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The Bitter and The Sweet

January 8, 2026 //
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I slept well and deeply last night. I woke gently at a good time for waking. I think I even managed to get myself ready for the day and leave the house without waking everyone else. The cafe is warm, my coffee is hot, and the background music is different, more to my taste. My first taste of this cup of coffee reminds me that life is not reliably joyful and easy; it is bitter, and tastes over-roasted. I shrug it off. It is also inconsequential. Some coffee is bitter. Some coffee is sweet. As with moments.

Everyone on my global work team is down with the flu, or recently recovering. The flu is hitting hard this year, but it is orders of magnitude less serious than COVID was. It’s easy to forget how terrible the pandemic was. (I’m glad I am finally getting over the flu, and I’m grateful it wasn’t worse; this year’s flu has killed thousands of people in the US alone, thus far.) Last night I did not wake even once to deal with my sinuses or to cough, and didn’t start coughing or struggling with draining sinuses as soon as I sat up – a pleasant change.

Spring is coming. Oh, this morning was freezing cold, and the car was thoroughly frosted over. It’s definitely winter here, now. I’m glad I’m not out walking in the cold and damp, I admit. Not my favorite conditions for walking, these freezing temperatures and dark, wet mornings. I won’t say “no” to a chance to watch the sun rise from a convenient trail, but I’d rather not spend hours in the cold to do that if I can avoid it. That’s just real.

My second sip of coffee seems quite different than the first, pleasant, not especially bitter. I don’t put a lot of thought into; it really doesn’t matter. It was probably something to do with the lingering taste of toothpaste in my mouth. I let my mind move on and enjoy my coffee contentedly. I take a moment to breathe, exhale, and relax, and do a “body scan”, allowing myself to feel my feelings and acknowledge the various physical sensations of being human. No particularly noteworthy amount of pain, this morning, which is something worth spending a moment of my time to appreciate and savor. I feel comfortable in my skin, ready for a new day. (I wonder what it holds…)

The earth keeps turning. The clock keeps ticking. American idiots keeps talking “bigger gun diplomacy” and nonsense about taking fucking Greenland. For real, people? Are we really those assholes?? Fuck democracy, we’ll just take what we want? I honestly thought better of us. Hopefully hateful stupidity and vengeful pettiness don’t win over the hearts of most Americans, and we can look back on this moment in our history with patient astonishment and lessons learned, after the next election. (Ideally sooner than later, because this shit is costing us many dollars, and allies, and destroying our reputation on the world stage.) We’ve got a mess on our hands, and I’ve become very concerned that we won’t dig out of it in my lifetime. I sigh and sip my coffee, grateful we still import this magical bean at all.

Speak truth to power. Don’t let your voice be silenced. Stand firm on your values, and try not to be too discouraged by current events; this too will pass, I remind myself. Change is. Impermanance is a permanent condition.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let all that go and pull myself back to here, and now. For some strange reason, the playlist the cafe has on is playing surreal sounding … surf music? Weird. I find myself asking a barista what they’ve got playing. Yep. “Indie surf rock“, she says. It makes for an interesting atmosphere in this morning space in the wet gloomy winter of the Pacific Northwest. I’m not even complaining. It beats “shoegaze” or vapid pop breakup songs.

I sit with my thoughts awhile. There is no reason to rush the morning, I’ve got awhile before the work day begins. I think about the years behind me. 62 of those. I’ll be 63 this year. I don’t “feel old”, in spite of aches and pains and such; I’ve had those for years. The osteo arthritis in my spine developed before I was 30 and has continued to worsen over the years, climbing my spine, reaching my neck most recently. It doesn’t have further to go, but manages to keep getting worse anyway. I try not to let it dictate my life or my choices, day-to-day, sometimes that’s hard – but it doesn’t feel “aging related” to me. It’s a reminder of past trauma.

When I was a kid, adults in their 60s seemed elderly to me. That’s not true in 2025 – most of the people I meet in their 60s these days not only seem “my age” (well, duh), but also don’t seem (or appear to be) “old”. Phrases like “60 is the new 40” come to mind. I chuckle grimly; recent changes to vaccine schedules, dietary recommendations, and cost or availability of healthcare pretty nearly promise that aging is going to look very different in the near future (and not in a good way for generations who will find themselves aging very soon). Limited retirement potential for Americans also continues to burden folks as they age out of the workforce (if they can leave the workforce at all, it may not be voluntary). We do a pretty shitty job of caring for our elders in this country. We do a pretty shitty job of caring, generally.

