how much I want to stay. I tell myself I will relax and sleep in, maybe leave in the afternoon. Each night, by the time I am ready to crash, I’ve admitted to myself that indeed, I do prefer to get back in the early afternoon, ensuring I have ample time to restore some order to my current living space, do some laundry, maybe get groceries – and again, chill, but in solitude instead of in good company.  Each Sunday morning I “sleep in” having set no alarm. Each Sunday morning I am generally also up sometime around 7 am or 8 am, rarely any later than 8:30 am. By 9 am I am generally on the road – same as on Saturday – and likely to reach my destination, (generally in either direction) sometime around 1:30 pm. It has begun to feel… routine. Planned, even when not planned. Funny.

It’s a lot of effort, and little down time. It simultaneously wears me down and nurtures me. It is an expense that has to be budgeted, considered, and kept in mind. (Less money for concert tickets, more money needed for gas. lol Pretty basic stuff.) I think I can keep this up though, maybe for years, which is a goodness – since I may be needing to. lol

Next weekend I stay “home” – at my current residence I mean, which feels peculiarly less like home in some regards – and still quite like “home” in others. Well, reasonably enough – all my stuff is here, right? lol

…And the squirrels. The squirrels are here too. 😀

I’m not sure what I want from my life right now. Hell, I’m not always confident I know what I need. (Quiet acreage in the countryside sounds like a nice start on meeting needs…) The wild level of spontaneity day to day is dizzying, and I am sometimes unsettled and afraid – frightened by a foolish inclination to cling ferociously to some sort of certainty… about something. Well… I am becoming more accustomed to the notion that there is very little cause to be at all certain of mostly anything. lol In a moment of pure joy, and a bit of humor, my brain throws back “this too shall pass”, and I choke on my coffee laughing out loud at myself.

It’s time to begin again – but first, another cup of coffee. 😀

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter

Love and Lovers

January 16, 2018 //
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There’s more to say on such a big topic. A paragraph or two about love and lovers isn’t going to cover the subject thoroughly at all. I won’t try. It’s early in the morning, and I’m headed to work soon. The morning is rainy. The coffee is hot. My mood is merry. Easy stuff on a Tuesday.

The view from my weekend away.

I scroll through my Facebook feed, catching up after a weekend away. I flip through the posts – what’s with all the angst-y relationship drama? (More than enough over the weekend, as well – seasonal?) I don’t laugh – it really isn’t a cause for amusement or celebration when lovers suffer in each others arms, most particularly consider the great care some lovers take in crafting their shared misery. The choices! The effort! The lovingly hand-crafted artisanal misery! It’s amazing to me that even if pointed out such that awareness is unavoidable, a great many people will still “well, she…”, “well, he…”, with real ferocity to return to an acceptable understanding that allows them to rationalize not making any changes at all. It’s weird. It’s as if – wait for it – they are actually choosing to be unhappy together instead of choosing to be actually happy, or at least content and blissful. So strange. It’s hard to watch. It’s always been hard to watch. It makes my acid reflux flare up to have to watch it. It makes me heartsick to have to turn away. (I can’t fix it!) 😦

Love isn’t misery. If you are miserable, I assure you, it isn’t the love causing that. It’s the bullshit. 😉 Drop the bullshit. lol (Sounds so easy in those terms, but yeah – there are still a lot of verbs involved, and you can’t avoid those, or pay for someone else to do them.)

I’ve had cause to be soaked in drama recently. Not so much a choice as a test of endurance, loving kindness, compassion, and the experience and (limited) wisdom that come of age – and that come of fucking up several potentially wonderfully promising relationships myself over the years. Doesn’t make it easier to bear witness to the misery of lovers who refuse to see that they are choosing their misery for themselves, with great care, and putting every ounce of their being into tending and maintaining it. Yikes. I can’t even imagine the power and joy of a relationship into which similar effort and energy are put directly into actually loving each other!

Sharing the love, and sharing the building. Destruction is far less joyful.

