One of my friends is grieving. She's going through a major loss, and although she is very guarded with her emotions, I can see that she is hurting deeply. I wish there were something I could do to take the pain away, but as is usually the case, all I can offer is a sympathetic ear, words of compassion, and an endless supply of hugs. Nothing, and everything.
I hate when people suffer. I've dedicated my working life to doing what I can to minimize suffering, and I try in all my interactions with people to be kind. To not add anything further to the burdens that people already carry. So when I see people acting cruelly, I am overwhelmed by the question "why?". Why do billionaires underpay their employees and not allow them bathroom breaks? Why do teenagers beat up homeless people? Why do jerks go onto Twitter and attack perfectly wonderful personal finance bloggers about their decisions to buy new cars?
Is it just a failure of empathy? A failure to see the humanity of the other person and give a shit about what they're going through? And, if it is, how do people get so broken that they don't care about the pain they cause others?
Friday, February 1, 2019
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
What it is Like to Meditate
When I started to meditate, I arrogantly thought that I would be good at it. I'm generally pretty good at sitting still, and I can stare off into space for hours, so I figured I'd be a natural.
Nope.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
My monkey mind is as active as anyone else's. From the moment I plunk my ass down on my meditation cushion at way-too-early o'clock, my mind starts wandering to anything other than my breath.
Should I put dried cherries or dried blueberries in my oatmeal today? I had dried cherries yesterday, but they are my favourite, so maybe two days in a row is okay.
Should I go to yoga at 5:30 or 6:45? I like the 6:45 instructor better, but I'm always hangry because I have to wait to eat supper.
I wonder if next year's conference is going to be in Barcelona. I've never been to Spain. I could eat tapas. Mmmmm. Tapas. Maybe I should go to the tapas restaurant this weekend and have patatas bravas.
And on and on. No matter how many times I bring my attention back to the in and out of my breath, it inevitably wanders back away. Over and over again.
Which, for a perfectionist, is just a little annoying. Some days I can sit with the distraction, watching my thoughts wander away and patiently bringing them back. Other days I scream in my head "OMFG what the fuck is wrong with you it's just sitting and breathing it's not hard stop thinking about eating Hagen Daas when you get home from work tonight!"
The only reason I've been able to stick with it for over six months (six months!) is because I am a compulsive reader, and every single thing I've ever read about meditation has said that this is okay. This is normal. The wandering and returning isn't failing - it is the practice.
But I still find it hard to let go of the idea that someday I'll figure it out and every meditation will be bliss. A few weeks ago, I went to a group meditation, and I meditated for a solid 45 minutes. And it was awesome! I have never in my life sat so peacefully and been so focused on my breathing. I thought I had done it!
And then the next morning, on my cushion, my brain said "Don't forget to take your lunch to work today because it's the pasta sauce you really love and you'll be really sad if you leave it on the counter and you have a busy morning clinic and the pasta sauce will be good after clinic as long as you don't fuck up and do something stupid in clinic, in which case you'll be crying into your pasta sauce and it will be ruined forever and you'll need to find a new favourite recipe which is really hard to find so you'll probably be miserable until you die alone and without good pasta."
So yeah. This is me on meditation.
Nope.
Nope nope nope nope nope.
My monkey mind is as active as anyone else's. From the moment I plunk my ass down on my meditation cushion at way-too-early o'clock, my mind starts wandering to anything other than my breath.
Should I put dried cherries or dried blueberries in my oatmeal today? I had dried cherries yesterday, but they are my favourite, so maybe two days in a row is okay.
Should I go to yoga at 5:30 or 6:45? I like the 6:45 instructor better, but I'm always hangry because I have to wait to eat supper.
I wonder if next year's conference is going to be in Barcelona. I've never been to Spain. I could eat tapas. Mmmmm. Tapas. Maybe I should go to the tapas restaurant this weekend and have patatas bravas.
And on and on. No matter how many times I bring my attention back to the in and out of my breath, it inevitably wanders back away. Over and over again.
Which, for a perfectionist, is just a little annoying. Some days I can sit with the distraction, watching my thoughts wander away and patiently bringing them back. Other days I scream in my head "OMFG what the fuck is wrong with you it's just sitting and breathing it's not hard stop thinking about eating Hagen Daas when you get home from work tonight!"
The only reason I've been able to stick with it for over six months (six months!) is because I am a compulsive reader, and every single thing I've ever read about meditation has said that this is okay. This is normal. The wandering and returning isn't failing - it is the practice.
But I still find it hard to let go of the idea that someday I'll figure it out and every meditation will be bliss. A few weeks ago, I went to a group meditation, and I meditated for a solid 45 minutes. And it was awesome! I have never in my life sat so peacefully and been so focused on my breathing. I thought I had done it!
