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It’s Not a Contest

February 26, 2018 //
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“Life” is not a contest, a competition, a race, or even, really, a game. I know I sometimes speak metaphorically in those terms, or have in the past, but giving that real thought, I have to wonder if I am setting myself up for an experience that doesn’t suit me, by doing so? Doesn’t it turn my attention specifically toward all manner of outcomes, and distract me from the moment I am in, to some degree, to view life as a competition?

This morning I face Monday feeling fairly content. I’m not in much pain this morning, which is a pleasant starting point for the day and week. I didn’t get as much done over the weekend as I intended to, but I also let go of those intentions fairly early on in favor of fretting over my distant loved ones, and compulsively checking for messages. LOL (So human.)

By letting go of any attachment to life-as-a-contest, life-as-a-competition, I let go of my attachment to most moments of envy that I might otherwise experience; that car, that house, that paycheck, that job, that title, that jewelry…none of that is really relevant if I am not in competition with anyone else (or with my own narrative). By letting go of any attachment to life-as-a-game, I am more easily able to simply treat others well (if I’m “player 1”, and everyone else is “playing against me”, it definitely changes how share-able shared resources really seem, for example).

Watching this chipmunk competing with the squirrels for resources over the weekend eventually crept into my own contemplation of life, generally. 🙂

This morning I’ll step out into the world in the context of simply being. I’ll head to the office and do my comfortable best, content, professional, and secure. I’ll be kind to my colleagues. I’ll seek to be helpful where I am able to support others in their work. Community and collaboration require us to be helpful where we can. In a community, ideally, that’s a reciprocal exchange that is ongoing.

I like to think that if Monday goes well and smoothly, I can build the week from there, enjoying both my life and my work. I’m sure there will be boundary-setting here or there; I’ve grown better at it over time, and the thought doesn’t cause me any stress. I may need to say “no” now and then. I’ve gotten better at that too. I’ll need to bring a firm commitment to self-care on into the office with me; I still really have to work at that.

I’ve taken my “to do list” at home, and having utterly failed to complete any noteworthy portion of my planned weekend workload at home, I’ve spread it out over the week in my planning. I’ve done so partly to get it all done, and partly to determine if, indeed, this is a better way to do that. lol I guess I’ll know by Saturday morning, when I rise to face the dawn, and another drive down south to visit love and family.

It’s not a contest. It’s just my life. I’ve got a list of shit to get done. I’ve got a job to do during the week. There’s a lot to learn in life still just out of reach of what I know today. There’s no “finish line” – and if I approach life as some kind of race (rat or otherwise), I may miss the best bits. This week? I’ll pace myself, and approach living my life from a place of awareness, wonder, and contentment.

I’m ready to begin again. 🙂

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

Let All That Go for a Minute

February 23, 2018 //
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I woke up angry this morning. I’m feeling pretty raw and bombarded by violent media imagery (recent school shooting, remember?), and omg, yet another round of craptacular memes masquerading as “truth” – that’s propaganda, folks. Memes aren’t cited, they aren’t fact-checked (and how would you know?), they aren’t held to any standard whatsoever of accuracy – do not get your fucking news (or your opinions, holy hell, seriously??) from god damned memes. lol Seriously. Read a fucking book. Read a bunch of books. Listen deeply, instead of waiting for your turn to talk.

Understand that your experience of life is not defining of life itself for all around you; they are also having their own experience.

It was my dreams. The world slid to shit and mayhem on the backs of pro and anti gun memes. lol It’s too much for me and I need a break. It’s literally a “problem” with a known and obvious solution (several of those) that we simply will not put in motion. It’s grim, terrifying, and fairly stupid of us as a society. Yep. Straight up saying it; we’re fucking dumb as dirt on the topic of firearms in America. I don’t need to say more than that; that is my opinion. Americans are not rational about firearms. Go ahead. Prove me wrong by being that rational American. Please. Definitely do that.

…And to the proud rebels out there concerned they may be unable to overthrow the government if they allow the government to take their guns, I have just one more thing to point out; that’s not how it’s done these days. Vote. Just fucking vote – and vote for people who will actually provide the nation with the legitimate necessary legislative support required, instead of a bunch of parasites making themselves wealthy on special interest handouts and stock tips. Maybe elect some folks who are not lawyers. Who are not rich. Who do not have a college education. Who are not white, not male. Not directly financially invested in the outcome of their decision-making. Damn. LOL How hard is that? Elect a government that looks like America – all of America. That’s how “representative” government works. Actually educate yourselves and learn to reason well and clearly, and have actual conversations about what you actually think, without relying on memes, labels, slogans, or name-calling. How many governments have been toppled in the past handful of decades without a citizen militia? More than one. Read a book.

Be kind to each other. It’s such a short mortal lifetime we live. There is no time for hate; it robs of us time we could spend enjoying love.

Begin again. (I sure need to…)

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, War and News of War

Careful, Don’t Trip on That Assumption

February 22, 2018 //
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As the evening wound ’round to a relaxed finish yesterday, I contentedly contemplated the day to come. An early start in the office, a busy-but-productive day, a quiet evening tidying up here at home afterward… all dependent on a single assumption; I would wake up on time, and drive to work a bit early. Nothing amazing or weird, just a routine workday morning in that plan. All the snow that had fallen had even melted away from the roads and most of the walk ways. It had soften along the edges of the deck and begun to slump and fall. Vast muddy patches of ground with sparse forlorn grasses were revealed. Definitely warming up. The commute would be no challenge.

