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The Quiet Times

June 28, 2023 //
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I’m sipping some fizzy water in a cool, dimly lit, hotel room in the desert. The whole experience feels exotic and a tad surreal. At the moment, there is nothing at all “going on” – no planned activities, no agenda items, no dangling work… just… quiet. The stillness is filled only with the sound of the AC blowing softly, and my fingers dancing across the keyboard. For a moment it sounds almost like someone tap-dancing, just behind me. I breathe, exhale, relax, and consider for a moment whether I need pain medication, or would benefit from a cool shower, a nap, or perhaps wish to venture out into the sunshine.

…I smile understandingly at myself; it’s easy to run from the quiet times when I have them. It’s not a good practice, but it is easy. lol Another breathe. I pause to spend a few minutes on meditation.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I stretch, reaching for the ceiling, and then for the floor, as I get up from my cushion, after some minutes of meditation. I sit back down at this keyboard to reflect and to share, before the afternoon grows later.

The weather here is hot, dry, and breezy. The sun blasts the mountains and ground between them. It was already 75F by breakfast, and now it is 91F (and getting hotter) – it’s just past noon. The hotel staff smile when someone mentions the heat. We are enjoying – apparently – an unseasonal break from it (at these temperatures).

Palo Verde in bloom.

The signal strength and reliability of the hotel wi-fi connection isn’t great. My signal drops occasionally. This is not a great place to spend the day watching videos or movies, or doing anything at all that requires connectivity. What is a great place for are these quiet times. Sure, I could step out into the heat and dazzling sunshine reflected from the hotel pool. I don’t. I sit here quietly for some little while, soaking in the quiet. It’s such a rare thing (for me, most of the time) to find myself alone and embraced by stillness all around. I crave it. Seek it. Enjoy it. So… running from it, however easy, would just not be acceptable. We’ve got a work session planned for the afternoon, and soon enough it’ll be time to make my way to the co-work space we’ve reserved for the purpose. Soon enough. For now, there’s all this lovely quiet time to enjoy…

…Later will be soon enough to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being

The Here and The Now

June 27, 2023 //
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I’m sipping a surprisingly good cup of hotel room coffee, alternating with drinks of water – this is the desert. Drinking water becomes self-care priority one. The coffee is warm, not hot – I made it before I took my not-quite-cold shower. I pause for a moment to consider how my preferences changed, moving from one climate to another.

…Good coffee…

The changes in my medications seem to be serving me well here in the desert. I rather expected to puff up like a marshmallow in a vacuum chamber, the way I often do in very hot places. Not this time (so far). I wonder which medication is responsible, but since I honestly don’t actually know if it is one or a combination, or even simply having “things in better balance” just generally, my thoughts go nowhere. I let them go, and continue to sip my coffee.

It seems the sort of place where the sun itself might choose to vacation.

The sun has come up. I slept well and deeply. Occasional noise from traffic did not disturb my rest, nor were sounds of other guests intrusive (or even noticeable). The staff here is friendly and accommodating, the amenities are good. My colleagues are a merry band of amazing individuals. So far it’s a good time.

…It’s expected to get above 100F today (about 38C). It’s already 78F (about 26C). It’s not at all unpleasant, and there is a cool morning breeze. My bare feet feel quite wonderful on the tile floor. My now lukewarm coffee is still quite satisfying (funny how the quality of the coffee matters so much). The water in my glass is cold and refreshing.

Soon, breakfast with my colleagues. Then… on to other things. I breathe, exhale, relax, feeling centered and content with the moment as it is. It’s lovely.

…It’s also time to begin again.

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

Oops, I Did It Again…

June 26, 2023 //
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…I am sitting in the airport, in Oakland, waiting on the second leg of a flight to a destination away from the peace and safety of home. I miss my Traveling Partner already, after a wonderfully playful romantic weekend of love and deep connection. Seems weird to leave at all…

…It’s a “work thing”. I could potentially resent the rather poor timing, but feeling so thoroughly infused with love through and through, I suppose there’s no “good time” to be away. lol

My point is, though, simply that I am away. My writing is likely to be fairly irregular… I do expect to write. Prolonged interactions with people are exceedingly stressful for me, and I won’t easily be able to control and limit these. A learning opportunity. Plenty to practice.

This trip has me focused on listening more than I talk… wish me luck! I expect my results may vary… 😉

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

The Content Matters

June 22, 2023 //
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What do you fill your time with? What about your thoughts? What’s filling up your headspace? Your relationships, too… what about those? What sorts of people do you fill your life with? I am sipping a bit of afternoon coffee (left over from the morning, honestly, nothing fancy) and thinking about life as some sort of … vessel… or… container.