I sigh and shake off my dark mood. G’damn I’m so fucking over people, lately. I call to mind the bright spots in my life, people-wise. My Traveling Partner. My friend the Author. My friend the Chaotic Comic. Far away friends I rarely see but write to more than occasionally. The Anxious Adventurer is also a human being with a better than average heart, of generally good character. Nonetheless, I feel a deep abiding need to “step away for awhile”, somehow, and like a great many people (most people, probably) I can’t really afford to right now. Another sigh breaks the stillness. The deep breath that follows feels good, and I relax as I exhale. I am enjoying the scents of freshly ground coffee as they waft my way, and I focus my attention on that. I rub my hands slowly, massaging my aching thumbs. I can’t say I’m surprised that arthritis is developing in my thumbs; the joints most affected are those that are most involved in holding a pen, a brush, or a palette knife. It’s a cruel twist, but it’s not personal. These are fragile vessels and we learn too late how best to care for them. I look at my hands. I see signs of age there most clearly; small wrinkles tell the tale of years, shadows of fading bruises are reminders of hidden fragility.

…The clock ticks on…

It’s been almost two years since I lost my Dear Friend. I experience a fleeting pang of mortal dread… that ticking clock, you know? I chuckle to myself. A great many people in my lineage lived to advanced years – a handful well past 100 years. Many (most?) into their 90s. There’s no reason to rush toward the end, but it’s on my mind more than it needs to be, lately. I often finding myself wanting to “live forever” – there is much to see and do and learn and explore, and many questions to ask along the way. This moment here is simple and ordinary, but it’s also precious and entirely unique. Moments are fleeting. Savor them! I sip my coffee, glance at the time, and think my thoughts.

A friendlier than usual barista stops by my table to chat – a moment of recognition and visibilty. She(?) is curious about what I’m doing, what I’m writing about. I find a way to describe myself and my writing, briefly. I find this a challenging but sometimes useful exercise. We exchange names, and a few pleasant words. She returns to the work at hand, I turn my attention back to my writing, and this morning moment.

My momentarily dark mood seems to have mostly lifted. As it passes, my arthritis pain begins to return. These experiences are not related directly in any way but timing, and that is coincidental. I sip my coffee marveling at how easily we conflate unrelated events or see causality where there is none, simply due to timing. Human primates are interesting. (We aren’t as smart as we think we are.) I definitely don’t want to be around them all damned time. I sigh, and sip my coffee, daydreaming about getting in the car and just… driving toward the horizon. Alone. I feel a bitter smile twist the corner of my mouth; human primates are social creatures. My love of solitude is a reflection of trauma, of chaos, and damage. I’m not unaware of this, and it is part of “who I am”.

I stretch and sigh, and get ready to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, turning 60, War and News of War, winter, Words

The Stupidest Timeline

January 7, 2026 //
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Do you ever wake up thinking, “good grief what a stupid fucking world we live in”, more in disappointed astonishment than anything else? Yeah… Looks like that kind of day. Distressing dreams, though I slept deeply and well, and only woke once briefly. I don’t dare look at the news this morning. I’m sure it will be more of the same bullshit: pointless dick-measuring by egotistical grifters in office, pettiness, violence, AI slop to dodge, and… sponsored content. No thanks. I’ll just have this coffee and then start the work day.

