Category: Morning Coffee

For the first things on my mind each day that I write.

  • rising above

    “In life, many things will challenge us. It is not about whether or not we rise to them, but rather that we simply rise above.” – Hannah McPherson

    I think of obstacles in life as optional. This is because I am an escape artist of reality, most of the time. The simplest solution to every problem is to pretend it doesn’t exist. This is not great advice, as it comes with consequences and complications.

    So, don’t follow in my footsteps on that one.

    However, there is a perspective shift in there. You can always rise above a challenge. If you zoom out to the bigger picture that we are on a floating rock hurtling through space, then things seem a lot less grave in times of weakness.

    When I say weakness, what I mean is that in moments of weakness I try to remember there is no problem we cannot solve with time, patience, and effort, or at least be able to give ourselves the illusion that it has been solved until the next problem arises.

    We may not always get the outcomes we desire.

    Life has a way of bringing what is meant for you to you, but the alternative must also be true, that things not meant for you will also leave you.

    I’ve been dealing with loss, lately. As friends get older, they grow apart. I’ve been dealing with loss of my sense of self, my sense of comfort. It has been far from easy.

    This is not an abject judgement on solving problems or true pain, but it is a commentary on how we can respond to these things.

    It is easy to get bogged down in the harsh reality of our world sometimes, and the “rising above” concept talks about how we may relieve ourselves of the temporary pains we experience from not being able to process these experiences.

    Step 1. Remind yourself that everything is temporary.

    Step 2. Remind yourself that things that are forever, we have no real knowledge of, so use your most positive imagination to fill in a story that inspires you.

    Step 3. Sit with the feelings caused by challenges long enough to observe and understand what it means to you, don’t just skim the surface or keep digging when you’ve done the work.

    Step 4. Zoom out, get back to the basics, trudge through the mundane while keeping the grander scale of things in mind.

    Step 5. Allow time, patience, and effort to transform the challenge into something you can work with. Trust the process.

    Now, these are not 5 easy steps, nor are they a simple band-aid fix all for responding to problems, but they are a great start to the methodology of rising above.

    Today, I am trying to take my own advice, which is difficult. I won’t say this process has always worked for me, but when it has, it was exactly what I needed.

    Today, I am trusting the process and I hope you can too.

  • facing your fears

    “Fear is a friend that you misunderstand.” – John Mayer

    Lately, I have been filled with fears. I have been obsessed with my fears. I have been talking about them, and about the concept of fear.

    Today I realized that I don’t have to let those fears consume me.

    At the root of fear is what is important to us.

    Now, if you have a fear of losing someone, it means you have an attachment to them, usually love. If you have a fear of losing anything, it means you care about it.

    If you have a fear of dying, it means you love living.

    The opposite of fear is love.

    Irrational fears? That’s a slightly different topic.

    The brain likes to invent little imaginary stories about what bad things could happen. I like to attribute that to our cave-faring ancestors, passing down their instincts to watch for sabretooth tigers.

    Today, I’m addressing those deep-rooted, lifelong fears: the ones that will come and go and circle back around until you learn to conquer them or accept them as part of life.

    The list of what they could be is quite long, and they are usually universal as well as individual. Whatever your fear is, know this:

    You don’t have to act on every impulse your brain says you need to in order to conquer the fear. Sometimes the best medicine is to simply acknowledge it and continue about your life.

    I’m not claiming you can just be immune to fear, but you can try to understand it as a concept. Fear is what shows you what’s important; in many cases, fear is used as a motivator and that is for a reason.

    If you are afraid of something, supervillains would call you weak. If you are afraid of something, there are people who will exploit that.

    My TikTok algorithm is testament to that. A bad boss could be testament to that. A particularly jarring Ad campaign could be testament. I don’t think I need to defend the idea that exploiting fear has its own economy.

    However, while we cannot stop fear from being exploited at large, (not in a single day), we can stop it from being exploited by our own inner voice.

    I’m an expert in trying to fend off the brain’s unique brand of spiral-inducing intrusive thoughts, all correlated to fears of mine.

