Archives for posts with tag: the Strange Diner

Oh, damn – that’s the sound of “the other shoe dropping”. Familiar. Well, hell – that means change, eh? I get a fresh glass of cold brew, take a breath. Honestly, the uncertainty is more stressful than the knowing. Seasons, cycles, and change – it’s just time, again, to begin again. I’d maybe even say “nothing to see here”, but it feels bigger than that from this vantage point, and I’m feeling that moment. I breathe, exhale, relax, and take a deep satisfying drink of icy cold brew. I let thoughts come and go, reflecting on the circumstances a moment longer.

…Doesn’t much matter what the circumstances are, this is a very human experience, and it’s likely we’ve all been through (so many) “shoe-dropping moments” in life. Change is – and we don’t always choose it. I’m okay, for most values of “okay”. It feels good to have my partner in my corner, encouraging and supporting me. This particular bit of change is job-related, and honestly seems rather mundane, considering some of the heinous shit going on in the world right now. I definitely do like things easy, not gonna lie, and it’s disappointing that I won’t be enjoying this role until I eventually retire (because yes, I’ve enjoyed it that much), and I really don’t enjoy the chaos of changing jobs at all. But I also feel more or less okay. Fine with it in the sense that it really is pretty mundane as changes go, and I’ve been through it before. So many times. I smile to myself, thinking about my “professional timeline” and all the many stopping points along the way.

…I would have retired a long time ago, if I could have afforded to do so, but even if I had it would not stop changes from coming, they’d just be other changes…

It’s easy to be angry when change comes. It’s rarely useful (except in the rare circumstance in which the motivational power of anger can be harnessed with a sense of purpose for good use). I sip my coffee content to deal with the change.

I sigh to myself. I’d like to take time to paint. I’ve no shortage of inspiration, but the household feels “crowded with activity”, and I’m often (usually) a participant. That sounds like an excuse, but I do find it difficult to paint productively while also juggling conversation, caregiving, and the day-to-day routine of keeping a household humming along. Then, too, there’s this thing I have been having to deal with all year… my hands. The specific position and grip pressure of my hand and fingers when I am holding a brush or pastel has begun sporadically (and unpredictably) causing me pain in the joints of my thumb. Arthritis? Feels different than that. Tendonitis? Closer, but I really don’t know. I do know the pain is aversive and creates a reluctance to paint at all, sometimes. Disappointing, but real. Between wanting uninterrupted time for doing creative work and finding that hard to get, and the pain that turns up unexpectedly when I do paint, I just … don’t. This, too, will pass. Probably. For now, it’s not the thing that is truly top of mind… I just happened to think about it, just now. A passing thought about something other than work and looking for work.

…I let my mind wander on…

Life’s journey isn’t a reliably easy one. I am even pretty sure, based on my own experiences and observations, that “easy” is more a matter of luck than anything else, and “ease” is not an expected part of the human experience. We’re fortunate when we find a moment of “ease” to rest within, and to enjoy. I sit sipping my coffee, reflecting with gratitude on the many moments of ease and good fortune that have found me, over a lifetime. They aren’t “everything” – life can be fucking hard – but they are something worth cherishing. When hard times come, I don’t look back on the easy times and good times with anger, frustration, resentment, or despair (not any more). I’m far more likely to take a moment, now and then, to appreciate how good I’ve had it, and how often that has been the case, and “fuel up” to endure whatever hardships have (or may) come my way. They’ll pass. Generally things do – good or bad.

I’ll find a new job. Maybe even very quickly (though that isn’t a given, and this is a difficult time for jobseekers, generally). Will it be the amazing experience of “work joy” this one has been? Maybe not. Hell, probably not – such experiences are quite rare (so I hear). Most of my work experience has been some degree of tedium, or aggravation, or pure hell in some environment that feels a like purgatory, watching a clock tick off the hours until the next pay check, while I do my damnedest to produce my best work and to be the best professional I can, hoping for better next time. I work to earn my pay, and use that pay to support my life. In a very real sense, I am converting the finite mortal hours of my life into spendable currency. I reflect on that for some moments, and consider my worth. Each time I find myself in this in between place, I am also… “finding myself“. It is an opportunity to learn and grow. Fill in gaps in my professional qualifications. Understand what I want more than I did at the start of the last job. Understand what I need better than I understood it previously. Look ahead. Plan. Consider new options.

