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What Is Your Essence?

December 28, 2018 //
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I am home for the day, preparing for the long holiday weekend ahead. Having a quiet cup of tea, vaping something pleasant tasting, and watching the vapor curl in wisps as the cloud breaks up as I exhale. “Vaping” is a verb now. I ponder the way language changes with the times. I wonder if things are still “on fleek” and if “fam” is still “lit”. I smile, breathe, relax; this is my time, my moment, and I am content with it just as it is, wedged between the shhh-shhh of commuter traffic at the edge of the driveway, and the chug-chug of the washing machine, down the hall. The noise doesn’t matter, this evening, and it is not disturbing this somehow-still-quiet moment.

I am thinking of “is” and of “isn’t”, and the year just finishing up, as I peer cautiously ahead to the year that is imminent. I am thinking rather carefully of “essence” and “essentials”, and hoping to stay on the path of sufficiency. Right now, at least, it is rather easy not being tempted by excess. I just don’t have the resources for that, and 2019 looks like a year that I will spend rebuilding reserves, planning with care, and being most particular to avoid wastefulness.

I catch my thoughts on a hook as they brush past a word – “essence”. Fancy. What is “essence”, really?

…I love the future. 😀

So… yeah… “the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character”. Essence. Got it. I ponder the word, and the idea of it for some minutes.

What “is” my “essence”? Is that a thing that I am? Have? Is it a state of being? A verb? An experience of self? A defining characteristic identified by others? Do I choose it? Chase it? Live it? Question it?

Is “what is my essence” simply a fancier, wordier, version of the lingering question “who am I”?

How would my “essence” influence my experience of life – or of self?

Are these questions that need asking, and answering, or is this a game?

Just questions tonight, I suspect, as I close in on the New Year. It’s a season of change, and of reflection. It is a season of choices, memories, and moments.

…the new year is a blank page…

I put questions aside, and make time for gratitude. The house is comfortable, tidy, and warm. The bills are paid. I have what I need, generally; I am fortunate. I reflect on good fortune, and the temptation to feel “deserving” or that this life is entirely “earned” on my own effort. Both the notion of being “deserving” and the notion of having gotten here “on my own” are illusions, nothing more, and I turn away from the thinking errors that bring me to those ideas. I’m fortunate. I’ve had a lot of lucky breaks. I’ve had help, encouragement, support – and all of that matters. I would not be “here”, had I been less fortunate, or if I had had to make this journey entirely without friend, or aid, all alone. I’d be somewhere quite different, and, perhaps, however grateful to be in that place, I might also be an entirely different human being, with a different understanding of myself, and different dreams, walking a different path, toward a different future.

That, too, I let go, as the twilight of winter evening slowly fades to the darkness of nightfall. No reason to become attached to notions in the darkness. Grateful and inquisitive – these seem worthy of being some part of my essence. Contentment, too. I smile, and make room to appreciate the journey, and the woman I have become over time.

Tomorrow, I’ll begin again. There is further to go. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter, Words

Here, Now, Human

August 10, 2018 //
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I am sitting here with my coffee, grateful to be out of the office today. My coffee is still untouched, though I’ve been sitting here with it for half an hour. I have a cold and feel fairly listless and awful. It could be worse, of course, it’s really just a cold.

Having a head cold was not in my plan for today. I am volunteering some of my time… and I am so glad that’s a little later. I take a sip of my insipid, possibly terrible, coffee (is this head cold why it tasted “off” yesterday morning, too?). It was my plan to spend the remainder of my weekend shopping for a car. It’s time. I don’t much feel at all interested in that, at the moment, and I suspect it would be a colossal dick move to go car shopping while contagious. I’m definitely certain it would be grossly inconsiderate to spread this shit around knowing I am ill.

It’s weird to me that many businesses strike a pose of actively discouraging employees from calling out when they are sick, in some cases even penalizing actual sick people for not getting over being sick fast enough. Many do, though, and the effort is leveraged primarily at entry-level workers, and lower paying middle management jobs; humans involved in the day-to-day work of keeping business going. You know, “the working class” folks. I’ve not ever seen anyone in the executive class actively discouraged from being out of the office… at all. Ever. I have reached an understanding that the amount of energy put into “attendance policies” (again, those are rarely applied to senior managers or executives at all) and convincing sick people to show up for work (in spite of potential risk of contagion, or delaying a person’s recovery) says a lot about the high value of their labor – and if those employees cave to that pressure, and work while sick or develop a tolerant acceptance of their exploitation, it says a lot about how poorly they value themselves. There’s definitely profit to be made in human beings undervaluing themselves – they cost so much less! It’s an understanding that, over time, moved me further and further left on the political spectrum as a human being, as a worker, and as a manager. “Who actually benefits from this policy?” became a question I learned to ask – a lot. It is heartbreaking how rarely, in most places, the answer is ever “everyone who works here benefits equally”.

