Therapeutic Posting

Boxes: yes!
Apartment on hold: yes!
Storage for unneeded appliances: yes!
Box carriers: yes!
Day of move set: yes!
Packed: mostly. two days of jamming things into boxes and clearing closets/cupboards. five empty boxes left.
Utilities set up: yes, except for phone
Truck reserved: yes!
Trip to Goodwill: one done! may arrange pickup for fridge
Trips to dumpster: many
Pets freaked out: 4, still
Forwarding/address changes: waiting for next week.
DMV printout: done! weirdly, it took ten minutes.

Boxes: yes!
Apartment on hold: yes!
Storage for unneeded appliances: yes!
Box carriers: yes!
Day of move set: yes!
Packed: no.
Utilities set up: no.
Truck reserved: yes!
Trip to Goodwill: possibly today
Trips to dumpster: many
Pets freaked out: 4
Forwarding/address changes: not yet
DMV printout: good grief, when will I get to do that?

Busy week ahead. Batten down the hatches.

But more tired.

I’ve started saying good bye to some of the kids I’ve been working with.

Who knew 12 year old boys were such drama queens?

It took far too many pills to make it through today. Migraine meds, more migraine meds, sinus meds, and plain ol’ headache pills because of fear of too many migraine meds.

Plus, I had to stop in and have a nail removed from my tire - it was

this close

to the sidewall and I had a bit of anxiety due to not knowing how much a new pair of tires for this car would be. But they were able to plug it for ten bucks.

Therapy with my Wednesday clients tends to go well, which is good; otherwise it would have been one of those hellish twilight zone days that ends with me under my desk in little knots.

Thank you, ladies who gave suggestions on previous post….

I think that I am opting for “move to a town with more things to do” - I had a job interview Tuesday and another coming up Saturday, in two different places. Either job I am taking a pay cut but this is immaterial to me - I need something wherein I do not live in fear of layoff, and either position would suit.

And, I think if I still have difficulties I shall start my own book group. Or maybe a hiking group.

Also I have just discovered the tax man owes me enough money to mostly pay off my credit card debt. Hmmmm.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Funky Winkerbean

I haven’t read Funky Winkerbean in forever and ever. It seems to me it used to be about… Funky Winkerbean. But the folks over at Comic Curmudgeon have been calling it Funky Cancerbean, and other silly names, and thereafter I sometimes tuned in, only to find one of the characters died of cancer after long and dramatic suffering, and now day after day the husband of Lisa the cancer victim has been laying on a couch talking through his reaction in flashback.

The funny thing about this is, the only people who use the couch in therapy are traditional psychoanalysts, which are horribly expensive and not covered by insurance, and are a dying breed. You might find them on the east coast, and I have heard of one in L.A. over here on the west coast, but you don’t just find them everywhere in the country. Also, in a few strips the analyst is sitting alongside the couch, and traditionally he would be sitting out of the client’s line of sight. ALSO - psychoanalysis done traditionally takes years. You don’t just go until you’re done. The goals are different. A grief group, I could buy into, but the couch thing? not so much.

The public view of therapy is a skewed and incorrect one. This is one of those things that only perpetuates the notion that psychotherapy involves couches and shrinks with a pen and paper to take down what you’re saying.

Yes, this is therapy geekiness - but I’m a big geek. What do you expect?

At the beginning of the week, I said, I will post something witty, intelligent or substantial to the blog! Maybe something about the idea for a novel that I stumbled across while reading up on a topic relevant to the Day Job.

Around Tuesday I would have settled for intelligible.

Around Thursday, I would have settled for a few words about the cat, with a snarky comment obliquely referring to the madness of the bureaucracy.

It’s Friday. I’m sipping wine. I have nothing to offer of any use.

BAH.

My life could not be more complicated.

Um. It could - but I’m already feeling overwhelmed, so, like, it can just stay the way it is and not get worse, okay?

Tuesday night, I got very little sleep. My neighbor with whom I share a single wall has an alarm clock that went off at about 3 AM or so, and stayed on for hours. WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP for five hours straight. (It was my day to go in an hour later than everyone else.) I noticed about ten minutes after I finally struggled out of bed that the alarm was now silent and they were watching the news on TV.