The very first time I was ever “out of work”, it hit me hard. I was pretty young, but I’d had that job, advancing through the ranks, for 15 years. I had literal hysterics over it. I felt as if I had lost my sense of purpose. I did not handle it well at all. I felt really lost. I felt “blown off course”. Then, later, I felt really… spoiled and stupid and foolish, because I had known it was coming, refused to deal with the reality, and done nothing to actually prepare. I pulled myself together, and figured out what resources I had. I moved to a new place on the other side of the country (in a battered used Ford F-150, with all my mechanic’s tools in my toolboxes strapped down carefully in the bed), and I began again. (I make it sound simple, but it was a process, and it was weeks, and the outcome wasn’t ideal.) In the two years that followed, I changed jobs 4 times before I found something that could last (it didn’t). I moved 4 times. I left my first marriage. It was a complicated season of change.

During that two years, I learned something that would be valuable for all the years that followed, and continues to serve me well; jobs end. They are not the totality of our lives, they’re just… jobs. I learned how to handle lay-offs and ends of jobs graciously while I was in construction. The job always ends. Each new job, I’d show up, do the needful, and be sent back to the union hall once the job was over. Job after job. Season after season. Year after year. In the downtime in between, I painted. It was brutally hard work, paid pretty well, provided good medical care, and I had seasonal breaks for leisure (and for physical recovery from the effects of manual labor on this fragile vessel). The most important thing I learned in construction was how to face the end of a job. I haven’t forgotten.

So… here I am sipping my coffee in an office that will soon no longer be a place I come for work. Probably. (I could end up with an employer who seats me here in this co-work space – hard to know, it’s a small world.) I’ve got a few more days. I’ve got options. There are verbs involved. Tasks to deal with. A resume to refresh and “version” for the various industries that hold my interest (and higher than average potential for jobs I’ll do well).

Change is.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. This all feels so… commonplace. I feel fairly “unbothered”, although I also feel a mild amount of annoyance over it; the work I do here has been valued, necessary, and no doubt there will be consequences if those tasks are not assumed by someone, but that’s not my concern, now. No, the annoyance is simply that I really liked this particular job, company, and team, and was figuring on staying in this role until I leave the workforce (probably at 70). It is what it is. It’s not “personal”. I smile to myself, grateful to have had the chance to really enjoy the work I do for awhile. That’s been rare. I’ve often been employed doing things I’m really good at, and don’t enjoy at all. Less than ideal, but quite practical and commonplace. I feel a pang of disappointment and… grief? It passes quickly. The future is unwritten, and the menu of life’s Strange Diner is vast and filled with things I’ve yet to try. The trick is to choose wisely, eh?

The sun rises beyond the window. I arrived before dawn. It’ll be a warm summer day, and sunny, later. The morning is mild and pleasant. The air in the neighborhood around the office is filled with the scent of garden flowers. It’s a lovely time to get a walk in before the heat of the day. The need for self-care does not diminish when change comes (quite the contrary, it intensifies). I think a walk sounds like just the thing. It’s a good time to begin. Again.

I got my walk in this morning, around the neighborhood where the office is located. It’s a pretty middleclass neighborhood, with few sidewalks and lots of lovely landscaping. The summer air was still and smelled of flowers, exotic and vaguely tropical. Very summery. The sun was up and the morning beginning to hint at the heat of the day to come by the time I got back to the office.

…The entire time I was walking, I had a favorite “big beat” track in my head, Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice“…

It was less about the music, this morning, than the words. I kept turning the phrase over in my head, “weapon of choice”… I’d always heard that as meaning “preferred choice of weapon”. This morning it hit me that it also means… choice, as a weapon (or tool). Huh. Words are fun.

