Posts in category "Daily Life"

pulling weeds and planting flowers

Few peo­ple have been able to fill the void late­ly. The ones who do sing to me the unashamed­ly erot­ic songs of John Dowland and help me test new decks.

Through it all, I’ve been try­ing to take five breaths every now and then, inhal­ing and exhal­ing a lit­tle more ful­ly than usu­al. Trying not to live like it’s a fri­day every day. Trying to fig­ure out if I should apol­o­gize for using your song to score the moments I shared with some­one else. Trying to rec­on­cile my old Taoist beliefs with my new Buddhist views. Trying to be hap­py with the per­son I am, instead of let­ting dis­con­tent dri­ve self-improve­ment.

house in the woods

 

Frigid win­ter days are teach­ing me patience and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Some are eas­i­er than oth­ers. I’ve been work­ing with the fick­le swings instead of against them. Otherwise, it’s a con­stant strug­gle when try­ing to impose sta­t­ic order on inher­ent­ly unsta­ble process­es. The hard part is mak­ing plans when you don’t know how you’ll feel from one day to the next.

Jesse arranges

Back in the day when we were doing cov­ers of Frank Ocean songs. One of the most rec­og­niz­able things about Jesse’s room are instru­ments strewn about.

The great­est test of my progress so far will be an acoustic show Jesse asked me to play with him on Sunday. Anxiety has been get­ting the bet­ter of me late­ly, and the prospect of hav­ing only two nights of rehearsal does noth­ing to assuage this.

I’ve been keep­ing in mind that we were able to pull off a decent per­for­mance last time when I did­n’t know the show was going to hap­pen until a few hours pri­or; one of those exer­cis­es to fos­ter pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences and com­bat neg­a­tiv­i­ty bias. Fortunately, Jesse is a great front­man to be behind, cause he com­mands the atten­tion of any­one watch­ing, also tak­ing the atten­tion away from ner­vous fin­gers and live jit­ters.

cat and girl

 

The jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery has been dif­fi­cult. When there’s a his­to­ry of trau­ma, it’s inevitable that an uncom­fort­able feel­ings get stirred up every now and then. I take care of myself by mak­ing sure I see the impor­tant peo­ple on a con­sis­tent basis and liv­ing in those moments. The lit­tle ways to heal are found in both the expe­ri­ences them­selves and the time one takes to inter­nal­ize those expe­ri­ences.

This is how I learn that self-com­pas­sion isn’t self-pity, and that most peo­ple bring less kind­ness to them­selves than to oth­ers. To get on my own side, I’ve been visu­al­iz­ing myself as a child, just as wor­thy of care as any oth­er. I would wish the best for that lit­tle per­son, and it helps me under­stand that I should wish the best for myself as well.

the edge of a waterfall

There’s so much hap­pen­ing at once that it makes my head spin. Sometimes I won­der what it’d be like to be the one writ­ten about, to be on the oth­er side of that lens. What would anoth­er per­son say about me? Would it be dif­fer­ent from what I think of myself? And would I like what was said?

I haven’t been able to write, not from a lack of time or desire, but because I can’t keep a straight thought for long enough to get it on a page. Even when I can get myself to sit down for an hour, I just end up in an end­less cycle of inspired writ­ing and crit­i­cal revi­sions. I’ve been ques­tion­ing every­thing. I don’t know what I’m work­ing towards, where I’m going to end up, or even what I want any­more. It’s easy to get over­whelmed by it all, so I have to remind myself to take every­thing one day at a time.

It’s no longer about resolv­ing strug­gles and learn­ing to grow, it’s about fun­da­men­tal changes in the per­son I am and the way I define myself. When you’re unsure of who you are, noth­ing in the world seems sta­ble. Maybe that’s why the good doc­tor asked me if I was scared of chang­ing. I told him yes, but only because I don’t know if the per­son I am now would like the per­son I’ll be lat­er.

torpor

The hol­i­day sea­son is offi­cial­ly over when it does­n’t feel right to watch Christmas spe­cials of Only Fools and Horses. The Trotter boys are out of their ele­ment, try­ing to strike it rich in exot­ic locales, and the Peckham flat is too far away for things to feel nor­mal. Still, watch­ing them makes me miss the UK more than ever. I’ve tak­en to episodes of Sherlock to get my dose of London nights until I can find a way to make it over there again.

girl in snow

Pointer of quar­ry, tamer of cats.

