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Seeing the Sun Rise Again

July 24, 2024 //
2

Every morning is so precious.

I’m honestly not even a “morning person”, in the sense people generally seem to mean by the phrase. I’m just an early riser by habit. I would sleep in if I could. I am not at peak energy in the early morning. I don’t prefer to interact with people in the morning until I’ve been up a good long while and had some coffee and quiet time to myself. I’m often quite irritable first thing. See? Not a “morning person”, but I most definitely appreciate seeing the sun rise again.

This one is hues of orange.

…We are mortal creatures, and there is no guarantee we’ll see the next sunrise…

I’ve grown to truly love seeing the sun rise each morning. I’m often on some trail when the sun rises, or on the road headed to a trailhead for a walk in the morning. It’s a pleasant way to begin a day. I walk with my thoughts. I take a few pictures. I reach some likely spot for meditation, a bit of writing, maybe some yoga. Over the past four years this morning walk has grown from an occasionally expedient use of my time that happens to be pleasant, to become a firm and reliable self-care practice. I often feel out of sorts and unprepared for the day without my walk – and the chance to see the sun rise again.

… How many more sunrises will I have to enjoy? I have no way to know…

…We are mortal creatures…

I walk the trail, happy with the start to my day. Content with my thoughts and my experience. Satisfied with being in this moment. I don’t need anything different than what I have now. I keep walking. The morning is mild. The air is scented by wildflowers. I am alone. I hear traffic in the distance and an airplane overhead; it’s far too rare to truly avoid the sound of humankind busily going about the business of being human. We’re noisy creatures. I shrug it off and keep walking.

Breathe, exhale, relax…and walk on. Life is a journey. The path ahead is built on my choices. When I falter, I can begin again. I am my own cartographer. This is my journey. These are my choices. I walk on, one step at a time.

… My Traveling Partner wakes at home and pings me a greeting. I stop for a moment to reply, and to reflect and write…

Another sunrise. Another new day. Another chance to begin again. It’s enough.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Limits and Journeys

July 23, 2024 //
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It’s chilly this morning.

I woke up quite early, ahead of my alarm. My Traveling Partner was already awake (woke me inadvertently), and in pain. We hung out for a little while before I left for work and for my morning walk. I almost left without my laptop, and did entirely overlook grabbing a fleece, sweater, or hoodie. Did I mention it’s chilly this morning?

I hate seeing my partner in pain. He hates being in the pain he’s in, and even more than that, he hates the limits pain places on his activities and cognitive abilities. There’s so little either of us can do about it. We wait together for his surgery, angry about a medical system that places so many limitations on doctors and patients and the medical care available to people in need. It’s inhumane and ineffective, inefficient and frankly terrible. We endure. Surgery soon, then the painful and annoying recovery journey can begin.

…We travel together…

Sometimes shit is hard. Sometimes less so. Life is complicated. I feel fortunate to have my Traveling Partner on life’s messy and painful journey. We’re in this together.

The morning chill caught me by surprise and I hustled down the path briskly to warm myself. There’s a mist clinging to the low places along the marsh. I walk on with my thoughts.

Misty morning.

This mortal life has limitations imposed by circumstances and events or enterprises beyond our individual control. We often place additional, unnecessary, limits on what we do, don’t do, can or can’t do, or have, or be, or experience. It’s a bit strange, isn’t it? I walk thinking about self-imposed limits. I remember a much younger me, talking myself out of trying pastels, when I was first “developing my voice” as an artist. Why? I judged myself (in advance of practical experience) to be “too messy” for pastels. I never gave them a chance, in spite of being fascinated by the luminous purity of the pigments. Life would later place other limits on my artistic endeavors, but truly? I got there first with my own. (Why?! Dunno. It’s very human, I suppose.)

I walked along thinking about the journey that life has taken me on. The journey I share with my partner. The limitations of the paths we’re on, individually and together. Sometimes it’s not at all clear where the path leads, or why we face the limits we do.