…Oh. Wait. Yes, yes I can actually imagine the power and joy of a relationship into which lovers are putting the full weight of their effort and energy directly into actually loving each other! I have that! How wonderful! 😀 I worked – and work – with great care to build (instead of destroying) to support and nurture (instead of criticizing and tearing my partner down) to attend to my own chaos and damage (because we really only have the power to change our own ways, to deal with our own issues, to put down our own baggage), and to learn to love well.

A gray, black, and tan moth is colorful up close. Perspective matters. 🙂

I’m still learning. I practice every day. I make mistakes. I make amends. I screw up. I make it right. Again and again. I learn something new that works. I practice it often. I find out something I do is problematic. I look at ways I could change my approach for a better result. I face the awareness that something my lover does is uncomfortable for me. I learn to bring those issues to the table with kindness, patience, and understanding that I am having my own experience, and “demanding change” is not always the most effective (or efficient) way to achieve the result I want. I learned to assume positive intent, and learned to share my words gently, and to listen deeply. I learned to let go of assumptions and expectations, and to distinguish between acceptance and being a doormat. lol So many life lessons to love well! We have to learn each of them on our own. The verbs pile up.

I may be writing about love for the rest of my life – there is that much to say about it, and I’m no expert. 🙂 Love matters most. Love inspires. Love pulls us. Pushes us. Changes us. Love is powerful stuff. I spent the weekend wrapped in love. Home now to begin a new work week, I’m still thinking about love – and lovers.

There is always time for love. (Make time for it.) What could be a more worthy use of your precious limited mortal life than to love?

Speaking of time… it’s time to begin the work day. 🙂 One new beginning among so many. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, winter

Changing to Winter

December 22, 2017 //
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Okay, so… it isn’t autumn anymore. The weather is still gray and rainy-freezy-misty. Not good for long drives through mountain passes (at least, it’s not my preference). A poor choice for my arthritis as well, though there’s little to be done about that long-term without relocating; I take short-term actions to ease my symptoms, almost as soon as I get up, today.

I begin the holiday with a lovely stack of books to read.

It’s the just the loveliest winter day. I’ve spent it…oh… on me. Relaxing. Meditating. Reading. Doing yoga. Watching the squirrels play. I forced myself out of the house once, when I noticed I’d run out of coffee and didn’t have even enough for a second cup. Of course, the one time I venture out, and silence my ringer while driving, I miss a call from my Traveling Partner. lol I check messages when I get home, see the missed call, and phone him back. It’s always lovely to talk, to hear his voice, even that bit when he gets frustrated with me talking over him is worth the phone call. 🙂 He gets back to his day, there, I get back to mine, here.

Today has been an exceptional day for meditation. It’s a good fit with all the reading, which somehow manages to surprise me. I find myself questioning the surprise; is it just an artifact of an injury that often misleads me about what is or is not new? I let that go and simply enjoy each precious chill moment of this pleasant holiday. I read awhile. Finish a chapter (or a book) and “take a break” by meditating for some unmeasured little while. I pause all that to have a bit of a chat with my partner, listen to some music, practice with the buugeng. At some point, I begin all that again, and return to reading. It’s been just about the perfect day off, in spite of missing my Traveling Partner, and even in spite of being in pain.

3 finished. Feminism, Love, and Dictatorship – a broad variety of topics, with still more enticing reading to come.

I put everything aside for a while. More meditation. Sitting quietly by the fire, taking a moment to simply be, and to be aware, and to really listen. To observe the moment without putting rules on it, or building a narrative around it, or making it any more or less significant than the moment itself provides without effort or guidance. Experiencing “being” as the verb it is, without the complication of all those other verbs, for just some little while. Some time later, the warmth of the room seemed to shift from cozy to stifling, and I got up, adjusted the thermostat, welcomed the twilight, and made my way here, right here, now. This? This is live – well, in the moment I am doing the typing, right now, it is. I’m often not “writing right now” in that way – it’s far more common that I am writing about some recently past moment (although rather rudely, I often do so in the present tense, having become emotionally entangled there in that past event).

