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Dream, Plan, Prepare

November 17, 2017 //
2

The holiday season is just at the edge of “now”. Thanksgiving is next weekend and I’m excited about welcoming my Traveling Partner “home” – to this home – for a few days of his good company, shared at leisure. I’ve been daydreaming about it since July – literally  since I moved into this space. lol Dreaming doesn’t get me far, though, it just feels nice.

I shifted gears from dreaming to planning once he had confirmed confirmingly that he would indeed, no fooling, actually be coming up, and that he had a plan to do so. 🙂 This morning, I sat down with my coffee and made my weekend “to do” list, and extended my planning from thinking over the holiday menu, and how best to stock the pantry for his stay, to also putting the house in order for having a guest, and adding little touches like specifically stocking the bathrooms with his brands, preferred products, and common OTC remedies I know he favors, and “detailing” my space. This doesn’t send me into a frantic flurry of panicked task completion, because that isn’t who I am. What it does is give me some structure to hang onto while I tidy up my corner of the world, and prevents me from losing track of what I intend to get done. I won’t finish all of it. That’s absolutely a given; I will want to do more than is possible to do. What is also a given is that I am okay with that. 🙂 The weekend is about love and celebration and gratitude, and at no point has my Traveling Partner suggested that my real value lies in my ability to wash a dish, vacuum a carpet, or do a load of laundry. lol I do like order, and I enjoy being a relaxed hostess – tidying up a bit makes me feel more relaxed, and… prepared.

So, this weekend is the point at which I shift gears again, going from planning the weekend to being prepared for it – which has to include also be ready for all that is not/was not/could have been planned. 😀 Yep. You read that right; I plan for spontaneity, then attempt to be prepared for it. LOL 😀

A low stress, relatively simple holiday meal for two, and a weekend in my partner’s good company sounds like a lovely way to spend a couple days away from the office. I’m looking forward to it. Hell, I’m looking forward to the weekend of tidying up, too! Sure, there are verbs involved, and I’m not suggesting that I specifically enjoy doing dishes, vacuuming, breaking down boxes for recycling, or doing laundry, but I very much enjoy the outcome of doing those things, and doing them with care, because the outcome matters to me personally and supports the quality of life I enjoy. I have learned to embrace the doing of them as both necessary and precious. Every dish I wash is something I worked hard for. Caring for them makes a lot of good sense. The way I feel when I see how tidy my kitchen is, recognizing that this is something I have done for me, because I like it, feels satisfying and nurturing. I feel cared for. It doesn’t detract from that feeling that I am the one caring for me day-to-day – shouldn’t I be? 🙂

Don’t get me wrong – I am not a “neat freak”. Being tidy and orderly doesn’t “come naturally” to me, nor is it a compulsion. I have to work at it. The outcome feels wonderful, and I do love living in a very tidy orderly environment, but omg – the verbs. This is what makes it possible to use my own environment, cared for by me, to gauge my emotional and mental wellness in the moment; everything goes to shit when I am descending into disorder, having a rough time of things, or losing my damned mind. When I’m sick, I struggle to stay caught up on every day basic housekeeping – which means whether I am fully aware of it or not, I am also likely failing to care for myself well, and since I can see the housekeeping more easily than I can see whether or not I am taking care of myself, it’s an effective early warning system to simply look around and “see how I’m doing”, based on the housekeeping. Little things can say a lot. (Sometimes they just say I need to get more rest, because I’m too tired to care for myself, sometimes they say I am over-committed to other activities and need to spend more time at home.)

…I’m pretty sure that a horribly messy crowded disorganized insufficiently clean unsafe or unhealthy household actually literally “makes me crazy” – or, at a minimum, crazier.

Looking around, it feels good to see that I’m generally well-prepared for life, for guests, for friends to drop by. There are some things I’d like to get done. There are some small improvements I can make that function as reminders to take time for me. I’m eager for the work day to end, for the weekend to begin. I’ve got concert tickets for tonight… then… sleeping in sounds nice… then… chores! LOL I am every bit as eager to get started on the housekeeping as I am to go to the concert tonight. 🙂

…So many verbs.

My coffee is finished. I make a second cup and get started on a grocery list. Thanksgiving won’t prepare itself!

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

Push Past That Wall

November 15, 2017 //
0

This morning I had to admit it; I’ve hit a wall. I’m stalled. I sat for almost an hour staring into the text editor of my blog, fingers – and mind – motionless. What the hell?

