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Dear Santa, Here’s My List

December 18, 2015 //
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Dear Santa,

It’s been awhile since we’ve talked, and surely the days of sending you long lists of retail delights is behind me… mostly. It’s not that I ‘have it all’ or wouldn’t benefit from a quality of life improvement here or there, it’s just that – generally speaking – I have what I need, and it’s enough. Still…you have quite a job ahead of you, and all you ever ask of me is that I do my best all year – and give you a list of what I want for Giftmas.

I think it’s safe to say that most of the time this year, I’ve definitely done my best – or what I thought was my best in the moment. So, that being said, I’m making a point of fulfilling my end of the bargain, Santa. Here’s my list:

  1. Please give me a moment – just whatever you can spare – to take a breath and rethink what I’m about to say to some other human being, long enough to avoid being thoughtlessly callous, or missing their point. I’d like to improve on how well I listen this year.
  2. Please also give me any spare reminders you may have laying about that we are each so very human, so that I also take a moment to pause before I react to what someone else’s experience is, and avoid taking it personally. I’d like to be more easily able to show compassion, without the detour through over-reacting in the moment.
  3. Santa, I know you’re going to work your sleigh off on Giftmas Eve, and spend the next 280 days or so recovering – can you spare some of your self-care best practices, because I gotta say – you’ve been working that magic once a year for decades, and I get tired just thinking about it! Please fill my stocking with self-regard, consideration for my needs over time, and a jolly approach to taking care of me – I promise to share.
  4. While I’m thinking about it, how about more Love, Santa – I want all of the love, the loving, and the sweet romance that can be crammed into my calendar all through the holidays and beyond. I’ll be so good –  next year, too!!
  5. Santa, please help me remember, all year long, how good this feels right now? I’d appreciate it very much, especially some time down the road when I feel insecure and doubtful, wounded, kicked-around, or bleak; this ‘now’ right here is quite wonderful, and I’d like to hold on to the comfortable certainty that there will be other such lovely times in the future.
  6. One last thing, Santa? The chocolates and sweaters and twinkly lights are wonderful, and I smile and smile for so many days – please tell me how I can hang onto this sense of wonder and delight until Giftmas comes around again next year? You can bet I’d share that, too!
Merriment, love, and fun - what's on your list?

Merriment, love, and fun – what’s on your list?

I’m still loving Giftmas after all these years, Santa, and hoping I am on the ‘nice’ list…

Your Friend,

E.H.

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Categories Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words

A Walk in the Park

December 17, 2015 //
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I left work smiling yesterday. It was a bit later than I had planned to end the day, and twilight had already settled in. The flooding from recent heavy rain has receded, and I took a chance on walking through the park. Some of the trails and walkways are covered in mud or debris, and there are occasional puddles. The signs warning of high water levels and flooded trails are still in place. I found the walk so satisfying I continued on past the point at which I generally turn up the walk headed to my apartment. I finally reached Number 27 in a round about way, an hour or so after I left the office. It was lovely to listen to the sounds of life around me, walking, thinking about love, breathing the chill night air and feeling contentment in each breath spreading to my finger tips as if it exists in the very air I breath. I reached my cozy apartment feeling quite tired, and generally merry.

There isn’t anything more to this, really. It was a lovely evening for a walk in the park. Some practices speak for themselves.

Some moments are enough, just as they are.

Some moments are enough, just as they are.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Who Wrote the Menu?

December 16, 2015 //
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I am sipping my coffee and thinking about sweaters. Well, actually, I am thinking about a particular sweater I like very much that just doesn’t go with the rest of what I am wearing at all, and immediately after finding myself wishfully thinking it would be nice to have this particular sweater in a number of other colors, I realized all I’d have to do to have that is learn to knit or crochet and get to work on it. That’s not my most likely choice in this instance, but it got me thinking about life’s vast menu of possible choices, and how little of that vast unlimited potential I actually consider day-to-day, myself.

When I dine out, I expect generally I will be choosing my meal from a menu – the restaurant prepares the menu, and it is the nature of menus to limit the choices presented. It is a system that works out pretty well. They tell me what they offer, and I choose from that list. If I don’t like the choices, I can go eat elsewhere and choose from their menu.

When I go grocery shopping, I may not have a menu, but I will nonetheless choose from the limited selection the grocery store offers me, and if I need or want things they do not supply, I can take my shopping elsewhere, and choose from the products offered by some other merchant.

When I attend classes, I choose from a list of available courses. It is clearly not a complete list of all possible knowledge I could choose to study.

Simple or fancy, the menu is a limited list.

Simple or fancy, the menu is a limited list.

Choices seem to generally work in the observed fashion; we are presented with some limited selection and we choose from that, or go elsewhere in search of something we want that is not offered there. I don’t often stop to think about the implied limiting factor: whatever is on the menu, or on the shop shelves, it is but a small sample of ‘all the possible foods’ or ‘all the things to buy’. Life is like that, too, only… I’m the person I generally find to be responsible for limiting my own choices; I am writing the menu, myself.

