Tag: travel

Exhaustion

To say that adulting is exhausting right now, would be the understatement of the century. Even being a kid is an endless string of activities, events, play dates, tests, and whatever. Many of us are chronically sleep deprived to start with, but what about the emotional and spiritual toll this modern world lays on us? How does chronic sleep deprivation factor into these elements, and how do we get out of the ruts in which we find ourselves? I can assure you, we are not going to “self care” our way through the feelings of dread, dissatisfaction, loneliness, anger, loss, shame, frustration… or much else. The whole idea that we can find salvation in a product, concept, or idea, has been the biggest of the big lies of human history. But really though, how do we find it? Asking for a friend.

There has to be a balance struck again, if ever there was one, in our daily lives. For instance, I get up VERY early every morning, so that I have time to collect my thoughts before the action of the day, especially weekdays. I have about 1-2 hours before the house starts to wake up. I’m able to read the news, make coffee, do some yoga or meditate, catch up on social media, and maybe even get some breakfast. I wake the kiddo up for school, and we are off to the races from there, until bedtime for us both. By 8:30pm, I’m soooo ready for bed. That’s just the regular schedule we have. It’s summer break now, so things are a little different. I still get up with the sun, and want to crawl into bed at the same time as always. I definitely like a routine. However, the last several days have been different. Perhaps it’s the humidity where we live, or that our school-year routine has been disrupted, but I can say I’ve been walking around like a zombie. I’ve been doing some learning courses in the early mornings, and the kiddo has been in summer mode, sleeping in typically. I’m way too high strung to sleep in or take naps. I’ve been an insomniac as long as I can remember. The balance to the crazy days are those moments of quiet in the morning; rarely is anyone up with me, save for the dog. I can attest that this week has been a challenge to find that balance, since the kiddo has also been fighting a summer cold, waking up early in the mornings, and struggling to get to sleep at night for the same reason. I’m grateful that I’ve been available to attend to the illness and a kiddo who needs me, but losing the balance time has been noticeable.

In contrast, it has taken me decades to get to this place of understanding rhythms. I’m a routine-oriented, Type-A, highly anxious human being, so “relaxing” isn’t something that comes naturally to me. My version of it is cleaning the kitchen or sitting here at my desk writing. I spend about an hour or so on the couch in the evenings with my family, generally unwinding from the day, but even then, I’m typically multitasking on my phone. It’s the main time that I get to see my husband, as he often works longs days away from home, while I work at home and chauffeur a small human to and from school.

But why? Why is it so hard for me to wind down? Probably the same reasons that you and many other people do. We are overstimulated, overworked, overtired, while simultaneously undervalued, and under-connected with. It’s a wild dichotomy and how we found ourselves here is a modern human invention. It didn’t have to be this way. I’m not someone who has nostalgia for the hunter-gatherer days, by any stretch. I enjoy not being a nomad (in some ways), having a permanent home, and being able to have that routine I speak so highly of. I like modern conveniences for stuff, too. However, at the same time, I loathe the idea of credit scores and preventable wars, billionaires and their race to the stars. I’m pretty much over most of it.

This leads me back to balance and exhaustion. It’s fucking exhausting living in the modern age. We are distracted, disconnected from everything that matters, and more diseased than ever. There has to be some sort of balance. We have to find the simplicity and joy of connection, focus, and love. If we come from a place of love and connection, all things are possible, in my opinion. Obviously, peace and love aren’t going to get the richest among us to pay more in taxes or end world hunger anytime soon. I’m not delusional. However, it’ll make our time on this rock suck marginally less, and give us the community of friends, family, and neighbors that we so desperately need. We will make connections with those around us, help us find support during the hard times, and have folks to celebrate with us during the times we need to throw a parade for our successes. It makes every single thing suck less, to not be an island. It’s the love and connections that will get us through.