Yesterday evening I watched a favorite action movie to put myself in a better mood (totally worked). Why do people love action movies and superhero movies? Maybe because, generally, the good guys win – and it’s usually clear who the good guys are. Why movies about underdogs who make it? Because people want to feel, for a moment, that it is possible for anyone to overcome the impossibly unfair “rules of the game”, if only they “really try” (and get some lucky breaks). Time travel movies? Those fill a need to believe that some moment in the past was significantly better – or perhaps that some moment in the future may be – and that it is possible to get there. We don’t look too closely at the role we each (and all) play in the state of things as they are, here and now. (Who did you vote for in the most recent elections? How many letters or calls have you made to your representatives since then making your voice heard? Where are you protesting? What are you practicing?) I sigh to myself. I’m grateful for this cup of fairly average coffee; it’s hot, it’s coffee, it’s here, and it is a reliable small pleasure in life, no wishful thinking required.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. Yesterday got off to a difficult start and I felt tired and worn down all day. A night of rest helped immensely, and today looks brighter. The world hasn’t changed (much) in 24 hours. It’s still a fucking mess. I’m okay. This moment is okay. This cup of coffee is okay. The quiet conversations of the baristas working the early shift is calm in the background. One barista, about my age I think, calls me “hun”, and it is clear she worked a long time as a waitress in local diners; it is a particular kind of friendliness. A lucky bank-shot drops the tissue I used into the appropriate waste recepticle, without having to get up to pick it up off the floor. Small things can really color a moment or change the feel of an experience. I let myself enjoy the moment as it is. Here. Now.

How’s your moment? What will you do with it?

I take a breathe, which turns into sneezing and a couple more lucky tissue tosses into a waste recepticle I should probably step to, instead. I am feeling mostly completely over the flu, now, but I’ve got congested sinuses first thing in the morning to deal with, and some coughing as I call it a night, and a less than ideal limitation on my voice, which starts to give up on me about 45 minutes into any meeting that I attend. It will pass. All of it will pass, and it isn’t even strange for me; once that shit had moved into my lungs, I knew this was coming. I know it will pass – so long as I continue to get the rest I need, and practice good basic self-care. There are verbs involved and I do play a role in my successful recovery. I have to continue to make healthy choices as I get well.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I take some time to meditate, just here in this warm coffee shop, before they turn on the background music for the day. I soak in the feeling of things being okay, here, now, without looking beyond this moment, or this place. Thoughts cross my mind like clouds in a breeze, observed but distant. Another breathe, another thought, another exhalation, another release of background stress or some element of anxiety. I relax. I sip my coffee. This simple practice is such a pleasant start to a day.

It is a busy month. I’ve got an old friend coming to visit over a week, about 10 days from now, and a return to the office in San Francisco at the end of the month, between those we’ve got to move our stuff from one storage place to another storage place. For me, this feels “busy”. I know people who would embrace such a “relaxed” calendar as “down time”. It used to be that I would ferociously push myself to approach life at a much more intense pace, with multiple events or activities on my calendar every day. I felt constantly harried, pushed, and often overwhelmed, my eye always on the clock. My temper flared with my impatience or my frustration, and I carried multiple sources of reminders, from sticky notes and calendar entries, to alarms, reminders, and notifications set in this or that app (once apps were a thing). I lived in my Franklin-Covey dayplanner. lol I thought it was a requirement of life, or perhaps unavoidable. I learned over time how many choices I was making, and I learned to make those differently, and accept who I am. I don’t like feeling “busy” or rushed, or harassed, or hurried. I like to focus, and work through a single task with my mind on that task while I’m doing it. I do my best work that way. It was a comfort to allow myself to move away from the internal “I’m great at multitasking!” lie and feeling chronically overconstrained and chased for my time and attention, to choosing what to put my attention on, and setting boundaries about my time and attention. I make different choices. I’m less anxiety prone, less forgetful, less irritable, less overwhelmed. This is better for me.

…It’s not a sprint, it’s not even an endurance race, it’s a very long walk on an undefined trail – without a map, just a hint of a sense of a destination in mind. lol Good thing I like to walk!

I’m not yet walking in the mornings, again. I do miss it. It’s quite cold right now, though, and my Traveling Partner has asked that I take better care of myself, and not be out in the cold and darkness, walking when I’m not at my best. That seems reasonable and sensible, and I agreed to “slow down” and take care of myself. It seems to be working out for the best. I’m still looking forward to mornings out on the trail, but circumstances play a part, and it may be February before that happens, just because there is a lot going on, and I’ll no doubt need my energy for those things in the short-term.

