You can picture me; I’m an Oregonian. I love trees. I literally hug trees. I stroke their needles and run my hands over their bark. I caress silky-soft decaying stumps. I love plucky little infant trees and towering sturdy old growth trees, I love living trees and richly populated fallen trees. They come in infinite… Continue reading Breathing with the Trees Meditation
Gas prices are the highest they’ve been in a long time. I hear a lot of complaining about this. And then I think, “If you were an alcoholic complaining about the high price of alcohol, I would tell you that now is the time to quit.” We’ve known about the ruinous effects of fossil fuel… Continue reading Addiction and Withdrawal: Fossil Fuel Edition
I’m an ambitious person. I am also someone who’s always done work for the satisfaction of a job well done. This has been the case in virtually every job I’ve ever done, from menial to professional. I have always found intrinsic, zen satisfaction in getting all the parts exactly right, over and over again, with… Continue reading Mindfulness and Ambition
All our lives, we hear about fight or flight – our body’s response to threats to our well-being. I got the impression that we are under near-constant existential stress. It’s like there are no other experiences except a panicked or hostile reaction to threatening stimuli. There’s a lot of this in life, but there are… Continue reading Safety and Contentment
Sometimes it’s easy to feel lonely. Particularly during COVID Times, isolation can be a constant struggle. I like this thought exercise to feel the long and practical history of how people in my life have shown me love. I do cringe a little thinking of how many more of the things that surround me were… Continue reading Surrounded By Love Meditation
Think of the evolutionary miracle that is love. There was a time before love existed. Then, somehow, some critter was born with a love gene. Some wild mutation invented love where it had never existed before. Its loved-on offspring did better, and survived longer, and carried the love gene forward into future generations. From egg-laying… Continue reading Love Mutation
My partner Dan went from near-total abstinence, to an enthusiastic social drinker, to a bottle-of-vodka a day secret drinker in the 10 years we were together in the first leg of our relationship. In his younger years, he was extremely cautious around alcohol, with some hard precedents in his family. But because I drank, he… Continue reading Selfishness and the Alcoholic Other
