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Pace Yourself

June 10, 2019 //
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It was a good weekend. Relaxed. Filled with reading, conversation, and quality time, well-spent. It was a bit peculiar, but only inasmuch as a 9-hour power outage changed the character of a Saturday, and ultimately of the weekend, but occurring pretty closely to the start of the earliest possible thought of preparing dinner on the grill, and watching UFC with my Traveling Partner… we did neither of those things. LOL The grill is electronically temperature controlled, and has an electrically powered fire-starter. Well, shit. The UFC fights? Yeah, we needed the power for that, too. :-\

Initially, we fussed, in turns, over whether one or the other of our phones would provide enough bandwidth to support streaming the fights… my internet isn’t quite that good. Well, shit.

It was a lovely day to catch up on my reading.

We let it go. We hung out, reading, playing small games on our phones, enjoying the sunny Spring day out on the deck. The day was pleasant. I went to bed a bit earlier than I often do, and missed the power coming back on. lol

The entire weekend ended up being a very pleasant, relaxed weekend, spent with each other. It was quite lovely. Yesterday, I happily ran an errand, then spent the day doing laundry, and tidying up. I dunno… it was a heavenly weekend. 🙂 I sip my coffee, very much aware that it was also entirely ordinary. I’m okay with that. 😀

56 in just two days. I’m okay with that, too. I grin at myself, thinking about all the things I am – and am not – sitting here today.

…My thoughts are interrupted most aggravatingly by my neighbor revving his car in the drive way, rattling the wall. I haven’t heard it quite like this before, and find myself hoping his cute lowered and modified car is “okay”. Then, the wall rattles again, and I frown, see-sawing between interested concern, and the raw nerves of noise sensitivity. Damn, dude, that car does not need to warm up for 10 fucking minutes… for fucks sake. I note the reaction, and take a slow, deep breath. He pulls away. I exhale and let it go. 🙂

It’s a morning to practice non-attachment, I suppose… 😉

I finish my coffee hurriedly, and realize my mistake when I begin coughing (I inhaled some of it. lol). I slow myself down with my whole will, and take another breath. There’s time. 56 doesn’t get here any sooner if I am rushing myself along, it only diminishes the quality of the journey getting there. lol

I consider a moment of contentment, captured in a photograph, and begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

Well…

June 7, 2019 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and contemplating the day ahead. Something’s nagging at me, and since it’s to do with how I interact with a colleague, I’m both hung up on the aggravation, and also inclined to stifle that feeling and disregard it. Here’s where finding that subtle difference between “letting it go” and “ignoring it” becomes its own tiny monster of conflict; what’s the difference, actually? What matters most? If I sit by silently and don’t manage my boundaries skillfully… then what? This small insult is actually a pretty big deal for me, and I’m frustrated that I also find myself concerned about “taking it too seriously”, because I am, suddenly, exceedingly aware of simply being female in the workforce.

Damn it.

I sip my coffee. I “let it go”, in the sense that I set it aside for the morning, which I enjoy for myself because it’s mine, and this is what I do. 🙂 When I eventually come back to it for a moment, it does not seem so huge or so looming, it’s merely a moment to “use my words”, set clear expectations about what is, and what is not, okay with me, personally. It’s time to point out that a boundary has been transgressed, however unwittingly, and that it does matter, and that I take myself sufficiently seriously – and treat myself with sufficient consideration – to voice my concern, clearly, kindly, and also quite firmly. It’s for me, definitely, and also for other female colleagues, who likely also don’t want to be treated disrespectfully. The challenge is to prevent a flash fire of emotion in the moment, which can be a serious distraction that holds the potential to undermine being heard. People are so peculiarly uncomfortable with emotions. So. There’s that. lol I move on to new beginnings, and delicious cups of coffee. 🙂

It was cloudy and gray when I got home yesterday. I still have pictures of sunny afternoons, and the memory of flowers in the sun, and their delightful scent on the breeze. There’s something to be learned from this.

Even a small moment to “begin again” can be powerful – this change of paragraph, alone, so small, is ample new beginning to support this moment, right here. 😀

I sip my coffee. My neighbor’s car starts up in the driveway. The television continues to softly read Herodotus as my Traveling Partner listens, in the other room. My headache is less important than my contentment, and I give it little attention, being much occupied with feeling content, generally. A pleasant morning, actually, and a weekend ahead.

