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Facing the Day As It Comes

January 12, 2026 //
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After a lovely restful weekend (and even sleeping in both days!), I woke earlier than I planned, this morning. I must have felt rested; the transition between sleeping and waking happened without my noticing, and there I was, awake for some minutes before I noticed I wasn’t asleep. I got up and dressed and prepared for the day as quietly as I was able – which, this morning, wasn’t very quiet. I grimaced when I banged my computer bag against the door jam on my way out. I felt certain that would wake someone.

I started the car, the tank read only a quarter full. Shit. I stopped and filled up for the week, somewhat reluctantly. I’ve got another errand to run later, and lately it feels like every dollar has two places to go. We’re a year in, and Trump’s economy isn’t an improvement on much of anything at all. I sighed to myself standing in the cold, pumping my own gas, thinking my thoughts.

A lovely lazy weekend…but I still need to take down the holiday decor.

It is a Monday. No particular feeling of dread involved, no extraordinary measure of anxiety, it’s just a day that follows the weekend. It was a good weekend. I started reading The Stand, by Stephen King. I’m well into it, and grateful I didn’t start it while I was ill. lol That might have worked on my mind a bit too much. As it is, it brings thoughts of COVID and the pandemic to mind. I cough, and look around the cafe a little guiltily. Coughing in public spaces makes me so uncomfortable, since the pandemic. I guess that’s reasonable – as the cold war shaped my thinking about nuclear war, so the pandemic shaped my thinking about contagion and social responsibility.

So… A routine Monday, then, and later some time spent moving boxes from one storage place to another with the help of the Anxious Adventurer. It all seems so very ordinary and routine. I don’t dare look at the news; it will mire me in dread and anxiety, and a forboding “what the fuck?” feeling that is hard to shake off, not so much because the news is bad (it’s unlikely to be good), it’s more that it is just so fucking petty and stupid. I can’t be bothered this morning, I’m still enjoying a lingering good mood from the weekend. I’d like to enjoy it a while longer. It suddenly feels like a busy week…the storage move, the car repair, the housekeeping, the cooking, work, and I still need to take down the holiday decor. I am reminded that what I put my attention on is what will fill my experience, and when I crowd my thoughts with imminent tasks and challenges I lose the opportunity to enjoy this quiet moment, here, now. I breathe, exhale, and relax – and let it go for now. I can take it as it comes. I can walk my path one step at a time.

Once we choose our path, we’ve still got to walk it. The journey is the destination. 🙂

I sigh quietly and sip my coffee. I’ve settled into a routine that feels pretty comfortable, lately, and it is happily less costly, and removes the hour-long commute I sometimes take to a distant co-work office. Pleasant, somewhat warmer weather will find me on a nearby trail, walking with my thoughts, and wintry cold mornings or inclement weather not suited to walking, finds me in this cafe (it’s just a Starbucks, very near the university library where I generally work most days, now). It works. The cost of a small black coffee for the time, the table, and the connection, is a small price to pay, far less than the cost of the gas for the commuting or the co-work space membership. I’m gonna drink coffee regardless – as long as the beans reach these shores affordably (for some values of “affordable”). Hell, my coffee was already ready and waiting for me this morning, when I arrived. lol

Happy Monday, indeed.

The Chaotic Comic came by to hang out and visit, yesterday. It was a good time, friends talking, nothing elaborate, but I really needed that connection, I think. It satisfies something within me, in spite of my less than ideally sociall nature. I still miss my Dear Friend greatly, since her death, and there is something “familiar feeling” in this new friendship, as if I have stepped into a role with the Chaotic Comic that my Dear Friend once filled for me. The age difference is about right; my Dear Friend was about where I am in life now, when we first met. The Chaotic Comic teeters on the edge of familiar circumstances in her own life, as I once faced in mine. Funny how the wheel turns, eh? My Traveling Partner graciously makes room for my new friendship, still making a point to get acquainted briefly before returning to what he was doing in another room. I’m grateful for his astute social discernment; he knew I needed this before I recognized it myself.

