Archives for posts with tag: order from chaos
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Variations on a Theme

April 5, 2026 //
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I woke early, but not ridiculously so. I got up and dressed, hoping not to wake my Traveling Partner. We worked through the day, yesterday, moving things around and restoring order from chaos. Joyful work, but still work, and by the end of the evening we were both fatigued, in pain, and easily aggravated. I called it a night early, expecting to read awhile, but I quickly sank into an exhausted sleep.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

We had a great day together yesterday, mostly. Fatigue and pain got in the way a couple times – very human. Today is a new day, and I am not clinging to yesterday’s grief; that’s generally a poor practice. (We become what we practice.)

The morning is quiet and very dark. I reach the local trail ahead of the sun. I decide to wait for the first hint of daybreak before I begin my walk. I’ve got my headlamp, but I’m not in any hurry. Even though it is Easter Sunday for many, there are no early morning events planned here (I checked before I chose this trail).

Yesterday, in the evening, I managed to hurt my knee somehow and managed little better than a slow painstaking limp, gripping my cane to steady myself through each painful step for the rest of the evening. The muscle running up the back of my thigh from the pit of my knee to my ass still hurts, but I’m not limping and for most values of “okay”, I’m okay. I’m just sore from the work of moving things around (and there is more yet to do).

I don’t personally enjoy the chaos of moving, and I’m grateful this is a very limited version of that experience. I’m delighted to have my space back, less so about the bangs and bruises of having my mental map suddenly destroyed. I laugh at myself for a moment, recognizing that as lasting consequences of brain damage go, it could be much worse that needing some time to rebuild routines and to restore a sense of object placement. This may also say something about my fondness for familiar walks and trails. I sit with that thought for a moment.

… Novelty is uncomfortable, but may be better for my cognitive health, long-term…

I sigh to myself as I recognize and acknowledge sore muscles. The walk will be good for me. I think about the day ahead. More to do, and today includes a bunch of basic housekeeping. I’ve been working from home more, which takes the pressure off the weekend, and let’s me spread things out more, and my Traveling Partner no longer requires full-time caregiving (barely any at all now), and has been resuming many household tasks he handled entirely before his injury. Fuck it’s good to have him back! … It’s still Sunday and there are still household chores to do. 😆

It’s funny, I had had it in mind to “put things back the way they were” when the Anxious Adventurer moved out… But things have changed, life has moved on, and that isn’t a useful solution in many cases. (I don’t think I have an accurate recollection to work from, either.) Change is. There are different paintings hanging in the library now, and my studio just “feels different”. I’m not even complaining or fighting it; it’s mostly better in obvious ways. There is room for further improvement and this is a choice opportunity for such things. I’ll relearn where everything is, all over again.

… And maybe even change it again, in favor of something better still…

I reflect (with some amazement and a whole lot of respect and admiration) on the way my Traveling Partner embraces the opportunity for change to completely change various elements of his work and creative spaces. I’m astonished by how little such things disrupt him. There’s a lot to learn from that.

I sit awhile longer reflecting on moves and moving and change. It’s a useful metaphor. My mind quickly wanders to art and painting and I am eager to make use of my studio, although it will see use as my office before then. Monday is almost here. I put that thought aside firmly. Neither Monday nor work need my attention today.

I look over the list of things yet to do. The sky has taken on a hint of deep dark blue. I can see the trail. Steps on a path are calling me. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Having My Own Experience

January 17, 2026 //
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I’m sitting at my halfway point on this local trail, before dawn.  Venus is bright above the western horizon. It is a clear, mild morning. The forecast suggested it would be near freezing this morning, but it is much warmer. 45°F (7.2°C). Pleasant, compared to freezing, and I am enjoying it. I am comfortable in the warm clothes I chose.

One by one the primroses are beginning to bloom in my garden.

I smile when I recall the primroses blooming in the flower beds along the front walk. They don’t understand that it is winter, they bloom in the mild Spring-like weather regardless what the calendar says. I think about that awhile, and the phrase “bloom where you are planted”. Like garden flowers, human beings also bloom at the time most right for them individually.

I watch Venus slowly sinking towards the horizon. I reflect on how peculiar it is that this appearance of movement is not what it seems. It isn’t Venus moving at all; it is the Earth rotating on her axis. I have no sense of that motion at all, as far as I can tell, I only observe the apparent movement of the stars. There’s something to learn there, about perspective and reality and truth.