HOW DO YOU SLEEP THROUGH FIVE HOURS OF AN ALARM CLOCK GOING OFF! I couldn’t even tune it out when it was muffled by a wall!

AND THEN. On top of all the stuff I won’t mention here because it could lead to various personages tracking me down and wreaking havoc on my life, I got a call at work the other day that nearly traumatized me.

“Hi, this is (name) at (property management place handling my rent check each month). I’m just calling to see if you’ve moved out yet? We have the 19th as your move-out date.”

The back of my mind: GUH. AAAAAAHHHHHHH! NYARRRRRRGH!

My mouth: WHAT? AM I BEING EVICTED?

Voice over the phone, muffled: “She sounds shocked.”

Various crashing rustling crinkling noises.

New voice on phone: “HI THERE, this is (name of a lady I actually remember), um, I’m so sorry, we’ve managed to cross up your apartment with (other address that’s COMPLETELY DIFFERENT except for the unit number) AGAIN, heh, I’m sooooo sorry.”

Me: So I don’t need a Uhaul and a bunch of therapy to get over the trauma?

Lady: “Oh, no, *chuckle*, no no no, I’m so sorry.”

And then my phone went berserk for the rest of the day and would not let me get voicemail. You do not know how crazy it made me thinking people in crisis might have left me voicemail I could not get. And then, I would leave my office and come back wondering if the impassioned voicemail I left for the help desk had resulted in a return call that got sent to voicemail. Maybe there was a voicemail about how to get into my voicemail? So I send an email about my voicemail. It righted itself eventually and the only voicemail I got… was nothing more than someone confused about an appointment time, which I’d already settled with them. Whew.

That was just yesterday.

This morning, I stumbled into the kitchen to find the first roach I have seen since the Bug Guy sprayed around.

HIDING UNDER THE ROACH MOTEL.

Reader, I squished him.

DEAR UNIVERSE, PLEASE STOP TRAUMATIZING ME, KTHXBYE.

CYNICAL CAT WOULD LIKE TO BE LEFT ALONE NAOW.

I have reclaimed two and a half hours of my week - I have ended group!

Now, what should I fill it with? hmmm.

Eating chocolate?

Eh. Probably more appointments.

Word of the day at work yesterday: assiduous. Using this in group supervision meant giving a definition, which was followed by some rather surprised stares. I do use words in conversation that no one else knows, apparently.

I was quite sad. It’s lonely being a word geek.

You know those days where you spend the whole day thinking the appointment will happen, and then you get up to about quarter after and realize they’re not coming, and then you look at your notes from last appointment and realize they’re not coming in this week and it’s actually next Tuesday?

Yeah. Hate those days.

On the up side - Happy Fourth of July! I get to stay home tomorrow and keep writing. The muse has been good to me this week.

Because I have this love-hate relationship with Costco.

My membership is up for renewal and I’m debating not doing it. But… it’s a great place when you need a really big cheesecake, or you have an empty freezer, or you just want five pounds of coffee beans to stash. Also great for gift buying, because they have this great exchange counter who don’t ask questions.

So I debate it, and I go this last weekend to get water filters before the card lapses.

There are two kinds of Britta filters. They don’t carry mine.

Oh, fine, I think, and cruise around the store. Surely they have something I need? I emphasized the ‘need’ to myself. I picked up a flat of Naked juice/smoothies in single serving bottles, thinking heat wave=pressing need for the cold stuff. I considered the huge displays of cheeses and meats, the endless fresh-baked everything, the pre-made lunches and so forth. Do I need this stuff? Not in quantities suitable for feeding the entire US Navy. For some reason things are getting moldy overnight. I looked for a testing kit for mold - no dice. And if they did have those, they’d probably force me to buy ten of them.

I think, as I go toward the front, that i need clothes. So they have a deal on tanks that you layer under other shirts, and I grab. They have cropped cargo pants in neutral shades. I take what I think is the right size. You would think I’d learn - like the last pair of pants I got there, it’s just a tiny. bit. tight.