… Next weekend, some solo time on the coast, with my pastels, my tinnitus, and my thoughts. I don’t know what will come of it, and I find myself wondering if I am being a dick to go, with my Traveling Partner suffering as he is. The Anxious Adventurer will be home, and providing caregiving… But is that even reasonable to ask, really? I’m suddenly overcome with self doubt, even though I know how much I need the downtime.

… It’s an endurance race, not a sprint…

… Self-care really matters…

… I turn back up the trail to head to the car. It’s time to begin again, again… already…

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Enough Blame to Go Around

July 8, 2024 //
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I’m sipping an iced coffee, perched on a stretch of fence, watching the sun rise. Another hazy warm summer morning that foretells of heat to come. I’ll be in the chill of an air conditioned office for much of the day. Right now I am sitting outside, along the edge of this trail that wanders betwixt marsh and river, looking out across an expanse of meadow, breathing summer air scented by flowers and grasses. It’s a pleasant moment and my being here, now, is mostly due to my Traveling Partner’s need to get some sleep in early morning hours, and the resulting habit of mine that has developed over time; I walk in the early morning hours (avoiding making a bunch of noise knocking about the house while my Traveling Partner tries to sleep).

Another summer morning. Another sunrise.

I smile and breathe the summer scented air. It would not be an exaggeration to place the “blame” for a lot of my current living situation and quality of life on my Traveling Partner. When he and I began to become close, I was in a very different situation (professionally, financially, domestically, medically, and romantically), and from the beginning he questioned (often) why I was in that place instead of living quite differently (and better). He suggested I could do more/better with the resources I had, with my background and experience, and with available options that seemed so obvious to him. He encouraged me to choose differently. It was 2010. He nudged me into getting my first smartphone. It started with that small change, and with the change in my outlook on life that developed and began to deepen through that first year together. He really “backed me up” and encouraged me in a way no previous partner had.

…He has reliably encouraged me to be my best version of the woman I would most like to be that I possibly can…

How I live my life is in my hands. My choices are my own. I am responsible for the consequences of my actions and my words and deeds. (Good and bad.) But… I likely wouldn’t have made many of the choices I did, when I made them, or pursued the results I have gotten, without the love and encouragement, and day-to-day confidence in my abilities that my Traveling Partner has shown me. I playfully “blame him” for much of my experience of success in this latter portion of my life. I doubt I would be in this specific here and now without him. I’m grateful, both for his enduring love and friendship, and also to be here, now, living this life. However long this lasts, it’s pretty pleasant and generally comfortable, and I hope I never take it for granted.

… I’ve done the work to get here, but I wasn’t alone on this journey; it’s been a shared experience. We’re in this together…

The sound of distant traffic reminds me this is a work day. I could happily sit here with my coffee, listening to birdsong and breezes until the heat of the day made it uncomfortable, but there’s work to be done, and it’s part of maintaining this pleasant life I share with my Traveling Partner (and the Anxious Adventurer, for some while to come). I glance at the time, on my cute wrist watch, a gift from my partner earlier this year. I’ve got plenty of time to make my way back up the trail, and my coffee is gone…

… Seems like a good time to begin again…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Seeing Through New Eyes

July 6, 2024 //
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My choice of trail this morning is a bit crowded. Summer mornings often find me sharing the trail, even at this early hour. I can already feel that it’s going to be a hot day, too. Things cooled off during the night quite a lot, but it was warmer when I stepped out of the house than it has been, by several degrees. I’ve a few things I’d like to get done while it’s cooler, before the heat of the day settles in.

A new day.

I finally got started on my soft pastel adventure yesterday afternoon. A change of preferred artistic media is… complicated (at least for me). I’ve been a painter in acrylic for decades. It feels comfortable and natural to me. Pastels are new, novel, and unexplored previously. I’ve got my pastels ready, and for me the next step is study. This is much easier than it was back when I began with acrylic, or even further back in time, to my watercolor origins. Now I can easily queue up some YouTube videos of artists working in pastels and just watch them work. I sometimes find that even a very artistically “fluent” artist may not really understand what they are doing as they do it, and the discussion is a distraction. I finally turned the sound off and just watched various artists (whose end result spoke to me), while I listened to music. I greatly value watching an artist work in their chosen medium.