My back aches fiercely. No headache yet, today. My tinnitus is loud in my ears. I sigh to myself, grateful for the mild morning and this walk. The air smells like Spring, already.

A beautiful young buck steps slowly out of the trees, watching me as he steps cautiously onto the trail and walks past, glancing my way as if verifying that I am not going to follow. He stops a short distance from me and steps into the grassy strip of meadow on the other side of the trail. I am watching him, and sitting very still. I don’t immediately see the two does who follow him out of the trees and down the path. They are abreast of me, almost close enough to touch, when I see them. They startle me, my movement startles them, and the herd of three quickly move further down the grassy strip beside the trail.

Today the Author arrives for a short visit. After my walk I’ll stop by the store and pick up a few things. My Traveling Partner hustled me and the Anxious Adventurer through a bunch of little changes and housekeeping tasks that had fallen a little behind, in order to restore order from chaos that had crept in while he was (far more) disabled (than he is now), and to prepare for company. The last of the holiday changes made to accommodate the Giftmas tree were returned to more typical placement, too. I was grateful to have help, and for the vision and encouragement provided by my beloved; sometimes the thought work or emotional labor is the most tiring part of some project, and I don’t have vast reserves available for either, lately.

I went to bed exhausted, aware that my fatigue was as much cognitive as physical. Lately I struggle to “find a quiet moment” at home, often turning my attention to a book or a show, only to face frequent interruptions from “noise”. Hyperacusis leaves me feeling as if I can’t get a moment of peace, but it is symptomatic and highly subjective. The coffee grinder isn’t louder than usual. The cupboard doors aren’t being slammed. Someone putting away the dishes isn’t an intentional assault on my senses. Stray remarks lobbed at me unaware of my attention being elsewhere are neither more frequent nor louder. The timing is not deliberate. It’s a “me thing”. The only real solution is the stillness of solitude. It’s a feeling that the literal only time my consciousness is fully my own is when I am alone with my device set on “do not disturb”. Definitely a “me thing”. It is an illusion, and a bit of madness, perhaps.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, and pull myself back to this present and quite solitary peaceful moment. These walks meet many needs, and a little solitude is one of them. I savor the stillness as daybreak comes. Venus is lower on the horizon now, barely above the dark smudgey silhouette of the treetops. The Earth keeps spinning. The wheel turns. The clock ticks on.

I check the time and sigh to myself. I fill my lungs with the cool morning air and exhale slowly. A new day, a familiar path, and I’m having my own experience. I remind myself to let small shit stay small, and to avoid taking things personally. I stretch as I stand. It’s time to begin again. I turn and face the sunrise and start down the trail.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, winter, Words

So Human

September 3, 2025 //
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New job, first day, and all of that went well yesterday. My headache was a 12 on a 1 – 10 scale as I headed home, and I did my best not to allow it to vex me. I was grateful it was a Tuesday – by longstanding practice, it is the Anxious Adventurer’s night to cook, which means less work (for me) and tasty tacos (generally).

… Turned out to be less than ideally easy to get to that moment…

My brain was exhausted when I got home, and the headache was kicking my ass. A shower might help, I’d thought, but no, it didn’t. I took additional pain medication and settled into a darkened room to meditate and hopefully ease my pain and maybe recover some cognitive energy to get through the evening on…

My Traveling Partner alerted me that he was facing unexpected difficulties and excessive time required in a project to do with server maintenance on our home network. My many many (hundreds of) gigabytes of images were…so many. Too many. Backups of copies of duplicates of old drive contents and folders of images I didn’t want to lose were carefully saved – and in several cases nested within each other, multiple times by several names – a byproduct of every tense OS upgrade, or computer replacement over time (for decades), and worse still, it was also all partially backed up as zip files from my old Google Photos app or on a cloud storage platform. Fuuuuuuuck. So many copies…of copies.

…Can I please do something with that fucking mess?!...

Yeah. I was annoyed and aggravated and frustrated to tears by the impatience and irritation in the otherwise entirely reasonable request. I’d even been working on it, piecemeal, much of the past year on and off, whenever I had a spare minute, was also thinking about it, and happened to be on my computer… But I hadn’t finished the important part (deleting the old copies) – I was pretty spectacularly busy with working for a living, caregiving an injured partner, running errands and keeping up the housework, and trying to stave off exhaustion as much as I could while managing chronic pain.