Now I have to go back to Costco - but do I ask for the next largest size? or just get the money and run? dare I admit in public that I am now LARGE? Nyaaaaaah. What a drag it is to get old. and FAT.

10 print “thunk”
20 goto 10

Dear clients,

I’m sorry I can’t remember your life story and sometimes repeat myself.

There are 22 of you and 1 of me. If I ask you the same question twice in the course of six months, you have my apologetic sheepish sympathy, but again, I’m trying to recall 22 life stories. I’m doing well enough just remembering my own name at this point.

ARRRR. gr.

hmph.

Running a group for kids to teach them anger management inevitably teaches those running the group more about anger management than it does the kids.

Like, how do you react when a 10 year old spontaneously bursts into song and serenades you with “I bring sexay ba-aack” complete with interprative dance?

It’s a good thing I can keep a straight face.

That kid will show up on YouTube yet. And of course I won’t be able to tell you about it.

I could spam the blog with pet pictures, I guess, but it’s a lovely spring day. I’ve managed to do laundry, clean the kitchen, let the cat have a good run outside on the patio, fed the parrots and sang to them (they don’t care that I can’t sing, obviously) and am in the process of sizing up what items I need to complete Operation Parrot Heaven. Perches and food dishes and new water bottles are on the list. Cheeto is happily tearing up an apple wedge and Kiko (which is the new bird’s name, which may be temporary if it doesn’t stick) is hanging upside down and attacking the new toy I made for her.

This week I threw a pizza party for the therapy group I’ve been running for six weeks - the budget is about to roll over to the new fiscal in June, and no one used the pizza account? I’m so there.

I also maxed out on the number of high maintenance parents there are on my list, and broke the computer software we use to handle case records. Go me.

At the end of April I will have been here for six months. I would never have thought it’d been so long. I tend to think it’s the sign of achieving a good job when you stop watching the clock and ticking off days on a calendar - a lot of things I don’t enjoy are easy to cope with when kids are showing up and people are responding. The new supervisor is working out just fine.

I was informed by one of my few girl clients today that she was going to be ruler of the world, and everyone would thereafter “have to stop being mean to each other.”

You go, girl.

Some days I really want to have clients who are not 10-13 year old boys.

If it’s not the sitting gloomily indifferent with the one syllable answers, it’s the open zippers, the unconscious “adjustments,” the random fartage, or the goofiness that leads to endless nacho cheese-no-not-yo-cheese-haw-haw-haw-hee cycles. Because when you’ve spent two minutes talking about losing your temper in class and being tossed out, you have got to spend the next forty making up for it with that well-known defense mechanism known as “irrelevance.”

Someone send me a girl. A troubled, yet not farting and adjusting, girl. Who talks rather than throwing the Piglet puppet and stuffed monkey around the room. Or doesn’t talk. Whatev. Just so long as we’re able to manage the hour without busting out the air freshener.

I’ve had, in my Magic Filing Cabinet Full O Toys at work, a Bionicle - one of those plastic creature toys that kids are supposed to put together. I kept waiting for one of the kids to verify that all the pieces were there.

Tonight a new kid came in and put the thing together, and when I asked if it was all there he said “yup.” Since he succeeded where other kids have tried and failed, I’ll just take his word for it.

And here I am doing ten things at once to distract my brain from workplace politics (gah), funny looks from parental units (ARG) who don’t quite believe in therapy but feel they need to drag in the kids to convince other entities they are doing due diligence (OF COURSE they have the best interests of the kid in mind, no question of that, we just sort of disagree what that is…), and the fifteen mistakes I made in pacing myself, overbooking myself and generally underestimating my Superhuman Qualities that led to not eating lunch….

So of course I’m working on the website, watching an episode of SG1, working on a story, and googling myself. Which leads me to discover random bits of what other people are saying about my fic, and also that Google leads me to other people’s link lists that include my handle, my stories, my livejournal…. I don’t remember google being so thorough before. All kinds of those fake link farm pages turned up, too. Also a bazillion posts to ASC echoed through various forums.

