I’m sipping my coffee and hoping to shake off this relatively shitty mood, soon. I woke early, ahead of my alarm, and started the day with my first interaction being with my Traveling Partner, who isn’t feeling himself (injured, still recovering), and was not in a great mood (also up quite a bit earlier than he wanted or needed to be). The commute was fine. Traffic was relatively light and the drive went by quickly and didn’t make much of an impression on my still-waking-up consciousness. I left too early to grab coffee on the way, and I’ve had to just put up with that until I got to the office. My head aches. My neck aches. My back aches. I’d frankly rather be elsewhere doing something different, right now, but… here I am. It is what it is, and what it is, is… a perfectly ordinary work day. The first of 2024.
I take another sip of my coffee. It’s okay. Not great. Not bad. Just coffee. I remind myself to appreciate that luxury properly; in the state the world is in, generally, there’s no telling when the supply of coffee will be used up, and no more available to “regular people” than mega-yachts are. Coffee is a luxury. In the present day, a mostly affordable luxury (depending on where you buy your beans, I guess). That may not always be the case. A lot of things work out that way. Enjoy the things you enjoy while you have them. Circumstances change.
Over the weekend, I managed to jam a tiny thin piece of PLA filament under my fingernail (left index finger, if that matters), and although I was fortunate not to break it off, I definitely jammed it right into the delicate nailbed and it hurts. Small thing, hardly worth bitching about, but every time my finger strikes a key on the keyboard, I am reminded of it.
…So… Here it is a new year, a new week, a new day… and I’m cross and fussy like a fucking toddler on the edge of a tantrum. I don’t mean to be. I don’t even have any excuse for this bullshit besides being irritable after waking too early and being on the receiving end of my partner’s own crossness. Another sip of coffee… I remind myself I don’t have to let this be the theme of the entire fucking day. I’ve got choices. It’s sometimes quite difficult to choose away from an emotional experience or a state of being, but… it can be done. Doesn’t generally work (for me) to try to suppress it, “wish it away”, or “fake it ’til I make it”, though. “The way out is through” applies here. So, a positive distraction, an opportunity to focus on something else, a healthier more recent interaction with my Traveling Partner… those are the steps on this path. I sip my coffee, take my medication, and take a couple of deep cleansing breaths. I stand and stretch, looking out at the city stretching beyond these windows and “give myself a moment”.
I take my coffee cup and walk from window to window, looking out at the city from different points of view, drinking my coffee and letting my thoughts wander where they will before returning to my desk to write. A glance at the time brings me back to the routine in front of me. It’s already time to begin again. 🙂
Here it is the first day of a new year. I’m sipping my second coffee, which is quite good (primarily because I enjoy coffee – not everyone would feel similarly, and I recognize that it is an “acquired taste”). I am thinking over the year ahead and specifically, giving thought to “doing more better” and making progress on personal goals. I’m not inclined to making “resolutions”, but I have ideas of what matters most to me, what sorts of things will help me thrive and achieve and maintain better wellness, and even what sorts of things I’d just frankly really like to do, see, or enjoy in my life. It’s a finite thing, this mortal life, and it makes sense to take steps to “make it my own”, or “leave my mark”, or simply thoroughly enjoy a life well-lived. So, yeah… thinking about it.
The obvious stuff is… obvious. Tidying up the chaos that has accumulated during the busy holidays while also carrying for my injured Traveling Partner makes a lot of sense. Very practical. Healthy – the real-world chaos in my living environment tends to rather directly reflect the likely chaos in my own inner world as well. With that in mind, it seems to easy to grab a quick win, here, by finally unpacking (no kidding, and omg) from my coastal getaway earlier in December, and picking things up in my studio, which was left in chaos after I spent a weekend making holiday cards. Very practical. Very much within the reach of my abilities and my energy (I think).
A subtler detail like “finding a home” for the Tachikoma model my Traveling Partner gifted me, and which I built over the holidays, would be a pleasing “small win” to begin a new year… it’s not a tiny model, and I’d like to put it somewhere that I can see it often and enjoy it, and contemplate next steps for giving it some “aging” details and “realism”. (It’s amazing how much real delight this project has already given me.) Funny thing, though, it’s the sort of placement of an object that relies heavily on tidying up other chaos, first, or the placed object quickly topples from it’s beloved status to become just more clutter. So… I’m back to the necessary tidying up, which clearly has to come first.