Enough about things to do with working. Bleh. Actually, “bleh” is a good descriptor of where I am with my whole experience, just at the moment. I’m not quite sick enough to give up on everything and just go back to bed (although my coffee is really not the experience I’ve grown to love, and I feel fairly crappy, generally)… and I’m definitely not well enough to pull on my hiking boots and get a couple of miles in before I head to the VA.

…Just thinking about going back to bed, and looking at the clock… I don’t know… bed sounds okay… even if I didn’t sleep… I could just lay there being miserable so gently…

…I can begin again… later…

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Categories Brain Injury, health, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Big 5

Seriously? You Could Do Better

March 16, 2018 //
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Couldn’t we all do better? A bit? Give that some thought. Are you really the person you most want to be? Every day?

I am feeling frustrated with humanity, generally, and it pivots on competing memes, the willful stupidity of human beings defending pet ideologies, and the unavoidable truth that every damned one of us has some pretty fucking hateful moments, and lugs around some pretty vile baggage. I’m mostly quite done with every damned body pointing at the other guy with criticism about hate, seemingly unaware that they, themselves, have some similarly hateful moments.

Fuck, people, look in the god damned mirror.

I’m not making this point unaware that I am, myself, quite human. On the contrary, I am frustrated and puzzled by some basic confounds in my own thinking. I am concerned about implicit biases I am likely wandering around with, that may inform my decision-making in a fairly stupid way. I worry that things I think I “know” are not well-grounded in fact, to the point that I am regularly seeking proof that I am wrong. (Because, frankly, finding out I am wrong is the only shot at correcting poor quality reasoning – I don’t give fuck-all for being right, and it isn’t helpful to “know” that I am, when it comes up.)

What’s specifically giving me metaphysical indigestion this morning is the head-on conflict between posts/memes/commentary suggesting that “gun control is not the answer –  be kind to lonely kids!” is The One True Way, and the other batch retorting “don’t suggest anyone else is responsible for violence except the sociopaths committing it – you could be encouraging vulnerable kids to become entangled with sociopaths!” because setting good boundaries is The One True Way. Fucking hell – are we all really that stupid? Is it not 100% entirely obvious that this is a false dichotomy? That the jigsaw puzzle of American violence is a tad more nuanced than that? Fuck your overly simplistic idiocy. So done with that kind of simple-minded horse-shit.

It matters how we treat people. It matters what we accept, as a culture, with regard to how people treat each other. It matters when we frame the discussion in terms of the value of one group of lives or another, or the worth of one individual or another. It matters how we talk about – and how we prosecute – violence. Yes, when we let domestic violence crimes go unnoticed, undiscussed, and unprosecuted, we build a culture in which some children grow up thinking their anger (an emotion, nothing more) has more value than the actual lives of others. We created that scenario as a culture, as a society. We deepen it when we devalue women, people of color, and other vulnerable populations. When we foster rape culture, and suggest in our institutions and laws, that how women dress or behave is somehow righteous justification for another human being’s lack of self-control over their use of sexual behaviors, we defend violence over “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We are at fault for the culture that exists.

Does that mean we are also accountable, individually, for the individual acts of violence of other individuals? Nope. We are each responsible for our own actions… including those actions that foster a culture of violence. So. Yeah. It’s not us vs. them. It’s not as simple as a single choice between two clear options. It’s about actually fucking being aware of the consequences of our actions, and of our institutions and laws, and we are responsible for the society we create. We built this. Stop acting fucking surprised. Fucking fix it.

Fuck, I am so angry about this. Just do better, damn. How fucking hard is that?

What are you going to do to make this a better country to live in for everyone who lives in it? (Yes, including people who are incarcerated, people who are poor, people who are undocumented – have you read some of what they are put through? Every.Damned.Day. “Inhumane” doesn’t begin to describe it, and that’s really not okay.)

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to do better. Just that. Something. Each day, today too, I am going to put my will and my actions toward being a somewhat better human being than I was yesterday. And again tomorrow. Then again the day after that. I will spend a lifetime working towards being the woman I most want to be, building the world I most want to live in. Tearing down the bullshit and baggage I learned growing up, or later on, or built myself. No excuses. I can do better.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories anger, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Rape, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, Words

Don’t Be Bamboozled

January 20, 2017 //
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It’s the day. The majority of Americans are dreading it (the actual mathematical majority of voting citizens). Today I’ll commute through throngs of Portlanders making their voices here in public spaces, and finding solidarity in outrage and anger. I’ll be focused on getting to and from work today. I’m no less outraged, no less concerned about our future, and I am also taking action. I’ve chosen different actions, for myself.

