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Next Steps and More Choices

June 8, 2017 //
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Doesn’t much matter where I am right now; there is a next step ahead of me on my path. No matter how many choices I have made, already, there is another ahead of me. Approximately infinite. Life definitely gives the impression that the actual living of it is the point of life, no further point, meaning, or necessity required… and, if this is true, then so long as I am indeed living my life, I have succeed at finding – and meeting – my purpose. 😀

What a nice thought to wake up to. 🙂

I am contemplating my upcoming birthday, which has amusingly skittered way off of any attempt at original planning, and the things I had planned and looked forward are no longer expectations, although they rather strangely still linger on my calendar; I hesitate to remove them, not wanting hurt feelings… or… well, why exactly? lol I take a moment to clean up my calendar – because it is mine, and I actually use it; it matters to me that it guide me like a map of my future journey, as much as it ever can. 🙂

My weekend looks very different than I’d planned it. My Traveling Partner’s commitment to spending my birthday weekend with me later became a request to accommodate other plans he wanted to make, and our time dwindled to just two brief events framing the long weekend (of course I am taking time for me!) Then, the phone call from the road last week, and a question – would I like to come out to a place, and spend the weekend with him…? We live rather separate lives in some regards, and the invitation caught me by surprise – I had to ask myself that question, separately from hearing it in his voice. Would I want to spend a weekend at a music festival in a remote location hanging out with this human being so dear to me – and like, many hundreds (more?) additional other humans that I don’t know? Um…

…Maybe?

I sat quietly after we got off the phone, considering years of weekend Renaissance fairs – a different era of my life, and I admit, it went from delightfully fun, exciting, and reliably great times hanging out with friends to stressed, rushed, hurried, pressured, too broke, too much, too often, no down time, no “me time”, no privacy, no time to think, no quiet to recover in… and… the relationship I was in at that time couldn’t do much to lift me up or ease the strain. I was doing most of the “heavy lifting”, literally, financially, and logistically, and I grew… tired. Want to know why I gave up weekend road trips, weekend travel, and weekend event fun of all sorts? Because I got tired of doing all the planning, all the preparation, and all the work getting to/from and handling clean up at home afterward, too, and not just for me – for everyone in the household. It was too much to ask, and I continued to do it long after I’d begun to resent it, didn’t really speak up about it, and didn’t have the skills for setting clear expectations and reinforcing boundaries then, that I have (think I have) now. I just stopped doing it as the only way I could take care of me that I understood then, problem solved.

I’m not even in that relationship anymore. So… Fuck yeah, I want to head to the trees, hear some great music, and hang out with this delightful human being so dear to me! 😀 I happily accepted.

There’s not much for me to plan here; the event exists and is a thing. My Traveling Partner and his traveling friend/colleague have logistics handled; this is their thing. I still need to know things. (A hilarious conversation on its own, including such witty repartee as “What do I need to bring?” “Wear clothes. Bring the clothes you want to wear, be prepared for cold nights.”) As I inquired what I may need to do or bring or when I need to be ready… I started feeling stressed about the trip itself. Where am I going?? What will happen when I get there? Where do I go? How will I find…? What will I be expected to do, bring, carry, be responsible for…??? What the hell is going on with my weekend?? LOL

Instead of drama or wild emotion, I tried out some new adulting skills. I allow myself to experience the relief and delight of experiencing this weekend in the context of a partnership in which I am actually not responsible for every damned thing. I consider my own baggage and issues as things that I am indeed responsible for managing, and identify where my stress is coming from. Time. Work. Agency. I suggest that I travel separately to ease my time-based stress about being back to work on time (knowing they live on a very different sense of time/timing than I do – and also don’t have any pressure to “punch a clock” work-wise). My heart soared when my Traveling Partner seemed pleased that I would take that step to take care of myself, meeting my own needs without requiring him to rebuild his plans, or troubleshoot my experience. Win and good. They’ll likely depart sometime today. I’ll leave tomorrow – possibly after doing a load of laundry. I feel comfortable, content, and excited about the weekend. 😀

Wherever my path leads…

This is an adventure, and I am eager to see where it leads. I’ll be away for a few days… if you find yourself missing me, perhaps return to the beginning, and begin again? I’ll be back before you’re all caught up to now, I bet; it’s a lot of words. 😀

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Tugging on a Thread

June 5, 2017 //
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It’s already Monday, already time to get back to the routine routines, and the usual flow of activities of a busy work week. (Seriously? Already??) How is this so damned difficult? I stare into my half empty cup of not-quite-cold coffee and wonder if there is time for another.