One of my besties literally just called me, while she is on a weekend trip with longtime friends and family, to tell me about a win she just received. A 30 second phone call to say “Hey I got the great news in an email just now, and I had to share it with you”. I told her how amazing I thought it was, and told her congratulations. That was it. Love you, bye. End of call. This is the shit we need. People in our corner to fight and celebrate with us, so we can help each other carry the weight of the crazy world. This is how we strike the balance between overwhelming existential dread and a throwing fucking party. Also, as a brief aside, surround yourself with people who fill your cup up, recharge your batteries, and give a crap about you, as often as humanly possible. The alternative is miserable- 0/10- Do Not Recommend. Not only will we find better balances in our lives, but we will find the drain far less exhausting to endure. Life is short, fill as many moments as possible with love and compassion.

Thank you for reading

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Rainy Day Musings

The last several days have been really bipolar in my personal life. Both extremes, swinging wildly to be noticed, as I’ve been wrapping up a couple courses that I’ve been working on in my time off. I’ve been meditating more and noticing there have been some really interesting synchronicities swirling about. I’m moving through some changes and experiencing personal growth, but I look around and see things that may be reminders of something or little signs that I pick up on in the world. Some give me a feeling of reaffirming, like seeing birds in the bird feeder reaffirms that animals are often so much wiser than we are. Oh, and to remember to refill it, as we now have a hungry horde of diverse bird species that come to our birdie buffet. Or seeing 12:34 on the clock everyday, which makes me think I’m on the right path for something. I couldn’t tell you what, since I feel like I’m floating in space most of the time. I also feel like so many of us are “looking for a sign”, that sometimes we just make them up, so we can feel supported or as there is a divine presence of sorts. It makes us feel less alone, I imagine. I’m sure I’m making some of these signs up. That’s my cynical nature shining through. My cautiously optimistic side wants to believe there is something to synchronicities and signs. Maybe I’m just trying to drag myself out of existential dread or perpetual boredom. Who knows?

I’ve been reading a book called Find Your F*ckyeah, by Alexis Rockley (the audio version of course, because I can only read in short bursts these days, due to many interruptions). She describes your F*ckyeah as your “art” or “passion”, not necessarily something you get paid for, but things you’d do without getting paid, or things that you can find your flow in. I love her approach to this book, not claiming to have all the answers, and just being real. I appreciate the honesty. But more than that, I appreciate her saying, sure, I don’t have the answers for you, but I have the way that you can find them yourselves. I don’t want anyone to do anything FOR me, or giving me some “quick fix” solution. I want to have the skills and knowledge to DO IT MYSELF. And maybe that hyper-self reliance is my trauma response to being perpetually disappointed. I’m self aware enough to recognize that I’ve been let down, A LOT. By myself and everyone else. I’d rather be to blame on my own, and figure it out without relying on others, who will then also let me down. Being let down by myself for not meeting an expectation is part of the human experience. Being let down by others can be triggering and cause us to lose faith in humanity or our support systems. It’s all a bad time.

But the question for me is how to find FLOW. Do I do the stuff I’m good at? There’s a handful of things I’m alright at, but most of them are soul numbing and boring as hell. Do I do the things I’m bad at? That sounds like an effort in frustration, since I don’t want to keep doing something I’m bad at to hopefully find joy and flow in it at some later time. Does that make me impatient? Yeah, probably. My brand of neurospicy can only handle so much failure in a day, and doing something I’m not good at in hopes to become better at it, sounds exhausting these days. Unless of course, it’s something I find some sort of joy in, but those things seem to be fewer and fewer. Being an adult is crap. Just continuing to do things that suck, day in and day out, until we come to the end? Why have we done this to ourselves? Alexis suggests making the mundane into a game, to make it less garbage and soul killing.