I should probably be reading a book instead, but it just isn’t enough at the moment. Maybe after I do some yoga and clear my head a little.

Or maybe take something to kill the head cold. Since there is no official cure, it may take some time to trial-and-error myself something that works. I’m thinking of starting with cheesecake and working my way through the ice cream, chocolate, caffienated beverage, and alcohol food groups. Of course, the cold may be preferable to a diabetic coma, but I’ll take my chances. I have a whole weekend to figure it out. If I exhaust all the options in the alcohol group I bet I can count on sleeping through next week. By then, the head cold should be gone.

I have hit the point at which I am slogging. No shows, cancellations, and some really tough cases to assess that take hours of phoning people and collecting collateral info. What do you do when a kid has no parents? You talk to social workers, cousins, group home administrators, teachers…. Ayi yi yi.

Also, kids keep bringing in colds. I keep taking pills.

Also, there’s ice. Pockets, in the gutters and shady spots. It’s cold!

It’s interesting that the stress results in fic. I should be good to go, now.

Edible squid-flavored postcards ::: Pink Tentacle

In other news - an unforeseen fringe benefit of being a therapist: get out of jury duty free card. A peer (therapist from a different department, therefore not a coworker) was telling us today that he was called in and nearly picked for a jury on a famous (locally, anyway) murder case. The minute he said he was a therapist he was dismissed. I’m not sure if this is because we’re too soft on criminals or what, but me, I tend to side with ‘personal responsibility’ and not so much with ‘it’s his mother’s fault for beating him with a wire hanger.’

There are no words to describe how very frustrated I am right now.

I haven’t even really filled my schedule and I’m behind on paperwork. That after a couple of holidays and slow weeks wherein all the kids went away on vacation. And I have spent two months trying to get three people to call back, and they just… won’t.

(Normally, a therapist would simply document this failure to communicate and then close the file. I don’t work for a ‘normal’ sort of program.)

I could say a lot of other things but of course - I can’t do that in a public blog. Or a private one, really. The kids are cute. The parents are a) anxious b) indifferent or c) somewhere in between and vacillating rapidly.

Oy.

I still like my job, however.

I managed to get through the first day on the job without incident, unless you count getting lost on the way there. Boss handed me 20 names and client numbers, so I am in the process of reviewing case files and reading the 6 inch thick procedure manual, reacquainting myself with the bureaucratic tree-killing paper load.

Now I’m in the bedroom at the friend’s house, with all my devices recharging, trying to remember my co-worker’s names. Nothing like a blur of people to confuse you. The clinic houses a number of teams and there’s a cube farm going on, but I have an office with a door and a ‘do not disturb’ sign. Therapists are lucky that way. That confidentiality thing requires an actual door.

Tomorrow will likely be a repeat of today, only with meetings. Boo yah.

In the process of packing up things to move AGAIN (I believe I’m in the 30+ mark for ‘moves within my lifetime’), I am confronted with STUFF. As in, haven’t unpacked this box in years, yet moved it each time with the nice little list taped to the top.

I opened a few boxes to find… proof that I have forgotten way more than I thought I did.

Letters from college roommates. Letters from relatives. Letters from people I barely remember, and some I will never forget.

Letters from my bestest friend ever from grammar school - I had lost track of her in high school (we went to different ones), then my mother ran into her mother at a store, gave her mother my college address to pass along, and we began a correspondence that ended abruptly when the cancer suddenly accelerated and took her down. She was barely 22. I was told about the funeral several days after it actually took place.

I repacked that box and put it in the stack. The shoes, on the other hand - the ten year old shoes that originally cost about ten bucks, with the shredded bows on the toes - those can go away. So can all the used file folders, the miles of paper with illegible notes I scribbled (must have made sense at the time, at least until after I studied for finals), the ancient brick cell phone, and once I figure out who recycles them, the metric ton of floppy disks is totally gone. I found a picture of me with such … ugly hair. Oh, the ‘what was I thinking’ moments multiply fast! I found a dress I wore twenty years ago. A pair of pants… where did I get them? Good grief. They’d fit a ten year old, maybe.