In an instant I felt unappreciated and disrespected – and invisible. I cried the entire time I pushed myself through the steps of reviewing each folder, feeling angry and unsupported. I wept frustrated tears while I deleted folder after folder, fingers crossed that I would not delete the sole copy of some image that has lasting value for me. I managed to finish the work needed in about an hour of mostly focused time, distracted only by my own tears and my Traveling Partner’s continued pings, messaging me continuing to explain why finishing this project matters to him in this moment and more generally, and checking on my progress. Unhelpful for me in the moment (trying to focus and work with a headache), but I recognized his desire to feel heard, and to reconnect and resolve painful emotions. I did my best.

… G’damn that fucking headache though, and not one fucking word of sympathy or care from anyone, which caused hurt feelings that lingered for a while in the background. I was silently mired in a very “fuck all of you” sort of place for a little while before I was able to let it go. Humans being human. I’m fairly certain everyone in the house was doing their best, but…as is often the case, it didn’t feel “good enough”. Our results vary, and as human primates we can expect a certain amount of bullshit and drama to be part of the experience. I chose to let small shit stay small and move on from it without doing anything more to address the circumstances directly.

A new day, a new chance to begin again.

Funny thing, this morning none of that mess is important or relevant at all. My tinnitus is loud in my ears, but my headache is an inconsequential 2 on a 1 – 10 scale. My Traveling Partner was awake when I left the house and seemed to be fairly merry as he kissed me goodbye for the day. It was a pleasant parting and I’m eager to return home at the end of the work day without resentment or ire. Resilience for the win. I’ve worked years to get to this place. I’m grateful that a momentary upset no longer sends me spiraling into chaos, futility, and despair that lingers for days or weeks.

I walked the local trail with my thoughts, enjoying the dawn. It’s a new day. It even feels good to have finished a project that had been stalled (and was seriously taking too long). I breathe, exhale, and relax. I can feel the reduction in the chaos in my life, having cleaned up my files. Funny how that works (for me). I’m grateful to my Traveling Partner for taking such skillful care of our network, and for making it clear that my failure to complete a project I’d started more than a year ago was holding up progress. I’m grateful that his own resilience allows him to bounce back from a tense or angry moment, too. I’m grateful that I never fear violence as a potential byproduct of his anger – he’s not that person.

I watch the sunrise contentedly from my halfway point. It’s a new day, a new moment. I’m okay for most values of okay, and there is no anger in my heart. It’s a fresh start – and time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Logic & Reason, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

An Experience, A Metaphor

April 11, 2023 //
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I got my car detailed yesterday. It’s a small SUV that suits me well. Over the past couple of years, though, as much as I love this car, I’d grown pretty used to using it as more of a tiny pick-up truck than as a “car”. We moved. Started a business. For big needs and small needs, my SUV served us well. We only needed to rent a truck specifically to haul something twice: once for a king size mattress, and again for a band-saw. Not bad. Here’s the thing though; I wasn’t investing time in proper care of my SUV all this time, and aside from occasionally taking out all the bits and pieces of trash and nonsense flung about or running it through a car wash now and then, I just wasn’t caring for my car as though it were a car I love… I was just “using it up”.

…I catch myself doing that with my own reserves of energy far too often…

So, after my Traveling Partner got a pick-up, it was clearly time to put things right with my car. I got it detailed, to give me a head start on keeping it nice, again.

Getting into my car after it was ready to be picked up was… an experience. It was cleaner than it was when I bought it! Wow. Every nook and cranny… clean. Carpets? Clean and deep dark black once again. Upholstery? Clean. Not a single crumb or mote of dust to be found. Super clean. That under-dash panel that popped off a couple years ago (that I was obviously too lazy to put back)? Back where it belongs. That wee clip or cover for something or other? It’s back on, too. The car smells clean. Wow. Just… yeah. Wow.

It was once again a thoroughly enjoyable experience to drive my SUV. Like… a total blast. I do love this particular car. Have since I first drove it. I’ll probably get a new one in a couple years – that good. In the meantime, though, the experience of enjoying this one? Fully restored. No trash or empty coffee cups on the floor. No dust or crumbs anywhere at all. It’s such a cute ride.

