Archives for posts with tag: practicing the practices
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The Brain Attacks! Again.

September 9, 2016 //
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It could be that some of my challenges will be part of my experience for as long as I’m experiencing things. It sucks more than a little bit to dwell on that, so I move on with my thinking as quickly as I can, but without cruelty or dismissiveness. I am human, after all. This morning I woke, and quickly found myself reduced to tears…over… nothing. Nothing whatsoever that has any substance in this moment, I mean. Emotions. Dreams? Maybe.

"The Nightmare City" 8" x 10" acrylic on canvas w/glow

“The Nightmare City” 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas w/glow

I woke feeling angry with my traveling partner, which is odd; one of my challenges is feeling safe about, and comfortably expressing, anger in my closest relationships. (It’s baggage that isn’t about my traveling partner, but he’s had to endure me lugging it around all this time.) I woke feeling angry that in our first years married, illness held him back from doing a lot of cool things; we stayed home, a lot. Now he’s well, and feeling fully himself, and he lives a busy life of adventure, going, doing, experiencing new things… and we no longer live together, and these are not our shared experiences. The anger I woke with quickly threatened to become a tantrum, a storm of unrelenting strong emotion knocking me off-balance with hurt feelings, and regrets. The anger became grief and sadness as soon as I let myself feel my feelings with compassion, and recognized the simultaneous feelings of resentment, sadness, and insecurity. My heart cried out “what do we have that is ours?” and I couldn’t answer it – not because there is nothing with which to answer, but because I can’t easily find the answer (through tears, through heartache, through the fog of just waking up, before my coffee…) without considerable thought. I let the tears come; it would be a genuinely sad thing to share nothing with one’s lover, and were that the case, there would be no failure in these honest tears.

It's okay to put some of that down, for now.

It’s okay to put some of that down, for now.

Later, I sip my coffee aware of the authentic feelings at the root of my difficult waking moments. I’m deeply in love with this particular human being I call my traveling partner, and at least for now we live very separate lives. Sometimes that is a painful experience. Sometimes it holds some relief that this human being so dear to me doesn’t have to struggle under the weight of my chaos and damage full-time. Right now, in this moment, I just miss him and find myself wondering rather hormonally what value I have… (Fuck you, Menopause, I’m supposed to be past having to deal with hormonal bullshit!) It’s rather foolish. It’s very human.

Love matters most.

Love matters most.

Seasons change. Over the long summer I’ve come to miss him greatly, after enjoying living with him through the winter. I’m eager to enjoy the autumn and winter months together, celebrating holidays, enjoying the company of friends… but… there is something real here that may want my attention, and getting past the tears I’m aware that most his “go” and “do” activities in the past 2 years have developed in other relationships than ours. We spend very little time together; he’s busy elsewhere. (It’s quite possible the time we do spend together fully meets his needs. I’m not sure I’m ready to ask that question…) I woke up hurting over it and wondering what value “we” have for him. It’s not something to stew over – that’s a fast track to misery. I’ll just ask when I see him again, and he will tell me, and then I’ll know. I’ll be back to work soon… there won’t be time for fussing about how little time we spend together, then; there won’t be time left in the days for it. The time we spend together will be limited to the time we have.

My calendar is very full for the next several days. Appointments. Brunch with a friend over the weekend. Friday night with the guys from my previous work team. My last week of leisure will probably be filled with “getting ready to go back to work” activities. It’s not likely that these will be days filled with sadness or passing emotional storms, there’s too much to do, and life to be lived. I feel some regret that my traveling partner wasn’t available to enjoy more of this time away from work with me… but it was time I took for me, as it was, and it has been well-spent on healing, growing, and practicing good self-care. Worthy endeavors, good outcomes. (So, hey, Brain, stop being such a bitch to me, please?)