That sweater isn’t going to knit itself – and, by the way, I’m not likely to be the one knitting it either. I don’t know how to knit. I could choose to learn…if I chose to… Learning to knit doesn’t seem to appear on ‘my menu’ of things to do in life. I could make excuses about being thumb-fingered, or having tried before, or any number of lame reasons why I don’t choose to learn to knit, although I really love sweaters and could learn to make my own. On the other hand, when I first began playing around with watercolors on paper, painting wasn’t just ‘on my menu’ – it was akin to ‘the special of the day’ in that moment in my life; I chose it before I could consider choosing it, and it is a natural part of me. Who wrote the menu? This internal list of what my options are in life – where did it come from? Who maintains it? When I feel as though I ‘have no other choice’ that isn’t likely to be the literal truth of it – and even recognizing this is often not enough to immediately open my eyes to the impossibly unimaginably vast potential array of choices truly in front of me.

Be love.

Be love.

The year is ending, and it is a season of contemplation and of questions for me. Where now? This has been a remarkable year for change, for growth, for love to blossom as though new – and I have so many choices possible in the year to come…but…what are they? Am I open to all of them, and equipped to choose what will tend to support my needs most over time? Will I choose to be a better human being than I was yesterday? Have I limited my menu too much by rejecting very promising opportunities, projects, or adventures because I don’t see myself as that person – or because I think I ‘can’t’ or ‘shouldn’t’?

It’s funny – when I was a kid there was a lot of push to send the message to children that they could do or be ‘anything’ they might wish to do or be. It’s even sort of true. Then there was a swing in the other direction, to refrain from encouraging children in an unrealistic way, and more in favor of being ‘practical’ and ‘real’ with children about their potential and abilities and and to avoid ‘setting them up for failure’ with overly high expectations. That’s even sort of sensible. Both approaches touch on real things; it is rare that we really understand the vastness of our potential, and we are able to overcome so much to achieve what we desire! On the other hand – there are obstacles in life, verbs involved, and some things may not be so simply done. I hesitate to say ‘impossible’ about any particular human achievement, myself: moon landing, space shuttle, space station, solar power, tunnel bridges, The Beatles, eggs fertilized outside of wombs, women on the Supreme Court, the internet, Google, Microsoft, Tesla, and all within my lifetime! How many of these things seemed impossible at some earlier point? So, when a little girl wants to be president – why not? On the other hand, it sure isn’t going to be easy to get there – and success won’t be a given.

Even Santa has a list...

Even Santa has a list…

I am sipping my coffee in the glow of holiday lights, and listening to the heater click and pop as it begins to take the morning chill off the room. I am wondering if I might like to learn to knit, although I had once attempted it without much success perhaps I have changed? I smile, and let other choices and options I might not generally consider drift past my awareness: encaustic? through-hiking? remote travel? exotic cuisine? a martial art? disc-golf? a musical instrument? another language? a silent retreat? a cruise? As I list options something strange happens just at the edge of my awareness and I pause to consider it; the longer I go on, the more similar to things I already do, or have done, or are very like my existing interests each thing becomes – I have to almost fight myself to allow experiences or events significantly outside my norm to reach my awareness and hold my attention for a moment. That’s something to consider further.

I choose even my perspective; I am my own cartographer on this journey.

I am able to choose even my perspective when I am aware that choice exists.

If I am writing the menu for myself, then even the choices regarding how I filter or limit my choices is mine to choose. What will I choose today? What will I choose tomorrow? What matters most – what I choose, or that I choose? Today is a good day to consider ‘all the options’ – and what that means, and how I am limiting myself in life by limiting my choices. Today is a good day to update the menu.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words

Picking Up Where I Left Off

December 15, 2015 //
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Well…or something similar, I don’t expect I’ll write much about diet, exercise, weight-loss, fitness, or related topics; it’s not my area. As is so often the case for me, though, putting myself back on a path that has some forward momentum on a topic that matters to me in a very personal way seems to have ‘boosted the signal’ on the value in my day-to-day self-care and quality of life. I don’t really understand the mechanism involved, but I do know that when I’m stalled on one thing, other things in life are also affected. It’s a very pleasant and encouraging feeling, and recognizably delivered from me to the woman in the mirror; getting back on track with my nutritional needs, and fitness goals feels good.

I didn’t sleep much last night. I’m not sure why. I am also not sure why I managed to wake feeling fairly well-rested, and in very little pain; I hurt so much when I laid down to sleep that it kept me awake well past midnight. I woke again around 2:30 am, and then the alarm went off shortly before 5. I may be numb with fatigue later in the day – but for now, rather mysteriously, I feel pretty good.

Enjoy each precious moment, there are so few of them in a single life.

Enjoy each precious moment, there are so few of them in a single lifetime.