A couple of things I am pretty good at, that are not completely mind numbing, are writing (which I’m doing right now) and roller skating. There are only a couple roller rinks remaining here, and of course the weather isn’t cooperating for outdoor skating. My hope is to take the kiddo out next week, when the rain is slated to pause, so we can hit the skate park. She can ride her bike or scooter, and I can get in some skate time myself. That’s been the light guiding me out of this weather-induced funk. We’ve had only a few sunny days, and the rest have been torrential rain. Gotta love the Midwest. My goal is to improve my jam (otherwise known as rhythm) skating, since I spent a decade of my life playing roller derby. The jam aspect sort of got lost. I took a couple roller derby practice sessions last year and the game has changed so much, as has the style of play. I retired 10 years ago, so it doesn’t hold the same spark for me. It’s a game and style I don’t particularly recognize, slower paced. It’s a lot less fun to play, and I’m sure it’s not nearly as exciting to watch for spectators. There aren’t the big sweeping hits that send skaters flying into the seats. There aren’t the massive breakaways from the pack, or the harrowing disappointments when someone is sent to the penalty box. The rules themselves have even changed drastically,because this sport is always evolving, as it should. A decade ago, I was pretty good at it. It’s kind of lost the luster now. I love being on skates though, so the skate park will be exciting.

http://egyptsaidso.com/weekly-motivation/if-destiny-is-by-choice-not-chance-then-what-are-you-choosing/

Finding a new hobby seems like the only way to find more flow in life, but what, and how? Alexis talks about how hard it is to find things that we enjoy, that are marginally difficult enough to keep our full attention long enough to find flow, primarily because we are too tired, anxious, or distracted for the trial and error of discovering it. Often we are afraid of failure to the point of “trying new things” paralysis. This keeps many of us from finding our flow, our art, our passions in life. This keeps us on the hamster wheel of productive for productivity sake, and completely out of finding our F*ckyeah. It makes us relatively good employees, and otherwise numb to the injustices in the world. We are passive and tired as hell. I blame many of the issues we are experiencing in our current world (politics, war, famines), on exactly this. How things might be different if we were all finding our flow, and excelling at things we enjoy? It’s a wild thought to entertain, for sure.

My hope for us all is that we find what lights us up, where we can find joy and flow, bringing our whole selves into the light, even if it’s only occasionally. Best wishes in discovering what that is for yourself, finding the time and resources to explore and try and fail in all the things you’ve been afraid to.

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Integration and Announcement

Please follow the link below to read this post on Substack.

https://open.substack.com/pub/ayearoflastinghappiness/p/integration-and-an-announcement?r=qdjak&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Cryogenic_Dreams_by_gusti_boucher
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Evolution

Hello and welcome back to whatever this blog has morphed into… musings really, I think. I set out over a decade ago after becoming inspired by a book I read on happiness. I gave myself tasks and goals (very Type A of me) to achieve everyday happiness. And for a long time, it worked, as you can read if so inclined, by my studious documentation of that project.

Over time, that little project changed a little, into sort of another project. And that challenge lead into a different thing, which led to a bizarre “confessional” of sorts, and now to this phase… where I seemingly wax poetic about something that has been on my mind.

As I have aged over the years, my focuses have changed too. My voice in writing, as well as my priorities in my life have changed distinctly. In the time that I’ve been hosting this blog, I’ve become a parent, gotten divorced and remarried (possibly more than once), and I’ve moved more times than I can recall at this moment. I’ve fairly recently uprooted my life and took my kiddo across the country to try something else, because what I was doing in our hometown simply wasn’t working for us anymore. We’ve grown as individuals and as a pair, me and the kid. We’ve gained a whole new support system in our new/old city, and lost a tremendous amount in these subsequent, turbulent years.

Which brings me to today’s topic: evolution. Not the controversial (for reasons I cannot begin to fathom) Evolution (read: dinosaurs, primates, humans, planet, and cosmos shit), but evolution, as we grow and change as people, parents, partners, and stewards of our lives. While I jokingly say to those close to me, I’ve been the same cynical bitch you’ve all come to know and love, that’s not exactly true. Yes, a great deal of my personality has not changed one bit since childhood- shakes fist at trauma– there are huge parts of me that HAVE evolved into someone/something else.

I’ve recognized that events in my life have caused me to change, both as a person unto myself and as a person in the world. Past experiences have formed how I behave in certain situations, whether healthy or unhealthy. A number of them are trauma responses that I’ve picked up to carve the path of least resistance for myself or others. However some of this stuff just comes with age, and my priorities being different than they were when I was 30.