On the other side, I found lots of articles and photocopied bits I am totally going to read again. By the end of this, I’ll have a box of stuff to grab in those odd moments I totally need a distraction from the wild and crazy month I have ahead of me. When things get settled, I’ll be organized. I intend to develop a list of books to read and find a yoga class. Re-do my diet to exclude things that lately have not agreed with my digestion — surprising, how suddenly one day the stomach just wants to reject the thing it used to accept without complaint. And get myself in for a physical, because doggone it all, I want to shed about fifteen pounds and get something that works for the allergies.

Forget New Year’s resolutions. I seem to be making New Life resolutions. “It will all be different when…”

I have a part of me that wants to drive around picking boxes out of the recycling dumpsters at Acre O’ Offices down the street — there are ALWAYS boxes just piled in them — and a bigger, lazier part of me just really doesn’t like that idea. Big n’ Lazy noticed a recent comment suggesting Costco boxes to be cheaper. BnL also likes the internet, so surfed off to the costco website.

They have moving kits that are roughly a third of the cost of the same thing you’d get at uhaul stores. (By the way? You don’t have to be a Costco member to shop at the website. You, too, can buy your moving supplies, pens, electronics or books, with a small markup over what a member would pay.) Yes, I could get those office storage boxes — but I’m thinking here of hauling hanging clothing for a couple hundred miles, plus loads of breakables and whatnot, and so a kit of wardrobe boxes plus a kit with various sizes and packing material and tape will do it — I don’t really need so many boxes, since so much of my stuff is still in boxes and the electronics will fit in their own boxes, which are currently jammed in nooks and crannies awaiting their call to duty. The kitchen is always the worst part of moving and I’ve got very little kitchen unpacked; Roommate’s stuff has been in use for the past couple of years.

I did a purge a while back, getting rid of roughly 200 pounds of dross (odd clothing, bits of office supplies/craft crap/cassettes I never listen to/shoes I don’t fit into any more) and also reorganizing things into more compact packaging. I have the feeling another purge is imminent, especially as I am in the throes of “OMG I will have money! Real money!” and the old work clothes are not looking so great. This urge is being pinned down and beaten soundly by the old Scottish auntie part of my brain that wants me to wash tinfoil for re-use and save empty butter tubs. I encourage the beating, as footing the rent myself, plus the utility and internet connection (I don’t call it a telephone line, I use my cell phone and let the answering machine talk to the telemarketing industry), plus the entirety of the food bill (Roommate let me mooch quite a lot because he has this habit of picking up more than he needs — it’s a single person’s lot to be consistently buying more of everything than we can possibly use before it grows its own civilization of bacteria), plus OMG I have no furniture! will add up to probably about the same amount of free cash I currently have, which is to say, six dollars and fifteen cents.

This is actually a true representation of my mental state. I am, in fact, thinking in run-on sentences. Also, I nearly forgot to show up for my Saturday gig, which involves me lecturing to a roomful of desparate parents who are totally angry with the family court system and bursting to prove it. I certainly won’t forget this week as I’m carrying the next session by myself, without the seasoned therapist who’s co-leading it. By then, I will have said farewell to the part time job(s) and begun to pack boxes with unessentials. God knows where I’ll store the boxes but I know better than to put off the packing til the truck shows up — oy, oy, oy. Most of it will be books. Some of it will be the contents of a chest of drawers I think I’ll ditch.

Add to that the sheer terror that I’ll pick an apartment next to the guy with the biggest stereo and the paranoid barking dog and nocturnal habits, who parties every day except Tuesday when he has his girlfriend over and they practically knock through the wall into my space, and we’re not looking at much of a joyride.

Hungry, no food in house.

Just drove another 200 mile round trip for a half hour interview, but this time, there was clickage. Part of being an intern therapist is getting a good supervisor - that takes luck and a lot of hunting. I feel quite good about this one, and when I left she was making a note to call my references.

I think I’ve done my time with County X Mental Health Dept. I have to call and let someone know I’m taking a pass - the third interview is for a department I don’t think I want to work in, and driving another 200 miles for an interview with them isn’t really worth it. If I don’t get the green with one of the two positions I’ve interviewed for, I’ll stick it out in the town I’m in.

