Archives for posts with tag: so human

Try Again

June 1, 2024 //

Another morning, another opportunity to begin again, to be the person I most want to be, to practice the skills that are most likely to result in good quality of life and healthy relationships… another chance to “get things right “. My Traveling Partner is right, I can be pretty hard on myself. I do tend to conflate “behavior” and “self”. When I fall short of my own expectations of my “performance” in life, my self-talk can become quite negative and more than a little punishing (definitely unkind). Those qualities don’t make “measuring up” easier. I could do better…

…I need more practice…

It’s cloudy this morning and my back aches with the likelihood of rain today. My head aches ferociously. My sinuses are a bit stuffy. My tinnitus is so loud in ears I don’t hear the traffic on the nearby highway without really listening to hear it, buried in the static and whine of the buzzing in my ears. The morning seems annoyingly noisy… but it’s all in my head.

I reflect on the past couple days. I find myself admitting I could for sure be more kind and patient with my partner recovering from surgery. I have been too easily frustrated or annoyed by his 100% understandable frustration and annoyance with being both injured and also recovering from a procedure that now has him further limited by pain and the need to rest and heal when he so earnestly wants to move around and get shit done. We’re very different people. I keep finding myself rather stupidly expecting him to deal with things as I might deal with them myself, and it’s not at all reasonable (see “We’re very different people.” lol) It’s not just stupid, it’s also rude. I remind myself to let go of assumptions and expectations, and just be kind, considerate, and available to help when asked. I can count on him to let me know when he needs help.

…But… It is a new day. It’s not really a “do over”. There are no “mulligans” in real life (not really), just new opportunities to begin again and do better – new chances to practice being the person we most want to be. It doesn’t eliminate any consequences of prior actions or words, though, and doesn’t resolve hurt feelings or make amends for damage done. All that? Totally separate. More verbs. Different practices. I sigh quietly. Adulting is hard sometimes.

My Traveling Partner and I are fortunate; we trust the love we share, and it has proven itself many times. Feelings are feelings. We have our share of difficult moments, but the love is there and it endures beyond any petty bullshit or harsh words. We’re both human primates with noteworthy trauma histories and our share of individual baggage as a result, but fucking hell do we ever also love each other madly. I smile thinking about the enduring love we share. I watch the clouds shifting and drifting. The sun breaks through the cloud cover like a message of hope and encouragement.

It’s a pleasant morning for thinking about life and love, and how best to practice being the woman I most want to be. I sit with my thoughts awhile.

It’s also a nice morning to walk along the edge of the marsh. I breathe the Spring air deeply, smelling the scents of flowers. I reach down to lace up my boots, and prepare to begin again.

Tags anger management, be here now, be kind, be patient, begin again, care giving, do over, do the work, do your best, don't take anything personally, love and lovers, meditation, my results vary, only human, perspective, positive self-talk, practicing the practices, so human, temper temper, there are verbs involved, who are you?

Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Working With a Blank Page

July 18, 2023 //

Several times lately I’ve sat down to write and … didn’t write. I started with a notion, a thought, and idea, or a few words or the sight of something I could describe, but nothing came of it. This morning almost went that way, too… I sat down with the recollection of the pale pastel pink and baby blue dawn sky, and the words to attempt to share that, here, and quickly drifted to a piece of music, with a cool video. I let the music carry me away. The “eye candy” of the video filled my senses, and I lost the thread of my thoughts. LOL So human.

After my last therapy visit, I’ve been sort of “in my own head”, thinking about painful inconveniences like self-directed misogyny, and progress-yet-to-be-made, and… pain management. I wasn’t sure why with the dry summer heat, but my arthritis had flared up significantly (like, wet winter levels of pain), and until the heat dissipated yesterday with a cloudy mild day with hints of the threat of rain that it was a puzzle. Now I get it, but… fuck pain. Pain complicates things, and makes it hard to focus on what matters most (it surely isn’t the pain).

I sit here listening to music and sucking down my morning coffee with little attention. I’m doing my best to focus my thoughts on something other than the pain I am in. The music helps, but it’s not really a remedy. I’d hoped that building a habit of going to the gym and adding strength training to my fitness endeavors would do more (sooner) to reduce my pain. I haven’t gotten that far on my fitness journey, yet. Incremental change over time takes… time. I do my best to manage my pain with care, with various reminders to check in with myself throughout the day so I don’t end up like I did yesterday; at the end of the day and wrung out from fighting pain, because I rather stupidly hadn’t slowed down long enough to actually deal with it properly for hours. Fucking dumb. Very human. I got caught up in the excitement and momentum of the latest home improvement project, which is the front lawn. I forgot to manage my pain until quite late in the day, too late to get ahead of it at all.