Human beings, being human. Living our finite mortal lives, moment by moment, choice by choice. I sip my coffee and wonder about the point of it. Maybe there truly is none, and we really do create any meaning or purpose that exists for us, at all? Are we only a peculiar cosmic coincidence, after all? Good times come and go. Dark times, too. Reading The Stand has me wondering, if it became necessary to leave it all behind, and walk away (or run), would I have the resilience and strength of character to make such a decision? Would I dither endlessly and meet a messy end as a result? Would I choose wisely or yield to magical thinking in spite of what I can see with my own eyes? Would I die in a zombie apocalypse, or could I survive? I can remember my father’s harsh words in some moment when I was stuck on a decision in a moment that required action, “Do something, damn it, even if it isn’t right!” and how often that lead me to make precisely the wrong choice in some urgent-seeming breathless moment of pressure and panic. Learning to slow down, to consider the details, the resources, the options, and to attempt to choose wisely based on a bigger picture has been worthwhile, and has stood me in good stead. How slow is too slow? How much consideration is too much time spent thinking something over? I sip my coffee and wonder if it is all down to the roll of the dice and the hand that we’re dealt? Do our careful choices matter? I like to think that they do. Maybe careful choices don’t guarantee better outcomes, but they seem to make the journey more enjoyable, day-to-day. The difference between a well-maintained trail through a lovely meadow, and trying to blaze a new trail through treacherous mires or marshes, seems a useful metaphor, perhaps. I think that over awhile, sipping my coffee.

However straight and obvious life’s path seems at a glance… I can’t quite see where it leads.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, and think about this path, this journey. I take a moment for gratitude. I’m aware I have better circumstances than a great many people, although I deal with my own challenges (and they sometimes feel unreasonably numerous). It could be worse. I’m fortunate to love and be loved. Fortunate to have indoor plumbing, and employer-provided healthcare. Fortunate to have a few simple luxuries and modern conveniences. Fortunate to have some useful survival skills and experience with hard times. I’m grateful to walk this path in good company. I finish my coffee thinking how good life is, when I’m not caught up in distant bullshit and vexation about things I can’t change with some action of my own. I smile, thinking of my Traveling Partner, and hoping that if I did wake him this morning, that he woke in good spirits and knowing how much I love him. I finish my coffee, and prepare to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, winter, women, Words

What’s the Weather Like?

August 28, 2021 //
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Today’s emotional weather forecast seemed sunny, clear, and breezy. Forecasts are not always accurate. Reality is not always according to plan. Moments are what they are. This moment? Me, now? Partly cloudy with hints of storm clouds on the horizon, which is to say, I’m in kind of a shitty mood. What is most aggravating about that, at present, is that there is no real reason for that to be the case, that is at all obvious to me. I’m feeling rather cross, and I’m not up for bullshit, today. :-\

I had a lovely walk. It was hard, though, to focus on the surroundings; the trail was rather crowded, and with a lot of families and children. So, while the healthy exercise was… healthy… it was also unfortunately very “people-y”, as well, and thus not at all what I was going there for. My ankle ached the entire distance. My headache joined me about midway, and has been loyal to a fault ever since.

Yeah, buddy, I get it, I really do.

I arrived home after some errands, and my walk, and enjoyed a bite of lunch with my Traveling Partner. He didn’t hang out with me very long, and although I “feel fine” in every practical respect (aside from this aching ankle, and my persistent headache), I guess something about my vibe just feels off, from the vantage point of trying to hang out with me. I didn’t fight it. He headed to his shop. I ran another errand, came home, and had a pleasant shower. Still have this headache. Ankle still aches. Back has started to ache, too. All quite “within specifications” for my day-to-day experience of wellness and relative comfort, and there’s nothing much to do about any of that. I take a handful of ibuprofen and assure myself it’s got to do something. My partner had pointed out that I sounded “stuffy”, so I take some allergy medication, too. Whatever. Maybe something will help somehow.

