Archives for posts with tag: mindful living
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Tugging on a Thread

June 5, 2017 //
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It’s already Monday, already time to get back to the routine routines, and the usual flow of activities of a busy work week. (Seriously? Already??) How is this so damned difficult? I stare into my half empty cup of not-quite-cold coffee and wonder if there is time for another.

All the windows are open to the morning chill. There’s a hot afternoon in the forecast and I am rethinking my choice of work clothes, too. Since I’ve been back from the forest, I’ve been notably less attentive to routines and habits, and existing more “casually”. It feels terrifically relaxed, but realistically may not be sustainable for me, with some of my persistent issues (memory challenges are what they are). I’ve misplaced my badge to get into the building at work… I think I may have left it in the car, which I’ve already dropped off at my Traveling Partner’s place. I grin at my oversight and shake my head. It’s a small thing, not worth becoming stressed over. (I can recall a time when even so small a thing would have sent me over the edge pretty reliably.)

My bare toes are cold, as the apartment cools down. The sweater I thought would be a good idea is still comfortable, but looking into the developing orange and hint of haze in the sky as the sun rises, the sweater is clearly in need of being reconsidered before I leave for work. Practical details. How is life so filled up with practical details and practical questions? How is there ever room left over for wonder or for mysteries? I’m astonished and amazed, and for just one moment wide-eyed with real appreciation for how much minutiae I do manage to keep track of moment-to-moment, day-to-day; life is busy.

What matters most?

I got the rest I needed this past weekend. I’m glad I took the time. This morning I look around my apartment – and my life – with “new eyes”, rested, refreshed, and open to change, and I see some things that are very much change-worthy and quite possibly overdue for it. It’s not always clear where some bit of alteration in life’s course may take things over time. Like a loose thread on a sweater, each dangling bit of something or other I might consider changing is connected with all of the details of my life; change one thing, and things are changed, generally. Pulling on that thread may have consequences as yet unconsidered. Still… change is. I can choose change, or I can allow it to be chosen for me by others, or by circumstances.

It’s an interesting journey, this life thing. I wonder where the next trail leads? The sun is up, it’s a Monday, and it’s time to begin again. 🙂

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

3, 2, 1… Enough

June 4, 2017 //
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3 days, two nights, one purpose, and I return to my apartment by the park with sore feet, aching muscles, stiff joints, and a smile that  won’t quit.

3 mosquito bites, two unexplained bruises, 1 blister over 17 miles of trails, and I shot more than 100 pictures, and spotted a rainbow’s worth of different wildflowers in bloom.

I reached my campsite and set up camp well before dusk settled in, on Wednesday evening. I managed more than 4 miles of hiking that evening, just getting my gear to the hike-in camping area, and exploring the nearest trails after making camp.

A coffee well-earned, an evening of quiet.

It rained most of the night, and I laid wakefully, contentedly listening to the rain fall, more than necessarily pleased that my tent doesn’t leak.

The rain-drenched morning didn’t quench my enthusiasm for the day ahead.

I spent Thursday meditating, after morning coffee and a short hike to stretch my legs, and didn’t do much else. I brought a journal to write in, and a notebook, a sketch pad and colored pencils for drawing, my camera, my kindle… and other than my camera, I didn’t touch any of the distractions I brought along to pass the time; I didn’t need them. Time passed just fine without any help from me. 🙂

Given the necessary conditions, I bloom in my own time. It is often enough to sit quietly and allow the moment to unfold.

I spent Friday hiking, departing fairly early in the morning to walk a new path. The trail I chose was sufficiently challenging to push me, lovely enough to be utterly worth it without any other “reason” to go the whole distance, and totally within my ability. I returned to camp in the afternoon, got my boots off, put my feet up, and made coffee. Out among the trees, coffee doesn’t seem to keep me from sleeping, ever, however late I may be drinking it. I bet there’s something to be learned from that…

Where does my path lead? It’s helpful to have a map, but the map is not the world.

…Instead of learning anything about coffee, though, I learned something different. As campers arrived to fill nearby sites for the weekend, I learned that my needs were met, and that I was “done”. I learned that I didn’t really want to sit through a chilly evening overhearing loud conversations about corporate headaches, challenges with the kids’ teachers, or sports. I learned that I didn’t find value in enduring another camper’s choice to bring a generator into the forest for the weekend.

Ultimately, we each choose our own path…

I learned, this weekend, that it really is quite okay to make my choices my way, without any pressure from my own expectations, or anyone else’s; I broke camp late that afternoon, taking my time, packing up skillfully and efficiently without feeling at all rushed. I packed my gear out of the park (taking the same three trips it took to bring it down to the campsite in the first place), still smiling when the effort was completed. I let the park rangers know I was checking out, so they could release that camp site to another camper – it’s a great spot.