…I remind myself to mask up for travel at the end of the month; I’m fairly certain I was exposed to the flu on the aircraft that returned me home. I at least observed definite direct exposure to someone ill, when some mother’s half-wit feral adult-ish boy-child lumbered through the aircraft gracelessly, coughing down on other passengers as he passed by, not even covering his fucking cough with his sleeve. Rude. I was annoyed at the time, and that made the moment somewhat more memorable than other casual exposure was. I’d likely have gotten sick even if I never saw that guy coughing all over everyone so carelessly… I was on an airplane; the air is recycled.

You’d think we all learned one thing during the COVID pandemic – that wearing a mask (properly), washing our hands, and practicing a measure of social distancing reduces exposure to contagion. I mean, are you kidding? How is that not all so super obvious, given a moment of thought? …Or are you among the “you can’t force me to wear a mask!!” group, or the “the vaccine has more risk than the disease” group? Maybe you’re simply one of the “you can’t tell me, I’ve got my rights!” people seeing conspiracies everywhere? If you are, I mean you no harm. I’ve simply got my own opinion about these things (just like you) and I am doing what appears to be most effective and appropriate, with greatest potential benefit to my entire community. It’s not about me, really, is it? It’s about taking steps to create and maintain a healthy world in which humanity and all manner of living thinking creatures can thrive. Right? …Although I do prefer to take the steps that reduce my own exposure to illness, and increase my chances of survival, myself, because I have found life worth living. (Shit – I need to pick up more masks! I jot down a reminder on my shopping list, then remind myself to ask my Traveling Partner if we already have some at home and I’ve just forgotten where they are.)

…It took a while to get here…

I frown cynically at my coffee cup – Starbucks. Yeah, yeah, okay. I know. Conspiracies pull people in because – more than anything else – some prove to be actually based on real shit going on. Governments actually do some terrible things (looking your way ICE, and DOD) – and lie to hide those terrible things from view. That’s real. Honest ethical behavior in governance is rather unfortunately rare, and very unreliable. Conspiracy theories develop because corruption, lies, and bad behavior really exist, and are often covered up intentionally by the self-serving individuals who benefit from the bad acts. That’s real. When does a “conspiracy theory” become simply some terrible thing that a government, agency, enterprise, or individual has actually done? As an example torn from current events… “conspiracy theories” about Epstein now seem less like distortions of fact than legit actual coverups. People who were associated with him, or who have powerful friends who were associated with him, scramble to cover their involvement, but… It’s likely that it will all come out, eventually. Just like Watergate, just like MK Ultra, just like the Tuskegee Study. It’s even harder to pull off a really grand conspiracy in the digital age than it was in the days of snail mail and paper documents. I snicker to myself, pretty certain that the elected elderly of our gerontocratic government still don’t get that. You can’t hide secrets from the future.

I sigh quietly, thinking again that maybe there should be an age limit to holding office? I mean, seriously? I’d retire now if I could afford to – I’ve got plenty of my own shit to do, and so little free time. Why the hell do we persist in electing people to office who are old enough to be reliably out-of-touch with current science and the real, lived concerns and struggles of everyday people? I’m not saying we’d do any better to fill the government with Zoomers… they lack life experience and depth of knowledge (although, I can imagine scenarios where that might be an advantage) and their childhood basic socialization was impaired by the pandemic. I think the ideal is somewhere between the extremes; sufficient lived experience to have begun building wisdom, but young enough that resilience and passion prevent cyncism and resignation… 35 to 65 maybe? If the “full retirement age” is 67, wouldn’t it be easiest to simply make that the end point for a career as an elected official? I’m not chucking asparagus at my elders – far from it – but look where we are with a gridlocked partisan government of elders faced with the real issues springing up from new technologies they have yet to embrace and understand fully? This isn’t working. I sip my coffee and think about that. There could also be a case made for only electing people who have retired from successful first or second careers, who are “taking a step back” into governance, maybe as a measure of “return on investment” by bringing their years of experience into administration that benefits everyone? I still see potential improvements in our shared experience that could come from an age “cap” on elected officials, in the sense that advanced years definitely come with some cognitive and intellectual limitations for many people. It’s complicated, isn’t it?