We have a ton of choices in life. The menu of the Strange Diner is – in a practical sense – almost unlimited. (Limits we observe are often self-imposed.) Choice is an important tool in our toolbox, whoever we are, regardless of our circumstances. Volumes are written about choice and choosing and how to make choices. What are you choosing? Are your choices taking you where you want to go? Do they make you more the person you most want to be? Are you trapping yourself with foolish choices? Do the choices you choose to make tend to make the world a better place, generally, or… not? I don’t need the answers to these questions (from you) – but maybe you do? (I know what my own answers are, and I ask myself these questions often.)

…Are you even making your own choices, yourself, or are you following some talking head on the internet, or an app, or an “AI”? Are you aware that it matters?…

I sip my coffee thoughtfully. I think my thoughts, grateful for another day to make choices and to practice practices. Grateful that I was finally able to get my Ozempic refilled, and my “sense of things” feels quite ordinary once again; I’ve clearly grown used to the changes it makes in my headspace (the increased impulse control demonstrably extends even to my ability to manage my temper, as it turns out). I breathe, exhale, and relax, feeling filled with contentment and a certain feeling of internal comfort that only seems to come from feeling very “at home in my own skin”. No anxiety, and for the moment no physical pain (which is a pleasant change). No headache. No allergies. Just a pleasant summer morning and a good cup of iced coffee, and this lovely quiet moment that is all mine.

…I am momentarily distracted by the awareness that a lot of my life is captured in words: emails, fragments of unfinished manuscripts, a rare bit of surviving journaling here or there, letters written in the days of snail mail as the only option, and this blog. I find myself wondering if I should be giving thought to preserving any portion of that (the internet may not actually be “forever”, considering current world events, generally)…

I sigh to myself, and my thoughts move on. Who am I? Who was I “then“? What relationship does she have to me, now? Memory is a thin thread that connects our past selves with our present self, and a bit unreliable at times. Does it even matter? Strange thoughts on an ordinary summer workday morning. There’s value in self-reflection, though, and asking the worthy questions is worthwhile whether I answer them or not. They demonstrate thoughtful curiosity and a regard for the unknown. They light the path ahead in some way I can’t easily describe or explain. They hint at what I don’t know, even about myself. Hell, sometimes they stave off the existential dread and doubt that sometimes accompanies awareness of how precious and limited this mortal lifetime is. I hear that metaphorical clock ticking.

The weekend is coming. What will I do with it? I’ve got a camping trip planned for a couple weeks from now. What will I do with that? I’ve got choices. So do you. What will you choose?

Every choice is a new beginning – even if you choose to stand still and do nothing.

One day I will not wake to begin again… It’s how mortality works. There is much to savor in each waking moment, and less to struggle with than I sometimes choose.

I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about favorite characters in books, movies, and anime, and what it takes to write a good character, and how the “story arc” of a truly great character pulls me in and gets me invested in the character. I’m thinking about why a good character matters so much. I’m reviewing my own life through the lens of character development, and this journey that is life itself. I’m just one woman, living one mortal lifetime, and honestly I see myself (now) as relatively ordinary in nearly every way. That wasn’t always the case. Dunning and Kruger will have their way with us all. lol When I was young, lacking in life experience, and prone to very poor decision-making, I thought I was the absolute center of my universe, the Big Bad, the main character in every story, and the best choice of human voice to say “all the things”… I was quite mistaken. I grew out of it. lol Reality does not care what I believe.