In other news, I recieved my diploma today. It only took them five months. rolls eyes

The Big 40 Hour Training, which runs two eight hour days per week then one day the third week, is supposed to be all about domestic violence advocacy. Whether I’m interning at the local shelter or merely a volunteer, I intend to have something to do with it soon. It will help give my part-time-boring-job life meaning.

What I’m learning is a lot of stuff I already knew, plus a lot of stuff I didn’t, and not all of it has to do with domestic violence. For instance:

1. Alcohol is a poison, not a drug. Like so many other things we ingest, alcohol is in fact capable of killing us. It is not a drug because it does not affect the synapses. It affects the “soapy water” in the space between the dendrites in our nervous system, slowing the neurotransmitters and rendering the membranes between the different regions of the brain temporarily impermeable. Which is why our judgement suffers — the lobes of the brain that control things like reasoning, long term memory, and that little voice that says “I shouldn’t drive right now” are cut off from the “wooohooo!” lobe. Guess who wins. It’s possibly also why people black out. Stuff happens while under the control of your non-remembering brain. Stuff you will regret, probably. Coroners examining the membranes of the brain can tell a corpse belonged to a chronic alcoholic by noting the holes in said membranes — the brain is determined to function so punches holes in the constantly-impermeable stuff.

Drugs, on the other hand, affect either the transmitting or receiving ends of the dendrites, impacting the sensation of pain and pleasure and outside stimuli. Which is why I saw oozing purple blobs crawling on the wall when the doctor gave me vicodin. Suddenly, my nerve endings were getting all kinds of information that had nothing to do with reality.

Some heart medications aren’t drugs, but poisons with a side effect of altering the behavior of arteries and the heart tissue. Arsenic was a heart med until it was superceded by more effective treatments.

2. People have no clear grasp of relevance. I know I’m totally Ms. Tangent of the Year, myself, but I feel so much better after sitting in a room full of random access champs. Personal anecdotes flew, and neither proved or disproved or really had a lot to do with the point being made.

3. People have no grasp of word choice or meaning. One lady asked a question about masochists that had everyone sitting around with question marks floating overhead, until she elaborated a little and we realized she meant misogynists. I counted ten different uses of ‘loose’ for ‘lose’ in the powerpoint presentations.

4. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has more merit than I gave it credit for.

5. Attachment issues are key.

As a member of the Microsplerf Provider Outlet Geekfarm, I note with a certain … bad taste in my mouth the oncoming wave of Vista upgrades in our near(? who knows with M$?) future. Having seen the previews/promo crap, I have thoughts of becoming an unwashed hermit living under a bridge. Or possibly going back to basic clerical and pretending I have no knowledge of this thing called Winblows, excuse me, I need to answer the phone.

Already, the fun begins, in a conversation with Friend Who Moved Away via phone the other night.

FWMA: I hated Macs! I couldn’t figure out the Macs in the labs at school. blah blah blah confusing blah argh splutter.

Me: *thinking about all the ways Vista looks like Tiger* Uh huh.

FWMA: Remember when we took comp exams on them? I was so stressed out already! And then I clicked on something I thought would do blah, and it did bling, and I was all, AAAAH!

Me: *thinking about how I won’t want to answer the phone at Geekfarm ever again* Uh. huh. Tell you what - don’t ever get another computer.

FWMA: Whaaaaat?

Me: Use what you like - what you have right now, just the way it is. Transfer the hard drive to the next computer you get. Burn backups of it and keep them safe. Trust me. You’ll be happier.

Because people don’t like change. Think about how hard it is to give up something you like - soda, chocolate, ice cream - or start something new, like an exercise program. The litany, every time we read about another woman who’s spent a lifetime being abused, is “why doesn’t she leave?” Well, she doesn’t like change. That’s her normal. She’s going back to him because he’s the devil she knows. The next man might drink AND beat her AND beat the kids, not just beat her. We learn patterns of behavior and they stick like super glue. The effort to change eludes us — and in the case of domestic violence, it’s the effort to change, plus the economics of being deprived of money and freedom for so long, plus the realities of learned helplessness, of chronic low self esteem perpetuated by verbal putdowns, and of being convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that he WILL find her no matter what and kill her/the dog/the kids/her parents, which might actually be a real danger, plus the shame….