So… here we each are, in our present moment. I giggle quietly to myself as I fully take in the meanings when I think to myself “I hope your present is not tense”… “present tense”. It should not be that god damned funny (it isn’t). I’m laughing out loud, and tears squeeze out of my eyes. A moment of subtly hysterical catharsis – no harm was done to this human in the writing of this blog post. 🙂 I smile with considerable kindness “at myself”, and experience a weird moment of recognition and gratitude – when did we actually become friends, the woman in the mirror and I? I don’t think it’s been that long ago… we’ve been mutually supportive for some time (a couple years) but “friends” would have been a stretch. Funny.

I smile to myself and consider how pleasant the evening is, and feel fortunate to enjoy my own company with such ease these days. What a lovely day, well spent, in good company, reading, meditating, listening to music, dancing, practicing buugeng and watching squirrels… I think I’m ready to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, medical marijuana, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, winter, Words

A New Week Begins

November 6, 2017 //
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I like beginnings. I’m a big fan of starting and of starting over. I love the energy of a beginning, the enthusiasm, the eagerness. There’s one thing I do know about the majority of beginnings, though; they usually follow the end of something else. I don’t always like endings so reliably well.

I’m sad that the weekend has… ended. 🙂 I had a lovely short weekend with my Traveling Partner. It was a fairly high energy visit, and we crammed into it quite a lot of hang out time, cuddle time, laughter, serious dialogue, connection, and social time – even managed to hit up a party. Twice. lol I slept like crap Saturday night (which meant, so did he 😦 ). I was so tired when I finally arrived home late in the afternoon on Sunday, after hauling ass up the highway through nearly continuous entirely pouring down freezing rain, that I barely finished a cup of soothing hot tea before deciding to just… call it a night. lol I crashed out early like an over-stimulated toddler.

This morning I woke precisely on time – well, if it were not for Daylight Savings Time, it would have been precisely on time, and with the alarm, instead it was an hour early…but… I’d slept through the night, from 6:45 pm (no kidding) until 3:28 am. I woke well-rested, and ready to begin a new week. Good enough. I got up. 🙂

I didn’t bother with the internet much – or the world – while I spent the weekend out in the countryside with my Traveling Partner. It was sad to catch up this morning and see that yet another angry man ended his life with violence, taking a bunch of innocent people with him. I have no ability to understand why we do not, at a minimum, restrict firearm ownership from individuals with domestic violence priors. I just don’t get it. If a human being is already known to have a domestic violence problem – whether they are convicted or not – why the ever-loving-fuck would they be permitted to buy or own a firearm, ever, at all? If a human being can’t be trusted not to assault people they say they love, how can they be trusted to use a firearm responsibly? These are serious questions, and they need serious consideration, serious answers, and serious action. Fuck, we are some stupid god-damned primates. I’m very disappointed in us. Anyway, this is just my opinion about the most recent firearm related sad news. I’m sure you have your own.

A new week begins today. We’ve all got yet another chance to begin again, to start over, to do things differently than we did them yesterday. That’s pretty cool. 🙂

I started the morning in the usual way, then spent some time sipping my coffee and planning my Thanksgiving grocery shopping list. I enjoy planning, and haven’t yet determined the menu for the holiday meal. I’m excited about it this year, more so than usual, because I am anticipating my Traveling Partner’s visit to my new place, and he’ll be staying the weekend with me. 😀 Fun!