…I honestly just want to relax…

Tears well up in my eyes. I don’t know why. I’m suddenly hit hard by a surprisingly visceral awareness of loss… the people who are gone… why now?? I am, for a moment, too aware that I’ll never send my mother a birthday card again. Never pick up the phone and talk to my father, or grandfather. Never grab a beer on a weekend with old buddies, now long gone. Never “get closure”… oh, so many fucked up things fit in that bucket. What a weird, hard, sharp, fierce, painful emotional moment this one happens to be. What the fuck?? Tears begin streaming down my face. This would feel like “hormones” if I were not 8 years past menopause. What kind of problematic nonsense is this shit??

I get it. I’m grieving. It’s been in my dreams, too. I don’t really know what to do with it, honestly. The timing is most peculiar, and detached from any relevant experience now. Maybe the pandemic and it’s weird vast isolation and distancing is working on my mind – maybe I just feel “lonely” in spite of being so fortunate as to spend the pandemic with my partner, loved and loving? It could be that. Wouldn’t that be enough?

…I don’t even like spending time around people all that much, so…um… whatever this shit is? Not okay.

I sigh out loud in this quiet room. I really just want to sit down and write my Mom or my Granny a long letter about oh so many things, and maybe even tucking in some photographs (remember when those were a physical thing, to hold in one’s hand?), or some small sketch or trinket or pressed flower. There’s no one to receive that letter…

And it’s time to begin again.

…Unexpectedly, just at the point of typing that period, my Traveling Partner calls to me through the closed door, “You should come out to the shop!” I reply “Okay”, and as I open the door, we meet in the hallway. His warm brown eyes scan my face attentively. I don’t recall if he explicitly asked how I was doing, but I do remember saying “I’m in pain, and I have a sad” and a handful more words, and a few tears, tumbled out. I remember saying something about “my bullshit” and “please just ignore it” (I’m too familiar with how it can spiral out of control with any measure of authentic kindness being shown, and I’m really not going for that.). I remember his hug. His reassuring presence. He shows me his finished work, and how well the CNC is working. It’s pretty cool, and a definite mood-lifter. After all… what are new beginnings for, if not to connect, to share, and to find real joy? So… yeah. I’m trying to put my bullshit aside, and enjoy these moments. There really isn’t any reason not to, and so many reasons to embrace every bit of joy life provides. I’ll guess I’ll go do that. 😉

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, grief, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, loneliness, Love, Menopause, 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, The Big 5

Try, or Practice?

July 29, 2017 //
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I woke up early. It makes sense. I went to bed early, too. I woke during the night. No surprise there, I often do. There’s no stress over any of that. My head is a jumble of random beginnings of thoughts seeking a narrative in which to play a role. My morning is a strange sequence of broken routines and randomness. I’m not concerned about that, either. Again and again, I pull myself back to this moment, here, now.

I sit down with my coffee, eventually, some two hours after waking (which is only one of many odd random bits of altered behavior that seems without cause or purpose).

The first track on my playlist right now is an old favorite. I want very much to play the bass line; I am not yet sufficiently skilled (and realistically, there is chance I never will be). I can try to play it, and fail. I could do that repeatedly. I could do that repeatedly until I am frustrated to the point of disliking what I am doing, although I am doing it because I enjoy it… a lot of people approaching learning something challenging in just that fashion.

I take another approach, instead of “trying”… I practice. That’s it. My approach to a lot of stuff I’m not good at, don’t yet know, haven’t yet found my way around, through, over, or into, or need to do and don’t quite “get”, yet. I practice. I practice the basic skills that would be required to do the thing. Too complicated? I break those things down further, to more elemental basics, until I can begin assembling simpler behavior or actions (or understandings) into more and more complex combinations, and – if all goes well – have learned to do the thing, have gained a new understanding, have completed some complicated task… whatever it is. Most things seem to work out pretty well this way, although it is not the fastest process by which to achieve success. It’s a bit like… a through hike on an unmarked trail, while all the way along observing what appears to be a freeway almost within reach, on the other side of a fence. I could waste time trying to reach that freeway, or I can walk on.

I still get where I’m going. That’s enough.

It may be an uphill climb, some days. I still practice taking time to enjoy the journey, and to look for beauty.