I turn 56 next week. I’m not exactly counting it down, and I’m not grieving over it. I just… don’t know what to do about it, really. I’m going to dinner after work, the night before, with friends. This one makes more sense to celebrate in that way; attend to the end of the previous one, more closely, than to shout about the one to come. 56 doesn’t seem like a significant milestone as numbers go. I just… I don’t know. I feel strange about it. There’s nothing I can call to mind that I would want to ask for as a birthday gift (land and a home of my own seems a pretty tall ask, as birthday presents go!), I’ve got most of what I need in life, and most of what I want. When I consider the day, I only want to spend it well-regarded and in good company. Isn’t that enough? To be celebrated as a friend, a lover, a colleague – valued, enjoyed, appreciated? I don’t really need “proof” of affection, or ritual gifts. So… I took some time off to enjoy with my Traveling Partner. A very long weekend. A luxury. Time to rest, to recharge, to paint, to read, to walk among the trees. It’s enough. 🙂

I look at the time. Almost 56?? Shit – It’s definitely time to begin again! lol 😉

 

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Categories Free Will, gratitude, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Breathe, Relax, Repeat

June 6, 2019 //
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I woke early. Ridiculously early. 2:22 a.m. early. lol Doesn’t wreck the taste of my (early) morning coffee, and I am content to be here, in the early morning quiet, a bit earlier than usual.

…To be fair, I went to bed early, too, as a result of not really sleeping the night before; I was just wiped out, after a busy day of working through the fatigue, and the extra work of seeking to manage my moment-to-moment behavior in the context of shared work, all day, with colleagues I respect, and who see me as both adult, and as a management professional, well… yeah… I was exhausted by the time I got home. My Traveling Partner kindly suggested I just go ahead and go to bed, fairly early in the evening. Realistically, I was a bit too stupid with fatigue to think of that. LOL “Bed time” came early last night. I’m up early this morning. No surprise. No stress. Good coffee.

I sip coffee. Breathe. Relax. Let the stray thoughts come and go. Let fears and doubts go. Another breath. Another moment. 🙂 I think back on moments from yesterday – not the work moments; the work moments will take care of themselves in the context of work, when I am in the office and on the clock, once again. Nope. Those don’t need my attention right now. Instead I am thinking back on flowers, on the scent of the early morning breeze, the smile of a friend in passing, a hilarious joke I’d already forgotten; this is a moment for building a firm foundation of emotional resilience through a favorite practice. I am “taking in the good“, and enjoying my morning coffee, contentedly.

Even the flowers in urban landscaping can become a meaningful moment of delight, contentment, and joy.

I think back to an earlier starting point on this journey, and how much misery filled my moment-to-moment, hour-by-hour, day-to-day experience of living. It often felt so entirely pointless. It was, at first, a major challenge to “find” even small moments of anything wonderful, beautiful, uplifting, joyful… and here I am, a couple years down this very strange path, and in spite of the often overwhelming seeming miseries and hardships of the world, I can find a moment of joy to savor, almost any time, almost anywhere. It’s a nice change. (Yes, of course, there were verbs involved, and a lot of practice. Worth it.)

A moment of will, a decision to “let it go”, and the choice to turn attention to something small, something beautiful… can change the character of an entire day.

I breathe. Relax. Repeat. Moments to contemplate simple beauty. Moments to savor a good cup of coffee in the chill of morning. Moments to enjoy being, without an agenda, without the stress of time or timing. Moments, so often, are enough. Stuck in a shitty one? Breathe. Relax. Let it go. Just let that shit go. Take another breathe. Sky still blue? Are you okay, right now? Another breath, another moment. Repeat as needed. Take a walk. Keep breathing. Let the stressors weighing you down fall away for a moment – you can pick those up later, if you really feel you must. Another breath, another moment. Another choice.

…I catch myself thinking about a singularly unexpected (and challenging) moment, yesterday; a colleague’s emotional investment erupting to the surface, catching me by surprise. I value their opinion, and experience. I spend a moment considering a question; what do they need to feel heard, on this? I make a point to set a reminder to follow up, to take time to listen deeply. I don’t know everything. This is a shared journey.

