Archives for posts with tag: walking my own path

Small Changes

April 12, 2020 //

Small changes add up to big changes, over time. Some of the small changes I made are a goodness, and result in improved quality of life. Some of the small changes I make are less so, and create potentially problematic circumstances – sometimes entirely foreseeable conflict results. Humans being human. Some of the small changes that are made around me manage to also improve my circumstances. Some, though, are a bother. It is what it is. Not all the small changes are mine to make, or made by me. Not all the small changes that occur are even about me.

I sip my coffee and think about changes.

This morning, there are three less aquarium fish in my tanks. The difficult thugs that were creating so much difficulty have found a new home. I hope it works out better for them. They were certainly too aggressive for my tanks, here. It was a poorly chosen small change to bring them here. I am feeling fairly confident that it is a beneficial small change that sees them on their way elsewhere.

Small changes involve verbs. This morning I broke down boxes for the recycling. Definitely a positive outcome as small changes go; boxes were piling up, and the clutter was an aggravation. This morning? Less clutter. Less aggravation. In the process, I got a paper cut, from a bit of discarded paperwork that was stuffed into a narrow box. Pulling it out, definitely a small change, resulted in blood loss (not much), and a very irritating sensation in the crook of my hand, between my thumb and fingers. Ouch. Annoying. Not a small change I’m super eager to embrace; I’ll have to keep my hands out of the aquarium water until it heals, for sure. I love my aquariums, but let’s be real; it’s not a great idea to immerse an open wound or cut in aquarium water. It’s definitely full of a variety of bacteria.

I remind myself to wash it, again; it bled more, and there’s dried blood all over my hand.

I look around at the many small changes that have resulted from prolonged staying-at-home over the past handful of weeks. There’s more I could do, particularly here in my studio, but wow – so much has already been done.

I finish my coffee, thinking about other small changes I could make to improve my quality of life. I think about spring. I think about the garden. I observe the morning sunshine illuminating the bedroom window, through the blinds. I pause to savor this quiet moment, before I begin again. 🙂

Tags be here now, be present, begin again, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, freshwater planted aquarium, good self-care, life in the time of pandemic, mindfulness, perspective, practicing the practices, small changes, small changes matter, sufficiency, taking care of me, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, what matters most?

Categories Allegories, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Hot Coffee, Gray Saturday Morning

April 11, 2020 //

Just me and this moment, right here, at least for now. My Traveling Partner still sleeping, the sun not yet up – the day feels built on potential and hot coffee; pleasant, warming, and lacking in substance. lol No idea what today holds. I’m okay with that. I take another sip of my still-too-hot-to-drink coffee. I sit quietly, watching the RGB lighting in my computer chase itself. I watch the fish swim in the small aquarium in my office, and remember that more fish are coming, today.

My studio gets tidier each day. Stay-at-home has been helpful for such often-set-aside tasks. I’m getting rather a lot done.

My attention is snatched from this moment by some sub-conscious reminder to back-up various files from various places, in a more organized way on the bigger hard drive now in my computer… I start some downloads, and smile at how far this technology has come in my adult lifetime. I mean… just “wow”. Seriously. I can zip and download a 16 gig file of high resolution photographs, move it, and unzip it so fast; I just did in minutes what would have taken me… days? Even a decade ago. Just wow.

…I’m smiling so hard. lol Happy Saturday. Yep. This is the sort of thing that brings me a moment of great delight. What about you? Where do you find your moment of joy on a Saturday morning? My fingers dance across the keys of my RGB keyboard in time with the music. How could it be otherwise? 🙂

There’s no pressure, no agenda, no urgent meetings or calls… just a woman, and a cup of coffee; I let myself “time travel” by way of my playlist… all the way back to 1997, but with a much improved perspective… It was a different life. I remind myself to reach out to old friends.

…Then I notice, it’s time to begin again. 🙂

Tags around the world, begin again, breathe, choose wisely, Daft Punk, emotional self sufficiency, life in the time of pandemic, Logitech G Pro, meditation, Memories, perspective, practicing the practices, relationships, sufficiency, technologic, The Art of Being, time travel, walking my own path, what matters most?