I enjoyed a strangely intimate and emotionally nurturing yesterday. I hung out with a dear friend of many years. We haven’t made time to hang out in about 4 years, and it was overdue, welcome, and comfortably intimate. She is someone I love, though we’ve never been lovers. We’re at very different places in life, and that has been an interesting characteristic of our friendship all along. She was the friend who said to me, so many years ago, “have you heard of ACT?”. Words that would later prove to be another piece to the puzzle of healing and learning to care for the woman in the mirror, because they would still be lingering in my consciousness on that grim December day when I began checking off my list of things to do before I would end my own life. That last item? Try therapy one more time. Her words were a hint at a new direction; “third wave cognitive behavior therapy”. There are several, some very rigid and formal, others less so.

Have we covered this before? Sure. It’s buried in the details, in much older posts. The eagerness of this new way to experience life, more authentically, with greater self-compassion, erupts in my words post after post after post. Life happens. I write about that too. Now and then I add something to The Reading List; my journey is paved with stepping-stones made of books, and practices, and the words of dear friends.

A current favorite track on my playlist feels timed for the moment. My heart fills with tenderness, and gratitude. I’m glad I stayed. Warm tears splash my glasses, and my shoulders shake with sobbing, and I’m just fucking crying now… I’m not unhappy. I’m relieved. I might have missed this precious moment right now. I might have missed yesterday… the lovely color work I got done on my hair… the phone call with my Traveling Partner later in the day… the conversations with friends. Fuck I am so glad I stayed around awhile longer… My heart aches with a powerful need to say “thank you” or.. “I’m sorry”… or… something.  There are literally no words for this strange strong emotion of thankfulness I feel that I chose to live. I’m okay with that too. I’m not afraid to feel.

Another good morning on which to begin again. I don’t know that I’ve done anything that changes the world, but so much as changed about the woman in the mirror. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

One Week of Waiting

July 6, 2017 //
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I woke this morning to a cooler apartment than usual after such a hot day; I’d fallen asleep with all the windows and the patio door wide open, without meaning to. I’m sort of glad I didn’t notice. It’s lovely to feel the cool morning breeze and the apartment refreshingly comfortable instead of stifling and oppressively still and warm. I’m even more glad that no passing stranger noticed the opportunity to quietly slip into my utterly unsecured dwelling and take all of my (conveniently packed) belongings while I slept (rather more soundly than usual). I wake feeling comfortable, grateful, appreciative, and relieved all at once. I sip my coffee wondering if this particular mix of emotions has a name of its own.

Another good day to begin again.

The dawn sky is shades of peach and a watery pale blue. Another hot day ahead. Peculiarly, I have my headphones on… no music. I must have meant to put some on… I didn’t actually do it. Even noticing this, I don’t actually pause to remove the headphones, or to put on music. I sip coffee. I write. I am content in this moment and the headphones are simply not relevant, nor are they uncomfortable. So… there they sit. On my head. Without purpose. lol Funny human primate.

I’ve still got a week to go before I have keys in hand, a new address, and a busy long weekend of getting moved out of here. So many boxes, in stacks and groups and piles and pillars and arrangements in spaces… and still a week of waiting remaining to be waited out. I still have more stuff to go into more boxes. A few more evenings and a weekend will take care of that.

I chuckle to consider a faraway friend making the journey to help me move; we’ll be basically “camping” in this space by the time he arrives, and then in the new house after the movers do their thing. I’m pretty blown away by the affection of friends who will help with moving. Friends who not only help with moving but will also travel more than 700 miles to do so, and do that with the expectation that there will be no comfortable convenient hospitality of the sort I usually provide is absolutely a treat, a wonder, a rare delight – and appreciated on a whole different level, that involves more than a little awe, and perhaps a tiny bit of bewilderment, and a sense that I need to step up my own friend game… because… I am not sure I’m that person, myself, and just… wow. I could be, though, right? Choices. I am fortunate indeed to have such friends.

What next? I have so much of the next few days tightly planned, centered on this move… I make a point to also take care of this fragile vessel. The hot days are difficult. I make a point to slow down a little bit, to drink a lot more water, to attempt to get adequate rest – even if that means laying down while evening is still daylight, windows and doors wide open to breezes, and at risk of falling deeply asleep without securing the premises. lol I finally got a really good night’s sleep, in spite of the heat. 😀 I really needed the rest.