…I sip my coffee and consider the matter from the perspective of an analogy for greater things, and a metaphor of life’s interplay of complex and simple. We walk our own path. We make our own choices. The “map” does matter…but we’re drafting that map while we explore this life, so… it’s not very handy as maps go, for making decisions about the next steps. It mostly just tells us where we’ve been.
…Speaking of “where I’ve been”, I really should update my Life in Weeks chart…
I look around this rather cluttered room. I’m glad now that I didn’t take a walk this morning. Although it would have been lovely to see the mists on the marsh, and hear the cries of the flocks of birds taking flight as the sun rises, it would fill me with optimism and contentment, too satisfied, too soon, for taking on the matter of “what next, 2024?”. My Traveling Partner encouraged me to stay home. We shared a few moments over coffee, before I began yawning. He encouraged me to go back to bed with a laugh, and I did so, thinking I’d be unlikely to sleep in spite of my general fatigue lately. How wrong I was! I woke more than two hours later, feeling substantially refreshed and much more rested. He was still asleep, himself, having also gone back to bed. I happily picked up the book I’m reading, and sat sipping what remained of my first cup of coffee, contentedly reading, losing myself in some other world, some other time. I do love reading… always have.
This brings me to another thing I’m looking ahead to; more reading. The convenience and easy availability of video content of all sorts (short and long formats) isn’t at all the same as reading a book. It just “hits different”. Videos, whether documentaries or fictions or news, are a bit more like grabbing a quick meal at a fast food place than they are like sitting down to a “real meal” at home (which, for me, is the “book” analog). The short format YouTube videos I definitely enjoy are very much akin to pulling through the drive through to grab a large order of fries and a coke; delicious, but there’s nothing at all nutritious about it, and as satisfying as it may seem in the moment, it leaves me wanting, and is probably actually bad for me. lol My Traveling Partner and I, seeking more/better, are talking about returning to “durable media” for things like movies and music, and canceling most streaming services. We don’t care for the strange empty experience of “doom-scrolling” or flipping endlessly through feeds that lack content we really want to consume, and the recent announcement from Amazon that they’ll be bringing ads to paid premium streaming customers is just… unacceptable. They’re definitely not going to continue getting our money. lol Streaming was definitely a lovely convenience, but I don’t at all like what the providers of such services have done with it. So… why take part?
The choices aren’t always “easy”. Giving up social media years ago? Hard. Have I regretted it? Not at all. It’s been very good for me, though it’s been an uncomfortable fit for some relationships with distant folks. Our choices and actions come at a cost. That’s just real. I make a point of mentioning it because although the cost is often “worth it” that doesn’t necessary mean it is an easy price to pay. (I think about my busted up back, which was the price I paid to survive my first marriage… a high price to be sure, but very much worth it.)
So… tidying up. Good one. Read more books. Yep, I’ve even got a list.
Other things that I see as having potential to make 2024 a better year (for me)? More miles on my boots day-to-day – fewer short walks, more longer ones. I managed to hit 500 miles in 2023 (that was my goal). Maybe in 2024 I can reach 750? I’ll try. That will mean making a point to be on the trail no less than an hour every time I go for a walk, if I walk every single day (because I also need time to take pictures!)… surely I’m worth an hour of my own time? 😀 I know that I am. So…
Tidying up. Read more books. Walk more miles…
I think I’d also like to make a very practical point of taking better care of myself, generally. I mean, cooking more healthier meals at home, and eating less fast food. I also mean staying more committed and true to my mediation practice, and not allowing myself to take shortcuts that undermine my emotional resilience, leaving me fragile and easily provoked by the world’s madness. Staying on top of my physical health, too, would do me a lot of good – it’s hard sometimes; I’m frustrated before I ever see a doctor, anticipating being blown off or gas-lighted, because I have been so many times before. But… this fragile meat suit needs care, and failing to care for it will legitimately have the potential to shorten my life, a life I am enjoying, and wish to continue to enjoy. So.
Tidying up. Read more books. Walk more miles. Eat healthier food more often. Meditate more consistently. Follow up with my doctor properly about shit that persists in being a problem. Damn. That’s a good looking year ahead of me, if I stick with it. 🙂
This is not about resolutions, though. If I try to make it so, I’m pretty much committing to failure I think. lol That seems the way of it. Instead, my approach will be to stay aware of what I want out of my life, and what it takes to have that, and what verbs are involved. Do those verbs. Repeat. Being committed to doing those things to enjoy those outcomes is, in a sense, it’s own goal. Setting myself up for failure and lobbing a bunch of self-criticism and negative self-talk at myself won’t actually be helpful… so I think I’ll skip doing those things. lol
…I guess I’ll add that I’d like to do more camping and hiking – more time spent constructively alone, instead of beefing silently about how hard it is to “hear myself think” or get a few minutes to myself. Create the world I want to be part of, even on this small scale. Care for myself.