Today I start things off similarly, and working on different outcomes as the day progresses. First, the gym, then a walk. I took my first-thing meds… first thing. lol I glance at the time. Time for the next Rx. I don’t delay, or snooze the reminder for even a moment. I take my medication. Small thing. Still progress. It’s a critical detail. This second couple of “first thing” medications need to be separated from the others, but a short-ish interval (like an hour) is sufficient. It’s peculiarly hard to get this one right (for me), and it sets up the medication dominoes for the day. lol So I keep at it. I’ll get this right. 🙂 I’ll finish my coffee, take a walk, and then get started on today’s meetings and calls. Today, I’ll take my medications 100% on time. Today I’ll manage my pain properly. Goals.

…I notice the the fingernails I broke yesterday. I don’t remember when. The rough edges draw my attention; that’ll be something to be mindful of all day, in order to avoid tearing at my fingernails absentmindedly through the day…

I breathe deeply and exhale slowly, feeling my heart beating, and letting my shoulders relax as I exhale. Looks like a pretty summer day beyond the window of the co-work space I’m in. I’m excited about my short week, and my upcoming roadtrip and camping along the coast. I’ve got my Thursday night site booked – now it’s just a matter of getting there! My Friday night is planned, too, and I’m eager to visit with an old friend (and bonus, it sounds like I’ll also get to meet a long-time reader of this blog as well). I still need to sort out my Saturday night, although I’m stuck on the route, because I have options and don’t know what I’ll want to do about it yet. Can’t really plan a camping location until I know the route I’m taking. 😀 I could proceed … without a plan… LOL

Thursday seems simultaneously “so far away” and also “almost here”. Funny. I’m already almost completely packed, which is pretty convenient. I still need to grab a couple items and my camera bag, but beyond that I’m ready. So ready. I’m looking forward to disconnecting from the world and following my thoughts for awhile.

It’s time to begin again.

Tags begin again, emotional self sufficiency, incremental change, pain management, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, self-directed misogyny, so human, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved

Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

Super Grumpy (Just Because)

April 30, 2020 //

Sometimes it is a thing; we are creatures of emotion and reason. Just like that sentence, emotion generally arrives to the party first. Reason shows up later. I’m super grumpy today. I don’t have any sort of reason for that, it’s simply how I am feeling, at this moment (and for several hours worth of moments since shortly after my work day began). There is nothing specifically “wrong”. I’m just… grumpy. Correction. I feel grumpy. I feel cross. I feel irritable. I feel prone to taking things personally. I feel “out of sorts” and generally aggravated. I feel impatient. These are how I am feeling.

…Still, they’re just feelings…

Emotions are funny things. We can argue the factual basis of a subject. We can disagree with each other regarding our understanding of circumstances, and our recollections of details; we are each having our own experience. We’re not seeing the world from identical perspectives. We can’t actually argue against an emotion, though. Those are our own. Not subject to disagreement. Period. I feel grumpy. No one actually gets to tell me that’s “incorrect” as an emotional experience. (People may try, but as arguments go, an argument against someone’s emotional experience is rife with thought-errors, fallacies, and a peculiar assumption of entitlement, inasmuch as it presupposes that other person’s emotional experience is somehow superior or has more substance or value.) I’m mostly not even letting my grumpiness “be a thing”, generally, but it is still there in the background.

…I would have been camping next week. All week. Out under the trees. No other people. Only my own agenda. Quietly sitting. Hiking. Cooking out under the sky. Sipping coffee in the morning chill. Watching the leaves unfold, and the spring flowers bobbing and swaying in the spring breezes. Content, relaxed, and face-to-face with the woman in the mirror for a few days of solitude. Pandemic life being what it is, the location where I would have been camping closed, and canceled all pending reservations, some weeks ago. So, not going is not a surprise. Hell, I’m not unhappy to have the opportunity to still enjoy a couple of those days off, in the good company of my Traveling Partner…but…

Today, right now, for no obvious reason, I feel exceedingly put out by every tiny inconvenience. I feel prone toward anger, over shit I’m not generally angry about. I really “want to rest” – but I’m not talking about physically resting this meat puppet. I need cognitive rest. I need time with myself.

