I’m sipping my morning coffee on a sunny summer Sunday, thinking about Love. I feel relaxed and mellow. Sundays mean housekeeping – and that’s just fine with me. 🙂 I like a tidy living space, and investing the time and effort (as much as I am able), is worth the pay off in improved emotional wellness day-to-day.
The home automation project – which started with the lighting, and grew to a bigger project – is coming along nicely, with some frustrating moments here and there. I’m fortunate that my Traveling Partner has the interest and skills to take on the project. I don’t have to do much besides enjoy the outcome – and help out with testing things now and then. It’s pretty exciting – it’s a lot of work, though. I find myself hoping it’s actually a project he’s enjoying, after one of those previously mentioned “frustrating moments” this morning; I’d never force it on him. It’s likely to be an ongoing thing, as we learn what we like most about it, and change or improve on things over time. That’s already been a thing. lol
I’ll travel for work this week. That feels strange. I’m excited about it, mostly. I like traveling by rail, and that was what I chose this time. (I think my thinking was that it would be more… convenient…?)
…So far a pleasant day, and a joyful weekend…
I spent a few minutes this morning happily working on a project for the distant Yule holiday. I feel settled, here, safe, and contented. I pause on the awareness and sit with that awhile. It feels good, and I don’t want to miss the moment. Moments are what we have. 🙂
Heat wave. Already hot this morning. Slept well, woke refreshed. Felt… content. Balanced. Merry…
…Whole.
Off to a good start on a hot day. Things slide sideways, slipping gently, somehow inevitably tilting toward irritation in spite of a great starting point. Best efforts. Humans being human.
I put aside my coffee and go for a walk before the heat of the day might stop me, or just make the experience miserable.
A favorite park has finally re-opened after all the damage during that last winter storm.
Muggy warm air filled with the sound of mowers, small aircraft taking off from the nearby municipal airport, and swarming insects seemed to cling to me as I walked across the parking lot to the start of the one open trail. It doesn’t really go far enough to satisfy the need, but it has been a long while and I have missed this place. I walk the trail twice. I take note of the wild roses in bloom – there look to be three distinct species growing in this wooded area. I spot ripe thimbleberries, but none within reach – too fragile for commercial agriculture, they are a rare special treat, tiny, soft, and mild. The birds will get most of them. Piles of cut up trees give some insight into how much damage the storm caused. Every few feet, there’s a pile of logs and branches on either side of the trail. The forest is full of huckleberry bushes, but I don’t see flowers or berries, yet. On my way back down, before my second walk of the trail, I realize I haven’t stopped at a favorite bench… I never saw it! Weird… I begin to really look for that thing, that expected thing, as I head back up the trail. My focus results in missing other details. Something more to think about.
Oh. Reality is what it is. Expectations are shit we made up, and cling to.
It was a lovely morning for walking, in spite of the heat. In spite of the changes all around me. In spite of a less than picture-perfect lovely summer morning. Expectations and assumptions can so quickly undermine a potentially lovely experience. I mean… I even know that. It still trips me up more often than I care to count.
I put on some music. Sip my rather delicious iced coffee – I’ve been planning this iced coffee on a hot summer morning for days. Really looking forward to this moment. I made coffee ice cubes to go in it. I sip it thoughtfully, savoring the moment that is, instead of yearning for another. It may not be what I expected, but it’s quite pleasant, and that’s enough. Maybe I’ll finish it on the deck…
My Traveling Partner and I both hurt today. Pain sucks. Aging is a mixed bag of qualities, and pain is just one of many experiences… We both try to avoid taking it personally, or lashing out at each other in a short-tempered moment of our frustration with the limitations of these very human forms. He says “maybe you should just avoid me today” – right about when I was thinking of saying gently that I’d give him some space because I’m hurting that much today. lol It’s generally an exceptional partnership, even when one or both of us is in pain, or just generally not being our best selves, together.
I sip my coffee and reflect. I think about the walk, the summer morning, recalling the sights and scents, and the feel of the air around me.
Just because there’s sunshine where I’m sitting doesn’t mean I’ll find illumination.
I walked, reflected, observed, and gave myself that time I need to spend with the woman in the mirror. It’s good to get perspective. I mean… I find it so, myself. 🙂 I don’t always do a good job of making time for me, and for what I need from and for myself. I could do better there. More practice? Obviously. I know where I’ll start, too; a familiar place.
I am rereading the Four Agreements; a worthy starting point on any journey of self.
Funny thing about The Four Agreements? It was my Traveling Partner who first recommended it to me. Good basic practices to practice that tend to heal a lot of hurts and limit a lot of negative self-talk. That seems so long ago now.