…Crap! I really need to make more shower steamers, too… I’ve run out…
Seems like maybe a lot to commit to… doesn’t it? I’ll point out that it is all – every bit of it – stuff I really enjoy and like to do (yes, even the tidying up, though that’s more complicated than pure enjoyment and delight). Taking pleasure in the doing seems a likely way to put myself on the path to success with these things, I think. We’ll have to compare notes at the end of 2024 (I make a reminder on my calendar to check in with myself… did I “get there”?).
It’s the first day of a new year… and already time to begin again. 😀
It’s your path. Walk it because you want to. The journey is the destiation.
Well, it’s my last work shift before a new year begins. Damn this year went by so fast. It’s been… much. Google “2023” and there are plenty of articles and listicles and videos already available breaking it all down, in spite of the clock not yet running out on 2023. Another year behind us…
…Another chance to do better, to begin again…
I’m not a fan of “resolutions” as a New Year’s celebration. I mean, the intention is good – make a change. Good goal. Most people focus on fitness, diet, exercise, something they’d like to do, some aspirational change of habit… and most people, most years, fail on most resolutions. It’s just not ideally effective as an approach, I guess.
I’ve got a list of books I’d like to read this year (most of them are to do with work related topics). I’ve got a goal in mind to walk a given number of miles this year (and it’s a bit more than last year). I have it in mind to do a better job with my self-care day-to-day and to continue down my path, maintaining or even improving on the practices that generally tend to support my generally good quality of life. I’ve even got my eye on being a better partner – and a better person. A better listener? That, too. It’s a lot to shoot for. lol All good stuff. Reasonable. Useful. Lofty. I can expect it to be a lot of work. I can expect my results to vary. There will be verbs involved – many. I can expect more failures than successes – at least initially; it takes time to build a practice (and repetition, a lot of repetition). There it is. A new year “all planned” and filled with an idea of who this woman is who I would most like to be. It’s at least a starting point. I can’t call myself “resolved” though, and I don’t view these as “resolutions”… I’m just a woman with an idea of what I’d like to get done next year, or see changed. I’ll do my best.
I still make a firm practice of taking “One Hour” each New Year’s Day, to reflect and evaluate and wonder. It’s a meditation, a self-care practice, and a worthwhile means of celebrating the new year without a lot of boozy noise and distractions, which I’m not really much into, myself.
I sit quietly with my morning coffee, gazing at the waning moon hanging above the city. Quiet morning. Lovely. Peaceful. I got a better night’s sleep than I have in the last couple days, but woke early to find my Traveling Partner already up, himself, quietly watching videos. A moment or two of conversation later, and I made the drive into the city for this last shift. Then… the weekend, the new year, and the whole cycle begins again, with spending much of New Year’s Day taking down all the holiday decor and returning it to storage for another year.
I sigh out loud, sip my coffee, and get ready to begin again.
I’m already on my second coffee, and will likely have a third. Maybe a fourth. I’m so tired… There’s not enough coffee to resolve this amount of fatigue.
My Traveling Partner woke me during the wee hours. He couldn’t sleep. It was not quite 3 a.m. He was supremely frustrated with being unable to sleep, and trying anything to figure out why he wasn’t sleeping. His injury was making him uncomfortable, too, and he was clearly vexed and feeling that the lack of restful sleep would slow his recovery. Sleep isn’t easy for everyone, and it can be a tough puzzle to “figure out”. I know this first hand, and even in this very moment. Since having been awakened, I wasn’t going to find sleep easily again myself (if at all).
Hoping to minimize any further possible disruptions to my Traveling Partner’s potential to go back to sleep, I went ahead and dressed and went on in to the office. Options. (Flexible hours for the win!) Fuck, I’m so tired, though. I tried unsuccessfully to nap on a couch in the break area… strange space, uncomfortable couch, no CPAP machine, the lights and noise of the city… it wasn’t happening. So. Work, then? Work. And coffee.