    I am understanding that this is just a shadowy projection of my consciousness and that however uncomfortable, it is a necessary evil.

    The Yin and Yang show it’s never fully one side of the story. There is bad in the good, and good in the bad. On the other side of that shadowy side of my mind, there is the light fighting right back.

    There was a fable about two wolves, a white wolf and a black wolf both starving, representing light and dark, and the stronger one will be the one you feed.

    You don’t have to starve your fear if it motivates you, but if it is debilitating some days like mine, then you don’t have to feed it either.

    I did a few things to face my fears: I changed my TikTok algorithm, I took a week off work, I try not to look at too many bad news stories. I had to calm myself, reach out to my support system, I have to use grounding techniques. I have to remind myself that not every fear is an ultimate truth.

    If you have a fear today: put it to bed, tuck it in, kiss it goodnight, and go find the root of it – Find the love that caused it and cling onto that until the fear goes away, or at least quiets for a while.

  • the matter of time

    “We are infinite and we are finite, all in the same breath. This is the way of natural things.” – Hannah McPherson

    I found myself on a staycation for a week.

    I’ve tried to read a book, listen to a podcast, listen to music.

    I’m not even 3 hours into my first day, and I’m already bored and not knowing what to do. Now, since the point of this staycation is to get relaxed and settled, which I sometimes struggle with, I should be comfortable doing nothing.

    However, I work hard, even at things like relaxing. I plan to take the week and clean house, run errands, work on my own creative projects, and take the world by a storm through personal productivity.

    These are high goals I may not reach, but there is no harm in setting them. I’m sure my indecision will stop tasks, my need to relax may delay cleaning, errands may hit complications, but alas – I can still aim at the stars. Even if I only make it halfway, I will have gone farther than going nowhere at all.

    This brings us to the title of this post, “The Matter of Time”.

    This week may go by quickly or slowly, depending on the fluidity of each and every collective moment. However, when it is done it will feel as though it was quick and a lifetime all at once.

    I stress a lot about time.

    In the matter of our mortality, what we have is so limited, but in the moment, things tend to happen very slowly. They say things speed up as you get older, and they do, but not in the way you think.

    We tend to, later in our lives, fill our days with more things. We fill our lives with so much purpose we can hardly contain it. In this sense, I’m defining purpose as things that get us out of bed in the morning and give our lives meaning, whatever that looks like for you.

    So how do we deal with the Matter of Time?

    We don’t. We simply show up. We witness, we participate, and then we (I would hope) go home. We go to wherever we came from. We did what we did, we saw what we saw, and those who knew us know and those who didn’t will never be the wiser.

    We can look forward and backward at time, we can live in the present moment, but we do not control the current.

    The current is a natural thing that runs through all things, specifically in this case the perception of time passing in our lives.

    Some people call this “The Flow”.

    They’ll tell you to go with the flow, which is perfectly acceptable. If you never did anything a day in your life except that, I think you’d turn out just fine; for example, when Harry Potter drinks the luck potion. He was in flow, and things just fell into place.

    However, we are creatures of creation and action, so we like to move and swim within the current. We like to try to direct the flow. We, like old cowboys, try to wrangle and wrestle our time to get the most out of it.

    Life is, in fact, just one wild ride.

    As I look down the barrel of time for the next week, the next month, the next year, or for the rest of my life, I have one piece of advice for you: Go with the flow, wrangle the flow, whatever you choose…do it with intention. It is our free will and our choice that makes time so valuable.

    I will try to live my next week with the intentions I had when I set out on this journey, but if they don’t live up to my expectations, it will be okay, because God-willing, there will be more time.

    When you choose intentionally, just know time itself, the living-breathing phenomena it is, will sometimes veto your intentions and direct you somewhere more aligned for you.

    Is time alive?

    Not in the sense that a squirrel in the tree is alive, or you might be, but in the sense that electricity is alive, in the sense that nature itself has life and can be classified as parts of the whole that move us through the system we know as existence.

    Time isn’t going to literally call you up and tell you what for, but it will gently guide you. Time is often misunderstood. If you start giving time the credit it deserves, you may find you’ll enjoy it quantifiably more.