Categories Allegories, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Waiting, Balancing, Pacing Myself

April 4, 2020 //

There’s a certain “order” and “flow” to circumstances that sometimes requires a bit of waiting, of patience, of carefully and clearly resetting expectations, and occasionally, even that has to be revisited, reinvented, or repeated along the way. I sip my coffee and remind myself how effortlessly easy it truly is to wait for something – it is the impatience to reach the goal that is the hard part. lol Letting that go, and the waiting? Well, it’s just letting time pass while I do other things, right? 🙂

Big things and small things, life has a lot of “wait for it” built into it. lol It’s neither a good thing, nor a bad thing – it’s just a thing to account for, to accept, to shrug off as one of life’s unavoidable, inevitable experiences. Rich or poor, we’ve all waited for something.

…Yesterday, I was waiting for a delivery of live fish to arrive on my doorstep. Today, I am waiting for a future moment in time. It’s a chill Saturday, well-suited to waiting on moments, contentedly, patiently, considerately, and even gently. The moment will arrive, and when it does, perhaps the waiting will have become “preparing”, “planning”, or some sort of desirable state of readiness, or another?

Aren’t we all waiting, right now? Waiting for the return of what we each understand as “normalcy”? Waiting for the moment we can meet up with our friends over coffee, or that moment we can host a big neighborhood barbecue (or attend one), or that moment when, through a crowd of strangers, we spot that person we know we love… so many moments are on hold right now. Vacations, journeys, endeavors, projects, group gatherings of all sorts… we’re all waiting. In the meantime, we’re all also living our lives. How’s that going for you, right now? 🙂 I hope your wise choices are resulting in a measure of contentment and joy that makes it all quite bearable.

Oh, and yes, the fish did arrive. It was a peculiar afternoon of timely arrivals, actually. My Traveling Partner and I enjoyed an evening punctuated by timely arrivals, and moments of joy, and discussions of our future together – in a time beyond the pandemic. We enjoyed the evening we had in front of us, savored the depth of our conversation, the intimacy of our shared connection, and the commitment to a shared future. It was quite lovely. There is so much more to talk about and to share that pandemic-related content. lol

So… another cup of coffee, another new day. I don’t know what it holds, and I can’t see the future. Nevertheless, I’m waiting, patiently, and contentedly, for another moment, while I enjoy this one right here. 🙂

Tags balancing needs and wants, be the change, begin again, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, enjoying this moment, handle good news with care, I am my own cartographer, listening deeply, making a plan, MBSR, opportunities, p.s. I love you, pacing myself, perspective, planning the future, small joys, sufficiency, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, waiting, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?, when normalcy returns who will I be?

Categories Allegories, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Starts and Finishes

March 22, 2020 //

Yesterday’s aquarium project concluded quite successfully, with a tank full of obviously happy creatures, living their tiny lives in captive luxury. Sounds familiar. 🙂 Same of me; living life contentedly, quietly, at home – in my own case, voluntarily confined in this time of pandemic. I could use more variety in the news, sadly, COVID-10 more or less dominates every headline, every human interest story, even coloring all the political and business news, and creeping into art, science, music… yeah; likes, clicks, views, and subscriber counts remain the true, consistent, underlying point of all of it. That’s sad. I mean, I’m grateful for updates and good information. I’m also aware that “life in the time of pandemic” still has so much more to it than news related to the disease, the spread of the disease, how to reduce risk of contagion, and the potential impact on various elements of human experience. I skim the headlines. At this point, there’s very little new content, and a notable diminishing return on taking time to read the articles.

…Life is too short to succumb to click-bait, or to read the same words yet again, reposted by some other news outlet. So… I don’t.

Instead, I am spending lazy contented hours this morning just watching the aquarium. Happy fish. Lush plants, recently pruned. New aquascaping. It’s too eye-catching to allow the news to pull my focus with repeats of the same bullet points that were promoted with such earnestness and enthusiasm (panic?) days ago. The numbers of affected people and businesses continues to increase. Yep. That’s to be expected, and has been expected. Who does not know by now? Even the stories about basic human stupidity have already gone stale (seriously, people went to the beaches in droves for Spring Break… during a pandemic of a highly contagious illness… I mean… wtf??). I contentedly update the wallpaper on my phone, instead of reading the news.