The “hard part” of the packing comes next. It is time to box up all the books, and take down all the paintings. This also means having to work a little more to manage my anxiety as it comes and goes; bare walls reliably fill me with anxiety and a subtle continuous stress – “you don’t belong here” is the message of bare white walls, to me. It’s fairly important to my mental and emotional wellness that I not subject myself to unadorned walls any longer than necessary.  Still, it is time, and it must be done. The weekend will be a good one for it. 🙂 Once the keys are in my hands, and that first car load is unpacked, there will be at least one small painting along for that trip, and it will go up before I even head back for another carload of household goods. No kidding. If it fits in the car, I may very well simply take the big painting that is most likely to be hanging above the fireplace. It’s a touch that makes me feel very at home, and the message it sends becomes “I live here”. Comforting. Safe. Real.

Gnothi seauton. “Figuring out my shit” turns out to be less about changing it, sometimes, than understanding it, and working with it instead of fighting it all the damned time. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Moving and Moving Forward

June 28, 2017 //
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It’s a comfortably cool, somewhat humid morning. The red-wing blackbird outside the window is piercingly reminding me that the feeder is empty.  It is, and that’s because it is fully summer, and there is no “food shortage” out there in the meadow and marsh this time of year, and I moving very soon. It’s time to prune back the roses for traveling – although this year a friend with a truck seems likely, and perhaps I won’t need to cut them back so much as the last two times I moved? I am now full of enthusiasm for this move, and I smile even thinking about my initial anxiety and frustration with having to, now that I’m past that.

…It’s still really hard to get started. It’s time to box up all the books and breakables. It’s time to take down all the paintings that are hanging. The more prepared I am, and the more small work I’ve done to be ready for the movers (and friends coming ’round to help out with moving), the less time I have to spend actually moving, and the less I have to pay the movers for fewer hours of their work. It’s still really really hard to do the first thing – whatever it ends up being. Beginning again, as often as I say the phrase, sounds so… easy. Just… do the thing, right? Yeah. That’s totally true, and also… totally not as easy as it sounds, often. lol Where to begin?

Any new journey begins somewhere. A moment, a location, an opportunity, a choice; a change-in-progress has to have begun with something. So, this morning I’m a bit hung up on that beginning, because this upcoming weekend kicks off the packing of things into boxes. 🙂 When I go to get the keys, I’d ideally like to have a carload of stuff with me, to bring into the house – I mean, I’m making the trip there, the end result of which will be keys in hand, right? It just seems practical to take stuff over with me. What to bring in that first car load, though? I consider the most likely immediate needs at both ends of the move… a drink of water, a cup of coffee, a quick bite to eat, or a trip to the rest room… someplace to sit down… a plan begins to form.

I figure I can easily take over one or another of three coffee solutions at hand. I’d need to have at least one coffee mug, at least one drinking glass. Packing the pantry seems an easy step, too. A quantity of my breakables have never been unpacked here in this apartment, although I had the space for them – I never reached my “buy a new hutch or curio” goal, in my budget. Higher priorities cropped up more than once over the course of the year. Moving them over is easily done…and goes a long way toward making me feel at home in the new place, and also more relaxed about the move by getting them out of harm’s way early on.

So the morning over coffee goes… I make a list, think it over, shuffle it around, consider cubic footage of space in the car… pack it in my head, unpack it, re-pack it. By the time the day is here, this will feel planned and routine – and hopefully comfortable. I rely on that feeling of preparedness and ease to keep my anxiety at bay; every time I move seems to “change everything”, and getting settled can be a long process for me.

I’m pre-occupied with moving – fortunately, I find it also a great “living metaphor” and as the process unfolds, I am also considering the woman in the mirror and her journey. It’s time to set down some baggage, and get more comfortably moved into my life, and my experience. It may not be easy to get started, but it is time to “walk on” from one thing to the next, with a full tool box full of verbs, and a better idea of who I am – and who I want most to be. My results may vary, but I can begin again, and begin again, and begin again – and incremental change over time is unavoidable; we become what we practice. So.

Begin again? Sure. This path definitely leads somewhere…

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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