I correct my posture and shift restlessly in my seat, as I write and drink coffee, killing time before the library (where I’ll be working) opens (it doesn’t open until 08:00). This is a nice start to the day; I hope the entire day is similarly pleasant. I smile quietly, thinking of my Traveling Partner sleeping at home. He seemed pleased yesterday that I found an option for my morning that neither had me knocking about the house noisily, nor out on the trail before dawn, while I’m getting over the last symptoms of the flu – a solution that also allow him to sleep later than I do. Today also being a work day for the Anxious Adventurer, my beloved will have the house to himself for awhile, and being winter there is no chance at all that people will be mowing or making a ton of noise. I envy his many opportunities to enjoy solitude at home, but it also vexes me that he has to endure that solitude far more often than he needs it. It’s hard to find the right balance and maintain it. I’m glad he’ll get some rest today; I know he needs that.

The minutes tick by. I’m content to let them, and powerless to stop them anyway. I think about the weekend ahead; I’m overdue to take down the holiday decor. I usually do it on New Year’s Day, a sort of ritual for starting the new year with “order” from the merry chaos of the holidays. This year, having been quite ill for a couple weeks, I just didn’t have the energy for it. This weekend, I’ll get that done. My new friend from work may come down to visit on Sunday… maybe. We take turns canceling plans for “reasons”, and enjoy a friendship that respects that. We’ve both got disabilities that make changes of plans rather common. We’re not frustrated by it, because we see each other, and we “get it”. She’s a “Millennial” (as is the Anxious Adventurer), and once we set clear expectations for each other regarding communication we’ve had no stress over it (neither of us treat text communication as “real-time”, prioritizing IRL interactions over texting, but neither of us care to pick up the phone, either). I grin, thinking about how much I enjoy her conversation… haven’t yet given her a pseudonym. I think about her for a moment, her smile, her current buzz cut colorful hair, her humor, her drama, her story to tell… After a few minutes, I realize this is not going to be an easy one. She’s chaotic, and has a good heart – like me. We like so many of the same things in a similar way, it sometimes feels a little eerie…we’re fun together. I realize that in some other life I could perhaps love her differently, but that’s not where/who we are in this lifetime. Romance isn’t what we’re looking for out of this, and friendship is definitely something we are enjoying, and which meets a real need (at least for me). I sip my coffee. The Chaotic Comic… I smile, because the words bring to mind her face, and the alliteration amuses me. This will do nicely.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. The cafe turns on their mediocre background music (sorry Taylor Swift, I can’t listen to you every day, just not my thing, personally). I pick up my phone and turn on private background music – Bluetooth straight to my hearing aids. lol Sometimes I fucking love the modern world. 😀

The clock ticks on – and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, turning 60, winter, Words

Dealing With My Anger

January 6, 2026 //
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Wakened unexpectedly by my Traveling Partner, who is having his own experience, I sat up to get my bearings. Stress, and sounds of a cupboard or door banging in another room. I don’t deal well with this sort of disturbance, most especially when I’m pulled from a deep sleep to deal with it. My temper flares. Not productive or useful. I breathe, exhale, and… get dressed. I get my work gear together, throw on a warm sweater and a warm cardigan over that. It’s a cold morning. I’m not yet up to long walks in freezing temperatures after being sick for weeks. Coffee? That’ll do.

I get my shit together before I find my way to doing or saying something out of anger that would be an unpleasant escalation. It’s too early for that shit. G’damn I’m so tired. Coffee, solitude, and some time writing sounds a lot better. I wish my Traveling Partner well and express hopes that he gets the rest he needs, as I head out into the darkness of a cold winter morning.

…I can’t say I have any particular fondness for Starbucks as a business, or even as a purveyor of coffee, I mean, it’s fine. Chain coffee. I’m fucking grateful this morning, though; they’re open. It’s damned early, and there aren’t many places open with indoor seating and hot coffee at this hour. We happen to have a Starbucks that is open at 04:30. Handy. Coffee, a table, an internet connection – and a woman with some time on her hands who needs to get her emotions sorted out without disturbing anyone else. This will do.