  • today is gentle

    “Not everything in life will be comfortable, but then again, comfort is subjective.” – Hannah McPherson

    Today, you could say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

    My dream was truly wonderful, but the moment I woke up the house was chaos.

    Now, as someone who likes it when life is gentle, today was the opposite. However, I took the opportunity to practice gratitude. I took a deep breath, said “okay, this is the moment, but this doesn’t have to last the day.”

    My new mantra today will be “Today is gentle.”

    Why? Because when your nervous system is under attack, there is no stopping the discomfort and displaced feeling until you’ve convinced yourself that you will be okay.

    I’m already bracing for “the worst day ever” in my mind, so by introducing this mantra, I am telling my body to stop bracing for pain and start embracing the possibility of miracles.

    By miracles, I mean an easy day at work, I mean problem resolution without strenuous effort, I mean things turning in the right direction after a little disruption.

    In doing this, my entire demeanor will change from being on guard and in panic state to something softer and more open. I will be attracting these good things with my own mentality.

    Instead of worrying over every outcome, I will be accepting and loving towards myself and others so that positivity can shine through, even if things are hard.

    We create our own comfort.

    Today could go either way, but I have a feeling it will go much better if I change my own mind about how it turns out ahead of time.

    If you ever have a hard morning, don’t let it sully the endless possibilities of the rest of the day. There is beauty in it all, even in the discomfort. It is our job to find the beauty and bring it into our perspective, in order to keep from being swallowed by all the harshness of life.

    As someone who values feeling safe, snuggled, and cozy; life rarely offers this opportunity without a little effort on our part. Don’t be afraid of the effort it takes to regulate yourself, because on the other side, there is comfort waiting.

    The song attached is about always reaching for the next great thing. It came on as I wrote this post.

    I wrote it about our need to find our next happy moment, our next success, our next plateau. In waves, there are troughs and crests, we always want to be at the crest, but when in the troughs, we forget that we are bound to rise again.

    It is important to remember that it is all part of the process, and the pain will pass.

    “There is always a new horizon, there is always another for finding.” – Hannah McPherson

    The song also talks about how we find that next horizon on the other side of a hard choice, but sometimes the hard choice is the guiding light of loving yourself enough to get through discomfort.

    It mentions that there is no way to heal your mind, because the thing is you’ll always need healing. Healing is a task you come back to over and over for different things, or the same thing, but you’ll always want it and need it. The key is to grow through it. The key is to keep showing up.

    This song stood out to me because it was originally written about my writing journey and where I’m at in my career, keeping up with my household, growing up in all sense of the word and where I thought my life would be.

    Here’s the thing: it will always require work and that work may not always be comfortable, but if I stay true to myself and take care of my needs, working out those goals is totally reachable. Once they’re complete, I’ll have new goals. So, the process will start again.

    Which leads me to the cover image: subjective comfort. What is comfortable to you, may not be comfortable to someone else. You have to find your own vision for comfort. Whatever it looks like to you, it is up to you to attain it. The world is not set up to freely give comfort, though we are sometimes rarely gifted with a kind gesture, it still comes at the cost of the giver.

    You are always the first option for being the giver of your own comfort. When no one else is offering it, offer it to yourself.

  • Today’s Self vs. The Cosmic Self

    “If you look at the small picture, you’ll see ‘Today’s Self’. If you look at the big picture, you’ll see your ‘True Self’.” – Hannah McPherson

    I was lying in bed last night running through all the scenarios in my head of how the day went, trying to go to sleep. Then, I remembered I am a being made of stardust and I have a whole cosmic journey. Sweating over the smallest things takes away from the biggest picture.

    Each day, we are new. Each day, we take on a new set of experiences, challenges, and memories. However, when you zoom out to the whole – we have an entire lifetime of those.

    Now, unless you’re a savant, you probably don’t remember every single day of your life – even ones you thought were the most important day ever, or alternatively the worst day ever.

    Some part of you will keep that knowledge, but your day to day “Today Self” will not.

