Tag Archives: spiritual

Establishing patterns

2016-11-26-11-04-34

So, yeah.  I picked up and moved.  For the past few years I had been stuck.  Stuck largely to furniture, thanks to gravity.  Stuck in a relatively small home that grew to overwhelm me as my strength diminished.  Stuck, in the sense that I had never been disabled before.  I had so much yet to learn and experience, before I could even begin to think of getting myself unstuck.

Four years ago I was still working.  48 months ago I had been living with my diagnosis for only about seven about months.  Working had become extraordinarily difficult.  Like a stubborn mule, I did not know I had to change my thinking.  I already was disabled.  But it wouldn’t register.  So I persevered into 2013.  March, April and May were the months that changed my thinking.  I kept missing days at work.  Every time I called in, I remember believing.  Even though I can’t move today, I should feel better by tomorrow.  My boss knew my situation.  And I had accrued close to a year in sick days.  Until the previous year, I never called into work.  I prided myself on my endurance.  By that spring, I was missing two days a week, then three, then four.  Will power and intention were no longer sufficient to move my body.

Things would eventually get a lot worse.  But now I live in North Carolina.  I relocated to be nearer to immediate family.  And I am dealing with things much better.  I still have muscular dystrophy (of course!).  In terms of strength, I am weaker than before.  But in terms of energy, and ability, I have improved.  In the coming days I will begin to share this story.

About three years ago I began this blog.  I was further into my collapse, but still hadn’t bottomed out.  I began the blog because I felt moved to write about my experiences.  Not so much the physical.   But the spiritual.  I was in the midst of another big change in life.  This one was about as profound as any I have been through.  While I felt called to write about my experiences, the act of writing was becoming increasingly difficult.

Back then, I was stymied.  My life was no longer moving forward.  It still had momentum, but mine had spun out of control.  Three years ago I wanted to tell this story.  Now, I finally can begin.  Back then, seeing my story was not yet possible.  I had lessons to learn, and difficulties to overcome.  I realized I couldn’t tell this story while living it.  First, I had to change my circumstances.

Now, I can begin to unravel things.  Here’s what happened, as I remember it.  First I crashed headlong into reality.  Recovery was an ordeal.  But eventually I got up and reassessed things.   I had to make a lot of changes.  But my life is finally moving forward again.  Attention to the patterns that make up my life was key.

What is life?

I want to share something.  But, I’m going through one of these myotonic-dystrophy episodes, where exertion brings on pain and.

Moving is exertion.  The days go by, and everything I write seems to suck.

My difficulty writing is part of my MD experience.  The highs, and lows, roughly follow my symptoms through the months.

So, this evening, I vaporized Sour Diesel.

Cannabis overcomes the inertia built into my symptom-cycle.

And Sour Diesel begs for music.

I fell asleep to Kaya.   Bob Marley’s ode to marijuana and rain.

 

My windows and doors are open.  A storm approaches from California.  Sometime tomorrow, we should have our first rain since November.

We are overcast with winter warmth.  My two cats, and the neighbor’s, are playing tag in the wind.

Throughout the yard and house.

 

I woke to the question.

What Is Life?

Black Uhuru asks.

 

 

Something about this song speaks to me.

The experience of life is framed by contrasting interpretations.

The positive and the negative are both constants.

The choice is where to focus.

A poetic, yet realistic, statement.

A foundation, for Conscious-Writing.

Conscious-Writing is Conscious-Thinking.

 

The above-two-lines should be written on my blog as, a poetic, yet realistic, statement.

That could be the title.

The words, trailing the first comma, of the first sentence, of this stanza.

 

Realistic, in the sense that.

If Know-One is doing it, someone should.

 

That someone should be me, because.

There seems to be, a need-in-the-field.

Of Conscious-Awareness.

 

But, if Someone is doing it, then I should first join.

Discover what they think.

 

Responses would be welcomed.

A few, brief, thoughts.

I have been quiet the better part of a week.  Possibly, the best week of my life, in many ways.

Since my previous post, I have been in wheel-chair prescription-limbo.

It’s bizarre.  How strange our worlds?

Become, when insurance enters our lives.

It’s not my control.  It’s shared control.

In order to gain control, I have to learn how insurance companies think.  It’s what I imagine before.

The alien, suddenly, in my dreams.

And this has been possibly the best week of my life, because, for the rest of it, I have only been writing, and meditating on my manuscript. I am now in full book-writing mode.

Beam me up, Spock.

To a heavenly place.

Each day, when I begin to type.

Thoughts.  Not my own.

2014-01-14

A beautiful day in Tempe.

Desert sky.

Winter’s bright blue glare.

An easily love affair.

I will now observe a moment of silence. 

Shorts and a sweatshirt.  

A mid-January,  Arizona,  fortune.

...

I’m feeling better, too.

Rebound!

I haven’t published anything in over a week, although, I have been writing every day.

The effects of my MD are inversely related to my ability to think and operate lucidly.

On my bad days, I write.  But, personal therapy is not for sharing.

I write because I know.  I will feel better, again, soon.

And because yesterday’s experience will help me navigate today.

The benefit of daily of journaling is the mindful comparison of this effort to my previous.

And of this effort to my best.

What went well for me today?  What did not?

What did I do to contributed to the result?  And, what did I do to undermine myself?

Were my behaviors conducive to my goals?  Or was I a destructive influence on my own audition?

And, what lessons can I categorize into a general understanding?

An approach to life.

Going forward — should I shift my stance?

My biggest growth as a writer comes from my journal.  It is the playing field where I hone my craft.

As a child I spent many afternoons hitting pitches and throwing and catching balls.

I never thought of it as practice.  I was playing and improving.  They are one and the same in the presence of mind.

It’s a biologically programmed behavior.  Boys play without even realizing, someday soon, success might win the attention of a girl.

But, we don’t play because we want to be noticed.

And, when it’s not fun I am noticed for the wrong reasons.

Now I write, because swinging a bat while remaining on my feet is too difficult.

But.  Also.

Writing is fun.

However.

Fun, for me, is learning about myself, and preparing for success on a given day.

Because.

Success is not hit-or-miss.  Success comes from aiming, followed by a hit or a miss.

Then stepping back.

And assessing.

When I learned team sports, the coaches would always have us stretch and warm-up before practice.

But, on my own I learned that stretching was typically easier after the workout, with muscles already limber.  And the benefit of the stretch would last longer.  Typically deep into the following day.

I didn’t notice then that I would also use the stretching to meditate.

On what I did, and how I felt.  I was judging, during my cool-down, how I performed.

What went well, and what surprised me, if anything?

Now I am an older man.  And I realize the mental benefits of assessing each performance, from day-to-day, are better than the physical.

I would rather write badly today than not write at all.  I know that tomorrow will probably be better.

And if I do write badly, but identify a cause, I increase the probability.

Tomorrow will be better.

Because I am changing my game-plan as I speak, to handle better handle the contingencies and nuances of life.

I’m no good at that is the mindset of child.

I can get better at this is the mindset of an adult.

And my journal is where I observe myself growing.