The beauty in the world exists whether or not I choose to observe it. My choice to observe the beauty in the world is necessary only to my own appreciation of it.

I got home before the sun set, unpacked enough gear to begin properly unpacking a bit at a time. First, a leisurely shower. A fresh salad. A hot cup of coffee. A moment to begin the upload of all the photographs. No music. No social media. No TV. Patio door open to the breezes and the sound of birdsong. A quiet evening, alone in the stillness, aside from a few minutes checking in with a friend from next door.

Roses blooming on the patio welcome me home, rain-drenched, fragrant, and lovely.

Yesterday I woke, still feeling fairly wrapped in my own purpose, and disinclined to be particularly social. I wrote a dear friend. I unpacked some things. I meditated. I gardened. It was a chilly gray day, and I enjoyed the morning with a crackling fire in the fireplace – which I might also have done if I had remained out in the trees another day. There seemed no urgency to connect to the digital world with any haste – no one was expecting me to, in any case. (Good expectation-setting for the win!) I watched the birds come and go from the feeder.

It was a lovely day of bird-watching.

Here it is, today. (Isn’t it always? 😉 ) I figured I’d sleep in… I didn’t. I woke with the dawn. I figured I’d move purposefully down a long list of things I’d like to get done… also not happening, at least not so far. I sip my coffee, smiling softly, watching the birds at the feeder with my laptop balanced on my knees, writing from a slightly different perspective – though whether that is a matter of my laptop, a chilly morning, and cold coffee on the patio, or simply that my perspective remains altered by my time out in the trees is neither known, nor relevant to the experience.

What now? Just this. Isn’t it enough? 🙂

A patio with a view.

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

Time to Face Change!

May 14, 2017 //
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Well… it always is time to face one change or another, is it not? If not simply the passage of time making some change to the face of the clock, it’s sure to be something else. lol

Today I am more than usually sensitive to, and aware of, change, just generally; I am making a change in my scheduled work days, and today becomes one of those. So… sure enough, I woke hours ahead of the alarm, once or twice, checking to be sure that time exists, and that it remained “still nighttime” and that I hadn’t missed my alarm, my bus, my moment… I got this with most changes in routine. I don’t give myself grief about it anymore; it’s part of how – and who – I am. Since there isn’t “one way” to be human that succeeds above all other possible ways, I am content that this is part of my own. 🙂

…Of course, for no clear reason, everything seems to take just a little longer this morning, on a morning I have a firm – and different – “walk out the door time”. I’m okay with that, too; I keep an eye on the clock. (That’s possibly what has seemed to slow things down!)

Change is a thing. Fighting this one would do nothing to make it go more smoothly, or to feel effortless – and because it isn’t “effortless”, at all, it makes more than a little sense that it doesn’t feel effortless. lol I make the effort, and with a smile, because this is a change I am choosing – it has value for me. It frees up a weekday for appointments and whatnot that I will not have to take time off work for. Nice. Even my Traveling Partner sounded ready for it, eagerly pointing out we’d now have Fridays to have fun together. 🙂 I had thought of that too. It’s a good fit.

…Still human though. It still feels like “Sunday” – a day to sleep in, to do laundry, to tidy up, to relax… the dawn is just beginning. The dark trees on the horizon are silhouetted against the pale blue-gray pre-sunrise cloudy sky. It may rain more. I feel mildly annoyed for a moment to be awake so early, ready to pull on my hiking boots… but not going hiking. I laugh it off. It doesn’t matter the day of the week, they’re all just days. I’m eager to see what this one holds.

I’m ready to begin again.

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Categories Free Will, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

All Your Drama Are Belong to Us

May 11, 2017 //
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How much of our perceived experience is mangled in translation as we struggle to make sense of who we are, ourselves, in the context of all of the everything else? Probably most of it, I suppose, but it’s what we’ve got to work with. lol

Spring, almost summer, plenty of flowers to see, to smell, to touch, to pause for.

Late in the day, yesterday, I received an anguished text message from a younger female friend. It was an emotional soup of self-denigrating words and phrases, and simultaneously angry and despairing, and somewhat nonsensical in the context of my recollections of my friend, and known details of real life. I dislike being the one to call it out, but couldn’t help noticing that the timing was almost precise; four weeks after her last major “life is shit” meltdown. Hormones. She’s in her 20s, so that’s an experience that hits hard in her life, and at a point when she may not yet have figured all of that out, herself. Fuck I hate drama – but I do love my friends. I search for calming words, something to put the emotional blast on pause, or at least assure her she is not adrift alone. The work day was nearly over, but I felt very far away.

