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Taking a Breath

October 14, 2020 //
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Today is weird. I mean… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a day. lol

The morning was lovely. I shared my morning coffee with my Traveling Partner. Mornings together over coffee are becoming a routine, which tends to crowd writing out of the morning plan. I enjoy my partner’s company. We never know how long we get to travel life’s journey with any one special human being, do we? I’m enjoying the moments as they come.

The work day became a busy bit of chaos unexpectedly quickly. I frankly over-reacted. Not in any notably dramatic way, I just took the moment more seriously than it proved to be worth, given time. One of those “oh. this is not an actual problem at all” moments. I would have benefited from taking a minute, taking a step back, and giving the whole thing some thought… Very much as I too-often, too-insistently, too-ineffectively sometimes suggest someone else do, in some other moment. Very fucking human. At some point, something clicked. I took a breath. I had more context. I rather literally “shrugged it off” with a shrug, when I realized how little the circumstances really mattered, in fact.

…Now I’m sitting here feeling just a little silly, and feeling vaguely fretful about purposeless anxiety and bullshit over nothing, and wondering again what the simplest steps to being the most balanced, calm, reasonable version of myself would be… I look to my day-to-day practices for some minutes, just “thinking things over”, then noticed something… I am finding myself “pretty balanced”, and I’m feeling very calm. There wasn’t anything particularly “unreasonable”, or unpleasant or harmful or rude, about my behavior at any point… just a day, with a bit of unexpected chaos. Handled reasonably. Progress over time. 🙂 Keep practicing.

I take another breath, and begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being

Finding Sufficiency

October 12, 2020 //
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It’s been another few days. I’m not gone. I’m fine. Life is… good. Contentment seeps in along the edges. I’ve moved back into my studio. “Everything” is back in its place. This is enough.

…Hardly fantastic motivation for early morning writing, though, I will say…

I hear my Traveling Partner’s merry laughter in the other room, and the sound of comedy. Yeah. This is enough. 🙂

I’m finding new routines. New timing. Sorting out new ways to enjoy my experience in this new space, now freed of the stress and chaos of repair work in progress. Perhaps you are used to counting on me, each and every morning…? Are you feeling sorrowful or bereft, or perhaps just bored, or jostled from your own routine? I hope you will be patient while I figure a few more self-care details out in this new home… I promise you, there is a ton of amazing content on the internet! (It is vast, indeed.)

…So… Until the next time. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being

Are We There Yet?

October 7, 2020 //
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The week began with unexpected (but welcome) contractors. It continued, yesterday, with the return of the (now expected, still welcome) contractors and the completion of the dry walling, taping, texturing, and painting. Today? Carpet, and, I think, the completion of the last bit of our moving “adventure” (which was the discovery of a leak, by way of the visible damage it had caused). Finally.

New homeowner shit. I’m not bitching – I’m delighted to have a home. I’m just counting down the days (hours, now?) until I can sigh contentedly, feel safe, settled, and at home – without huge holes in the walls, and an entirely unfinished closet, and paintings stacked everywhere in a seemingly haphazard way. lol 🙂 I’m sipping my coffee feeling grateful for this house, our home, this partnership, and my partner – and mentally listing for myself all of the many things we’ve gotten done since we moved in, just 98 days ago. 😀

…Time is a funny thing, isn’t it? I feel simultaneously that I’ve “been here a long time” (and thus, it feels unreasonable that I’m not yet wholly “moved in”) and also feel as if we just moved in “a couple weeks ago” (in which case, it totally seems reasonable to still be “sorting out some details”).

In early April, we began looking for a home of our own together, quite seriously. The search became “urgent” in an earnest “this has to get done because we’ve got to move” sort of way, in spite of the pandemic, at the end of April. By May 19th, we’d found what we were looking for, and made an offer. I’m still surprised by how quickly that went. We closed at the end of June, and began moving in. Pandemic restrictions at their most severe (up to that point), we did the move ourselves, and it took just shy of 10 days to get it all “done”, such that we were no longer moving out of anywhere, just putting finishing touches on moving in. That makes it all sound rather easy – and it was as easy as my Traveling Partner could make it, no doubt. Organized. Well-considered. Planned carefully. Executed skillfully. Still hard. Still a lot of manual labor. Some fussing. Some crying.

