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One Enchanted Evening

March 2, 2016 //
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One of the sweetest outcomes of the choice to live alone is how much more obviously precious time with my traveling partner is. There’s little to share about last night. It was an intimate connected evening spent having dinner, hanging out, and enjoying conversation…about life, about love, about the future of our shared and individual endeavors, about recent appointments with doctors…words, shared between lovers. It was a lovely evening, and ended gently with time left over to spend in the studio inking details on a landscape, still thinking about love.

Practice the practices that take you closer to being the human being you most want to be.

Practice the practices that take you closer to being the human being you most want to be.

One of the things I most value about a strong partnership is the mutual support for individual endeavors. So many conversations amount to “Can you…?” “Yes.”, and “Will you…?” “Sure.” – and we know that other person so dear to us isn’t just throwing empty words into the space between us; they’ll really be there, as indicated. We offer ourselves, our time, our thoughts, to each other. We nurture the best within ourselves – and the best within that person we so adore. It’s a rare and beautiful thing, and it involves a lot of choices, and a lot of verbs. Totally worth it. It also turned out to be less about finding some ideal human with whom to have such an experience, and a whole lot more about being a human with whom someone can have such an experience. (Thank you, Love. It’s a journey very worth sharing.)

Getting here was a journey - it is a journey to sustain love, too; there are verbs involved.

Getting here was a journey – it is a journey to sustain love, too; there are verbs involved.

I sip my coffee and continue to linger on the recollection of last evening. I consider where life is taking me, and what choices ahead could most benefit me while also supporting my partner’s long-term needs. I think about these things in the context of community, of enjoyment, of sustainability, and of lasting-value. Mostly, I think about love and loving. I think about retirement; timing that carefully might result in being able to step away from the corporate grind into a handful of years supporting my traveling partner’s business directly, before retiring in earnest to paint and write full time. Suddenly, the idea of buying a little place of my own – our own – takes on a new dimension for me; how best to also serve my partner’s long-term needs becomes an important question. It’s a lovely morning to think about love, to ponder a shared future with someone so dear, and to enjoy my coffee with no agenda but my own. My choices matter, and it feels very good indeed to be so well loved, so thoroughly considered, so completely respected and valued, so heard, to be dealt with so openly and with such compassion. I enjoy the reciprocity in our partnership; my needs are as important, and as thoroughly discussed and supported together, as my partner’s are.

I smile when I realize my writing this morning reads a bit like a love note to love… Seems reasonable, really. Isn’t love worth a few words? 🙂

As I near the end of my coffee, my thoughts turn towards more practical matters. I get no criticism about that from myself; there are tasks to handle, things on a to do list, and stuff to get done. I find all the fuss and bother of adulthood a bit more manageable if I organize my thoughts – and my activities. I consider my limited time, and the priorities of things needing to be done. What matters most? How important is it? Is there a matter of time or timing? I find myself less fearful and overloaded if there is more than one thing that just must get done in any one day than I used to be. (Many thanks, Google Calendar, Mint, and SuperBetter!) I even feel as if there is just a bit more time in each and every day… although… to be fair… I did move so close to work that I can walk there in less than half an hour, through a beautiful park, which cut my daily commute from a 3 hour+ round trip each day to less than a hour – I do have ‘more time in each and every day’. 🙂

Taking care of me has been a journey about choices and practices. As it turns out, taking care of love has been a similar sort of journey – fraught with choices and practices, growth and change – and enduring affection. It was the affection that was missing from my journey with the woman in the mirror, for far too long. How powerful it was to make that connection, to revitalize my experience of life with and for myself – and how delightful that the result has been how much more I am able to love, and enjoy being loved in return. 🙂

A thread in my tapestry, a color in my palette, so much of life is fueled by love.

A thread in my tapestry, a color in my palette, so much of life is fueled by love.

Today is a good day to love, to be loved, to share love – to choose love.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, weight loss secrets, Words

The Occasional Other Moment

March 1, 2016 //
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I generally enjoy my experience of life so much these days. Contentment is a prominent feature of my emotional landscape, sustainable, real, authentic, and fairly easily supported with a number of basic good self-care practices (emotional and physical). It’s not fancy, but it’s a long way from misery, chronic frustration, and anger – and more than that; it is enough. More often than not, these days, my experience is both ‘about’ sufficiency and enjoyed on the basis of sufficiency, as well as ‘wholeness’ – which isn’t quite ‘wellness’ – and basic worthiness.