It was still a very good day for flowers.

No kidding, when I got home I actually invited drama to come over to a cup of cocoa. LOL Yep, brought it right into my safe haven, my drama free zone… held the door open, even. 😀 We chilled together – things were already some better. That’s the way of it, like any other sort of storm, bad weather passes.

Some flowers are small….

The three of us (me, my friend, her lover) chilled in the quiet comfort of my place, talking. Sometimes there is no perceptible difference in our ages when we hang out…we’re just people, there are more important things to be aware of. Last night, I felt that peculiar sympathy and tenderness of the elder “wise woman” in the company of youth; so much of what was troubling my friend is no longer commonplace for me, but recognized, familiar, and mostly relatively (subjectively) well-understood. I shared what I learned over many years of screaming and crying on a cycle, the things I found that worked, the things that did not, and continued to reassure her that she can be okay and learn to manage this bullshit that curses us all. lol I was going for offering more hope than I ever felt myself; I didn’t have me as a mentor, or friend.

…some flowers are more complicated…

I looked back on the woman in the mirror, and recalled all the things I wished I’d understood sooner, all the many times I learned something more. I tried to share those things with calm conviction and reassurance. I served cocoa.

…some flowers decorate vegetables…

I talked to him about little things that really do make a difference, openly, comfortably, together, because this ought not be secret knowledge! The biggest thing I have to share with him? Ease the fuck up on being right while the hormone thing is going on. It’s hard, but seriously, just stand the fuck down, back off, and revisit whatever on some other day, when everyone is “feeling better”. lol How many fights wouldn’t be fights at all if lovers would let bullshit go when one or the other is hurting, and tend to wounded hearts as lovers can? The hormone thing is just not a personal attack, the experience can feel really shitty and lonely, and more than anything it’s nice just to feel loved, and feel that our lover “is there”, and understands we feel shitty.

…others are on trees…

…Then I called bullshit on her bullshit, too. It’s a hard thing, but as bad as the hormone thing can be, legitimately and truly bad behavior remains bad behavior. Unacceptable behavior is no more acceptable when driven by hormones. Being a nasty mean bitch still isn’t okay just because being female has some really shitty irritating unpleasant painful aggravating experiences that push us past our personal breaking point. We still have an obligation to do our best to choose our actions and words with great care, and with mindful awareness that the person we’re interacting with is every bit as human as we are, ourselves, and also someone we love. Including the woman in the mirror.

…some are potted…

How is it I think I can say these “terrible:” things that may appear to lack compassion? Well… I just haven’t ever seen a woman treat her boss the way she treats her lover when hormones flare up – have you? I mean, seriously, full-on raging tantrum, screaming at them irrationally, or being overtly willfully nasty to them using hormones as an excuse? Acting out? Breaking shit? Weeping apathetic pessimism that halts all productive effort? I’m betting you haven’t. lol So. Some choice and freewill are clearly still available. Just saying. Feel your feelings. Take care of you. Do what is right, nonetheless, and treat your lover with an assumption of positive intent, and an awareness that they are having their own experience and would help if they could.

…their colors vary…

Not one bit of any of that is “easy”. It takes a lot of practice. Results vary. Adulting can be hard. lol 🙂 Begin again. Practice more. Say I’m sorry” when you’ve hurt someone – right? The basics.

how we tend the garden of our hearts determines what will blossom.

It was still a beautiful evening shared with friends. Drama left way before they did. No idea how they ended the evening… I woke wondering, and hoping they are okay. Young is hard… I’m sort of glad I’m not that, anymore, at least… this morning, on a lovely quiet morning, over coffee, watching the sky lighten to a cloudy spring morning. Being where I am in life is enough. 🙂

Love matters most.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

One Singular Moment

May 6, 2017 //
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The sun rises beyond the meadow. The dew on the tall grass between the community lawn beyond the patio and the park beyond, sparkles like glitter, catching my eye as it shifts with the morning breeze. It twinkles like a promise of friendly fun in the eyes of a new lover. A curious blue jay approaches the patio door, peering in from his own perspective on the morning, curious but too busy to linger. I sip my second cup of coffee with a contented smile. There’s nothing more this particular moment needs. It’s just one moment, between waking and doing, a moment to be. It is enough as it is, and I am content to enjoy it.

I bloom like a garden flower when conditions are right. This morning I understand I am also the gardener.

Later I will take action, or complete a task, or do a thing, or play a happy song… there’s time for that, then. For now, I embrace stillness. It’s enough.

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Categories Free Will, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being
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