A gray dawn greeted me so gently I barely noticed it had become day time while I wrote. I’m not crying now, or even sad really. I’m sipping my coffee, listening to music, and feeling a contented smile tug at the corners of my mouth. I think about other friends. Other loves. Other moments of great joy – or great sorrow. Impermanence is a very real thing, and change is, too. I smile thinking about my traveling partner’s good times to come, and his journey here and there. I’m already eager to hear about it – and he hasn’t even departed. lol He’ll take approximately no pictures at all, but my imagination will fill in all the details in the telling. 🙂

Today I don’t opt into loneliness, and once my tears have dried it’s another lovely morning, heading into another day of living a life built mostly on contentment (and bits and pieces of chaos and damage). Today is a good day to begin again. 🙂

 

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, Words

Pulling My Own Weight

September 8, 2016 //
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In life, generally, there is an implicit expectation that we each “pull our own weight”, or “handle our share of the load” – basically, to do our part in our family life, our community, and even our world to create, maintain, and nurture the world we want to live in, and that we want to provide for our loved ones and descendants. That seems almost effortless compared to the more practical, less metaphorical, pulling of my own literal weight around each and every day.

I weigh more than I’d like, more than I find beautiful based on my own aesthetic, and more than is ideally healthy for me, personally, based on my own experience of movement, fitness, and comfort each day. This morning I am sipping my coffee and rather rudely chastising myself for finding losing a few pounds (and keeping it off) more difficult than building world peace, or overcoming poverty, privation, and disease. Ludicrous. So… while we all work on those other much larger issues, I’ll also work on making my issues with my weight much smaller – and thereby making myself somewhat smaller, and probably quite a bit healthier, and even reducing the burden on global resources in some minuscule way simply by consuming less, and more wisely. Some of my chronic health concerns would be eased, possibly resolved, if I lost the excess weight I’m dragging around, too… which sounds like a great way to reduce my health care expenses, as a further “value add” to getting fit.

So. Another journey begins again. This is a hard one for me, for a number of reasons that are intertwined with the chaos and damage. It’s time to set down more of the baggage, shed unnecessary pounds, and walk on. I even know I can do this – because I’ve done it before; I haven’t always been overweight. This morning, I practice bringing more mindfulness to my yoga, and to my physical therapy routine. It’ll be an every day commitment to be successful, and I expect to begin again any number of times… there are verbs involved, and I know my results vary. I’m very human. Still, it’s a worthy endeavor, so I begin again. Again. I fall back on practical basics that I know work: gamification (SuperBetter is a great tool!), accountability (talking about it reduces ‘get away with something’ opportunities), and mindfulness – both with regard to consumption and with regard to tracking data. “What gets measured gets managed” still works for me. And… there are still verbs involved.

…In the three plus years I’ve been writing this blog, I could easily have reached my fitness goals several times (and got really close once). I’m frustrated by that, sure, but I understand that incremental change over time does really work – it’s those pesky verbs! The verbs are not avoidable, and must actually be lived, done, performed, acted upon, otherwise they remain only words in sentences, becoming, perhaps, thoughts and never becoming achievements. It happens. I know – I happened it. 🙂 (Or, rather, I didn’t.) It’s time to begin again – it’s nearly always quite an ideal time to begin again. It’s not necessary to save it for a Monday, or first thing in the morning, or perhaps on the first of the month, or for a New Year’s resolution, and in fact I’ve often been surprised to find that handling something that way (by selecting some opportune seeming beginning point in the future) resulted in failure more often than success. Failures are okay – steps on a journey – but they can be quite a buzz kill, and that’s more to deal with.