It may be awhile, for all of us, before we get some needs easily met. For some folks, solitude is hard to come by right now. For others, what’s hard to come by is community. Whether we call time spent alone “solitude” or “loneliness” is largely a matter of perspective. The emotions involved belong to each of us as individuals. I sigh and alternate between sips of cold coffee left from this morning, and fizzy water that has gone flat. I don’t care for – or about – either one. It’s almost reflexive, as if I am seeking to satisfy a craving, but doing so quite incorrectly for the craving that it is. So… now what?

Eventually the emotional weather will shift, and “this too shall pass”. I could take the mood, and the moment, very personally, blowing it way out of proportion, catastrophizing it, creating monsters out of miniatures. Or… I could let this shit go. Again.

…And then again, if necessary. And again after that. Yep, again once more if I have to. Maybe another time after that. Just keeping putting it down, letting it go, and beginning again. No reason to vilify the emotions themselves; they are not the bad guy here. Far more valuable to look them over tenderly, honestly, and with as much self-compassion as I know how to practice. Then try again if I miss that mark. There is no limit on the new beginnings I can offer myself.

So… I do.

My Traveling Partner comes in for a moment, and glances at the page in front of me. “I’m sorry you’re grumpy.” He says it tenderly. Kindly. Honestly. This, too, is a moment. A pretty nice one, actually. He gets back to what he was doing. I get back to what I am doing, while taking some time for me – to savor this moment. Far too easy to become mired in my less pleasant ones, even though the lovely ones are so much more worthy of my attention. Human primates and their negativity bias. I shake my head, smiling at myself. So human.

…It helps to take a moment, for myself. Some quiet. Some solitude. A moment to begin again.

Tags be the change, begin again, breathe, camping, emotion and reason, emotional self sufficiency, emotions, good self-care, human primates, life in the time of pandemic, listening deeply, love and lovers, MBSR, mindfulness for beginners, mindfulness matters, missed moments, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, reason, relationships, so human, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories anger, anhedonia, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

More Than One Path

April 16, 2020 //

Every day I am trying to walk my path with my eyes open. I don’t always succeed, but then, few things manage to achieve “always”, or, for that matter, “never”. Those require an unrelentingly high standard of proof. lol I do okay, generally. One step at a time. One practice at a time. One beginning at a time. I just keep starting over, and keep walking. Somewhere along the way, I’ve managed some personal growth. I’ve managed to develop some interpersonal relationship skills. Hell, I have even managed to develop some tact, though I use it less often than would perhaps be welcomed. I am very much a “work in progress”, and my perspective on that, these days, is that there is no “final exam”, no “finish line”, no end in sight – it’s all about the journey. The walking of the path, itself, and the living of this life, is the point. No destination matters as much. I’ll get where I get. I’ll get there when I get there. I try to do my best every moment I can, along the way.

…Still totally human… My results vary.

Today, I write at the end of my day. I’d forgotten I hadn’t written, until the work day ended, and I went back to my blog to review what I wrote in the morning, from the often weary perspective of the other end of a busy day. How’d I do? That’s sort of the point of “checking back”. 🙂 That – and catching spelling mistakes I missed. lol (For real – totally human.)

My thinking is sometimes very different later in the day. Real life has had a chance to take the shine off my morning optimism, perhaps, or the day has frustrated or amazed me. Sometimes, I’m so groggy in the morning that my thinking is clouded, simple-minded, or my meandering musings fairly pointless, and my afternoon or evening perspective is sharpened by events that have been more fully considered since the morning. My perspective changes. My results of the day vary. I’ve wrestled with emotion, or found myself struggling with reason, or failed to find a balance between the two. Today, though? Just a day… room to grow.

My Traveling Partner sticks his head into the studio “Do you want to play a cool game and kill some time?”, he asks with a smile. “No,” I smile back, “I want to finish my writing.” He sticks a playful tongue out at me, and closes the door. I’m suddenly stricken by intense anxiety – baggage. Personal demons. Personal demons carrying my baggage. Seriously? This, again? Even knowing my partner has occasionally nagged me for not taking time to do the things that help me maintain balance – and sanity – and that he loves to see me invest some portion of my effort and energy in doing things I love doing, because they are part of who I am; I’m sitting here terrified that he may be hurt and angry, feeling rejected, because I did not drop everything immediately to rush to his side, this time, right now. I don’t berate myself over it. I go gently; there’s real damage here. This? This is scar tissue from decades of abuse in other relationships. This is what surviving sometimes looks like. There’s still “clean-up” to do. Still some healing self-work that needs to be completed. And that’s okay. It’s certainly very human.