The journey isn’t over, and I hope it continues for a long while to come. I’m still very human. There are still verbs involved. I still experience emotional weather – although the climate has improved greatly. 🙂 My results vary.

Be love.

Be love.

Last night I had a bad bit, and even now I am not certain why. I’d gotten home from an afternoon appointment with a new physician. It had gone well, and I didn’t have to travel very far at all, so I arrived home quite near to the usual time of evening. I was relaxing after a bite of dinner when a state of extreme irritation, almost anger, swept over me quite unexpectedly, and without any obvious cause at all. Unpleasant, sure, and potentially very problematic if I were living in a shared household; that’s the kind of stray emotional bullshit that quickly escalates among human primates, becoming a nasty evening of arguing, or unpleasant confrontational tension, with all the associated blame-laying and accusatory dialogue imaginable. Go ahead, imagine it if you want to; haven’t most of us been there at least once or twice? I did imagine it, in the moment, and gave myself a chance to feel the relief of living alone, and literally having no one to start shit with.

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

A helpful reminder; I apply it equally to how I speak to myself these days.

I gently alerted my traveling partner I was having some challenges with emotional balance and logged off for the night to manage my needs, medicate, meditate, and call it a night. Few things ease unexpected emotional volatility like meditation. Medical cannabis is a another exceptional tool in my toolkit, particularly if there is any chance that my issues are symptomatic of my PTSD, or when fatigue causes my injury to weigh in more heavily on the outcome. Getting adequate rest [for this particular human being that I am myself] is critical – and I’m not always aware of the impact of small changes in my sleep. (Even something small like having a stuffy head interrupting my sleep periodically over days can eventually become a bigger deal.) It’s hard to overstate how valuable it has been to learn to more skillfully take care of this fragile vessel.

I sat quietly for a long while, letting emotions ebb and flow without interference, interpretation, root cause analysis, or criticism. No tears – this one was mostly emotions of anger, quite specifically, and just not associated with anything particular. I could so easily have made it ‘something’… Instead, I let stillness fill my senses. I took deep calming breaths and let the emotions come and go, feeling them fearlessly and letting them pass. And again. Over about an hour, the landscape of my thoughts began to shift toward pleasant observations, contentment, calm, and I found myself wrapped in a gentler experience as the evening ended. I slept well and deeply.

Would it make you nuts to feel angry and not know ‘why’? Would you feel an urgent need to explain or justify it? To make sense out of it? To identify the cause and bring the wrong-doer to justice? Does there have to be a wrong-doer in the first place? Our emotions have a chemical component – and some of our most basic physical sensations are shared with emotional experiences, too. How often have I taken some physical experience and ascribed causes to it, nudged it into an emotional context, and turned it into drama – instead of taking some time for myself to just breathe through it, recognize that feelings are… feelings (and may not be anything more than the sensations of experience), without further requirement to take action on them, at all?

Sometimes finding a happy place is surprisingly close to home.

Sometimes finding a happy place is surprisingly close to home.

This morning begins gently, and I have a busy work day ahead that doesn’t occupy my thoughts needlessly early. I have evening plans with my traveling partner. In all respects a promising day unfolding ahead of me. It’s enough.

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, medical marijuana, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, weight loss secrets, Words

My Own Sliver of Sky

February 27, 2016 //
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Beautiful night sky.

Beautiful night sky, a view as I leave home for work in the morning, before dawn.

I was glad to see the work day end yesterday. It was a grueling week on a number of levels, and at the end of it, by Thursday, I was also not really feeling well. I made it an early night Thursday evening, crashing out at a childlike hour of evening, and resenting the early pre-dawn hour at which I wake on Friday. I really wanted to sleep more, longer, later, more deeply… just sleep. Friday raced by, and ended fairly early (my work day starts fully 2 hours earlier than usual on Fridays). I got home with no clear plan, and again found myself crawling into bed content to end the day quite early.