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

It’s funny something so practical as losing some weight can be such a challenge… I think we probably all understand that doing so requires fewer calories, more carefully chosen to meet nutritional needs, consumed in the context of the most active lifestyle we can comfortably maintain for our overall fitness. So many verbs…but hey, no fancy diet is actually required, and it doesn’t cost anything more to eat far less, generally. Choices. Verbs. Incremental changes over time. It’s tempting to see this journey as being “about” the destination (losing the weight), but this too is more about the journey itself, is it not? 😉

Practical thoughts on a Thursday morning, likely the result of practical thinking generally as I begin to shift gears from living largely at leisure, painting and writing, toward something more commonplace, with a commute, regular hours, an income, expectations… and yet another beginning. It’s enough to be who I am, in this moment. It’s enough to be here, now, content and relaxed, and still aware that there is more to do on the journey of being the woman I most want to be. I’m okay with that; it’s about the journey, after all. 🙂 Today is a good day to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, Uncategorized, weight loss secrets

Letting It Rain

September 6, 2016 //
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I woke to the sound of rain falling. Although the drenching shower has diminished to a friendly patter by the time I sit down with my coffee, I’ve enjoyed it. I have no firm expectations of the behavior of rain, beyond that it will, at some point, fall. I’m a pluviophile; I enjoy the rain.

Whether I like rain or not, there’s no stopping it when it comes time for rain to fall. I can stay indoors, if I choose. I can venture forth, it’s another choice. Generally the choice is entirely my own, today I have an appointment. “Letting it rain” is more an approach to the inevitability of rain, which I can’t control at all. I breathe the scent of it. I enjoy the splendor of rain drops, all their forms, all their sizes. I enjoy the peculiar alterations to just about everything touched by the rain, transformed for a time. I treasure rainy days.

Raindrops on roses.

Raindrops on roses.

This morning, I’ll take my coffee by the patio door, comfortably seated on my meditation cushion, watching the rain fall. It is a lovely moment, and very much enough. 🙂

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Categories autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Roses, The Art of Being, Words

Waiting

September 5, 2016 //
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Today is an odd sort of day. It feels like one of those filled with moments filled with waiting. I’ll wait another day to see my traveling partner. I also wait to begin work. With a background check in progress, I suppose I also wait for that outcome, in the background. 🙂

This morning I wait for the hour to be late enough to do laundry without disturbing neighbors who must share a wall with the laundry room. I wait for the next opportunity to hang out with a new friend. I wait for friends nearer at hand to wake for the day, or find a moment to drop by. I wait for water to boil for my second cup of coffee. I wait for the sun to rise a little higher so I can open the blinds and see across the meadow without going blind from the sun in my eyes. None of this is new, or a big deal; waiting is a thing we do. I do it most often when I am not here, now, fully present in this moment. I do it when I am focused on some future moment that is not now. Waiting is expensive, in terms of time and time management; it is generally not productive time, if left to be solely what it is.

I smile into my empty cup of coffee, having already forgotten I am waiting for water to boil, or that I was on my way to make a second cup of coffee. I am engaged in this moment, here, and these words. I’ve already moved on, in fact, from the thought of waiting to writing about waiting – and am no longer waiting, at all. Waiting is not only not productive, it isn’t particularly engaging, really. It’s the thing I’m waiting for that holds my attention, I suggest to myself, but I’m not sure that’s really true – haven’t I often fussed over the waiting, itself? Anticipation feels different from waiting.

I sit up straighter, thinking for a moment about my commitment to better health and fitness; no waiting required, just verbs. I breathe deeply, and relax, feeling my shoulders return to their natural place. Definitely no waiting needed for breathing deeply, or for relaxing. This moment, here, in the present – in whatever form it takes in this moment, now – isn’t at all about waiting. Time well-spent is rarely spent waiting, and far more often spent being.

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Each time for the first time, each moment the only moment.    ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

This morning there is no time to wait. Today is a good day to be here, in this moment, engaged, present, available, connected… and not ‘device connected’, either – connected heart to heart, connected through eye contact, through shared conversation, through hugs, touches, kisses. Connected through mindful awareness. Connected through consideration. Connected now, because we’re all in this together. Today is a good day for a shared experience. There are verbs involved (and people). Your results may vary. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Seasons Change

September 4, 2016 //
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It’s been a busy few days. Appointments, friends, interviews… there has also been time for stillness, although I’ve taken fewer of those opportunities than I could have, I know. Today is a day to recover, to regain balance, to let new knowledge and changed thinking settle in to be considered in context.