I correct my posture. I breathe. Exhale. Relax. I imagine myself gently-firmly taking heavy bags from the hands of the exhausted demon carrying them, and setting them down (really imagining it very clearly), on a curb perhaps, or next to a dumpster. I imagine walking away – away from this baggage. Away from that exhausted, defeated demon, standing alone, and a tad puzzled.

…We get to choose our path. We get to choose over and over again. We become what we practice.

I smile to myself. It’s clearly a good time to begin again. 🙂

Tags be the change, begin again, breathe, can I help with that?, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, It's about the joiurney, let it go, MBSR, my results vary, no final exam, no finish line, p.s. I love you, perspective, please step away from that baggage, practicing the practices, so human, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walk on, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what are you practicing?, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

A Slammed Door and Irritation

January 12, 2020 //

I slept well last night, and got enough rest. I woke gently, and quietly made coffee, hoping not to wake my still-sleeping partner. I headed to the studio, sat down with my coffee, and started trying to put my thoughts together, words on a page, on a quiet Sunday. I’m grateful to have had an entire night’s sleep. Today, it looks like I’m going to need it.

This morning, my writing is interrupted, several times, for what I can only describe in this moment as “difficult interactions”. I’m not yet fully awake, and lack adequate emotional resilience for the irritated (I hear it as angry) tone of voice, so early in the morning. My thoughts are fractured, scattered, and now focused on feeling hurt, instead of nurturing something within me. My studio door gets slammed, probably without intent. My tears spill over. A quiet morning is apparently not on today’s agenda, and I am the hapless villain in this story – but who is the author? I feel frustrated, sad, and isolated (as much because I don’t really know what to do with these feelings, in this moment). It irks me that I woke up feeling so soft and amiably inclined toward my partner… and at the moment, I feel only the sting of his irritation, his disappointment with me (“What do I have to do to help you remember??”), and the visceral sensation along my nerves of a slammed door.

Sometimes “doing our best” isn’t enough to overcome opportunities to fail at something, or to miss a detail, and “trying hard” is not enough to ensure success. This is true with or without a brain injury. We have to choose again and again to “do the verbs” and to try again. We have to choose again and again to walk our path, or select a new one. It is also true that we don’t generally grow from the things we are reliably good at, or which we find comfortable and easy. So, okay – routine human shit between human primates. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it isn’t comfortable. Sometimes it is necessary to be reminded what the point of it is, and refocus our efforts, because it matters enough to do that. It reliably takes practice.

…What a shitty morning so far…and less than an hour into the day. Disappointment with myself, with the morning, with the circumstances, it all fills me up and spills over as tears, while I watch a little brown bird on the stoop, picking enough sustenance from the ground and from the sidewalk, just to get by another day. I watch the little bird, and try to nudge myself in the direction of recognizing that I am just experiencing some emotional weather; the climate in my heart (and, I assume, my partner’s) is fine. This? It’s just a moment. It’s useful to begin again, if I can start on that, somehow, then it’s not “a shitty morning” as much as a shitty moment. Moments are brief, and they pass.

This time, when my Traveling Partner opens the door to the studio, his face is softened, and he looks at me with love. The irritation is gone. He steps close, and strokes my hair. I apologize for the difficult start to his morning, through my slow, steady, tears. He tells me “it is what it is” and “I’m not angry”. He’s human, too. If I allow it to, the morning will shift gears to a happier place; we’ve made that possible, now it is just a matter of accepting that change and going with it. A matter of beginning again. I give myself a moment to appreciate having a partnership with so much resilience and potential to bounce back from a difficult interaction. I savor the feeling of gratitude that seeps in, as I contemplate the difference between this partnership, and others I’ve had.

I breathe. Exhale. Relax. Allow my heart to slow, and my posture to lift me more erect. I sip my coffee, and begin again.

Tags accept change, be open, begin again, breathe, choose your path, communication, everyone here is human, how to communicate, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, practice the practices, so human, spring weather, The Big 5 work here, there are verbs involved, walk on, weather vs climate

Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Frustration, gratitude, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Big 5, winter, Words