My friend, the Author, is coming for a visit later this month. It’ll be good to talk things over with him. He has so much perspective and lived experience. I think about other friends I can share with, talk things over with, get insights from, and just feel heard on subjects that I know I struggle with; my anger, healthy relationships, and boundary-setting. I send an email to my therapist asking to make an appointment, and whether he might have an opening this week? Sleep is important; my Traveling Partner needs it to heal and be well. I also need it, to recover from illness, to maintain emotional balance, to age gently, to be well… all needs that human beings share. We all need sleep. We don’t all get it easily. I find myself seething over it, and I know that taking action from a place of emotion can result in poor decision-making. So, I sit with my coffee and my anger, wondering what the actual fuck I can do with this emotional bullshit to create order from chaos?

Emotions are not actually “bullshit”. They are an important part of who and what we are as human beings. We have shared needs as primates and as mammals, and even as thinking reasoning creatures – but we’re each having our own experience. It’s regrettably easy to view the world entirely through the lens of our own experience, taking this or that personally, lashing out at perceived slights or hurts without pausing to consider the context, or to fact-check impressions. Emotions are useful – they give us a lot of information about the way in which our circumstances and values intersect. They tell other people where they fit in our world, too. Relationships are rarely held together by reason or logical thought. More commonly, they are built on an emotional foundation, and shared experience. And when that goes sour? What then? I frown to myself, feeling stressed and insecure in my closest relationship. This has been my longest… we’re going on 16 years. That’s 3 years more than the next longest. Where does this path lead?

I sip my coffee and reflect on life and love, and struggle and choices. Love is wonderful stuff – but I don’t find it “easy”. I’ve got issues (maybe we all do?), and I’m not an easy fit for cohabitation. Relationships take real work. Loving someone doesn’t seem to make that any easier, though I often find myself thinking that is somehow “should”. (Reality does not care how I think things “should be”. lol I chuckle to myself and some of my anger dissipates.) G’damn I’m going to be tired by the end of the damned day, though; I really needed the sleep I almost got. The thought makes my anger flare up again. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Fucking hell this human journey is messy, indirect, poorly mapped, and frankly it feels too damned easy to get lost on a path that looks clear on a sunny day, but is obscured in the fog. (It’s a metaphor.)

I think about my “Big Five” relationship values, again: respect, consideration, reciprocity, compassion, and openness, and this morning I find myself wondering how many of these my beloved Traveling Partner truly shares with me…? Maybe his values are different. I sigh to myself over my coffee. It’s difficult to ascertain how much of the emotion of the moment is coloring my thinking. Maybe a lot, that’s very human. Wisdom gained through painful experience and mistakes over time have taught me that it is best to reflect long, and let moments be moments. I sip my coffee grateful for the warmth of the cup in my hand, the shelter of a bustling retail space around me, and the wisdom to let moments pass. I catch myself wondering, though, what is on the path ahead.

Another breath, another moment. My headache is fueled by my lack of deep rest. My backache is worsened by the cold damp weather. My mood is not improved by the vapid pop music in the background – songs of lust and heartbreak, sung to the tune of a forgotten advertising jingle. Sometimes life is surreal to the point of seeming almost profound or insightful, without improving my perspective. Why so many breakup songs? Because breaking up is a thing human primates do, and we are singers of songs and tellers of tales, eh?

The world spins on madly… I keep drinking my coffee, hoping for that moment when clarity arrives and settles the day. Maybe. I get an unexpected text from my therapist directly to my phone, instead of the reply to my email I expected later. Something about my phrasing got his attention, and he replies by text directly to me. He has an opening tomorrow, if I can do a virtual appointment I can make the timing work. I gratefully accept; there are definitely some things I avoid burdening friends with. We’ve all got our shit to get through, right? I’m not trying to make anyone carry a heavier load, I just need to talk about some things, in real words, with a real person who really knows me. I’ve been seeing my therapist (off and on these days), since 2013. It makes sense to keep (and deepen) the relationships we have that work – whether friends, family, colleagues, lovers, or therapists.

There’s no “coded language” here. I’m just one human primate dealing with baggage, and the lasting chaos and damage of relationships that most certainly did not “work”, but left behind a lot of wreckage, and weirdness, and moments of temper or sorrow to manage. Our past relationships, and the trauma or hurts that resulted, create portions of the foundation on which our present and future relationships rest. This complicates things like perspective, boundary-setting, perceptions, assumptions, and whether or how we react in some moment. The way out is through, they say. (Who exactly are “they”? How many ways out have “they” explored in a practical way? Was what they were going through relevant to my experience at all?) I sigh to myself. People are complicated. Each having their own experience. Each walking their own path. Each using a subtly different “dictionary”, while also likely to be assuming those definitions are universally shared – and often without being watchful for variances that lead to miscommunication. Fucking hell, why is communication so hard? I frown at my coffee, head pounding. Some questions don’t have useful answers.