I smile every time I touch my phone.

Life in the time of pandemic is complicated. The easy part is the staying home, it seems. It gets more complicated figuring out what to do with that time. I’m fairly sure reading the news is less than ideally emotionally healthy, right now. Growing fat on the couch with 24/7 continuous streaming entertainment is probably also less than ideal. I find myself eyeing the bookcase with real interest; there are a couple books I’ve yet to read from cover to cover. (Very few of those, as I have a firm long-time habit of reading every book I own.) It’s a peculiarly suitable time to catch up on my reading.

It’s spring, now. I have my eye on some garden projects, too. There is most definitely more than 6 ft of space between the houses along this street, and gardening is definitely on my “to-do” list. It’s about time to begin laying out plots for planting, and sorting things out on the deck so that the new irrigation can be installed (I’m eager to prevent that mid-summer die-off that so often happens because I’m not at home when the watering needs to be done). This “social distancing” stuff most folks are wisely committing to isn’t all that trying, if I use the time well to further my own agenda in life. 🙂

My Traveling Partner handles things a bit similarly, seeking projects large and small to occupy his mind and hands. Household projects that improve our day-to-day quality of life are a favorite way to pass time. This weekend, he dived deeper into cherished hobbies and skills of the past, and spent time on personal development through self-paced study, too. It’s been pleasant sharing this time together. We encourage each other when facing some small challenge. We help each other when asked. We celebrate finished work together.

Life in the time of pandemic has its challenges, but also its opportunities. Spend the time well. (Or, hey, don’t – I’m not trying to tell you what to do.) This works for me… or… has so far. I glance at the time, aware that I agreed to wake my Traveling Partner shortly. …A nap does sound nice… and then? I’ll begin again. 😉

Tags begin again, blue velvet shrimp, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, freshwater planted aquarium, get off the couch, good self-care, life in the time of pandemic, love and lovers, MBSR, neon tetras, p.s. I love you, perspective, plakat betta, practicing the practices, read a book, relationships, something to do, sufficiency, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?, what will you do with your time?

Categories Allegories, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

A Moment of Quiet

March 7, 2020 //

I sat for a long while, this morning, quietly watching the fish swim in the aquarium. Shrimp, small fish, a couple of snails, and lush green plants, shifting in the gentle current created by the filter pump, presenting a tiny living world to my delighted eyes. It was a pleasantly timeless moment of contentment, joy, and solitude. Still and quiet. Calm. Satisfying. Emotionally nourishing. 🙂

They don’t vote, and aren’t worried about the latest virus.

…The world is a fairly scary mess right now. Corruption. Pandemic. Greed. Deceit. It is at times quite horrifying. Other times, it seems awkwardly tedious with the weight of lessons we never seem to learn, as a global society. We’re too connected to view world culture any other way. Our survival as a species is so obviously linked with each other in this age of connectivity. It is, too often, very hard to watch. So… I take a moment for me, and watch the fish swim. 🙂

Better than television. Reliably more truthful.

More often than not, there is nothing in the news that is truly urgent or new. Most of what we see, read, and hear, is in some way a repeat of something we’ve seen, read, or heard before. I remind myself, regularly, to let all of that go, in favor of walking in the sunshine, enjoying the garden on the deck, or watching the fish swim. These are by far better quality moments of existence, and life is already so very finite… better to enjoy more of these gentle pleasant moments that to become mired in what is not so very news-worthy after all. 🙂

I smile contentedly into the empty cup that was once my morning coffee. Seems like a good time to begin again.

Tags aquarium life, aquascaping, be here now, be the change, begin again, better than television, blue velvet shrimp, breathe, change the channel, emotional self sufficiency, finding contentment, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, in the news, MBSR, meditation, mindful living, monetization is not the point, my home my rules my way, neon tetras, perspective, practicing the practices, sufficiency, sufficiency is enough, taking a moment for stillness, taking care of me, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, watching the fish swim, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Allegories, Free Will, gratitude, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Spring, The Art of Being

Small Changes

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Hot Coffee, Gray Saturday Morning

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Waiting, Balancing, Pacing Myself

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Starts and Finishes

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A Moment of Quiet

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