It is well before dawn. I’m at a local trailhead waiting for the sun, or maybe just waiting.

My Traveling Partner had a rough night, sick. I felt bad for him, and woke every time he did, but I had wisely gone to bed at my usual early time, and this morning I woke clear eyed and clearheaded, feeling pretty well rested. I hope he managed to get enough rest, himself.

Yesterday was weird. Sort of blurry and surreal from fatigue, I went through the motions of work, and once I had completed everything that was time sensitive and due, I went home and crashed hard. A two hour nap put me right, enough to make a good meal for us to enjoy as a family. Not enough to put forth the effort to clean up. I was grateful to have the Anxious Adventurer’s help with that.

Another day begins. I sit in the dark with my thoughts, grateful for the quiet time alone. My beloved encouraged me to sleep in and work from home this morning. I may yet work from home, but sleeping in? Not gonna happen. I woke at my usual time, feeling quite alert and rested. 😆 I got up, dressed, and headed out into the predawn darkness, rather than risk waking everyone by bumbling around the house or tapping away on my keyboard.

It is a chilly morning, although not particularly wintry (here). It is a mild 40F (about 4.4C), and the night sky is clear and starry for the moment. The weather says a foggy morning, but so far it is not that, at all. Not in this location – and I’m certainly close enough to a creek that feeds into the Yamhill River very nearby to see some fog. On foggy mornings, it’s usually quite thick here. Perhaps the temperature will drop and a fog will develop?

I sit quietly thinking about people and places. Friends. Lovers. Family. Colleagues. Strangers who crossed my path in some meaningful way. People. Lives that matter. Lived moments, shared and unshared. Family, community, and society. Human potential.

I sigh to myself, feeling vaguely disappointed by humanity “as a whole”, but realistically, I am most disappointed with those who contribute to human misery directly through their cruelty, pettiness, violence, indifference to human suffering, and/or self-serving profit seeking at the expense of, and through the misfortune of, others. Exploitative greed and capitalistic callousness is so toxic. We could do better, but to do so would require real change, right down to the deepest layers of what individuals value. We may never be ready to become better than what we are, as a species, and it will likely be our undoing.

… Dark thoughts in the darkness. Fitting, I guess…

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let go of my dark musings, and my mind wanders on.

I’m in more than a little pain this morning, but it’s manageable for the moment, and I don’t cling to the experience, I just note the feeling and let that go, too. I’m grateful that chronic pain and some fairly minor limitations to movement and flexibility are generally the worst of it for me. I’m still walking. I sit with my gratitude for the surgeon that day (maybe it was night?) so long ago (more than 40 years now). He was frank with me that if I didn’t have surgery to attempt to repair my fractured spine, I’d be in a wheelchair, and partially paralyzed. There was no guarantee that the surgery would be successful, and there were experimental techniques involved. Two of my vertebrae were basically crushed, and would be rebuilt using hardware and bone grafts. 16 hours of surgery… Weeks in the hospital… Months in a body cast… More months of physical and occupational therapy and restrictions on what work I could do… And eventually, the osteoarthritis arthritis and the chronic pain setting in a couple years later. Small price to pay; I survived that injury, and that marriage. The pain reminds me that freedom has a price, and that the bill will come due.

… What price are you willing to pay for your freedom? Your rights? Your survival?  The price may be quite high. Paying that bill is not optional. You may only have seconds to decide…

Choose wisely.

My tinnitus is loud in my ears. My head aches. I take notice and let those go, too. I “flip a coin” in my head; walk or don’t walk? I make my choice, and begin again.