…”What do you want? Will it help you become the person you most want to be?” my mind whispers to me from the shadows…

I sit with my thoughts, waiting, wondering, and annoyed by the background music. Perspective reminds me things could be so much worse. Experience tells me this relationship is generally pretty good, and fairly healthy. We’re still humans being human. It’s messy sometimes. Disappointing sometimes. Aggravating sometimes. It’s also rewarding, joyful, enriching, uplifting, and encouraging… maybe just not this morning, right now, in this moment? Human. I sigh to myself, hoping my Traveling Partner gets back to sleep and gets some of the rest he needs, even though I won’t. Not this morning. Another sigh, and I finish my coffee. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

The Real Gets Real-er

January 5, 2026 //
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First “proper” work day (for me) of the new year. I sip my coffee considering the moment, and the day ahead.

I push thoughts of worldly matters aside, in favor of here, now. The coffee is good. Hot on my tongue, soothing on my throat. I had planned to work from home. Plans change, and I am waiting for the university library to open in 15 minutes. A quiet uninterrupted work day will be just the thing to get me caught up after being ill. The morning is gray, and it has been a rainy night. It’s a cold drizzly morning in the Pacific Northwest. Winter.

… When I moved to the area in 1998, we would reliably have at least some snow before the new year, and plenty of freezing mornings and icy cold days, but it’s been awhile since that has been true. Winter (at this altitude and location) is more about gray rainy days, now. Cold, but rarely freezing. It could be that I personally prefer this, but I don’t think that has anything to do with what is good for the health of the planet.

Permanence is an illusion. Change is. I sigh to myself and think about life. Where does this path lead? How many more years? What quality of life will I enjoy over time? Will I live to see global peace…or global war? I sip my coffee. The clock is ever ticking.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, and take a few minutes for meditation, before I begin again. Say hello to 2026 – what will you do with it?

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, War and News of War, winter, Words

Yearning & Sufficiency

January 3, 2026 //
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I’m still down with this sickness, although I continue to improve. When I’m lounging, resting and watching videos to pass some time, I find myself drawn to relaxed videos of various aquarists and hobbyists building small aquariums for shrimp and small fish suited to peaceful planted freshwater aquariums. I miss my aquarium. Sometimes I miss it a lot. It was, for a time, very low maintenance and successful – a thriving ecosystem that required very little work to keep up. One move, then another, disrupted my stable little underwater paradise, and things got messy, chaotic, and required a lot more work. For awhile that overcame me, and I let the algae take over. Then, noticing a favorite fish was actually still thriving, my renewed interest and enthusiasm – and real regard for that fish – carried me through several restorative projects.

Taking a moment to watch fish swim.

We moved, at last, to this little house. Life feels more settled, but the aquariums (at that point I had three) had no ideally suitable location. Every place they could be placed was a compromise that reliably resulted in more work, more inconvenience, or… more algae. One tank got broken when a bookshelf being moved into place shifted and fell onto it. The fish were saved. The damage and water and mess were cleaned up. I retired the other small tank, and focused on my 29 gallon freshwater community. Peaceful and beautiful, and seemed to be thriving (although my betta persisted in leaping from the tank at odd hours, which was a pain in the ass and very stressful for us both, I’m sure). One day, as I happened to be standing nearby, the silicon seals simply failed. The front glass panel fell to the floor and water went everywhere. My Traveling Partner heard me cry out, and rushed to help me. The fish were saved – into a bucket, with what remained of the water from the tank. The small tank was pulled from retirement long enough to house the distressed fish. I couldn’t bring myself to keep on saving fish from the floor, and felt rather as if the circumstances were a clear sign that this location and this time in my life were not suited to keeping an aquarium. As I’ve done with other pets in my life, I allowed the circumstances to direct my decision-making. I don’t have an aquarium now. (Or, any other pets, actually, for various reasons and due to my thinking about such things changing over time.)