And then the next morning, on my cushion, my brain said "Don't forget to take your lunch to work today because it's the pasta sauce you really love and you'll be really sad if you leave it on the counter and you have a busy morning clinic and the pasta sauce will be good after clinic as long as you don't fuck up and do something stupid in clinic, in which case you'll be crying into your pasta sauce and it will be ruined forever and you'll need to find a new favourite recipe which is really hard to find so you'll probably be miserable until you die alone and without good pasta."
So yeah. This is me on meditation.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Words
In March of last year, about 5 months after my major breakup, I decided that I was ready to start dating again. I had gotten past my initial euphoria at leaving a bad relationship, allowed myself to grieve the good parts, and reached the point where I felt okay with being single. I was ready.
As I was getting back into dating, I distinctly remember thinking about how good a mental space I was in. I felt like I had worked through a lot of my old demons (anxiety, self doubt) and kind of figured things out. I understood shit. I can even remember, in one particularly arrogant moment, thinking that I had learned most of the big things in life and really didn't have that much more to learn.
(Cue deep laughter from the universe.)
In my last post of an unsuccessful NaBloPoMo, I wrote somewhat glibly about starting to meditate, completely diminishing the magnitude of the impact it has had on me. On one level, it has done what I expected it to: made me appreciate the present moment more, helped lower anxiety, and improved my always inconsistent sleep. What I completely didn't expect was the deeper changes it has brought about*.
Through meditation, I am learning to see everything more clearly. I am getting more comfortable with difficult things and learning to sit with them so that I can understand them better. Habits, thought patterns, relationships. The last half of this year feels like a veritable explosion of self understanding and personal change. Far more has happened than I can possibly capture in a single New Year's post.
It became popular a few years ago to choose a word for the year as a way of setting an intention, and while I didn't do it at the beginning of 2018, in retrospect, my word for the year was clearly growth.
And what for 2019? Mostly, I want to keep going on the path that I'm already on. I want to remain in the present moment, enjoying it when I can and learning from it when I can't.
2019 is going to be all about mindfulness.
*This whole post feels so hokey, and if I'd read someone else's version of it a year ago, I'm sure I would have rolled my eyes and accused the writer of having drunk the magical kombucha.
As I was getting back into dating, I distinctly remember thinking about how good a mental space I was in. I felt like I had worked through a lot of my old demons (anxiety, self doubt) and kind of figured things out. I understood shit. I can even remember, in one particularly arrogant moment, thinking that I had learned most of the big things in life and really didn't have that much more to learn.
(Cue deep laughter from the universe.)
In my last post of an unsuccessful NaBloPoMo, I wrote somewhat glibly about starting to meditate, completely diminishing the magnitude of the impact it has had on me. On one level, it has done what I expected it to: made me appreciate the present moment more, helped lower anxiety, and improved my always inconsistent sleep. What I completely didn't expect was the deeper changes it has brought about*.
Through meditation, I am learning to see everything more clearly. I am getting more comfortable with difficult things and learning to sit with them so that I can understand them better. Habits, thought patterns, relationships. The last half of this year feels like a veritable explosion of self understanding and personal change. Far more has happened than I can possibly capture in a single New Year's post.
It became popular a few years ago to choose a word for the year as a way of setting an intention, and while I didn't do it at the beginning of 2018, in retrospect, my word for the year was clearly growth.
And what for 2019? Mostly, I want to keep going on the path that I'm already on. I want to remain in the present moment, enjoying it when I can and learning from it when I can't.
2019 is going to be all about mindfulness.
*This whole post feels so hokey, and if I'd read someone else's version of it a year ago, I'm sure I would have rolled my eyes and accused the writer of having drunk the magical kombucha.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
How I Started to Meditate
I've been thinking about meditating for years.
Although I don't remember specifically, I suspect that I first heard about mindfulness meditation sometime during my medical training. It was probably during a session on "resiliency" or "work-life balance", and I was probably cursing the fact that I had to sit through an hour of stupid talks before I could get back to the ward to finish my work and go home. I probably laughed at the idea of using my precious free time to sit on a cushion and focus on my breath.
But it kept coming up. In talks, in articles, from friends and co-workers. And always with an emphasis on all the things it has been shown to help with: depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and pretty much every other bad thing that people struggle with. So I read a book, which I loved. And went to one class, which I hated so much I practically ran to the instructor to get a refund at the end of it. And I thought often about doing it. But never did.
(This is the point at which I would love to insert something profound about a life-altering experience that motivated me to start meditating. In reality? (Rosemary is going to laugh at this.) It was a girl.)
I met a woman online who is super into yoga - does yoga at least once a day, reads books about yoga, goes on yoga retreats, and has a yoga tattoo, into yoga. And...she was really cute. And while I couldn't become an expert in yoga in the week between when we met online and when we met in person, I had enough knowledge about meditation that I felt I could claim some proficiency in it after a week. And meditation is basically yoga without all the stretching, right? So I started getting up 15 minutes early every morning to plunk myself down on that cushion and focus on my breath.