…Ordinary is okay, nothing wrong with it. “On the average, things are average.” – I’d attribute the quote, but I don’t know who said that (it wasn’t me). I’m not dismissing or discouraging aspirational goals or pursuing one’s ambitions, I’m just saying human primates have a tendency toward grandiosity (whether private or explicitly stated), and we’re mostly just… primates. Fancy fucking big-brain-having apes, that have chosen to build and to make, and have learned to wear clothing and how to set themselves up for elaborate failures. Hell, I’m not even saying so to provoke any sort of change – I’m just pointing out this thing I am observing, while character and character development are on my mind (for no particular reason). I’m not meaning to be at all discouraging of whatever you may be seeking to do or to change, just saying generally we can expect most things, most of the time, to be completely… insignificant and ordinary… in most regards. Our individual epiphanies and fantastic ideas are often pretty illuminations of ideas someone else has already put forth elsewhere, before it came to us. Our triumphs are often held in common with the triumphs of others rather like us. Few of us as mortal human primates stand out in any particular way, good or evil. A small handful do – often in the worst possible ways – but seriously, most of us just don’t, and that’s actually just fine.

Do you earnestly truly need to change the world and need to be known for some special something? I can tell you how! Be remembered. Sounds easy, and surely there are a number of ways to go about it, if you’ve just got to have it. If you are more particular than that, and want most to be known and celebrated for actually helping make the world a better place for humanity, this one is more difficult, but built on the same principles – you simply have to be much more selective about what you do that comes to define you and what you are known for. What do you want to be known for? How do you want to be remembered? If you were reading your life as a story, a novel, or a screenplay, what would be the pinnacle achievement that shows you have grown, and how you have successfully made the world a better place? Can you get there, realistically? Authentically? Ethically? What would your path need to be? What experiences would you have to seek and submit to? What would you change about who you are? You can get started any time…

…Where does your path lead?..

…We become what (and who) we practice.

I sip my coffee and think about my journey over the past 62 years, but more specifically how far I’ve come over the past 15 years. It still astonishes me that I had made so little progress toward bettering myself in my first 47 years – that’s a long damned time to fuck about being a rather terrible person lacking in goals or firm ethical grounding, mostly mired in chaos and damage, and definitely struggling just to survive. I did an unfortunately adequate job of masking a lot of that, and giving a decent appearance of being… decent. I mostly just stepped very carefully around the wreckage within, and did what I could to protect those I cared about from my madness and my inner demons. I lacked trust in anyone’s affection for me, most especially my own. I needed help – a lot of it – and some lucky breaks – and I definitely did not know how to get there from where I stood then. “Here” wasn’t even a place I could envision, then.

One of my luckiest breaks was developing a friendship with the man who would eventually become my beloved Traveling Partner. Life changed enough in some small way that my sense of self was changed, too. That mattered more than I could know at the time, and it took me a long way on a new path. My perspective on life changed. It wasn’t “everything”, but it was a good beginning. A new beginning, and the start of a willingness to consider change with greater comfort, and even to embrace it and to seek it. I began asking new questions. I began considering myself as something other than my own worst enemy. I stopped treating myself as though I somehow deserved the lifetime of trauma I had endured. I still needed help, and I sought it out. I began looking at myself in a new mirror, “changing my dictionary”, and using a new map – one I was creating myself. I stopped allowing the world to tell me who I was, and began working to become the woman I most wanted to be – for love. Now I pursue these things because they are the path I choose. (It helped to have profound inspiration to inspire a new beginning though, not gonna lie.)

Note: it doesn’t require a great and inspiring love affair to embrace change, to experience epiphany or enlightenment, or to choose to walk your own path, just happens to be what got me there.

Another perspective on love – and character building.

I’m not certain why these things are on my mind this morning. Maybe because my birthday is getting closer, and I’m often self-reflective and introspective around this time? Maybe because things have been so good with my Traveling Partner, lately, that I drove in to the office feeling pangs of “separation anxiety” in a way that I tend to associate with “new love”? I smile at the new Hue Forge image he made for me over the weekend – an early birthday gift – a favorite anime character, Dandy, from the anime Space Dandy. My Traveling Partner also 3D printed me another hydroponic tower garden, which I assembled on the deck (this one is mostly filled with strawberry seedlings). I feel very loved. I smile and sip my coffee, sitting with my contentment and joy, and reflecting on how far I’ve come in 15 years. It’s been a sometimes slow-feeling journey – incremental change over time often feels very slow – but it’s my own, and I’m okay with where I am this morning, compared to where I was on any Monday morning 15+ years ago. 😀

Love blooming in my garden; “Rainbow Happy Trails” and “Whimsy”.