We begin life pretty much “empty” – all potential.

I spent a lovely handful of hours with my Traveling Partner yesterday evening listening to music and enjoying each other. He got seriously into some Spring cleaning sorts of things and the house looks quite fantastically tidy (except for my spaces, which are as yet untouched by Spring cleaning – I’ve got some catching up to do). It was lovely and quite relaxing to turn my head and see only order in all directions. His eye for details is quite astonishing. Admittedly, I tend to be a tad superficial about such things, in part due to poor eye sight, but also due to finding myself entirely less willing to make most housekeeping tasks any kind of massive undertaking. (It’s an obvious flaw in my character to favor “easy” to the degree I do…)

…But damn does the house look amazing. Nice refresh. I’ll be thanking him for months, no doubt…

But about that “empty container” that is the start of our individual lifetime… how about it? What are you filling yours with? When was the last time you did a thorough rethinking of all that… baggage and clutter? What are you keeping you could be better served by letting go of? What are you hanging on to that only seems to weigh you down? How much of that shit your holding on to could be repurposed or made use of differently… and how much should frankly get tossed into a waste bin?

…Is your life “in order”? How about those important tasks that get put off on the regular… a will… emergency planning… that dark closet or basement into which all manner of miscellany is tossed to be dealt with “some other time”…? The clutter adds up.

So I sip my coffee and think about a room I’m not even standing in at the moment, and how I can best short the bullshit from the useful things. It keeps bringing my thoughts back to my life. What sorts of things am I clinging to that I could let go of? What sorts of bullshit are piling up that could be tossed out? When our thoughts become cluttered, it’s harder to reason, to plan, to make wise decisions. When our lives become cluttered, it’s harder to make time for what we feel matters most.

I sip my coffee and think and plan and wonder. I could use a new beginning on this one… I feel it. It’s time.

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

Recognize Progress, Experience Hope

June 20, 2023 //
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Progress can be slow. Progress can be so slow that it becomes useful to play mind games with oneself with regard to the glacial pace of incremental change over time, in order to stay focused, keep practicing, and maintain motivation and engagement with those elusive goals that seem always “out there”, not yet achieved. It’s hard sometimes, and it’s easier – too often – to lose ground out of frustration, or even “losing interest” (in the sense that the commitment to one practice or another is quite separate from the pain of struggling with one issue or another). The tl;dr? Adulting is hard.

This past weekend was an odd one. I fought pain and fatigue most of the weekend. It was a long holiday weekend, but the holiday (Juneteenth) is not truly “mine”. I find it frankly difficult to “celebrate” an event that quite explicitly documents the moral, ethical, and cultural shame (slavery and racism) of my ancestors (and a great many other people who look quite like me). Juneteenth-wise, what makes sense for me, truly, is to make room for quiet reflection; how can I, myself, in this lifetime here/now, do better to eliminate even implicit racism from my thinking, my words, and all my interactions? How can I cast my vote to further improve the quality of life and situations of Black Americans? How can I use my privilege (as someone who is white) more as an umbrella and not as a barrier?

The holiday wasn’t the weekend, though, it was just a piece of it. It was a strange weekend, productive, but also peculiarly emotional and I wasn’t at my best. I had a rough day yesterday, characterized by strong emotions, and in spite of the great start to the day, I mostly felt sort of like I was just a big bucket of slop all weekend long (although it was actually just yesterday that was so difficult). My Traveling Partner did his best to support and care for me. We got a lot done together. It was just a very weird day. I didn’t write at all. Got a couple walks in over the weekend. Got a lot of really good rest. Didn’t paint, or write. Did get a bunch of housekeeping done. There was a lot of honest conversation about deepening intimacy and being closer with my Traveling Partner.

There isn’t that much to say about the details that would have any legit relevance this morning. It’s more that there was honestly a lot of real progress evident, if I take a step back and look at things in a way that directly compares this past weekend to – for example – a similar three day weekend 10-12 years ago. So much difference as to capture a feeling of “being an entirely different person”. I’ve come a long way. I’ve worked at it. A lot. I’ve endured frustration and failure and realizations that this or that practice don’t work out as well as I’d hoped, or that “the progress up to this point doesn’t touch that issue”. My results have varied… but… I have gotten results. Worthy real change in quality of life, for the better (by far). Worth celebrating. Worth making note of it. Worth learning to observe real progress, even when the changes over time seem quite tiny. There’s some hope to be found in this, and I’m finding it. Feels good, even after a day as shitty as yesterday was (though even now I do not understand why it was such a difficult day).

And it’s already time to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being
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