…I find myself just sitting here, quietly, sipping my coffee. I’m okay with that. You know…actually… I’m so okay with that, I think this morning that just sitting quietly will do just fine. I think I’ll go do that, and see how the days builds. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, weight loss secrets, Words

Very Simple, Not So Easy

December 14, 2015 //
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“Just eat less.” Yep. Sounds super simple. [Is.] On the other hand…isn’t that a little bit like explaining meditation as ‘just breathe’ to someone who has never tried it? I mean… sure… sort of… but… yeah… there’s actually more to it than that, however simple a practice it actually is. There’s a certain something that exists before one begins… and during… and following up… a certain commitment, a will, and perhaps most importantly, an awareness.

“Just eat less.” A lack of awareness in-the-moment tends to be where I most regularly mistreat myself caloric-ly speaking; I get caught up in some other thing, and eat while I do that, watch that, read that, listen to that…I’m not eating, I’m merely allowing consumption to happen while I do something else. It’s a poor practice, and when I catch myself doing it, I sometimes struggle to make the needed course correction.  In the meantime, I’ve eaten more than I needed for the lifestyle I live. The other common pitfall for me, personally, is that one that crops up when I’m stressed out, blue, or fatigued; some sort of tasty treat can be a mood-lifter, a battery-recharger, or a stress-reducer – but it’s not really ‘taking care of me’ in the best possible way if I am focused on food specifically as a distraction from something that actually matters [to me] more, or taking in surplus calories to change my brain chemistry.

“Just eat less.” Yep. That’s the basic idea. So here I am, the end of a long day – and doing something that I know works for me; I am here, now, doing this. Just this. I’m not eating while I write, nor writing while I eat. Dinner will be ready shortly, and when it is; that’s what I’ll be doing, then. It’s a simple change. It does work very well; I eat less when I eat mindfully (probably because I notice sooner that I have eaten enough). It’s not ‘easy’ – practices require practice.

“Just eat less.” It’s a good idea, one that works, only… how much less? How much… at all? What do I really need to live on? How do I tell if I am eating that much… or more? (Or less?) Will I starve myself unintentionally and suddenly… something? (Doubtful.) One very cool thing about losing weight, though… there are a lot of ways to proceed. There are as many practices as there are people wanting to feel more comfortable in their body. I consider the strengths of the woman in the mirror and return to the very simple practices of strict portion control and mindful consumption. (Admittedly, for me there is a spreadsheet involved, and yes, I am actually planning my meals, and measuring out portions based on weight or volume, depending on the food item.) This works for me, I’ve been here before – by weight, I’ve literally been here before. lol

“Just eat less.” Okay, so… got it. Simple. (Not always easy.) Here’s another irksome detail to consider – and I do find that considering things (mindfully) is helpful – it matters what I eat, too. 1000 calories of potato chips isn’t going to satisfy for long, and I’m pretty sure that taken as a daily staple, my health would quickly fail in some fashion. So, the calories will ideally also meet my nutritional needs – and may need to be overall of consistently better nutritional quality (more nutrition per ounce of intake) to thrive on many fewer calories altogether. It’s doable. It is a practice.

“Just eat less.” It’s all so very simple – and like so many very simple things; it’s not as easy as it sounds. There are all these verbs, and all this practice… mindful eating? Seriously? (Yes.) As practices go, it’s not difficult, or uncomfortable – but there are verbs involved. I find it quite difficult to set all else aside to eat, particularly when I dine alone. I’m inclined to read, or to watch a show – harmless enough, I guess, but however educational or entertaining the programming, it does take my attention from this other very important practice – eating. In my case, it nearly always results in eating way too much, rather too fast – and weight gain seems to  happen so much more quickly than losing weight ever does. Weight gain, for me, does not require mindfulness at all. Weight loss does. The math does itself.

I break for dinner, enjoying each bite of my meal. I taste all the flavors, and enjoy the warmth and texture of the dinner I prepared so carefully, and I take my time enjoying the meal. Each element chosen, quite specifically, even measured for appropriate portion control. (The tablespoon portion of cream cheese on my half of a bagel made me giggle; I had clearly long since forgotten what a ‘serving’ of cream cheese actually looks like.) This is the more difficult bit; resetting my implicit understanding of serving sizes, ensuring I am mindful of quantities, and taking great care with my choices moment-to-moment. It’s easier to be thoughtlessly carelessly feeding myself tasty calories with my eyes closed, than to practice the simple practices that nourish my body, care for my health, and prolong my life.

Welcome home.

Welcome home.

“Just eat less.” That actually is what this is about, and it is what is required to reach my goals. What if I fail? There’s no real ‘failure’ here – and there’s no need to treat myself with such callousness; I’m human, if I want a bit of dessert, I assure you I’ll have it. lol Perhaps a smaller than common serving will satisfy? Or a different choice of sweet? Or both? Point being – it’s not an elimination diet for me, I don’t find that behavior sustainable. I choose instead to do what is simple, and hope to practice it until it is also easy – if I falter? I’ll begin again. That’s enough.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, The Art of Being, The Big 5, weight loss secrets, winter, women, Words
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