Treating each other well has reliably tended to start with treating myself well, and as it turns out that has nothing whatsoever to do with buying things, and everything to do with reflection, perspective, and practices that build resilience and emotional wellness. Boundary-setting. Testing assumptions. Confirming expectations. Being flexible and adaptable in the face of change. Being there for myself. Being kind, and treating the world as gently as I am able to. Good self-care. Getting enough rest. It’s a lot to juggle, and I suspect that I half-ass a lot of it, just trying to do all of it… but…getting things ‘half right’ or ‘half finished’ is still a more useful result than never making an attempt to be my best self at all. Incremental change over time. I get better at something each time I attempt it… eventually. Learning is a process. Change is often a verb. I keep at it. Incremental change over time requires both time, and increments.
Feeling frustrated and challenged can sometimes mislead me into thinking I haven’t improved – a lot – on a lot of little things that had been far more problematic before this journey began. That’s a shame; it robs me of my chance to celebrate small wins. I think on that while I sip my coffee, gazing into the sunshine beyond the window.
I hear the A/C come on. Then I feel it. I recall the heat of the morning as I walked the wooded trail, and think about the apartment in which my partner and I first began sharing our lives… and that roasting, horribly hot all-drama-all-the-time summer some 11 years ago; no A/C. I feel grateful for the A/C, definitely… but the love matters most. We brought that with us, to this place, across years of shared challenges, growth, change, loving moments, and petty arguments – it’s a very human experience, and it’s hard to imagine spending life differently and still enjoying it as much. I sip my coffee thinking about my partner (my lover, my best friend), and the pain he’s in today. Maybe I’ll bake oatmeal cookies? Would that help? (I don’t know why it would, it just occurred to me to wonder – sometimes I have a mind like a child. LOL)
There’s enough of this coffee left to enjoy a few moments of summer morning on the deck before it gets to hot to enjoy… seems like a good time to begin again. 🙂
I’m sipping my coffee and frowning past my monitor, looking beyond the “view” outside the window. Nothing impressive, just the fence, the pear trees that rise above it, and the wall of the neighbor’s house beyond – I’m not really seeing it, right now, I am in my own head. I am ruminating over the bitch of an inconvenience that is the very real truth that however much someone loves us, however much someone cares, no matter the level of consideration, empathy, or understanding – we are each walking our own mile, having our own experience, and there will inevitably be some detail that is simply not visible, or not recognized for what it is, or not understood with any clarity, or seems wholly miscommunicated to the detriment of a pleasant moment. Have a brain injury? Ratchet that up a notch. Grieving? This one too; it’s progressively more invisible over time, and people eventually reach their “you’re not over this yet?” point – sooner than you will, yourself. It’s just real. We feel our own pain most intensely. We understand our own circumstances more than we can understand someone else’s, generally. We filter every interaction through who we are ourselves, and how we personally understand the world, with little regard for the demonstrable reality that it legitimately is not the same for someone else. Sometimes I feel completely fucked over by that whole entire messy business.
I’m not pissing and moaning about this while mired in self-pity. I’m actually more… a tad angry about it. I earnestly want to do better by my friends, family, and loved ones than that, myself. I still struggle with it, too. Maybe it just feels easier to bitch about what someone else is doing than it is to attend to what is within my personal control? I could stop doing that, and redirect that time and effort into personal growth and change… that sounds pretty positive.
I take a breath, and a sip of my coffee. When I got out of the shower, my Traveling Partner had already made his coffee. I generally make coffee for the both of us. It’s one way I say “I love you” and start the morning off pleasantly. I enjoy the routine. This morning, he did not wait on that, he took ownership of needs and made his coffee. I can’t fault him for that. Good self-care. He did not make my coffee. (I could take that personally – it could even be possible that it was intended to silently signal his irritation with me, more likely he just wasn’t sure I’d be out of the shower before it got cold.) I don’t give it much thought beyond observation, and let go of any concern about “sending me a message”, because, frankly, he uses his words. He’s not the sort who goes around being under-handed or passive-aggressive with communicating his needs or feelings; it’s a pretty unhealthy approach. I try to avoid that sort of thing, myself; it’s very imprecise, and not reliably clear. I’m not even certain I’d “get the message” – I tend (more often than not) to be very “face value” about those sorts of things, in my interactions, and it’s likely that that kind of thing would “go over my head” anyway. 🙂
I’m working on taking better care of myself, generally, which I also generally suck at. It’s a lot of work. I enjoy spending time with my partner to the point that I overlook taking time with myself. It doesn’t take long before my background stress is evident, and becoming unmanageable. So… I reset, begin again, and work on building better habits, and practicing the practices that I know support my emotional wellness, best. It is, however, still an ongoing, challenging, messy, aggravating, frustrating, endlessly fiddly bit of bullshit and effort that will no doubt plague me to the end of my days.
…It could be worse…
I sip my coffee. I’m writing on a pleasant summer morning. I’ve got a partner who loves me and does his best, reliably, to love me well. I could say “that’s enough”, but I’m aware how much more than “enough” that really is; I haven’t always had it like this. My good circumstances just don’t happen to alleviate me of my burdens in life. (Why did I expect that they might?) The work day peaks at me from the clock… it’s time to begin again.