…Then I let that go, too, and return to this quiet moment, and this delicious cup of coffee. Soon enough it will be time to begin the day, for now, this moment here is quite enough. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, gratitude, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Big 5

The Contract

May 31, 2019 //
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I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about social contracts – those implicit, rarely stated, seemingly “universal” silent agreements about how we behave together. The thing in the background that tells us “how rude!” when someone else breaks that contract, or we find ourselves shrugging off our own behavior (“sorry, I’m just being a bitch”, “sorry, I’m a dick sometimes”), and making an excuse. The specifics vary by region, by community, by employer, by in-group, by geography, religion, even time of year… weird, right?

…Who wrote these contracts??…

Trust me, most of us signed one before we knew anything about language at all. A rare few enter one explicitly understanding it, signing with their eyes open, fully aware of what they are agreeing to… Which is weird, right? I mean… “read the contract” is even a thing we’re told to do, when we get old enough to start signing things. How is it that, as a culture, as a global community of adult, reasoning, human beings, we haven’t done a better job of setting down clear rules for conduct and society that are more broadly accepted, and more thoroughly understood?

…Maybe we just suck at this thing called free will, competing with this other thing called agency, and both all tangled up with this bullshit we call “being successful”? I mean… we’ve got a Constitution, here in the United States. The world (by way of The United Nations) has the UN Charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… both sound pretty all-encompassing, with the grave exception that a great many people don’t agree with either. So… yeah.

We have local laws, county ordinances, state laws, federal laws – and lots of people employed to enforce them, change them, write new ones, and the rest of the population following or breaking any number of those laws, every day. (Maybe we’d need fewer of them, if we had a better social contract in the first place?)

Maybe the problem is… us. We aren’t the best at “getting along”, being fairly territorial, more than a little bit delusional, prone to logical fallacies, emotional, and poorly educated (yeah, you too, college degree and all; there’s just too much to know). We get hung up on bullshit assumptions and expectations that we make up in our heads. We get angry, frustrated, sad, or depressed. We wander around feeling entitled to this or that experience, person, or object. We’re all about… us.

The moth does not understand metamorphosis.

I sit sipping my coffee. I’m hard on myself on this one. How do I live up to this committed desire to become the woman I most want to be? Who is she? How does she treat other people? How does she balance her commitments to others with adequate self-care? Where does she stand on the matter of people vs. profit? How does she live her life, moment to moment? What matters most to her? What does she not understand about getting where she wants to be in life? How does she know when to let go, and when to hold on? How does she know which questions to answer, and which ones are pure, sparkling, delicious rhetoric – intoxicating, but not nourishing?

More questions than answers on a quiet morning, and already it’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Breathe Through the Moment

May 30, 2019 //
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Moments come and go. Whatever shit you’re having to wade through in life, it’ll pass. You can, of course, slow that process down some, by clinging to misery. I don’t recommend it. Take a breathe. Relax. Be in this moment, and let that one go.

Sometimes the flowers are tucked away behind the vines.

Sunny days come and go. Rainy ones, too. I’m just saying; this, too, shall pass. That’s real. Take a breath. Have a cup of coffee. Walk in the fresh air, among the trees, or under broad open skies.

“Human” isn’t always easy. Actually, quite the opposite seems to be the case; being human often seems needlessly difficult. Worse – we choose the difficulty level on the game of life, more often than we realize we do. We make specific, considered, deliberate choices to make the game so much harder. I’m not sure why that is. We could each do things quite differently than we often do…

…You can begin again. Let it go. Breathe. Start over. Just a thought.

My coffee is good. This moment is deliciously quiet, and gentle. Morning has not yet really gotten going. I’m okay with taking that slowly.

We each walk our own hard mile. We often don’t notice others suffering, and have little ability to place the suffering of others in the context of suffering generally; our own pain often feels like the worst pain, ever. “No one else could ever understand how bad this is…” We isolate ourselves from the support we are seeking, forgetting how common most of these human experiences actually are. We sometimes choose to withhold compassion and kindness, because we aren’t receiving it, ourselves. It’s weird how that works.

I sip my coffee and consider The Big 5. Respect. Reciprocity. Consideration. Compassion. Openness.

I could do better.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Big 5, Words
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