I scrolled through Facebook rather mindlessly. I put that aside, aggravated with myself. I tried to read the news, but I don’t actually want to fill my thoughts with that garbage, either. lol I put on music, which satisfies me and fills that cognitive void, but doesn’t “fix” anything. I update my “to do list” – rescheduling all the crap I could have done yesterday to be things I intend to do today. Then I move them to tomorrow. Omg. Seriously?

I pause everything for meditation. No timer. No agenda. Just a few moments of alone time with the woman in the mirror, breathing. Shifting gears from thinking to practicing awareness, only, is what got my attention more clearly focused on this bit of stalled progress. More awareness of the underlying fatigue, the yearning in the background, the loneliness competing with the delights of solitude, the world in fierce competition for my attention with the things that truly matter most to me, personally. It’s a puzzle. How do I snatch my attention, energy, and effort back from the agendas of the media, my employer, and the world?

…With great commitment and a lot of practice, I suppose… there are verbs involved. So many verbs. lol

I get back to my “to do list” and my coffee. I consider the one or two tasks that keep being reliably postponed, rescheduled, pushed off for another day, and wonder if I am allowing those, and my reluctance to deal with them, to derail me generally…? Or… Am I “just being lazy”? (Whose words are those, I wonder?) When I examine the tasks on my list that I’d like to finish up, I can see there isn’t even 2 hours of real work involved… I just… yeah. I just haven’t been doing those things. This is a less than ideally productive approach. lol

Tonight won’t be the time for all that, and it feels inconvenient to want to wipe that list clean now. I smile into my coffee, aware my impatience is one more way my primate brain seeks to distract me from simply doing; I can lead with my frustration and annoyance, become invested in the emotional experience and … not do anything about the things that create the experience. Uh-huh. Well… okay, so I specifically don’t want to do things quite that way, so I get up from my chair, in the middle of my writing and do one thing, and cross it off the list. I sit down smiling, and continue to sip my coffee.

Did you know that checking things off the list gives me a boost? It does. Fairly similar to the feeling of reward and satisfaction I feel when I receive a like on a post, or when I get a notification that someone has messaged me. It’s a very real chemical reward, but does require the bit of effort needed to go from seeing the item on the list, to completing it, to checking it off. I’ve noticed just checking off shit I haven’t done does not produce the same effect – although adding something to the list that wasn’t listed, but got completed, in order to simply check it off is every bit as rewarding as checking off something that has lingered on the list for ages. Do you keep a list? Have you noticed that little jolt of good feeling chemistry, and a sense of accomplishment, when you check things off that list?

Here’s where the verbs pile up, though, like rush hour traffic; I know these things about my experience, and still find myself stalled sometimes, and not doing the verbs. Very human. How to get past that? Push on. I don’t have a better answer. Do one thing. Then do another. Make a point of it. Turn off the TV. Turn off YouTube. Disconnect. Do the thing. Then do another. Make a point of it. Check it off the list. Did something not listed? Add it to the list. Check it off. Repeat. See something else that needs doing? Add it to the list. Do it. Check it off. Repeat. There is a path to completion – it is paved with verbs. lol These chores are not going to do themselves!

Time to begin again. 🙂 I’ve got this list, and a bit of time before work…

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being

Not My Circus…

November 13, 2017 //
0

…I still got the invitation to join the fun under the big top. That’s sort of how OPD (Other People’s Drama) works; it’s not your own, but nonetheless, it draws you in, consumes your attention, your time, your resources… if you choose to allow that. The alternative, which is to say, choosing to avoid, or depart from, the local circus of human drama means accepting, first, that you can.

Some people cultivate drama, relish it, and insist you sample it with them.

You don’t get those minutes (hours, days, weeks… whatever) of your life spent on drama back. Ever. You likely also don’t recoup any more tangible losses, should you have been so foolhardy as to waste your literal resources on Other People’s Drama. Most often, our compelling, seemingly unavoidable (it isn’t) drama is that of family members, and friends. We may feel “invested”, or obligated to do something about for… reasons. We may think we can “help” (unlikely; drama is chosen by those who love it, and they aren’t going to relinquish all that attention any time soon).

The drama isn’t “real”…

My weekend was weird. I cherish the time I spent with my Traveling Partner. The unexpected drama swirling around an unexpected couch-surfing house guest staying with his other partner was… both unexpected, and dramatic. It was also utterly willful, built on the narrative in said house guest’s head, and entirely untethered from any obvious connection to reality. Chosen. Emotionally invested in. Shared with persistent enthusiasm. I excused myself several times to be away from it altogether. No advice I could offer will alleviate self-selected willful suffering.

