Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Where Did Summer Go??

I can't believe it's the last day of August! What happened to the summer? 

There were so many trips I was looking forward to this summer, and now they're pretty much done. 

I mean, yes, we'll be going out to another trip over Labor Day weekend. And we might even make it up to Big Creek for some camping later in September. If the roads stay clear long enough. There's always a chance that Profile Gap will get snowed up early. 

But, essentially, the season is over. 

I might have to move somewhere where I can have a longer backpacking season... 

Or it might be time to start living in a van and driving to where the hikes are. 

I don't think that's really something I want to do. The idea is tempting, but I just don't know how I'd be able to make enough money to sustain an itinerant lifestyle. 

Maybe someday. 

I'm excited for next season's trips. But I wish the season didn't have to end. 

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Bits and Pieces

There's going to be a preseason hockey game in Boise for the first time in many years. There was supposed to be one a few years ago, but that was the 2014-2015 season, aka the lockout shortened season. That game never got played. But I thought, just maybe, we could get tickets and go see NHL players, even if the big names probably wouldn't take the ice. 

However, I was not the only person in Boise with this idea. Tickets sold out so fast, I never even got past the waiting room before they were gone. I guess I'll just have to travel if I want to see an NHL game. Maybe someday I'll get to see one of Boise's "local" teams (at least according to regional sports networks), like Seattle, Colorado or Las Vegas. 

I've been playing the game Dead Cells a lot lately. It's a roguelike game, which means that if you die, you start all over. The game doesn't take that long to complete, even with my style of "must kill everything" which takes longer. It's got an interesting, new-to-me, system of difficulty. Essentially, you can't really finish the game until you play it on the hardest (of 6) levels. 

For a while, I thought I wouldn't ever make it past the 3rd level (called 2 boss stem cell), but then I did. And then I wanted to complete a puzzle that required taking a specific route through the game and finding hidden areas in specific dungeons. I got through that, and now I'm thinking, well, maybe I can beat the final boss with 3 boss stem cells activated. 

But the last time I tried, on what was otherwise a very good run, I just couldn't get the final boss. Yeah, I'll probably keep playing the game until it leaves Xbox Game Pass. 

When this blog goes live, I'll be out in the wilderness. If the trip goes to plan, I should be at the Moose Creek Air Strip, or getting real close. As I write this, I'm so looking forward to being out there. I've got a headache from letting things at work stress me out a bit too much. I need to do some hiring and there's an awful project I'm involved in because I'm the only one with the expertise to get it done. Or that's how it feels. 

Being out in the woods should let me re-center myself. To remember that nothing at my work is actually life and death. To remember that I am not my work. 

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Old Goals

I spent a lot of my teenage years wishing I could just be happy. All the time, I felt sadness and frustration and despair. I didn't have friends who lived near me. I didn't have many close friends at all. That has remained a constant in my life, but I have learned how to be happy at least. 

Not all the time, of course. That would be silly. Happiness would lose its meaning if it were a constant state. But I can choose to look at the world through a positive lens now. I can choose to find something to be happy about. I can reject the sadness that used to overwhelm me at times. 

My husband mentioned the other day that he hasn't met anyone else who self analyzes quite as much as I do. I like to look at myself and my actions and try to figure out why I did what I did. Sometimes that's a negative thing to do; it can lead to a spiral of guilt and self-recrimination. But I've learned over the years how to calm that critical inner voice. 

The voice isn't gone, but it's a lot quieter than it used to be. It used to be a much larger monster, one that spoke whether I wanted it to or not. Over the years, I've worked on slaying that monster, taking away its energy source, not feeding it. Many repetitions of the mantra, "I do not like the way this makes me feel," helped me to reduce the monster's food source. And the thought that if I were to hear someone talk to a friend of mine the way I was speaking to myself, I would be angry as hell at that person. Why should I treat myself in a way I wouldn't let anyone treat my friends? 

In my niece, I see similarities to myself at that age. We are, outwardly, very different. She is tall, while I am short. I love to read, while she is dyslexic. She's more outgoing than I am, in some ways more confident, especially in the city and with technology. But I think there are aspects of her inner life that remind me of myself at that age. 

I wish I could give her a shortcut. A faster way to get from the wreckage of the teen years to the happiness that I've found. But I know it's hard to see through that fog. And if you want to get out, you need to see that there's an out to get. To see that there are possibilities waiting for you in the future. Possible futures that include things you could never imagine. 

Like being happy. 

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Perchance to Sleep

I didn't get any writing done last weekend. I meant to. I even brought my computer out into the woods. But the hike up to Grouse Butte took a lot more out of me than I expected. By the time I got back to the trailhead, I was ready for a nap. 

I didn't take a nap, though maybe I should have. I'm not very good at napping. Especially when I have only a small amount of time in which to sleep. I find that I can't relax enough to fall asleep, because I'm too worried about waking back up on time. That's why I can never nap during my lunch hour at work. 

Sometimes, I'll lie down quietly and try to nap during the lunch hour, on days when I'm particularly tired, but even if I set an alarm, I get paranoid. I just can't relax into sleep. Very unlike my husband, who can drop off at a moment's notice and feel refreshed after a nap as short as a minute. But he was in the military, so I suppose that's something he learned there - get sleep when you can. 

I've gone through different phases in my life when it comes to sleeping. Times when I needed to have some light on, and times when I needed absolute darkness. Sometimes, music that is barely audible, others, a movie (also barely audible), other times silence. Though even wearing ear plugs isn't getting me anywhere near silence lately. And not because of my husband's snoring! No, these days, I sleep to the sound of fans, air conditioning and the dishwasher running. 

Actually, the dishwasher is pretty good at putting me to sleep. I don't know what I'll do if I ever get one of those new, efficient, quiet models. Maybe I can play a recording on YouTube of a noisy dishwasher. 

My brain likes to come up with new tricks to keep me awake despite my best efforts. Spinning on thoughts that I can always think about the next day. Focusing on aches and pains. Considering whether my bladder should be emptied again for so long that it actually does need to be emptied again... 

I don't always have a good way to get around those tricks and fall asleep. There's a book that I like, Quarantine by Greg Egan, that has an interesting bit about sleep. The book takes place in a future where neural implants are commonplace, and owned by the main character. There is a neural implant called Boss, and it allows one to literally choose to sleep with the "press" of a "button" in your head. But that doesn't cure insomnia. You still have to choose it. 

I wonder, if I had the ability to choose to sleep like flipping a switch, would I use it? Or would I wallow in my spinning thoughts, putting off the choice? I'd like to think I'd choose it. Nights when all I want is to fall asleep, but my mind won't quiet, I'd definitely use it. 

At least, I think I would.

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Menstrual Torture

The latest period of mine is one of the more intense and unpleasant ones that I can remember having. Of course, the body does tend to forget pain. The memory of pain gets blurred edges, which is a boon I suppose or no one would go through childbirth more than once on purpose. But I don't usually have to walk around half bent over with the pain. 

I don't usually start leaking tears during working hours because the pain is so intense, even with a heating pad firmly tucked on my lap. 

I'm not usually quite so vocal about how much it hurts. 

I don't usually have trouble falling asleep because when I lie down the pain decides that position is just the worst like I did last Monday night. 

So I think it's fair to say that this is one of the worse periods I've had. I mean, I do take notes on my periods as well, and they aren't ALL "worst period ever!" - most of them just note that the period began. Not because I don't have painful cramps or other issues, but because they don't cross my personal threshold of bad pain. 

Sure, it's "just" cramps. And I can "deal" with it. 

But I really wish I didn't have to. That no one had to deal with this kind of pain. Though it might be helpful if men could. . .