I woke a minute or two after 3 a.m. My bedroom was filled with light, a peculiar soft glow coming through window. I got up to check it out – had I, perhaps, overslept? Could it be past sunrise? Perhaps the moon was full? No, that’s not for days still. So… what then? I peered through the blinds, then squinted… then retrieved my glasses and put those on, and tried again. What the hell? More snow. Everything was white – snow-white. The illumination was simply all the ambient light reflect back off the snow. Funny that it woke me. Funnier still that I had no interest in staying awake, even though it was already almost 3:30 a.m. I went back to bed. I even slept.

I woke on time, feeling content and sure of myself. I already knew about the snow. I’d already adjusted my thinking in the few remaining minutes of wakefulness before returning to slumber. I got up. I barely dressed. Fuzzy spa socks. Soft jammies. I had coffee. I got to work. It was ridiculously early for that sort of thing, and I was hardly as awake as I generally am. Things like that are less relevant in the context of basic task processing of very familiar routine low-risk-of-failure sorts of things, so of course that’s where I started the day.

It was a productive day, in spite of all my routines and planning being entirely upended, even shattered, fragmented and thoroughly broken. More of that than not these days, and I say this knowing it isn’t actually ideal for me. I see it around me in small things I am less “on top of” than I expect to be. I still get plenty done, but subjectively I find it also very easy to really see what isn’t getting done, and needs to be. That’s something I can count on though, and an opportunity for a first-rate beginning. At some point.

It’s an interesting time to explore life with the woman in the mirror. She’s still got some rough edges, some things to work on, further to travel on this journey that is one human lifetime.  I frown for a moment at my monitor as some relevant seeming point slips past my awareness too quickly to include.

I end this day, again thinking I will be in the office tomorrow…only, this evening I also look out into the sky, at the darkness of gathering clouds that mock my willingness to make assumptions at all. Haven’t I learned that one, yet? I laugh at myself in a knowing way. Still so human.

There’s time to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being

Now, Again

February 21, 2018 //
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I finished the work day at long last, satisfied to have gotten quite a lot done. I worked from home due to snowy weather.

I wandered the house feeling disconnected, distracted, and wholly unsettled for some minutes, feeling uncertain of what, if anything, I might do with myself that wasn’t somehow still working. It was a challenge to disengage from thinking about work. I had a similar challenge in the morning; it was on my mind when I woke, and I got started early as a result… since I was working from home anyway. Not my healthiest choice, I admit.

I restarted the evening with meditation. I still find myself feeling a bit restless, even now, some time later. My tinnitus seems louder than usual. I take a deep breath and a moment to really “hear myself think”, in the sense of actually paying attention – my entire attention – on how I am feeling, for just a moment. Slow things down. Breathe. Relax. I already know I can’t chase what I’m after and reach it – it is more correct to say I would do well to stop everything, and allow it to catch up to me. So it goes. My restless monkey mind benefits from meditation, but this evening it wasn’t enough to go through the motions of my meditation practice. I also really need to keep coming back to this moment, here. I need to really listen, to myself.

No matter how often I look behind me (or around me) and see things I want to change, and no matter how often I look ahead to what I want to achieve, it’s this moment here, now, that I’ve got to work with. 🙂

I set off with a smile, to begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, winter

Worth The Trip

February 20, 2018 //
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Some things are worth the effort to experience them.

(I should just stop there, perhaps; it is 100% of what I am meaning to say this morning…)

I sip my coffee, and contemplate the weekend behind me. It was definitely worth the drive down. I went to a good party. Met some cool people. Reconnected with people I know and cherish. I felt that warm welcome I love so well. It was an intimate connected weekend filled with fun – and strangely enough, also with sleep. Well, sleep did occur, and it was luscious and restful and was, itself, worth the drive down. You see, after basically 36 hours awake (just due to the way timing and my sleep worked out), I crashed out in my Traveling Partner’s bed, and in his arms, and we slept harmoniously together, quite soundly, for something like 12 hours. lol No regrets there; I’m quite delighted to make the drive down to enjoy that experience.

That’s what I’m saying, this morning, some experiences are worth an investment in effort, in intention, in awareness – they linger in memory, holding on to some magical quality about life or love, preserving it and bringing it back to life every time I recall it. I smile again, and sip my coffee.

I think about a cup of coffee my gracious and charming host (of the party I went to Saturday night) made for me in the wee hours on Sunday. I know, I know, small thing, right? Not really… big party, lots going on, and my host is a new friend – I would not have imposed. I was, rather naturally I think, as it was a bit after 5 am, starting to lose enthusiasm for partying (and starting to feel the sensation of “going without coffee” around the edges of my consciousness). In the context of the conversation, I admitted being a junkie for the stuff (coffee, People, coffee), and he very sweetly offered to make me a cup, himself, personally. It was a damned good cup of coffee, too. The sort of strong cup in the morning after partying all night that reaches into my brain from my tummy and sort of just punches me right in the fatigue, refreshing me and restoring my merry wit. 😀 Fuck – I hope I remembered to say “thank you”! 😀

It was worth the drive down to meet this new friend, and to enjoy that cup of coffee. 🙂

Now it is Tuesday. A work day. A different set of timing constraints, rules, limits, and obligations are in place for the week ahead. The coffee? Made it myself. The sleep? Solo. The morning? A new beginning.

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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