…like a mushroom, what is on the surface of most drama is only the outward expression of something far more vast …

Then there was the alternate undercurrent of drama that is simply the ebb and flow of change as my Traveling Partner and his Other get settled into the new location, and adjust to nearer and farther away friendships also adjusting to those changes. Getting to know new neighbors. The welcoming of deepening associations among now-local friends. The boundary-setting and limitations on resources that must sometimes be placed on friends lacking recognition that generosity has limits, that resources are not unlimited, that circumstances change. Learning to live well in an entirely new context. It’s lovely out in the country on their acreage – it is also not city living, at all. Change is a thing. What works when one can just pop down to the big box chain at the large shopping megaplex down the street isn’t necessarily an effective strategy when the nearest neighbor is a drive away, the corner market doesn’t have all the essentials because it is only the size of a storage shed, and “town” is miles down the highway – and more of a village than a town. I’m not being critical of country living – I’m eager to retire and embrace it – it is simply quite a lot different, and requires altogether different strategies to maintain good quality of life. It definitely drove the point home to be part of the experience of shopping for more complete first aid and emergency care gear; there is no chance an ambulance could arrive to deal with a first aid emergency in less than 45 minutes or so out there, at best.

…like raindrops clinging to surfaces after a storm, tears fall, tears linger, tears eventually dry…

The drive home was… surprisingly restful. lol No traffic and no drama. My timing was excellent. I left after enjoying morning coffee with my partner. I got home in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to grocery shop (didn’t need to, didn’t bother), do some tidying up (didn’t feel like it, didn’t bother), and prepare for the week ahead (didn’t need to, already was). I spent the evening meditating, reading, and enjoying the changes in the shadows as afternoon became twilight, and then night.

…there is value in perspective, and looking beyond the storm of the moment…

I still did not wholly escape the whopping helping of OPD that I “enjoyed” over the weekend; more drama when I got home. I (rather humorously, actually) was “unfriended” by a friend – over the other friends we had mutually shared (who, apparently, he also unfriended). I noticed though (while briefly catching up with the world), and, yep, invited drama rather thoughtlessly by asking him what was up with the unfriending? So… he told me. lol Fuuuuuuuuck. Okay, okay. That one’s on me. But – we’re still friends, I think. I even think that matters, since the entire mess was a reaction to an online exchange which I was no part of, and I actually like the guy. I even enjoyed spending some minutes in conversation with him, once we’d moved on from the drama, itself.

…storms pass.

Seriously, though? What is up with all the fucking drama? I mean, I’m not really surprised. We elected drama. We gobble up drama in our feeds every damned day. We make more if we run out. It’s pretty gross, actually; we are not ready to be content, or even to enjoy a moment of quiet. I mean, as a species, or a culture. Me personally? So ready. In fact, I spend much of my time utterly without drama. It’s pleasant. I plan to do more of that. 😀 I’ve even gotten pretty good at it. (If you read my blog regularly, you are probably getting pretty good at it, too. 🙂 )

There’s more to life than drama. Seasons change.

I woke at 2:32 am, this morning, when the power here went out in the strong wind and stormy rainy night. I might have slept through it (most of my neighbors likely did), but the back up power on the aquarium beeps in a friendly but hard to ignore fashion, about every 30 seconds, until shortly before it has done all it can, at which point it beeps rather more aggressively before becoming silent. Once it was silent, I went back to sleep for an hour. The power came back on minutes after the back up power to the aquarium was exhausted (just about perfect, and I remind myself to thank my Traveling Partner, who suggested it), about an hour and a half after the power went out. I dragged myself out of bed earlier than I meant to when my phone, carelessly left on my nightstand, buzzed when morning emails and message notifications began to arrive.

What we contribute to our experience ripples outward into the experience shared with others.

A new day, a new week – hopefully no new drama. lol It’s time to begin again. 😀

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

A New Week Begins

November 6, 2017 //
0

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

First Day “Back”

November 2, 2017 //
2

I’m awake. Showered. Dressed. Sipping coffee in the usual ordinary sort of way. My day begins relatively gently, and I am eager to return to the office this morning. (I kind of have to write that sentence down, right there, to record factually that indeed I am looking forward to going to work, because I’m not sure that’s a sentence I use very often, or a feeling that is especially common over the entire course of my life, and I want to enjoy the moment.)