Sadly, the date was not the beginning of a great romance that I have failed to talk about here (Despite my abysmal blogging record recently, I would have blogged about something that exciting.). But the meditation stuck. From day one, I felt a little less anxious, and a little less stressed. I slept a little better. In exchange for getting up 15 minutes earlier, I really do feel 10% happier.
Apparently online dating can pay off.
Although I don't remember specifically, I suspect that I first heard about mindfulness meditation sometime during my medical training. It was probably during a session on "resiliency" or "work-life balance", and I was probably cursing the fact that I had to sit through an hour of stupid talks before I could get back to the ward to finish my work and go home. I probably laughed at the idea of using my precious free time to sit on a cushion and focus on my breath.
But it kept coming up. In talks, in articles, from friends and co-workers. And always with an emphasis on all the things it has been shown to help with: depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and pretty much every other bad thing that people struggle with. So I read a book, which I loved. And went to one class, which I hated so much I practically ran to the instructor to get a refund at the end of it. And I thought often about doing it. But never did.
(This is the point at which I would love to insert something profound about a life-altering experience that motivated me to start meditating. In reality? (Rosemary is going to laugh at this.) It was a girl.)
I met a woman online who is super into yoga - does yoga at least once a day, reads books about yoga, goes on yoga retreats, and has a yoga tattoo, into yoga. And...she was really cute. And while I couldn't become an expert in yoga in the week between when we met online and when we met in person, I had enough knowledge about meditation that I felt I could claim some proficiency in it after a week. And meditation is basically yoga without all the stretching, right? So I started getting up 15 minutes early every morning to plunk myself down on that cushion and focus on my breath.
Sadly, the date was not the beginning of a great romance that I have failed to talk about here (Despite my abysmal blogging record recently, I would have blogged about something that exciting.). But the meditation stuck. From day one, I felt a little less anxious, and a little less stressed. I slept a little better. In exchange for getting up 15 minutes earlier, I really do feel 10% happier.
Apparently online dating can pay off.
Friday, November 2, 2018
This May Be a Month of Placeholder Posts
It is 11:33, and I suddenly remembered this blog and NaBloPoMo. So...I'm sorry. This is not going to be a particularly inspired post. It is, in fact, going to just be a list (someone said that lists were completely okay). I will try to do better.
Things I May Write About in the Next 28 Days:
- Meditation
- What to do when all your friends have babies, but you're single and childless
- Dating (For this post, I will need a good gif of someone moaning while they rip all the skin off their face)
- Something money-related, given that I kind of claim to be a Personal Finance blogger?
- Uhhhh...photos of my cats?
This could be a long month.
Things I May Write About in the Next 28 Days:
- Meditation
- What to do when all your friends have babies, but you're single and childless
- Dating (For this post, I will need a good gif of someone moaning while they rip all the skin off their face)
- Something money-related, given that I kind of claim to be a Personal Finance blogger?
- Uhhhh...photos of my cats?
This could be a long month.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
If Creampuff Can Do It
It's NaBloPoMo, one of the worst-named events ever, which means that Rosemary at Creampuff Revolution is blogging again!
I haven't blogged in almost two months. Not sure why...maybe because meditation is making me less angsty, and I am less in need of a public space to vent? Maybe I'm just lazy? (Bets on the latter.)
I don't know if I will NaBloPoMo this year, but the day is almost over, so I'm putting this here in case I decide to commit to it. If you're still reading my blog and I decide to do it, what do you want me to write about?
I haven't blogged in almost two months. Not sure why...maybe because meditation is making me less angsty, and I am less in need of a public space to vent? Maybe I'm just lazy? (Bets on the latter.)
I don't know if I will NaBloPoMo this year, but the day is almost over, so I'm putting this here in case I decide to commit to it. If you're still reading my blog and I decide to do it, what do you want me to write about?
Monday, September 3, 2018
Building Community
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the end of my relationship with my ex, M. The anniversary of the actual end will be this Wednesday, but I'm going to be on-call that day, and in the interest of not being a disaster at work, I am trying to get all the feels out this weekend. I spent Saturday alone at a Nordic spa, warming myself in hot tubs and dry saunas, and yesterday I basically lived in my pjs. The only reason I bathed was because I had made plans to go to the Mister Rogers documentary with a friend, and I thought she might prefer it if I didn't smell*.
Today, Labour Day, I'm rejoining the real world. My fourth load of laundry is in, the fridge has been emptied of moldy olives (who knew they could go moldy?), and the dishes are drying in the rack. And after days of wallowing in the hard stuff, I'm searching for the good things that came out of my "failed" relationship. What have I found so far?
Community.