…Great commute into the city, though… no traffic at all. LOL
Getting my ass up, dressed, and out of the house when my partner can’t sleep is, as he points out himself, “just a band-aid”, not really a solution. What the hell is the solution to poor quality sleep? The real answer? I don’t know; I still suffer from poor quality sleep on a regular basis – I just don’t happen to deal with snoring as the cause of that experience, nor worry that my snoring is keeping my partner awake, since I started on a CPAP machine. I’m still light and noise sensitive. I still struggle with nightmares. I still sometimes find myself wakeful during the night for no obvious reason. I still need more sleep than I find myself able to get. The only piece of the puzzle I’ve ever truly solved was eliminating my anxiety, frustration, and anger over being unable to sleep. I used to respond to lost sleep with tears and fury. Tossing and turning. Punching pillows. Restlessly banging about my living space frustratedly trying to coax myself into returning to sleep by creating more fatigue, somehow. Enacting peculiar “bed time” rituals like getting a drink of water, then going back to bed. Sometimes something worked, mostly nothing did (or does; if I’m not going to sleep, I’m not going to sleep). The stress over it made it much worse. That I was able to ease, and pretty much resolve completely. Now, when I’m wakeful, I just… am awake. I meditate. Read quietly. Maybe write. Get up and have a quiet cup of chamomile tea, perhaps. It just “doesn’t bother me” the way it used to. This was a choice built on practices, built on acceptance, and built on non-attachment. That much I managed, and it has worked nicely.
…But I don’t think that counts as a solution to poor quality sleep…
…And I really really wish I could truly help my partner resolve his sleep challenges, especially if I am any cause of those! Whether I am or not… I’d just like him to be able to get the sleep he needs to feel well and rested every day!
There are a ton of commonplace recommendations regarding sleep hygiene from any number of foundations, YouTube channels, Dr recommendations, sleep clinics, sleep-oriented businesses, and bloggers… some of them likely work for some people. All of them probably work for someone. (Chances are none of them work for everyone.) I practice many of them routinely and they have become habit for me. It helped. Stressing over the lack of sleep never helped at all, and I suspect did much to make things worse. Learning not to do that was a big deal, and it was my Traveling Partner who pushed me to do so, wisely pointing out that the stress about not sleeping was causing me to lose more sleep.
I don’t have any solutions – but I know how much sleep matters, and I know a lot of us struggle to get the sleep we need. Are you having sleep difficulties? What have you done about it? I’d be interested to know what has worked for you.
Coffee #2 is finished, and just a memory. It’s time to make a third and try to push through the fatigue on caffeine and pure persistence. It’s time to begin again.
I’m tired. The day started poorly, at least initially. (It’s fine now.) My Traveling Partner was worried about me and woke me from what to me felt like a very deep, sound sleep in the midst of detailed dreams. It was rather near my usual wake-up time (about 90 minutes too early) and I could not go back to sleep. I woke feeling groggy, confused, fussy, irritable, and startled. This was less than ideal. I went ahead and got up for the day. I was going to head out immediately so he could just go back to bed himself, although I definitely wasn’t fully alert, yet. He invited me to stay and have coffee together, which sounded pretty good; there would not be any cafe’s open at that hour, and driving into the city without having some coffee sounded pretty crappy. So…
We began again. We enjoyed our morning coffee together and watched a couple videos. It was a pleasant way to start the day. No regrets.
I will say… although I wish no one would ever wake me while I’m sleeping soundly… I sure wouldn’t be the one to insist that someone who is worried about me as I slept take no action to ensure I’m okay. That seems fairly unreasonable, and possibly actually foolish. If my partner woke me at 03:30 in the morning and asked me to wake up just to hang out with him because he was feeling lonely, I totally would. (I mean, keeping it real, I might be a bit annoyed at first. lol) I’d definitely expect him to wake me if the house was on fire or something, too. I just really wanted to sleep (because I already was) and waking up was so hard. I’m not that good at sleeping well, and it’s hard to let sleep go when it does happen. I’m fine, though, for most values of fine. Just… definitely tired.
G’damn I am tired this morning, though. lol Although my Traveling Partner seemed certain I’d “probably gotten enough sleep”, mostly based on when I retired for the evening, I did read for a little while, and I was up once during the night. My tracker suggests I got less than 6 hours. Not ideal, but I’ll get by on that and I should certainly be safe to drive home at the end of the work day… it’s not like losing sleep is so common any more. I’m generally getting enough sleep these days.
…I’m having trouble getting my shit together for the work in front of me…
I yawn and stare into the glow of the monitor vacantly for awhile. So tired. I try to shake it off. I drink more coffee. Even the utterly average office coffee will do the job I need it to do, this morning. I make another cup and make a point of trying to drink it before it gets cold.
I sigh out loud in this quiet room. It’s not yet quite daybreak, but the sky has begun shifting from black to a dark moody blue gray. I guess it’s time to begin again.
Evening Light 