The seasons sometimes seem to change so peculiarly. Like, nope, not summer yet… not yet… not yet… NOW! Summer! lol It’s definitely a summer morning, this morning. Warmer than it seems like it should be, shortly before dawn, and a big muggy – I still enjoyed my walk, before work. It’s a nice start to the work day. So far the day is pleasant and mild – I know the afternoon will be a scorcher. It’s been in the news.
I think about ripe summer strawberries fresh from the garden, and cherries on the neighbor’s cherry tree, one temptingly loaded down branch dangles over the fence, beckoning me to turn my attention to the bounty of summer. It’s a work day; it’ll have to wait. 🙂
I sip my coffee, grateful for the pleasant start to the day, grateful to be in minimal pain this morning, grateful for A/C and modern conveniences like refrigeration, potable drinking water, and indoor plumbing. It wasn’t that long ago that sweltering days in the weather forecast would mean days of pure misery, cold showers, and trying to drink enough water or eat enough frozen ice pops of one sort or another to stay “comfortable” (for some versions of comfort – some summers it was enough just to succeed in not falling over from heat stroke). I look out the window, over the fence, beyond the pear trees; the wall of my neighbor’s house is illuminated by the early morning sun as it climbs to it’s preferred summer vantage point. It’s very bright. I smile; I’m grateful to be sufficiently wise to refrain from looking directly at the sun – some people are not similarly fortunate. 🙂
So. Another day. Another week. Another summer. Another moment to reflect with gratitude on how fortunate I really am to have come so far. Another chance to begin again. To reflect. To grow. To do better.
…I’ll get right on that, as soon as I finish my coffee. 🙂
I’m nearly at the end of an entire year here in this “home” place. My birthday passed gently, uneventfully, and infused with a certain chill bliss that I don’t think I can put into words – but it was everything I wanted for my birthday, and more (in a sense, by being less! lol). There are tomatoes growing in garden pots. Roses planted in the front landscaping, and nasturtiums sprouting in the flower bed under the kitchen window. The quieter environment that resulted from the acoustic treatments has eased so much tension day-to-day. The lighting changes my Traveling Partner made tend to ease my frequent headaches, and lighten my mood. Waking is easier without an alarm clock, and I’m pleased that I can rely on the changing light – a programmed sunrise – to wake me gently. I’m not cross with the world first thing in the mornings. It’s pleasant.
Time passes. Sometimes I notice. Mostly I don’t. It gets away from me. I don’t take that so personally lately. 🙂
Is there still a pandemic going on? Well…sure, there is; the world isn’t even 50% vaccinated yet. I’m okay with continuing to be cautious, personally, although I’m vaccinated myself. I admit; I really like not having a fucking head cold every other month. lol Still… things seem to be improving in our area, and more folks are out and about in the world, doing things, seeing people, shopping. I found myself “stuck in traffic” for the first time in this new community just yesterday.
…Is it still a “new community” if I’m nearly a year into living here? lol It still feels new; it’s been a year of staying home. Pandemics are weird.
I still have “ups and downs”. My Traveling Partner, too; he’s walking his own hard mile, as a human being. (Aren’t we all?) The pandemic was hard on us as lovers, we’re not alone in that experience – and frankly, I’m sure there were a lot of folks who had it much much worse. We’re fortunate that we really enjoy each other as human beings, and we’re friends. It gets us through some challenges, for sure. 🙂 I’m pretty fond of that human being living with me.
Here I am… 58. Doesn’t feel much different than, say, 47, or 35, or … yeah, even 27 doesn’t seem that different through the lens of remembered experiences. I feel like the same “self” – which is hilarious, considering how much I’ve changed. Would 27 year old me even like this woman I am now? Would she “get it”? Would she embrace the values I’ve embraced? Would she understand the changes I’ve chosen? The direction I’ve gone in life? Could we talk together as intimate friends about our journey, our choices, our changes? Would there be unresolved anger or “old business” that we’d need to work out? Would we even want to connect as individuals – or is there too much distance and time between us? Would she think me “old” or “out of touch”? Would I see her as young, ignorant, and foolish about taking risks? Are we really “the same person” at all? Probably not, in a great many very important ways, and still also entirely this one human being, living this one peculiarly complicated life, as the years roll by.
So, it’s time to turn the page on another year of living. I’m okay with that. It’s been a strangely eventful year, counting the days from one birthday to the next. Bought a house. Moved. Changed jobs. Discovered new places. Discovered new music. Discovered new depths to this love I share with my Traveling Partner. Healed some old wounds. Re-opened others. Walked new trails. Traveled roads I’d never traveled before. Found “my way” more often than I found myself lost.
I can say, comfortably and without hesitation these days, I like this woman I have become over time. That’s a pretty big deal… it has required quite a few beginnings to get to this place, and I’ve stumbled on my own baggage more times than I can count. It’s gotten to be pretty comfortable to pick myself back up, and simply begin again. It’s not personal; it’s my journey. 🙂 It could sure be worse.
My coffee is almost gone, and although my partner is no farther away that the other side of a closed door, I find myself missing him… it must be time to begin again. 🙂
Evening Light 