I’m sipping my coffee, watching the dawn become day. I can’t honestly say the morning is “routine”; the move into this house is still quite recent, and a great many of my routines are altered, or broken. The “new normal” is still developing, and I don’t really know what that will look like, in days or weeks, or months, or two years from now. I breathe, exhale, relax, and let that go. The new normal does not need my help, it’ll be what it is once it becomes so. 🙂

…This coffee is fairly terrible…

There is a work day ahead of me. I’m struggling to fully embrace that. I’m tired, as a result of sleeping… poorly? That’s not wholly accurate. The sleep I got was deep and restful. It was just interrupted, a lot, and it takes a lot of 90 minute to 2 hour naps to achieve a restful night’s sleep. lol I feel distracted by tiredness. (I also feel acutely aware there is another, more appropriate word for “tiredness” that I can’t quite recall…) I’d very much like the day to be over, so I can go back to sleep. LOL It’s not quite 6:00 am. So unlike me.

This morning I am lost in thought, contemplating “fairness” and “unfairness”, and what it means to have a “level playing field” in life (or love). I am giving thought to how easily I take things personally – even knowing that generally speaking, “it isn’t personal” applies to most situations. Even those few that are direct, targeted, willful acts (or words) of aggression between human beings aren’t really “personal” – they have ever so much more to do with the person doing the thing than they are ever about the person against whom the words or acts are directed. I mull that over awhile, and drink my coffee.

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I sit quietly with this moment, and this fairly terrible cup of coffee. I feel fortunate in life (and in love, if I’m being real). I feel grateful for what I have, how far I’ve come, and how much chaos has been transformed into order, and yes, even how much healing has occurred, over time. I sit quietly, and let the scales gently balance, metaphorically speaking. It’s so easy to become entangled with a partner’s experience, or to internalize world drama or conflict. It’s easy to take small things personally, or to make much of something small. It’s easy to wreck the experience of a singularly pleasant moment with a harsh word, a misunderstanding, an erroneous assumption, then place the blame on the circumstances, or some other human being… I sip my coffee aware of the quizzical look on my face. No answers, just questions, and a handful of useful practices. It is, at least, a starting point.

The minutes tick by. The blue morning sky hints at a hot summer day ahead. I wonder what I’ll do with it? Will I be my best self, from moment to moment, or create an emotional inferno of small shit to apologize for, instead? Something in between? (There’s very nearly always “something in between” any two extremes, just saying, “don’t succumb to false dichotomies” is very good advice.) I remind myself that life (and love, and emotion) are very nuanced, filled with subtleties and hidden information. I remind myself to slow down, to be present, to stay centered in my own experience, and in this moment, here. I’m tired… which puts me at risk of drama and bullshit and chaos, but none of that demands that I be a shitty human being – it’s a new opportunity to practice doing a bit more/better at being the woman I most want to be. So… there’s that. 🙂

I notice the time… time to begin again. Again. 😉