Over here, it’s been a faith­ful Canadian win­ter. Bouts of var­ied snow­fall, record-break­ing lows, and a spot of freez­ing rain here and there. My gui­tar must be aching­ly dry as the mod­est humid­i­fi­er help­less­ly fails to main­tain bal­ance against the con­stant churn of the fur­nace.

I’ve been pick­ing her up again, rebuild­ing my blis­ters and re-learn­ing old songs. Sometimes I won­der how I was ever able to play cer­tain pas­sages, but know­ing I have before makes it eas­i­er the sec­ond time around. This time it feels a lit­tle dif­fer­ent though. I have a bet­ter reach and a more con­fi­dent picky, along with some new pains that have found their way into my hands.

cat in cat bed

The cold that per­me­ates the house means Dolly prefers sleep­ing in her bed over any one spot, and I can car­ry her around with me from room to room to keep me com­pa­ny. Byron is rarely far away. Even though he’s not as affec­tion­ate as Dolly, he’s still my cat in the way he comes to walk on me when I wake, and the rit­u­al play­time we have after teeth are brushed.

With the cats form­ing a lit­tle nest wher­ev­er I go, and the view of ice and snow just out­side the win­dow, I have lit­tle rea­son to leave the house nowa­days.

parent time

When Karen’s at yoga, Aaron and I take turns cook­ing din­ner and play­ing with Ryan and Ruby (read: keep­ing them occu­pied and out of trou­ble). Then we gin­ger­ly con­vince them to eat what they can (good days involve uten­sils), make sure they’re bathed, and put into bed with a sto­ry if they’ve been good. Everything is man­age­able as one but eas­i­er with two, espe­cial­ly when the sim­ple act of get­ting rice into a child’s mouth can turn into an ordeal.

This is when I get to expe­ri­ence the joys of hav­ing chil­dren in man­age­able dos­es. That means not hav­ing to deal with dia­per changes, and read­ing the same 30-word book only four times instead of 400.

Ryan and Ruby

The new lap­tops were presents from Nana and Papa at Christmas. Now they can send/receive e‑mails, and blog about the awe­some poop they just took.

Ryan used to be par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed to see his Uncle Jeff, leav­ing Aaron and Karen to won­der what got into him when I was around. Now that he’s a bit old­er, his face does­n’t car­ry the same glow when I arrive any­more, and he’s hap­pi­er to see the mar­bles I brought. But Ruby is begin­ning that phase of enam­our, and con­stant­ly clam­ber­ing into my lap to involve her­self in what I’m doing. Recently she start­ed ask­ing me to car­ry her (which I’m told means mem­ber­ship in an exclu­sive club con­sist­ing of her par­ents and me), even though she’s just learned to man­age stairs by her­self.

They seem to grow by inch­es every week, and they’ll soon be old enough to take care of them­selves. I’ve learned to appre­ci­ate the lit­tle chances I have to be tru­ly part of a fam­i­ly like this, espe­cial­ly after decid­ing last year against ever hav­ing kids of my own. And I don’t feel the need for chil­dren any­more cause this will always be enough.

a heavier dose

I’ve been try­ing to stay vocal about my needs, lest I fall back into old life traps and defence mech­a­nisms. It means I’m still apply­ing lessons learned from last year, still try­ing to be open even if it means being vul­ner­a­ble.

As far as I can tell, this has been work­ing in my favour. Otherwise, Seth would­n’t be com­ing over on Saturday to teach me how to play the acoustic ver­sion of Sean Rowe’s Jonathan, one of those songs I’ve always want­ed to learn before I die.

As a side-effect, it’s been a strug­gle to bal­ance my rela­tion­ship needs with over­stim­u­la­tion. The oth­er night we smoked an apéri­tif in the car before spend­ing three hours gorg­ing our­selves on all-you-can-eat sushi, learn­ing that the small but sig­nif­i­cant priv­i­leges of our class come in plates of bite-sized fat­ty pro­tein made to order. Then we watched the entire first sea­son of Tim and Eric, Awesome Show! Great Job, and played Magic until 4:30 in the morn­ing.

It left me burnt out and I must have lost two days, yet it still feels like I don’t have enough nights like that, shar­ing real moments with peo­ple who don’t per­pet­u­al­ly have some­where else to be or some­one else to see. I need more of those times in my every­day life, not just in the days marked on my cal­en­dar.