Over-reaching for a good metaphor…content to watch fish swim.

…But I’m home sick, trying to rest and get well, and I keep finding myself drawn to videos of aquarium setups suitable for small spaces, small fish, small creatures, and low maintenance practices. I sigh to myself as I sip my coffee. Do I really want an aquarium, or am I daydreaming and missing what once was? For the moment, the difference is too small to matter. I still don’t have a really good location for an aquarium, even a small one, in this house. I don’t have the time, the energy, or perhaps even the will to provide the care and maintenance even a small one would reliably require (and the small ones often need more attention more often than a big one does). I still love a beautiful aquarium, and there are so many kinds!! Aquascaping has a lot of variety. It’s a beautiful hobby. I even indulge myself, as I consider the matter, allowing myself the fun of planning out what I would need to do a small aquarium… Maybe just 6-10 gallons? Shrimp and snails? Maybe a betta? Some neon tetras? The exercise reminds me that this is not a “cheap hobby”. The tools and materials (long before livestock is considered) are somewhat costly, most especially if chosen with care based on best suited to the concept, well-respected brands, quality goods, and aesthetics. I quickly found myself looking at a “budget” that would require $200-$300 dollars, before I even started pricing livestock and plants. Yeesh. Do I want it that badly? Enough to deal with a compromise on location, the work involved, the potential for more work if there was a tank failure, and the possibility that this was merely a passing fancy stoked and amplified by sick day boredom? Enough to push it to the top of the list of things that need doing, for which there are limited resources? No, no, and no. I don’t actually want to build a new aquarium… I’m just missing my old one. Human primates are weird.

The day the tank arrived at a new place.

Do I need an aquarium? No, I don’t. Am I lacking something in my life that having one would truly fulfill? No, it would be an unnecessary luxury that comes at a significant cost. Do I even truly want one? No, I don’t think so; I just want to be well, and free from constraints on my comings and goings, and limitations on my energy. I just happen to be filling some portion of time with engaging videos about a topic I have a connection to, and take a lot of pleasure in considering.

Do fish get headaches?

I finish my coffee, thinking about what a useful reminder this is that chasing some momentary yearning is a very human thing, but it can easily get out of hand, taking me down a path I didn’t plan to walk, and without real benefit from that detour along my journey (maybe). Do I love a beautiful planted freshwater aquarium? I definitely do. I remember my Dad’s aquariums when I was a kid, with great fondness. I remember mine, and what a haven it was for me in a difficult time (it was originally undertaken as a means of providing healthy background noise that would reduce my nightmares, and it worked well for that purpose for the years that I needed it most). The stress (and lasting responsibility) over the safe healthy lives of the inhabitants and the terror and panic when something went wrong (whether a power outage or a tank failure) are not so welcome in my life. I still miss my aquarium. I miss the fish and the lush green plants moving gently in whatever current there might be. I don’t miss the work or the stress or the worry when I’m away. I won’t be getting a new aquarium any time soon, because I don’t really want one. I definitely don’t “need” one.

Human primates are wired to go after what they want: food, sleep, money and love, and endless things in between. It makes sense to pause and give some new yearning a moment of real thought and reflection. We only have so much time to spend, and only so much available in spendable resources to acquire some new thing. Our yearnings are not necessarily tied to our actual needs in any practical way. Good thing we have minds and critical thinking skills – ideally we put those to good use.

Are you hearing me on this? It’s a metaphor. When yearning overtakes me, I pull my focus to other things, I seek out a sense of sufficiency. I examine the thing I think I am yearning for with great care looking for what may be driving that (it’s rarely the thing I’m yearning for, itself, which nearly always masks some identifiable practical need or another than can be more effectively addressed quite differently). I breathe, exhale, and relax. I enjoy this moment here, as it is, quiet and calm and pleasant (in spite of lingering flu symptoms). This is enough. No aquarium required. 😉

I smile and think about Spring. Soon enough, the weather will be warming up, and it’ll be time to get out into the garden. There are plenty of creatures there to watch and wonder at, and all manner of lovely plants and flowers to tend. My effort will be well-spent there. It’s enough. Soon, I can begin again in the garden I have.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being, winter
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