    Now, the “True Self” or what I like to call the “Cosmic Self” will remember. It is my hope when we end our time here, we get to review it all and recall what we have lost in the sauce of everyday existence.

    Until then, I’m aiming to paint the whole experience, not just today. I’m determined to paint a picture so grand and colorful that it will fill me with joy and surprise at all I did and forgot about.

    So, with that in mind, I’ll refer to how I started this thought last night: I cannot get so caught up in how today went, that I forget to get excited about how my whole entire life will go.

    My message to you is this: “Today’s Self” whether it was the best version, the worst version, or somewhere in between, is just a small fractal of the “Cosmic Self” – and all of it is wholly and one hundred percent you. You are able to look in whichever magic mirror you want to, at any time, free of charge. I recommend looking through the mirror that is most true to you.

  • A GOOD DAY TO BE TIRED

    “Hot Take: It’s a gift to be tired.” – Hannah McPherson

    Today, I find myself alive and energized. I am grateful for these moments.

    I have no doubts that later in the day, I’ll hit a wall and be tired. Life tends to wear us out.

    I had a friend who was telling me she was tired; not sleepy but in her being, that life had just taken her for a ride, and she was feeling the effects. I resonated with that.

    However, my advice to her was that it was a gift to be tired. I think Earth does that to us. Being “beings” is exhausting. There is a cost of energy that we must pay to participate in existence.

    Whether the things you’re going through in life are good or bad, we’re all paying the energetic price.

    I’d like to open up a framework in your mind to consider, no matter the way that life is treating you, you can be grateful to be tired.

    Someone who is having a really hard time might think I’m insane to say so, but hear me out:

    Tiredness can be evidence that you have lived and that is the whole point.

    From the good times to the bad, if you are living, you are doing something right. Tiredness does not mean that you have failed. It’s quite the opposite actually. If you are still here to be tired, then you have made it through whatever it is life has given you.

    Tiredness is an unavoidable part of life.

    Yet, if you don’t fight it, and allow it to be part of your being’s experience in this life, if you choose to be grateful for it, then the path to healing, the path to energy opens up.

    We have ways of replenishing ourselves: rest (first and foremost), self-care (whatever that looks like for you), relaxation, meditation, comforting ourselves with positive affirmations, breathing exercises, etc.

    So, being tired is an opportunity to replenish. It’s your body telling you it’s time to take some time to do what makes you energized.

    For me, this is being creative. For me, this is feeding my soul. For me, this is a requirement of everyday life. Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health is the most important part of my day, everyday.

    Because being tired is the cost of life, taking time for our health trinity is the currency we pay it with, and it is a gift to be able to even transact on this system at all.

  • WAKING UP CREATIVE

    “There is no better way to start the day than being creative.” – Hannah McPherson

    Here I sit, in a space surrounded by my art. I have a cup of coffee and a candle lit. I have a new website and a dream to keep me inspired.

    My dreams are like stories. I will not share them unless they are especially interesting, because most of them are random and personal. However, I will say that I keep a dream journal.

    I keep many kinds of journals.

    Before this site, I would keep all my morning musings to myself.

    Today, I’ll share it with you.

    Kindly Keep On Going

    “I’d like to say,

    there is a way,

    to make all your dreams

    come true.

    But the best of these,

    if you please,

    is to simply just be you.”

    – HM.

    I’ve designed all these graphics myself, and I’ve always been quite fond of Photoshop’s overlay features. I love what it does to the lights in the image. My corporate day job, which I have to get ready for shortly, does not have a brand standard that allows early 2000’s design styles, unfortunately. (I don’t blame them) – However, since it’s my intellectual brand I will do as I please.

    I’d like to make a closing note here about doing what you love while doing what you have to.

    Would I love an infinite amount of time to write, instead of having to squeeze it into my morning and afternoon routines? Yes.

    Yet, the bills must be paid and the house taken care of and social life must continue and family is important (even chosen family), and so through the hustle and bustle of productivity culture, of balancing it all and doing everything – make sure you’re making time for your dreams.

    Whether that is your real-life goals, or your actual sleeping movie shows, there is something to be said about following your hearts intention.