The night sky.

The night sky, on some other night. 

I woke unexpectedly a couple of hours later, no identifiable reason but feeling very restless and uneasy. I got up and took a seat on my meditation cushion, in front of the patio door with the blinds open to the night sky. I sat for some time just looking out into the night. Stress faded with passing clouds, I found contentment in moonlight and thoughts of how soothing I find a view of the sky. I sat for a long while, meditating, gazing into the night sky. Eventually, I returned to bed.

I slept 12 hours, and woke feeling rather uninterested in waking to face the day. I lingered in bed for some time, nearly an hour more, meditating and dreaming in a half-sleeping half-waking state of consciousness that found me reminding valued coworkers not to crowd me so closely; even with the week behind me, work found its way into my restless consciousness.

The morning has been leisurely and filled with love and friendship, and music – an unexpected gift this morning, and I have enjoyed it without attempting to define, excuse, justify, or limit this beautiful experience. The quiet has returned, now. I find myself thinking about having a view I can ‘call my own’, here. Everywhere I have lived there has been at least some sliver of sky, some particular angle I could contemplate, free of people, industry, clutter, or suburbia. Sometimes I’ve had to work at it a bit, finding some particular corner of a sofa in a loft with a single window looking at sky above roof-tops, or a view of green space between homes or buildings. One lovely thing here in this new space is that the patio and my studio both look directly out at the park, uninterrupted by human endeavors with the exception of occasional runners and walkers passing by, and a small playground easily omitted from view by choice of angle, or disregarded during hours when no children are playing – as during my evening meditation, last night.

The view from my desk, in the studio.

The view from my desk, in the studio.

Today is a good day to enjoy the view, and a few quiet moments. Today is a good day to slow down, to be present, to enjoy each moment as it is. Today is a good day for gardens, and rain showers, and nesting ducks in meadow grass. Today is a good day to set aside stress and confrontation in favor of acceptance and ease. Today is a good day to choose a better window on the world. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being

Finishing Touches

February 24, 2016 //
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I arrived home last night quite exhausted. I made it a gentle evening, and crashed out quite early. I slept well and deeply, and woke comfortably to the alarm. In all regards, quite a nice way to finish off a challenging work day and move on. I woke this morning having forgotten about the closet doors. When I moved in, there were no closet doors at all. They were still on order and not yet installed. They arrived, and were installed yesterday (with the exception of the closet door in my bedroom, at my request). I had inspected the work when I arrived home, and not given it another thought. This morning I awoke without having closet doors in mind, and was a bit startled when I stepped into the studio to write… closet door. Big broad, vast, visually impressive, white sliding closet door… across the entire end of the room, where previously the shelves with my art gear, and the top shelf with not-yet-unpacked breakables sit safely, had been ‘part of the view’ since I moved in. It was a bit odd. Different. More… ‘finished’.

I find myself thinking about ‘finishing touches’ generally, you know – those items, tasks, elements, and moments that really round out an event or experience in a way that feels ‘complete’ and satisfying, or fulfills some specific aesthetic. Love, too, has some opportunities for ‘finishing touches’ – and that could be quite a literal thing, as with tender contact, touches, and afterplay following sex, or something deeper – like the unexpected love note days later, found tucked away somewhere undiscovered, found in passing during a difficult moment, filling a tense emotional space with love and recognition. Finishing touches seem to be more about an awareness, a perception, than about the thing themselves… and I continue to contemplate finishing touches as I sip my coffee.

Reflecting on a turn of phrase or a metaphor provides new perspective.

Reflecting on a turn of phrase or a metaphor provides new perspective.