All the windows are open to the morning chill. There’s a hot afternoon in the forecast and I am rethinking my choice of work clothes, too. Since I’ve been back from the forest, I’ve been notably less attentive to routines and habits, and existing more “casually”. It feels terrifically relaxed, but realistically may not be sustainable for me, with some of my persistent issues (memory challenges are what they are). I’ve misplaced my badge to get into the building at work… I think I may have left it in the car, which I’ve already dropped off at my Traveling Partner’s place. I grin at my oversight and shake my head. It’s a small thing, not worth becoming stressed over. (I can recall a time when even so small a thing would have sent me over the edge pretty reliably.)

My bare toes are cold, as the apartment cools down. The sweater I thought would be a good idea is still comfortable, but looking into the developing orange and hint of haze in the sky as the sun rises, the sweater is clearly in need of being reconsidered before I leave for work. Practical details. How is life so filled up with practical details and practical questions? How is there ever room left over for wonder or for mysteries? I’m astonished and amazed, and for just one moment wide-eyed with real appreciation for how much minutiae I do manage to keep track of moment-to-moment, day-to-day; life is busy.

What matters most?

I got the rest I needed this past weekend. I’m glad I took the time. This morning I look around my apartment – and my life – with “new eyes”, rested, refreshed, and open to change, and I see some things that are very much change-worthy and quite possibly overdue for it. It’s not always clear where some bit of alteration in life’s course may take things over time. Like a loose thread on a sweater, each dangling bit of something or other I might consider changing is connected with all of the details of my life; change one thing, and things are changed, generally. Pulling on that thread may have consequences as yet unconsidered. Still… change is. I can choose change, or I can allow it to be chosen for me by others, or by circumstances.

It’s an interesting journey, this life thing. I wonder where the next trail leads? The sun is up, it’s a Monday, and it’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

3, 2, 1… Enough

June 4, 2017 //
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3 days, two nights, one purpose, and I return to my apartment by the park with sore feet, aching muscles, stiff joints, and a smile that  won’t quit.

3 mosquito bites, two unexplained bruises, 1 blister over 17 miles of trails, and I shot more than 100 pictures, and spotted a rainbow’s worth of different wildflowers in bloom.

I reached my campsite and set up camp well before dusk settled in, on Wednesday evening. I managed more than 4 miles of hiking that evening, just getting my gear to the hike-in camping area, and exploring the nearest trails after making camp.

A coffee well-earned, an evening of quiet.

It rained most of the night, and I laid wakefully, contentedly listening to the rain fall, more than necessarily pleased that my tent doesn’t leak.

The rain-drenched morning didn’t quench my enthusiasm for the day ahead.

I spent Thursday meditating, after morning coffee and a short hike to stretch my legs, and didn’t do much else. I brought a journal to write in, and a notebook, a sketch pad and colored pencils for drawing, my camera, my kindle… and other than my camera, I didn’t touch any of the distractions I brought along to pass the time; I didn’t need them. Time passed just fine without any help from me. 🙂

Given the necessary conditions, I bloom in my own time. It is often enough to sit quietly and allow the moment to unfold.

I spent Friday hiking, departing fairly early in the morning to walk a new path. The trail I chose was sufficiently challenging to push me, lovely enough to be utterly worth it without any other “reason” to go the whole distance, and totally within my ability. I returned to camp in the afternoon, got my boots off, put my feet up, and made coffee. Out among the trees, coffee doesn’t seem to keep me from sleeping, ever, however late I may be drinking it. I bet there’s something to be learned from that…

Where does my path lead? It’s helpful to have a map, but the map is not the world.