I sigh and smile. I feel pretty good this morning, and I’m eager to face the day, and return home to my beloved. We plan to cook dinner together this evening – an experience we’ve been enjoying together. I feel fortunate and grateful, and I sit with those feelings awhile, watching the sun rise beyond the window of the office, and sipping my coffee. It’s not fancy, this experience. It’s not extraordinary – it is, in most regards, quite ordinary. That’s okay – better than okay – it’s the experience I’ve chosen, and a moment in a life I am enjoying, on a path I’ve chosen to walk. Am I changing the world? Not in any particularly obvious way, but I’m changing my wee corner of it in small ways, every day, working to become the woman I most want to be, living a life I can look back on with a measure of satisfaction, and a sense that I am doing better today, than I did yesterday, by every measure that counts for me, personally. I have a sense of who I am, and who I want to be – and that counts for so much more than I understood it could, 15 years ago.

What does it take to become the person you most want to be? A commitment to character building over time, perhaps? A willingness to begin again, many times, over years, definitely. Some frankness when facing the mirror certainly helps. The clock is ticking. Embrace change. Become the person you most want to be! You can begin again, any time.

I’m sipping my morning coffee thinking about how ludicrous it is that we so often seek to make everything fit into an “either/or” sort of arrangement – two neat columns, pro and con, or two clear choices for or against. I don’t think our human experiences are so tidy and clearly on one side or another of some dividing line. Not at all. We are creatures capable of depth and nuance of both thought and emotion. Our choices are often not so easy, and the problems we face more subtle and complex than a clear “yes/no” decision can resolve. We cheat ourselves and each other when we default to false dichotomies and make believe dilemmas – we often have many more choices on the vast menu of life’s Strange Diner than we take the time to consider.

…I consider our weird two party political system in the United States to be symptomatic of this very human challenge (in addition to being the only likely mathematical outcome of our current election system, regardless how many parties we may attempt to put in the mix). Human beings don’t seem to like complicated decision making at all. What a shame – we have such beautifully well-suited brains for such things. Seems like a waste of our potential as beings.

How are you wasting your potential today? Maybe that’s worth giving a moment of thought to? It’s your life, of course, and I’m not telling you what to do, just saying – you’ve got so much potential as a creature! What are you doing with that? What are you practicing? Where does your path lead?

What love looks like.

I spent time this weekend lingering over love and games with my Traveling Partner, who has been patiently re-teaching me to play cribbage. I enjoy cribbage. I played it with my grandfather. I played it when I was in a warzone (preferring it over pinochle or dominoes). My TBI gives me an irritating cognitive quirk; I don’t easily remember certain sorts of things, and the rules of card games are one of these. If I am not playing a particular game every day, the recollection of the game play and the rules quickly extinguishes, and I’ve got to start all over again the next time I go to play. It had been years since I’ve played cribbage. My Traveling Partner made us a lovely cribbage board. We’ve been playing relatively regularly for the past few days, and I’m enjoying it greatly. Oh, sure, at least for now I still need help figuring the points in a hand – cribbage is a relatively complicated card game – but I’m enjoying the time with my partner, and he with me, and it’s time well-spent. I am grateful he is so patient with me as I relearn a game I once knew so well.

A rose blooming in my garden. A beautiful metaphor.

I spent time this weekend lingering in the garden, enjoying the roses that are blooming, and fussing over the plants the deer have nibbled on. I weeded, and I watered, and I sat in the sunshine. Also time well-spent.