There are ‘finishing touches’ along the far reaches of the negative spectrum of my emotional experience, although I generally don’t call them ‘finishing touches’ so much as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ or ‘the deal breakers’. The ‘finishing touch’ on my first marriage was how my spouse treated his son, and his mother (in both cases, badly). The finishing touch on the long-term relationship that followed was a complex singularity – an evening of trampled boundaries, disregard, unexpected violence, inconsiderate nastiness, and intimidation; it was a hell of a finish, no doubt, and quite a sudden cascade of deal breakers in one seemingly endless evening. The finishing touch on a relationship that followed – a ‘long term’ relationship characterized after-the-fact by its brevity (less than 3 years), was the development of a peculiarly chronic neglect, disregard, and emotional weaponry launched by a mentally ill partner; I was in no shape to provide the support she needed, and I needed day-to-day simple decency from a disordered partner unable to provide that to anyone, in any relationship (at that time). When I think of those events in the positive terms of ‘finishing touches’ rather than the negative terms of ‘deal breakers’ and ‘last straws’, I find myself feeling more settled and content with the way things turned out; it makes sense that those relationships ended, and the events that finished them off do settle things, in a fairly ‘completed’ and ‘finished’ way, providing a ‘why it makes sense’ that they ended. I find myself aware that a ‘finishing touch’ is a form of closure – and it is found within, requiring no assistance from another party, no ‘last words’, no ‘parting gift’, no give and take; it belongs to me, and exists as part of my own understanding of myself, and the context of my life in which I exist. The ‘finish’ of a finishing touch is a perception, and as such, also beyond the realm of argument, requiring no validation. 🙂

The closet doors do result in a more finished look here, generally. The paintings hanging in the hallway provide a similar sense of things being ‘complete’ and ‘finished’. It feels comfortably grown up, and properly a residence, in a way that differs slightly from #27, which I so recently adored, and moved from. It is a similar feeling to moving from the barracks as a young soldier, into housing ‘on the economy’, or moving from a college dorm, into a ‘real apartment’. My previous apartment was set up for artistic live/work…but so small and compact that it was very nearly a studio apartment, and felt rather like a spacious bedroom sometimes. This new space feels very like a house, from the inside, and having separated my studio and creative work space from the rest of the residential spaces, also very comfortable… and sometimes strange. It seems more… finished. I’m still getting used to it, and sometimes find myself simultaneously delighted and vaguely uncomfortable with the spaciousness, or feeling both relieved and uneasy to have it generally all to myself. I remember as I write those words that growth itself often feels very uncomfortable indeed. I smile. I am okay with where I am in life; that feels really good.

Begin again; the finishing touch in one moment becomes a cherished reminder of the beginning for another.

Begin again; the finishing touch in one moment becomes a cherished reminder of the beginning for another.

The leisure morning at home nears its end. I notice when I check the clock. Finishing touches are possible here, too; there is time for some housekeeping, and those are the finishing touches on my morning that become my beautiful welcome home at the end of a long work day. 🙂 It’s a very good day to treat the woman in the mirror well, and to live my values authentically. It’s a very nice day for finishing touches.

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

Wow – This is Ordinary!

February 18, 2016 //
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It’s a Thursday, poised gently between a week in progress and a week nearly over. I slept well and deeply, waking at some point before the alarm went off. I told myself, this morning, that if it were as little as 15 minutes before the alarm would go off, I’d just get up. Seemed quite likely I’d get up regardless… I checked the clock, and noticed it was a bit more than half an hour before the alarm would go off… generally, I’d get up… Peculiarly, this morning I contentedly rolled over, wrapped myself in warm covers, agreeably admitted to myself as sleep overcame me that I’d most likely feel groggy when I woke… only…

I woke to the insistent beeping of an alarm clock that I had trouble locating by feel; it was quite literally out of reach, which seemed oddly metaphorical in my waking moment. I struggled with twisting to reach the lamp switch as the alarm continued to beep. I woke stiff and aching, and had managed to place the alarm clock quite completely out of common reach, on the far side of the nightstand. Finally. Silence. I stood with some effort, and made my way to the bathroom rather sluggishly.

I dither through my morning routine…heat the water for coffee now… or after my shower? After. Music? No music? Music. Fuzzy spa socks until I leave for work…or put on my hiking socks? Spa socks. Dark roasted Java, or medium roasted Uganda? Java. Sweater or t-shirt? Sweater. Back and forth, options being considered, choices being made, and the day begins to take shape for this one singularly ‘me’ human being of middle age, soft sweater, modest means, and generally gentle habits… I see the words, and sense a much younger version of me somewhere in the distance of time with a scrunched up ‘WTF?’ look of quizzical wonder on her face. “How did we get here?” I smile to myself – feeling the warmth of my affection for this ‘stranger within’, this ‘me’ creature, and think of the miles we have walked, the internal demons of chaos we’ve battled together, the endless practice, the choices to change… There is no question, really, how I got from ‘there’ to ‘here’ – there have been verbs involved, and will, and choice, and change.