…Instead of learning anything about coffee, though, I learned something different. As campers arrived to fill nearby sites for the weekend, I learned that my needs were met, and that I was “done”. I learned that I didn’t really want to sit through a chilly evening overhearing loud conversations about corporate headaches, challenges with the kids’ teachers, or sports. I learned that I didn’t find value in enduring another camper’s choice to bring a generator into the forest for the weekend.

Ultimately, we each choose our own path…

I learned, this weekend, that it really is quite okay to make my choices my way, without any pressure from my own expectations, or anyone else’s; I broke camp late that afternoon, taking my time, packing up skillfully and efficiently without feeling at all rushed. I packed my gear out of the park (taking the same three trips it took to bring it down to the campsite in the first place), still smiling when the effort was completed. I let the park rangers know I was checking out, so they could release that camp site to another camper – it’s a great spot.

The beauty in the world exists whether or not I choose to observe it. My choice to observe the beauty in the world is necessary only to my own appreciation of it.

I got home before the sun set, unpacked enough gear to begin properly unpacking a bit at a time. First, a leisurely shower. A fresh salad. A hot cup of coffee. A moment to begin the upload of all the photographs. No music. No social media. No TV. Patio door open to the breezes and the sound of birdsong. A quiet evening, alone in the stillness, aside from a few minutes checking in with a friend from next door.

Roses blooming on the patio welcome me home, rain-drenched, fragrant, and lovely.

Yesterday I woke, still feeling fairly wrapped in my own purpose, and disinclined to be particularly social. I wrote a dear friend. I unpacked some things. I meditated. I gardened. It was a chilly gray day, and I enjoyed the morning with a crackling fire in the fireplace – which I might also have done if I had remained out in the trees another day. There seemed no urgency to connect to the digital world with any haste – no one was expecting me to, in any case. (Good expectation-setting for the win!) I watched the birds come and go from the feeder.

It was a lovely day of bird-watching.

Here it is, today. (Isn’t it always? 😉 ) I figured I’d sleep in… I didn’t. I woke with the dawn. I figured I’d move purposefully down a long list of things I’d like to get done… also not happening, at least not so far. I sip my coffee, smiling softly, watching the birds at the feeder with my laptop balanced on my knees, writing from a slightly different perspective – though whether that is a matter of my laptop, a chilly morning, and cold coffee on the patio, or simply that my perspective remains altered by my time out in the trees is neither known, nor relevant to the experience.

What now? Just this. Isn’t it enough? 🙂

A patio with a view.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Gray Skies and a Smile

May 29, 2017 //
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I woke to a gray morning, cool, overcast, threatening rain without yet raining. I didn’t take time to fully wake before throwing the windows open to the cool breezes, and filling the place with birdsong and fresh air. I had dressed, still not yet quite awake, and fumbled with my phone before losing interest in the clumsy comedy. It was while I was making coffee that I actually started to wake up, becoming more aware, first, of how awake I was not, initially. I took my coffee to my meditation cushion and sat a while, watching the morning become a day from that vantage point, without actually meditating, at all.

I’m not sure I’m quite awake even now. There’s time for all that. No rush. I’m off work today.

The meadow and the park beyond are a lush assortment of shades of green: bright, dark, yellow-y, more blue, browning at the edges, neon on the tips. It’s beautiful. So much of what lives is a shade of green. I sip my coffee and observe. Still working on being actually awake. Starting with being aware. A bright-eyed red wing blackbird stops by to check on my progress with some skepticism. He has a bite of breakfast, and calls to his buddies in the neighborhood, perhaps about the quality of the meal, before departing.

I sip my coffee and breathe, simply existing in this moment of contentment and calm without letting it slip away unnoticed. I can’t overstate how much it has mattered to do this – just this simple thing. Savoring the simple joys, the sweet moments, the easy times, and really giving in to allowing these sweet pleasures to be important, to be as much of everything in their time as I ever allow something moment of grief or ire to be… then… Then moving on in life to this new place, where it is the sweetness that is by far the more valuable experience, cherished wholly as it exists, looked back upon more often than I look back on tragedy, and shared as words, as memories, and indeed being appreciated in an active way. Verbs. It’s a journey; there always seems further along to go than the place I am standing right now, however far I have come.