"Baby Love" on a rainy morning.

“Baby Love” on a rainy morning.

A misty rain falls this morning, as it did yesterday, as it likely will tomorrow. “Is summer over?” I wonder to myself. We can expect another handful of summer days before autumn firmly takes hold. Spring and autumn are the longest seasons in this area; by the time it seems reasonable to complain about summer heat to friends living in genuinely hot climates, summer here is over. The rain has come. A gasp of winter weather follows, then the drenching we can expect for spring begins, and seemingly endlessly showers us with all the different kinds of rain I’ve known, in some quantity or another, before the wheel turns again, back to our brief summer.

Life works very similarly, I find, changing like the seasons if only I give it time. More often than I’d like to count, some situation or another causing me stress just… goes away, after a time. Things change. Change is as much a passive seeming thing happening around us continuously as it is a tool with which we can craft our experience through our choices and actions (and reactions). That’s pretty useful sometimes; no matter how stuck in some one moment I may feel, regardless how terminally miserable I think I am, things do change. On the reverse of that coin, however, is the reciprocal truth that our moments of greatest and most intoxicating joy will also, inevitably, pass in favor of some other moment to come.

Yesterday was wonderful. I hung out with my new friend, although for now I’ve no convenient nickname or characterization to use to bring her to mind, here. Soon enough, I’m sure. We had made plans to go to the farmer’s market together (she hadn’t been). We both had things we’d intended to do after that… but chose to spend the day together, because we were simply having too much fun to let go so soon. She hugs easily. I want to learn to be so approachable, while still maintaining such clear boundaries with gracious firmness. Powerful. We share ourselves easily, together, and I find incredible joy in being so relaxed, and so un-self-consciously myself with another human being, at a time in my life when I am quietly plagued by self-consciousness about small quirks, and unexpected deviations from obvious norms. She’s not frustrated by my definite over-use of fancy language; she laughs with delight, and good-natured humor, happily “correcting” my verbiage along the way, with more laughter. (We rode the light rail through an economically under-privileged community, which I noted as unfortunate, and she laughingly corrected me, “ghetto” with a grin and a hug. Like my traveling partner, she favors simple clear language.) We have interesting conversations about the use of language to convey subtleties of meaning, and conversations about brain injuries, child-rearing, and surviving. We spent 8 hours together, talking. Yep. I can talk for 8 hours – ask anyone. LOL (I’m sitting here suddenly hoping very much that I listened for at least half of that time…)

My traveling partner is in my thoughts, too. I wonder how his weekend is going? He’s been away during the days, and we’ve been out of touch. I’m eager to get together and share how our days have been until we feel we’ve been together. I’m eager to “talk for 8 hours” – there’s a quality to such an experience that I thrive on, and I definitely miss our days of long conversations together, when love was new and neither of us had all the answers about the other – or any notion that we might have that kind of complete and thorough understanding, in the first place. I will do well to be mindful how we differ, and how we’ve grown, and make a point to listen for long luxurious hours of story-telling and anecdotes of exotic adventure – without interrupting, if I can manage it. (That would probably be a lovely treat for him. lol)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. ;-)

Perspective matters. I often find it here. 😉

There are things to consider and reconsider from the week’s conversations. New perspectives on life, on love, on being human, on being vulnerable, on work, on family, on the future… it’s been a very busy week, and my mental buffer is filled – over-filled – with things to think over. Today, I’ll stop being so busy, and just be, instead. Today is a good day for it. Today is a good day for meditation, and for mindful service. Today is a good day for consideration – if we’re all considerate at the same time, we could change the world. 🙂

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