How beautiful that each new day I can choose to begin again!

How beautiful that each new day I can choose to begin again!

I am in some physical pain this morning; the weather is rainy again, and my bones ache with it. I’m not bitching, just saying it is an element of my experience that can tend to color my thinking if left unaddressed. I make a point of taking care of this fragile vessel. Today has all the ingredients of being a very pleasant one. (Still verbs involved.)

I can recall a time when being asked to change seemed more constant than being valued or appreciated as I was, which I recall as being very rare. I don’t doubt from my perspective now that this was a ‘true’ experience from my perspective then. I felt frustrated, and criticized. I felt inadequate. I felt angry – and the anger mostly came from how astonishingly rarely anyone else seemed willing to change at my request, as though I were uniquely flawed, and they were singularly perfectly beautifully human just as they were.  It hurt a lot to view the world that way. It grew and festered until it became a fairly constant internal fight that often ended resentfully with a simultaneous feeling of ‘fuck your change!’ and capitulation to pressure, to coercion, to fear of withdrawn affection, followed by all the brutal self-criticism as I attempted to force change on myself to meet someone else’s needs. My soul fairly continuously cried ‘what about me?’ within the context of relationships that were purportedly intimate. What a fucking mess.

It became a very big deal to live authentically – which definitely required that I start figuring myself out, fast. Turning my own attention toward the woman in the mirror in an honest way, unreservedly and unashamedly in my own corner, being genuinely supportive of my own needs in a strong and positive way was another very big deal – and the verbs were definitely piling up alongside new practices. Every change I chose for myself, because that change met my own needs and held potential to take me further down my own path, made change itself just a bit less terrifying, and a bit less alienating. Instead of changes imposed on me somehow making me less and less me over time, I began to choose change for myself, based on my own values, my own needs, my own aesthetic. Life changed with me. The changes I chose were for and about me, about being the woman I most want to be, myself, and about living my values quite openly and comfortably. A lot of things begin to change around me, and within my relationships – for one thing, it quickly became clear who enjoyed and valued me, for real. “Faking it” in life was not only no longer a choice with value – it was no longer an option. What a relief!

"How many more miles?" doesn't ask a question that needs an answer.

“How many more miles?”  is not a question I need to ask.

This is not an epitaph to a journey. The journey is not the destination. There is no ‘finish line’, no scorecard, no ‘pot of gold’ – because there is no end to the rainbow for this tale of wonder. Another day will dawn, and I will begin again. Each day is so powerful as an opportunity to choose to live life willfully, eyes wide with wonder, mind open to the possibilities, and aware of the world and my fellow travelers within feeling constrained or encroached upon by their values, or their freedom. In this moment, here, this morning, I feel ‘whole’ and ‘well’ and a whole bunch of other lovely words about the ‘me’ that is, versus the woman I wasn’t, for so very long. Strangely – this is what feels ‘ordinary’ today. 🙂

Change is like a doorway on a longer journey.

Change is like a doorway on a longer journey.

…Oh…hey… We’re still here? My mind wandered. A quick montage of recollections of other times, harder times, different times, some even fairly recent times, and I humbly observe that although this morning feels very good – and also very ordinary – I’m very human, and there will likely be other less pleasant times to come… somewhen. That, too, is very ordinary. I’d say something insightful about impermanence, but I’m not sure there’s more to say than ‘impermanence is a thing I can count on’. Weather changes. Job changes. Mood changes. Relationship changes. Health changes. Lifestyle changes. Change is. I think what I’ve really been saying this morning is that being the authority on change in my own experience, being the entity choosing the changes, and keeping that power of choice and action for myself – to use it as a tool, rather than as a weapon, and to make it one of the processes of order, rather than part of the chaos – has been a profoundly positive thing for me.

Yes. Of course there are verbs involved. Isn’t today a good day for some verbs? 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, women, Words
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