Speaking of journeys; my Traveling Partner will likely return sometime today. I smile thinking about it, even though I know there is a chance we won’t actually see each other. The turn-around time between this thing and that thing is quite short this week, and I think he’ll be headed out again with only the briefest opportunity to see each other, if any exists at all. lol I grin knowingly thinking about last year’s promises to spend so much more time together through the autumn and winter months. It didn’t happen that way. We snatched what time we could from busy lives. I have rare bitter moments about it, but the freedom we give each other to go, do, and be, on our own agendas rather than living lives constructed by some recognized cultural framework, penned in by other people’s expectations of love, is part of what makes loving each other so precious in the first place.

I break out in unexpected laughter, startling the birds away from the feeder. Damn I write long, weird sentences! LOL I very much write the way I talk, actually, and the commas tend to fall where my speaking the words would place them…but… If you don’t know the rhythm of my speech, how would you “hear it”? Do I leave readers struggling to make sense of things because I happily (sloppily) mix metaphors – and tenses? What about this major overuse of ellipses? This can not possibly be librarian or linguist approved. 😀 Shit. Still happily grinning at myself, my fingers continue to tickle my keyboard, and words continue to flow. We’ll get through this, together, yeah? 😉

Today is a good day to begin a journey – or begin it again.

A picture of a rose in my garden, on a sunny day. Beauty needs no excuse. 🙂

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

What Are You Doing About It?

May 26, 2017 //
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Remember that day I said I need to get some rest? (Was that only yesterday?) I eventually arrived home from work, bone tired, brain tired, so tired… that down deep, long gone toward stupid & clumsy tired. I careened around the apartment for some little while. I don’t recall when I went to bed, but I can gauge my cognitive fatigue, specifically, by the disarray I woke to.

My cell phone was left on a side table and never recharged, fitness tracker carelessly left on its charger and never put back on, half a dozen coffee mugs left behind pretty much everywhere I paused thinking I’d have a cup of decaf…tea…broth… forgetting as the short evening proceeded that I’d already made something, and left it elsewhere. As I changed from work clothes to comfy clothes, I carelessly left things laying about, which is not my habit. My hiking boots in the living room, my socks oddly left draped on the shoe stand by the front door, my jeans draped over the side of the bathtub (?!), my top dropped on the floor and left there, my earrings on a bookcase… I can follow the path I took, from the front door, to the neatly stacked yoga pants and t-shirts in my closet, back to the kitchen – the cupboard with the coffee mugs was left standing open. When I did I go to bed? I don’t recall that at all, but I don’t guess my state of mind counts as “awake” to begin with. lol

I woke at 5:15 am. I slept in! (Yep, it counts.) I slept deeply, dreamlessly, restfully, and I had no intention of getting up so early… so I went back to sleep. When I woke again, to sunlight streaming into my room between the slats of the blinds, I eagerly got up for coffee… no coffee. I’d meant to go to the store last night. Clearly, though, I was in no condition to be operating a car, so I’m rather glad I didn’t. I throw on some jeans without any particular effort to be particular, and grab the nearest clean top and drag my brush through my hair, step into my sandals, and make a quick trip to the store for coffee, salad greens, and… tangerines. Why the tangerines? Why the hell not? (Actually, it is in part a rather practical thing; they are the right size for a serving without being cut in half, and they are quite delicious in recipes, too.)

I returned home, wandered about the place putting things right, and getting myself organized for a day of… getting organized. LOL I find creating order from chaos very relaxing when there is no deadline or agenda, so a day of tidying up, laundry, and housekeeping sounds just the thing for a relaxing day. At some point, the windshield replacement technician will show up, do that thing that needs to be done. I hear a contented sigh in this quiet room. Me. A side glance confirms what my lips reported last time I took a sip from my coffee cup; it’s empty. It’s a good time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, health, Healthy Living, Post Traumatic Stress
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