M's family has belonged to the same church since her parents met at a local bible college, so their connections to other church members go back decades. Soon after I started dating M (once she had come out to her church in the middle of a sermon she was delivering), I started getting invited to events with members of her church community. Fundraisers, potlucks, small group dinners, reunions at the bible college, board game afternoons, and trivia nights...my social calendar filled up effortlessly. And it was really lovely. She goes to a very left-wing, social justice-oriented church, so while I didn't share a faith with these people, I definitely shared a philosophy with them.
And then, it ended. At the same time as I lost M, I also lost my connections to the dozens of people in her life who had become an extended family to me. My social calendar emptied itself out. It's been a year, and I still find myself grieving some of the harder losses**.
But the upside is that the loneliness I felt after the breakup drove me to work on my own community. I had neglected some important relationships while I was dating M, and in the past year I've done what I can to strengthen them again. And because many of my friends chose the past year to start having babies and to disappear from the social world, I've also been looking for opportunities to befriend new people. I've become really good friends with R, who is the ex-girlfriend of another friend of mine. I've developed a friendship with the woman I dated after M, because although we were romantically incompatible, we have a freakish amount of things in common. And I'm becoming friends with another woman I met through online dating. (One of the perks of same-sex dating...online dating can be a source of friendships!)
I'm also joining pretty much everything I can think of to join. I became a board member for a local theatre company. I joined a conversational French group. I started going to a drop-in knitting group. I've joined a group of lesbians of "a certain age" who are interested in local cultural activities. I'm even going to an upcoming information night about co-housing!
I'm not going to lie - it's been hard. It sucks to have spent over three years in the midst of a supportive community and to have suddenly lost it. I miss the ease of having a partner and a ready-made social life, at the same time as I recognize that it isn't healthy to be dependent on another person for all of my social activities. As an introvert, it's also really difficult for so many of my relationships to still be in the early phase. I want the comfort of 20-year-old friendships, not the awkwardness of new relationships!
But I'm working on it. I'm taking the opportunities that present themselves, and I'm putting myself out in the world as much as I can. And trying to be patient as I rebuild the community I lost.
*You should go see this documentary, but if you have any heart, go with someone you're comfortable crying with. And take Kleenex.
**How am I doing with the whole not wallowing thing?
Today, Labour Day, I'm rejoining the real world. My fourth load of laundry is in, the fridge has been emptied of moldy olives (who knew they could go moldy?), and the dishes are drying in the rack. And after days of wallowing in the hard stuff, I'm searching for the good things that came out of my "failed" relationship. What have I found so far?
Community.
M's family has belonged to the same church since her parents met at a local bible college, so their connections to other church members go back decades. Soon after I started dating M (once she had come out to her church in the middle of a sermon she was delivering), I started getting invited to events with members of her church community. Fundraisers, potlucks, small group dinners, reunions at the bible college, board game afternoons, and trivia nights...my social calendar filled up effortlessly. And it was really lovely. She goes to a very left-wing, social justice-oriented church, so while I didn't share a faith with these people, I definitely shared a philosophy with them.
And then, it ended. At the same time as I lost M, I also lost my connections to the dozens of people in her life who had become an extended family to me. My social calendar emptied itself out. It's been a year, and I still find myself grieving some of the harder losses**.
But the upside is that the loneliness I felt after the breakup drove me to work on my own community. I had neglected some important relationships while I was dating M, and in the past year I've done what I can to strengthen them again. And because many of my friends chose the past year to start having babies and to disappear from the social world, I've also been looking for opportunities to befriend new people. I've become really good friends with R, who is the ex-girlfriend of another friend of mine. I've developed a friendship with the woman I dated after M, because although we were romantically incompatible, we have a freakish amount of things in common. And I'm becoming friends with another woman I met through online dating. (One of the perks of same-sex dating...online dating can be a source of friendships!)
I'm also joining pretty much everything I can think of to join. I became a board member for a local theatre company. I joined a conversational French group. I started going to a drop-in knitting group. I've joined a group of lesbians of "a certain age" who are interested in local cultural activities. I'm even going to an upcoming information night about co-housing!
I'm not going to lie - it's been hard. It sucks to have spent over three years in the midst of a supportive community and to have suddenly lost it. I miss the ease of having a partner and a ready-made social life, at the same time as I recognize that it isn't healthy to be dependent on another person for all of my social activities. As an introvert, it's also really difficult for so many of my relationships to still be in the early phase. I want the comfort of 20-year-old friendships, not the awkwardness of new relationships!
But I'm working on it. I'm taking the opportunities that present themselves, and I'm putting myself out in the world as much as I can. And trying to be patient as I rebuild the community I lost.
*You should go see this documentary, but if you have any heart, go with someone you're comfortable crying with. And take Kleenex.
**How am I doing with the whole not wallowing thing?
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