My relationships with people have changed significantly too. My close friends and I aren’t playing sports like we used to, injuries and having jobs that start early in the mornings being things. Partnerships have evolved. The days of teenage infatuation have moved toward a deep sense of knowing another person on a deeper level. I’m not as afraid of things in relationships either, like the other person getting distracted or periods away from one another.

I recently saw one of my best friends and it was like nothing had changed. We caught up, laughed, hugged… we’ve not seen each other in 6 months. We don’t talk as often as we’d like, but it’s ok. Life is hectic and we are so solid in our friendship, we know that we are friends for life. There’s so much peace in knowing who your people are and that they’re solid. It’s taken a loooooong time, and a whole lot of shitty friends seeing themselves out of my life for this to happen. I used to be the type of person that would try to keep people in my life, even if they were toxic, because I was afraid of being alone. I don’t have the patience for that any longer. It’s just not who I am.

Patience is another thing that has evolved. I have infinitely more patience for certain things, like kids. But I’ll be damned if I waste a single second that doesn’t serve me or my higher self. If it’s a drain, I’m OUT. This goes for people, social situations, jobs, all of it. I can’t tolerate nonsense anymore. If Covid has taught me anything, it’s that life is too short for bullshit and I refuse to waste a single moment more on it. I’ve wasted far too much of my life catering to people and things that are soul sucking. Never again.

This admission in itself, is proof positive that I’ve evolved. In a former life, I’d have held on for dear life to shit that was actively destroying me. I lost everything because it, repeatedly. I lost myself. I lost my homes, car, stability, security, everything. I was empty and lost. Never again.

I can say with utmost certainty that it’s never too late to evolve, change, grow, and throw away the things that make you feel hollow, alone, or sad. Choose happy and work toward that every single day.

Thanks for reading.

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Too much

For the last couple of weeks, watching the world unfold has been an effort in trying to keep myself upright. I have been on the verge of collapse as Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

There have been countless days where I’ve sobbed uncontrollably as my heart shattered for people I will never meet. From places I’ll never get to visit. I’ve had this experience many times in my life. But for some reason, this hits me in the core.

It’s likely, of the last several decades, I’ve said that the sadness is just too much to take it all in hundreds of times. Today, I’m feeling those words in my marrow. for the last two solid years, I’ve been thinking it regularly, but saying it rarely. Today, I break that silence and acknowledge that my heart is sawdust for the people of Ukraine, and other sufferings that are equally unspeakable. My heart has been ground to fine powder for those sufferings.

It’s difficult to go on with daily life, when life has been uprooted and pulverized. By sickness, pain, loss, isolation, abuses, murders in broad daylight, shootings, all of the tragedies we’ve collectively experienced for TWO SOLID YEARS. Everyone on this earth is in pain, whether they know it or not.

Once upon a time, writing was my safe haven, my outlet, and my muse. Today it feel heavy and pointless. As though my words are meaningless. I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said by someone else, more eloquently, to a larger crowd. What do I have to add to the dialogue? To contribute to the narrative? Very little, in my estimation. However, staying silent does not allow me to feel whole, so I write today. Not for those that are “out there” suffering. But for the one “in here”.

It’s an odd feeling writing to a page about lasting happiness. It’s so elusive. Do I feel “happier” than I did many years ago when this page began? Without a doubt. I’ve grown so much, learned more things than I could ever recall, read a myriad of books, researched the research of happiness and put practice into my quest for more tangible joy in my everyday life. However, in that same breath, I find it impossible to be “happy” while so many people are in pain. It’s so hard to go on with our “regular lives”, whatever that even means now, while others have lost everything. To not acknowledge the struggle, would 1) be doing a disservice to those who are in pain, and 2) make me an asshole. I’m unwilling to allow either of those things. Not on my watch.

I have no rosy closing to this entry. I have nothing but love in the space my heart once was, for those that need love right now. I know I’m not alone in this feeling of hopelessness, and I genuinely hope that we all make it.

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