… I learned a lot through observation…

This morning the world “looks different” as I walk along the trail between river and marsh. There’s a mist clinging to the ground in the low land at the water’s edge, and the early morning sunshine is dazzling, illuminating leaves and stalks of meadow grass. I look at my surroundings in the context of painting the scene using pastels instead of acrylic. My perception and understanding of what I see is altered. I walk, eyes open with wonder and curiosity. “How would I capture that?” Is an unspoken question, repeated frequently.

… I keep walking…

The sun rises higher. The light becomes brighter, bolder, harsher. Shadows shift. Colors change. I walk and watch.

Voices approaching from behind me startle me from my reverie. I pause and let a small group of photographers walk past. I stop where I am to write and reflect, finding myself eager to “get on with things” in order to knock out my list of crap that needs doing, so I can get back to my studies and subsequently take advantage of this wellspring of inspiration welling up from within me. I’m eager to give the new pastels a proper exploration and see where they take me creatively.

More voices. More people. The trail is too crowded for a creature such as I. lol I stand up and prepare to head back to the car to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being

The Best Advice

July 3, 2024 //
0

Beautiful sunrise. Good morning to get a walk in. I’ve had the trail to myself, and watched the sunrise as I walked. Lovely.

Every day, every journey, begins somewhere.

The weather forecast indicates there is an extreme heat warning for the latter portion of the week, possibly record-breaking. I checked with my Traveling Partner about whether there were steps we might need to take to stay comfortable and ensure our AC functions properly. I’ll make a point to stock additional beverages and cold foods, so we won’t be required to cook using the oven or stovetop for long periods of time. I’ll drink more water.

…”Drink more water” is excellent hot weather advice, but there’s something quite limited about even the very best to bits of advice; it only works when actually taken. There are verbs involved. If we receive great advice but choose to disregard it, instead of applying it, our failures and misadventures thereby are of our own making. No one to blame but the person in the mirror. We for sure can’t claim we didn’t have guidance or that the advice was ineffective. lol

Why do people get great advice and then choose not to follow it? I don’t have an answer, I’m just wondering. I mean, actually, I can come up with several possible answers, but I don’t at all know which are likely to be most correct. Maybe we don’t trust the advice to be accurate? Maybe we don’t find the source to be credible? Maybe we think we’re a special case and the norms don’t apply to us? Maybe… maybe mostly… we’re just not really listening in the first place? That seems likely… people are pretty crappy at listening to someone else talking.

… Maybe sometimes there’s too much new information to process…

Are you listening to the good advice you’re given? Do you use it?

My neck aches ferociously this morning. I think I “slept on it wrong”. Ouch. The pain colors my experience unpleasantly. When the time comes, I take my morning medication, grateful to be able to add prescription pain relief, grateful to have it available, hopeful that it will bring some relief. I stopped on the trail several times trying to “work the kinks out” by practicing the release and self-massage techniques my chiropractor taught me. These are often quite helpful, this morning they are less so. I still make the effort. The headache that rises from the pain in my neck spreads like flames across the left side of my face. Occipital neuralgia. Fuuuuuuck. “Just kill me now”, I snarl quietly to myself, though I don’t mean it literally. I just hurt. I stretch. I breathe. I keep walking. This too will pass.

I reach my halfway point and keep walking, lost in my thoughts and preoccupied by my pain. This trail is a loop. Though I often walk out and back, a shorter distance, the full distance of the loop isn’t unreasonably far. I laugh at myself; looks like I’m going the distance this morning. I have time. Anyway, I’d be shit to be around this morning, and my Traveling Partner was already up when I left. No reason to rush back with my bitchy cross mood intact. I sigh as I walk.

… I should probably begin again. That’s pretty good advice…

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, turning 60, women
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