A new week begins today. There’s also the work piece; short work week ahead because I am taking a couple days for a long Veteran’s Day weekend, and making the trek back down to the countryside to spend it with my Traveling Partner. We’re seeing a lot of each other while we can. When winter weather sets in, I won’t want to make the drive, and he will likely journey elsewhere, anyway. This year, we are just straight up planning around that, and I expect we won’t see each other at all for 6-10 weeks, including all of December, and much of January. I’m okay with that. I’m skillful at enjoying my time alone, generally, and have plenty to do through the cold winter months. 🙂 I’ll catch up on my reading, and have more to say about life and the world when we next see each other, and he will return with a traveler’s tales. 😀

That last paragraph started about work, ended up about love; clearly I’ve got my priorities in order. 😀

Coffee is finished. The day is started. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5

All of the Uncertainties, All of the Choices

November 3, 2017 //
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I’m not at all firm on what to write about, this morning. I often begin that way, and it is a state of things that does not cause me any particular stress. I put words in the title field, and then begin typing in the text box, and away I go. Writing coherently, fluidly, about something that matters to someone, in a clear, specific, insightful way… is not a given. It’s more a coincidence, I think, when it does work out that way.

I think that “insight” is more to do with you, the person reading the words, than me… or the words. We each have our own dictionary, and what I think I’m saying may not at all be what you understand me to have said, and this need not be a relevant concern to the matter of insight, at all. You’ll likely make some assumptions as you read. Maybe if you know me personally, you read my words “in my voice”, but is it my voice now, or my voice of some other lifetime? Are your assumptions accurate? Were mine? If you don’t actually know me personally, in what voice do you hear these words, when you read them? There go those assumptions again, at work in the background. Who do you think I am?

If I got something from the process of writing the words, and you get something from reading the words I wrote, does it matter at all if we understood completely different things? Perhaps – at that point we attempt to explain to each other how well we understand one another, I could see that being a potential sore point, but… maybe not? Maybe? I don’t have an answer here, only a question. It’s not even an important question. Just a random thought on a Friday morning.

I make a second coffee, and marvel at how terrible it is. How is this cup of coffee possible, from the same beans, using the same machine, made in the same way, by the same method, into the same cup, at all different than the previous coffee?? I take another sip, puzzled, curious, and seeking greater understanding. I like understanding things. Yeah… No – this is one terrible cup of coffee. Wow. I mean… like… an achievement of bad coffee, a stand out, an extraordinary demonstration of how poorly made a cup of coffee can be – and I didn’t even need to use a percolator, an air pot, or poor quality additives. Good grief. This sucks. I mean… on this whole other “No, seriously? I must be wrong… one more sip…” level. lol This is bad coffee. LOL I am still drinking it… no idea what that says about me, or about human primates generally, but… this is me. Drinking terrible coffee. At this point, I am savoring this terrible coffee and even enjoying its noteworthy awfulness. Please don’t ask me why would I do such a thing, because frankly… I don’t have an answer for that one, either. It is every bit as inexplicable as if I were to suddenly rise from my seat and do a cartwheel. lol

I think about the winter ahead. I think about the future. I sip my bad coffee, now mostly over how dreadful it is, my consciousness has moved on to other things. I think about love. I think about lovers. I think about the twinge of discontent that sometimes catches me by surprise in some lonely moment, when my awareness of age and aging collides with my awareness that I “still feel young on the inside”. This morning, the thought is merely a thought, and does not evoke an emotion. My thinking moves on.

I’ve a busy weekend ahead, and I am eager to get on with it. I’ll see my Traveling Partner this weekend (if all goes to plan, next weekend too!). Fuck I miss that guy. I’m ready to make the drive down, and I’m glad I seem to be well enough to do so; I don’t think I have the pro-adult skills to firmly decline if I weren’t up for it. I just miss him too much at this point. lol I consider the drive itself. It is autumn, and a lovely time of year for a long drive through beautiful countryside. Weather permitting, perhaps I won’t take the highway? A longer route, through scenic forests, down less traveled state highways and country side roads could be quite lovely and relaxed, and a great deal more like part of the weekend than mere transportation from point A to point B. (I-5 is efficient, but not beautiful, the result being the drive feels very purposeful, and more like “work”.)

The map is not the journey. The journey is, itself, the destination. Life’s menu of options is vast, and the choices are many. I am my own cartographer. I sip my terrible coffee and smile. The words pile up. I open up Google Maps with a plan in mind, ready to begin again. 🙂

 

 

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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