62 soon. Life is significantly less complicated – and less “exciting” – than I once expected it would be (though it often still feels like a lot to manage), and I’m not at all disappointed by that. lol Like a lot of other things, “excitement” is somewhat over-rated (and things are generally complicated enough to feel bothersome), and I greatly prefer joyful contentment, sufficiency, and the kind of broad perspective that allows me room to understand and appreciate others. We’re each having our own experience, and I really don’t have the time to bother with being annoyed by everyone about everything or wallowing in made up drama. lol I do like things “easy”. These mortal moments are so finite and precious.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I’ve got a couple appointments today, and it’s a busy workday, and there are errands to run on the way home, and… when the hell would I also find time to enjoy “excitement”? Good grief, a pleasant generally routine life is plenty busy already, isn’t it? I sip my coffee and smile to myself. This is a nice moment right here. Good for self-reflection and new beginnings. Good for gratitude and love. Good for putting some thought into decisions to be made and things to be done. There’s no need to rush, or force everything through a filter that reduces it all to either/or, this-or-that, yes/no, pro or con… I have time to think things through thoroughly, to understand more of my life more deeply, in spite of that ticking clock. I have time for myself before I begin again.

There’s time to pause for flowers, to water our gardens, to chase our dreams.

I’m sipping my coffee, back aching, and contemplating the day ahead of me. The world seems ever to be in turmoil, and I find myself wondering if maybe that’s just the way of worlds? Humans being human, stumbling in the darkness, failing to live up to their own expectations, trying and trying again – sometimes without changing what they’re doing that didn’t work the first time. We’re strange creatures; we have immense capacity for reason and intelligent thought, but often choose not to make use of it. Isn’t that strange? We have the power to change how we feel and what we do, how we experience the world around us, what we think of this or that, and to deepen our understanding and knowledge over time, to choose differently based on experience and learning, and sometimes we just… don’t bother. Isn’t that peculiar?

The weekend ahead of me is filled with choices and opportunities. Will newly started seedlings have enough roots to be ready to plant into the new little solar hydro garden that my Traveling Partner made for me? Will the deer eat more of my tomato plants? Will I find a pair of jeans that fit as well as this pair that is falling apart and can’t really be worn anymore in spite of being my favorite pair? Will I make “the perfect cup of coffee” and manage to enjoy it before it gets cold? Will I take time to finish the book I’m reading? Will I paint or write poetry or gaze at the stars in the hour before dawn? Will my Traveling Partner delight me with some unexpected token of his affection crafted for me by his loving hands? Will the Anxious Adventurer share a funny meme, or cook a tasty meal for the family, or give me a hand with the irrigation project for the west side garden? I think about the possibilities without setting expectations or making assumptions. The possibilities are nearly endless – what brings them to life will be the choices we each make.

…”Choose wisely,” I remind myself, “the clock is ticking”…

A rose blooming in the garden

Still, choices or no choices, actions or no actions, busy or not-so-busy, it’s worth making time to also simply enjoy each moment. Like the roses in my garden, each moment is unique. Unrepeatable. “Once in a lifetime”, however similar it may seem to some other moment quite like it. Being present – really present – slows the clock, and enriches each experience. Mindfulness as a practice has its greatest value in that quality above most others; presence. It teaches presence. It’s a practice, though, and it requires effort, and the doing of the thing. There are verbs involved, and choices. It’s not a passive happenstance that I can count on, it’s a choice I have to make, and a practice that requires practicing.

I sit more fully upright, hoping to ease the arthritis pain in my back. I’m aware of it there in the background. Does it hint at a change in the weather? Is it due to effort or strain? Does that even matter? I sigh quietly to myself and take something to ease the discomfort somewhat. I sip my coffee, and enjoy the moment without regard to the pain. Escaping it may not be an option, but neither do I have to let it control me.

Feels like a good day, generally. If it didn’t, I could choose to change things about my experience and perhaps improve it. That’s not necessary today; I feel okay for most values of “okay”, and I’m not weighed down by the foolishness, violence, and sorrows of the world. Not right now. It’s a pretty morning. There are flowers blooming in my garden (and beyond), and the day feels sort of “easy”, generally. I sit with that feeling, grateful and appreciative, not wanting to waste the moment by rushing it or taking it for granted, although I’m eager to get to the other side of the work day, and head home to my beloved and my garden.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, gazing out the window in front of me as cars stream into the parking lot below. It’s that time. Time to begin again.