…There were some trying moments, that’s just real…

Since we moved in, there has been what now seems like an inevitable cascade of “small things” to handle. Squeaky doors. A hot tub leak. Quite a bit of spilled water. Cleaning. Things to assemble. Small repairs. Totally ordinary homeowner stuff. lol At first it mostly felt new, and delightfully autonomous (no call to a landlord, no delay in getting stuff done that wasn’t chosen), then it began to feel sort of “crushing”. (Strictly temporary. Change is.) We fixed things, and moved on. I feel a bit as if this last bit of contractor work really finishes the move, is what I’m saying. (Omg, so many words just to get to that idea. Sorry.)

No idea what comes next. New adventures. Everyday life. Contentment. Romance. New recipes? New neighbors.

A sunny day on the deck, a view of the forest beyond.

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer

Be Careful What You Wish For…

October 5, 2020 //
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I’d settled into work for the day, with a reminder to myself to phone the contractor handling the repair work (for the recent water damage). Having heard nothing for more than a week (again), it seemed wise to reach out pro-actively and see what could be delaying the work, and maybe get it scheduled. I felt very grown-up to be so on top of things on a Monday…

…Yeah…

So, just as I was preparing some routine work for follow-up with key stakeholders, fingers flying across my keyboard, I heard the doorbell. A package? So early? (I bet you know where this one is heading!) Yep. Contractors. Here to do dry wall. Wtf?? Nothing on my calendar… nothing coordinated with me… no follow-up since materials were picked. What. The. Fuck.

My Traveling Partner was wakened by the door bell. Hadn’t even had his coffee. My studio and the adjacent room were not ready for contractors to do work; I’d moved a bunch of stuff while my stepson was visiting. Paintings. Computer equipment. Paperwork. Book shelving complete with books. So, I did the only obvious thing… I smiled and welcomed the contractors in after alerting my partner they were here to work. I moved stuff out of their way. I did my best to keep my shit together while my work space was disrupted yet again. Fucking hell.

Things got moved. Including me; I’m in my partner’s game room, working. Whatever. It works, and I greatly appreciate having a partner who is flexible and quick-thinking. I managed to shed minimal tears over generally being faced with further upheaval. Win.

…Now all that’s left is to begin again. 😉

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, Frustration, gratitude, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights

This Headache, Though

September 28, 2020 //
1

I woke early with a headache. I didn’t sleep well, waking several times for (sometimes) no obvious reason. More than once I woke from dreams of … noise. Just that. Car noise. Truck noise. Construction noise. I would wake to hear only quiet. No real noise. Back to sleep, to dream of noise. It wasn’t a great night.

I woke earlier than the alarm would have gone off by a bit more than an hour. I got up. Meditation. Some yoga. I felt restless and annoyed, headache persisting. I put on my boots and went for a walk. It was dark, quiet, and still. The chilly morning air felt wonderful. The quiet was lovely. The silhouettes of trees and shrubbery created fantastical scenes ahead of me along the way. The headache persisted.

I returned home, still before dawn and no hint of sunrise visible. I made coffee, and sat down with that – and my headache. I finished off the water in my water bottle while I waited for my coffee to cool enough to drink that, instead. About half-way through my coffee, I admitted that “nothing else” had worked to improve this headache, thus far, and took something for it. My Traveling Partner woke, perhaps I banged the drawer or rattled a pill bottle? We spent a pleasant half an hour or so hanging out with our morning coffee before my work day began.

I started my workday with this headache, and it is with me, even now. A soak in the hot tub in the chill of an autumn morning was lovely. Didn’t help with the headache. Lunch with my partner and his son was quite pleasant, too. Still enduring the headache. I’d taken a stronger headache remedy shortly before lunch, and it’s now about an hour later than we finished that meal. I’ve still got the headache, but… maybe it’s improved a bit? It only hurts when I move… and when I sit still. Sometimes it fades into the background for a moment (that’s definitely an improvement).

…I’m not really just whinging about this headache as much as I mean to be pointing out how important the self-care is, even though it isn’t helping the headache much. The self-care is keeping me from becoming a fucking monster and treating everyone around me badly. That’s worth something. It’s not so much that I can feel any notable improvement where the headache is concerned (I can’t) – but I’m not snarling at people. Not blasting anyone with negative emotion over some small thing. I haven’t lost my sense of humor, or become stern. I’m mostly enjoying my day, mostly being someone I can appreciate in my interactions with others (from my own perspective). I’m in pain. I’m not enjoying that, but I’m also not devolving into some shattered broken down thing, or causing a fuck ton of chaos for everyone around me. That’s worth something. Apologies only go so far, so often – sooner or later we have to take steps to change problem behavior. For real. Headaches and all.

Fuck this headache, though. Damn.

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights
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