I’ll be phoning and writing to Congress. I’ve got a couple handy links:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/

https://www.senate.gov/

Postcards are inexpensive, and have the added value of making their message clear to all who handle them. In an age of tweets and texts and slogans, keeping it brief also has the advantage of being something that can be read at a glance. Short, powerful statements uncomplicated by rhetoric, written at roughly a 4th grade level will be the win on postcards. Instead of a long detailed letter seeking to persuade, giving ideas the ‘ad slogan’ treatment and getting as many into the mail as possible is the idea. I mean, I could write something long, insightful, honest, vulnerable, and real about why I personally don’t want to see the minimum retirement age for Social Security raised… I mean… holy shit, I so don’t want to still be having to work for a living when I’m fucking 70!!! Instead of 5 pages that won’t get read, I’ll go with something like “Lower the Retirement Age for the Well-being of Seniors!”, and other postcards that say “Remove the Income Cap on Social Security Withholdings; Everyone Pays, Everyone Wins”… And I’ll just keep at it. For four years. Longer.

Anyway. You have your own path to walk, your own voice to raise, your own concerns to share and to act on. Do it. There are verbs involved. Find your way. If everyone takes just one action and makes it their own, with commitment, and reliably beginning again – and again – whenever they feel beat down. Well… change is. Making change is where the power is.

My day-to-day writing isn’t about American politics, or even American life. Certainly it isn’t about our crap-tacular failure as a culture to take care of our citizens in a civilized way, or how ruinously stupid and corrupt our government appears to be becoming, so I won’t bitch about it much. It’s scary, though, isn’t it?

Today is a good day to be the change.

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Categories Anxiety, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, The Art of Being, War and News of War, Words

What Are You Doing About It?

January 7, 2017 //
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Some mornings, particularly on weekends, I sip my coffee and catch up on the news of the world and my Facebook feed before I settle down to write. On those mornings, I also fight “taking the bait” and I do battle with invisible forces hoping to leverage the power of outrage to get my attention, and others hoping to get their hands on whatever loose change may be laying about. I’m getting better at maintaining some balance in the face of emotional triggers of all sorts as I scroll through images and words.

The need to build more resistance to emotional manipulation, for me, is pretty serious. My injury and my PTSD tend to result in a level of emotionality generally (the TBI) and volatility (the PTSD) that can make me very susceptible to emotional manipulation, emotionally evocative language and images, and it has been difficult to manage over the years. If I’m being honest, I can’t say that I “managed” it all all, with any skill or noticeable success until I started practicing mindfulness – and omg, do I ever need practice, like, all the time, every day. So human. I learned a lot about how far I’ve come, during this past election year, and I also learned a lot about how far I’ve yet to go. So… I keep practicing. I keep finding my way along life’s journey, one step at a time. The news thing is tricky; I love to read, I consume content at a high rate, I love language… and I’m a highly emotional reasoning being. I needed something helpful to rely on…

I ask myself questions that seem to help sort it all out (for me).

  1. Does this matter more to me than it did when I read the last article about this? If so, am I merely having an expected reaction to repetition?
  2. Can I verify it is 100% utterly legit, fact-checked, references cited, real no bullshit data or information?
  3. Who profits from this? (…and what does that say about the content?)
  4. Is the content original? (If it’s creator content reshared/reposted, is the creator credited?)
  5. What is my purpose in sharing this? Is it necessary?
  6. What am I going to do about it? (If this is action-worthy at all, why not just take action and share that in my own words?)

I think, generally, most of my friends also read the news – no need for me to share it to ensure they hear the latest from the same mainstream sources most of us are reading. It’s redundant – which means it is repetitive, which results in higher believability whether it has a shred of truth or not. Not helpful. If I’m angry about it – do I actually want to share that experience?  If I feel moved to share content solely on the basis of seeking “solidarity”, sharing the experience of being outraged or angry, or looking for community… wouldn’t it make so much more sense to reach out to friends directly, human being to human being, get together over a coffee, or hang out together, and really talk, really share? Sure, we’re all in this together… but using Facebook to reprogram our culture seems to be taking us all to some very strange and fairly ugly places.

I’ve gotten sucked into Facebook time and again, and wasted hours of precious limited lifetime – not connecting with friends and deepening those relationships, either, just reading the news, reading memes, scrolling through duplications and repeats, and generally filling my consciousness with the cognitive equivalent of junk food. I’ve added to the noise, reposting articles that evoke an emotional reaction without closely examining why, or even whether the content is highly accurate, and unbiased. You know what it got me? What it got all of us? The 2016 election outcome. That event has really changed my thinking about what purpose Facebook serves in my experience – and what it can do, and how it affects my quality of life, generally, as an application – because that’s all it is. It’s an app. It’s up to me to use it well, and use it wisely, and be mindful of the results I see, and the consequences of my actions.

Facebook – another opportunity to be mindful. Who knew? 🙂

I’ll hop down off my soapbox. It’s a gray, cold, wintry Saturday morning. WordPress notes that it’s been 4 years here, sharing, practicing, walking my own mile. My coffee is done. The morning has begun. Thanks for being here.

Today is a good day to live life in real-time, with real people, in physical space. I think I’ll go do that. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Fiction, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Mindfulness, more than a little bit of bitching, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, War and News of War, weight loss secrets, winter, Words
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