I am, for most values of “feeling better”, feeling better. 😀

As with any other sort of subjective state of being, it’s an individual perspective, right? I’ve still got some sinus drainage. Still have some soreness of throat. Still have the cough (which may well linger through the holidays). None of those things are what they were. The cough is seldom, and not as bad, and the sore throat and sinus drainage are also minor. I’m not overwhelmed by fatigue. I don’t have a headache. I’m not shivering while wrapped in blankets in a warm room (very not; the heat is set to “don’t let the house freeze” over night, and I’m just wearing work clothes, not even a sweater, and quite comfortable). I’m work-ready, though, and ready to work. 😀

I’m also super glad I now commute by car, even if distracted drivers keep tapping my fucking bumper at stop lights on an almost monthly basis; I’m well for most values of well, but… I’m not up to walking a mile to catch a bus on a cold morning. Not yet.

Taking care of this fragile vessel is an interesting balancing act. Long-term care means holding down a job and preparing for future retirement… short-term care may require taking time away from work to care for my health right now.

Mental health care works similarly. There is a balance between long-term wellness and urgent care needs to find. There is a balance between addressing issues that are destroying personal perspective and quality of life, and those that degrade relationships with others. A friend struggling with a loved one’s seeming lack of “acceptable” progress, which she feels is required to feel safe in the relationship, doesn’t seem to understand that being in therapy, for the mentally ill loved one, isn’t about that. It’s about saving their own actual life, their experience of living, their quality of life and ability to live and thrive – on their own terms – and achieve mental and emotional wellness – for themselves. I mean, sure. I know when I went into treatment, and this is every time, ever, I definitely wanted to preserve and heal the relationships my condition had affected…but… not at the expense of succeeding to become well, myself. Mental health therapy is for the person seeking treatment – and it’s not about “fixing” that person according to any criteria or standard aside from that determined by the treatment seeking mentally ill person and their therapist. Period. End of stakeholder meeting. Fuck right off if you think you get to insert yourself and your pet concerns into that process to exert influence over a treatment plan intended to achieve reasonable emotional wellness because you have an outcome in mind. Fuck right off indeed – and then go get your own god-damned therapist and take care of your own god-damned needs. lol Seriously, people. “My partner is in therapy” does not equate to “my partner is rebuilding themselves per my specifications”. Just stop and hey, maybe actually support the general emotional wellness of your partner, yourself, and your relationship by being kind, compassionate, listening deeply, and accepting that you, yourself, have your own baggage – and may need your own help. Your partner can not be your therapist, and their therapy is not about you.

Sorry. That’s a bit of a rant there. I’ve just been through it in too many partnerships. The “concerned” questions that mask a hidden agenda. The probing about what is going on in therapy. The lack of willingness to actually participate or seek help, while pushing the full weight of all the issues of a relationship onto the mentally unwell partner because they are unwell, rather than be accountable for some portion of the dynamic. The clear drive to push an agenda into therapy content. The disapproval of selected therapist or treatment modality because it doesn’t meet the needs of the person not even seeking help in the first place. The indirect arguments with a therapist who’s not even in the room if those pesky probing questions are met with openness and trust, but the answers are uncomfortable. Fuck all that. Everyone has their own baggage, and very few people in relationships are “crazy alone” – the crazy becomes shared over time. If you are in therapy, yourself, it’s about you. That’s okay. It’s supposed to be. If your loved one is in therapy, be supportive without being invasive; it’s not about you. It just isn’t. Just fucking chill. (I know, I know, you feel out of control because you can’t control what your partner reveals to the therapist – maybe it is the “wrong” stuff, or not enough, or not “what matters”… and you still don’t get to call the shots, and it still isn’t about you, and you still need to go find something else to do with your time and let your partner handle their business.)

I breathe. I relax. Memories. Wow. I still carry around some pain and some anger about an ex who worked very hard to “guide” my treatment in therapy, with some degree of success, to my detriment – over time I ended up becoming progressively much worse. I’m glad I am out of that relationship. Turned out that mattered a great deal and was an important positive change. Turns out it is still enough to ruffle my feathers when watching friends go through it from an outsider’s perspective. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of damned work. People seek therapy because they are hurting. Therapy itself is sometimes a process of feeling all the hurts until the hurts are processed and in perspective – that just doesn’t even sound pleasant, and it isn’t at all. It’s a process, and the tedium and strain and quantities of change and upheaval are not eased by attempting to interfere, that’s really what I’m saying. 🙂 (And, just to keep it real, I’m still working on plenty of my own issues – remember that whole “living alone” thing? Yeah. Therapy turns out to be muuuuch easier in that context. Much.)

It’s a new day. A good one for all manner of new beginnings, and starting things. Where will you take it? Will you use your human super powers for good or evil? Will you be listening deeply, or waiting for your turn to talk? Will you make taking care of yourself well and with great skill and compassion a high priority? Will you take one step to change the world for the better, yourself? Take a look around. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories anger, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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