This is a real experience – but it’s also a metaphor. If we drive ourselves so hard that we begin using ourselves up, never taking time for self-care, or a moment to appreciate our accomplishments, or to just enjoy our life for a little while, we lose the joy that our experience can provide. We begin to lose a sense of what makes us special as an individual. We begin to take our qualities for granted, and become – even with ourself – exploitative and potentially even abusive (of our own self, and this fragile vessel in which we reside for this mortal lifetime). Life can become a grind. A series of errands.

It’s down to the details, isn’t it? How I care for myself matters; doing so, or not doing so, changes my experience of myself and my life. Worth considering.

I sip my coffee thinking happily about my very clean cute SUV. I think about the conversation my Traveling Partner and I were having last night about making some changes to our shared camping gear to account for the truck – it has vastly more room for things than my SUV! Trying to camp in style with just gear that fits in my SUV is a bit limiting, and fine for a solo experience, less so for the two of us. I grin thinking about my Traveling Partner shopping for a proper camp kitchen set-up. I generally get by with my Jet-Boil and freeze-dried camp meals. lol I’m looking forward to better camp food. 😀 (He’s a super good cook, too.)

A new day dawns. I think about odds and ends and things I need to get done. A quick trip to the grocery store. Put essentials back in the car now that it’s detailed (like, hey, the freakin’ paperwork back into the glovebox!!). Launder my all-weather gear that stays in my car for whenever I need it. Emergency kit. My spare cane. I shift in my seat restlessly.

…It’s already time to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

This Here, This Now

December 5, 2020 //
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I sip my coffee, lukewarm, no longer “fresh”. I find myself in a “work with what you’ve got” sort of place this morning. What I’ve got is a sink full of dirty dishes, and aquarium with an overgrowth of green hair algae, and a massive fucking headache. I mean, just being real; I ate the food that those dishes had supported. The aquarium with the algae? Mine, and I chose the placement in the room when we moved in, which has too much light for the aquarium, and as a result I have a common nuisance that is algal blooms. The headache? Okay, so, sure… it’s “mine”, and obviously I did not choose or created it by intent, but making a big deal out of it when I have had this same fucking headache (worsening somewhat over time, but yeah, same headache) since… 2014, seems pointless.

…Giving credit where it’s due though, this headache has done a first rate job of sticking around, and slowly developing a more precise location and greater likelihood of moment-to-moment continuation without relief… 2014? Fucking hell. 6 years with this fucking headache. Now that’s a fucking headache. I do find myself just a bit impressed by that, in an irritated, resigned way. I mean… if headaches had a culture of their own, surely this headache would be receiving accolades from peers, and doing the talk show circuit about its success? lol

Most moments are just moments. We create the context and significance.

Still. Here is where I am. Now is the moment I’ve got to work with. So. Moving past “it is what it is” (and it is), and reaching for one new beginning after another (and appropriate pain relief steps, however futile seeming)… I’ve either got to yield to this shitty experience, or let it go and do something else… or find a different alternative. Verbs. Choices. My results vary.

I sip my coffee. Now cold. The darkness of the room is mocked by the appearance of the morning sun, through the window shade. The whir and hum of the computer is dimmed by headphones I’m wearing, although I’m not listening to anything that requires them. I mean, besides the whir and hum of the computer, itself. I sigh out loud. One moment of many, and there is an entire day still ahead and things that want to get done. Those dishes for starters. The aquarium maintenance. Ordinary tasks, life to live – headache or not. I’ll work off some of my irritation with some exercise (Beat Saber? A walk?), and by getting some chores done. I’ll have another cup of coffee, and exchange pleasant words with my Traveling Partner.

I find myself wondering, for a moment, how more primitive humans dealt with things like massive chronic headaches? Did they feel cursed? Possessed? Did they lash out at others? What did primitive human beings know about “self-care”? Was that something they were at all concerned with? “Survival” and “good self-care” seem pretty far apart on the spectrum of things people are concerned with…

I smile when I nudge myself to consider recent lovely moments. My Traveling Partner’s birthday was lovely. I’m grateful for the joy we share. I think of a recent busy work day, and a wee dish of unexpected ice cream delivered during a meeting. I reflect on conversations shared with my partner. Goals. Expectations. Thoughts about future projects and quality of life improvements. The routine matters of living and loving. The delight of an unexpected nap, together, side by side on the recliner sofa.

…Fuck this headache! It is too small a part of my experience to get to call the shots on this day.

I finish my cold coffee, and begin again. 🙂

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