I think Windows is abusive. M$ is abusive. They’re the bully in the schoolyard, the fascist government with all the money and power, and the uneducated masses who think reinstalling every few months is normal just can’t find the right path to freedom. The guys at Geekfarm quote off hourly rates and I don’t doubt some people strapped for cash just go buy another $400 computer rather than fix the one they have, out of sheer frustration. The ones that do pony up the money keep right on using the software. There’ll be an update next week, which is the equivalent of flowers and gushing promises that it will never happen again baby, just come home…. And the cycle continues. Tension builds. The little signs begin — the occasional error message, having to ctrl-alt-delete to end a program that won’t respond, that one time the computer “can’t find system disk” and then it starts to happen more often, and before you know it, you hit a key out of desparation and the disk formats, and those six years of files are gone.

At which point you go to the PC shelter for crisis services, and the case manager has to call in a specialist to help you recover. You get the PC back all shiny and working, your data back in place, and it’s as if nothing ever happens. Until the tension builds, and the messages start…. For someone who relies on the computer for their livelihood, this is costly. You’re at the mercy of the whimsy of a capricious, uncaring, unpredictable creature that sometimes appears to like nothing better than torturing –

I really do need to find a job in my field, don’t I? I’m seeing pathology everywhere.

Bleh.

Don’t worry. I have a therapist.

I have decided that the only thing to do is move parts of one WIP into another.

The transplant will require some significant rewriting, of course, but I think that it will improve both stories immensely. It will make one WIP much shorter, and the other much more cohesive and complete.

In other news, I have so far in my time at Geekfarm, counted system components, drank too much soda, and run across a software package that will not total the items you enter unless the video resolution is just right. The mind reels at the stupidity of programming so that the math doesn’t work at 800×600, or 1024×1024.

In other other news, no interviews, no calls returned. Grr. Arg.

Your problem is, the problem is never the problem.

It’s been a constant, in therapy and at Geekfarm, that people will come in and say, “My problem is A.” Inevitably, I research that problem and find it to be sort of true, or sort of not, and talk to the client about it, and as the person is walking out the door (in the case of Geekfarm, walking out with the computer), he/she will say something like “it was also Y, did you fix that?”

Uh, you said the problem was A. Not Y. Don’t expect me to know your songs vanished from your iPod when you plugged it in, or to magically fix the issue, when you A) did not mention it and B) did not bring in the iPod and C) in fact you brought in your Office install disks, which I did not need, thereby proving that you really didn’t know what you meant when you described the problem.

Likewise, if you say to me “I keep arguing with my husband” and get annoyed when I ask you a series of questions designed to diagnose what, exactly, is going on and the results come up “looks like bipolar,” don’t get all shirty about my suggestion that you keep track of when the arguments happen and see if it’s not when you’re feeling very UP or very DOWN, and that you speak to a psychiatrist to discuss medicine that might stabilize your moods and prevent you from gambling away the house or sleeping with the pool boy at the Y, all his friends, and half the local football team. The problem is not the arguing at that point. The problem is your inability to face up to your symptoms. You came to someone for an objective, clinical perspective. Stop spitting at me.

Of the two career paths, computer stuff actually starts to look less complicated, doesn’t it? But a coworker failed the MCP exam the other day, and when I think about all the exams it would take to make it in the computer world, I get a headache and long for a chat with a bipolar person.

The problem is a symptom, not the problem. Like the computer I was working on yesterday that wouldn’t install antivirus software — ten minutes of geeking tracked it to improperly installed Windows. Typically, repairing the installation via the XP install menu didn’t work due to wackiness with the key/registration, and left me in endless reboot-restart-glitch-reboot mode. All the splash screens announcing how easy to use XP is get really annoying when you’re trying to install it for the tenth time. The problem is not the person, or the hard drive, but the hideous paranoid copyright crap M$ does to be certain no one pirates their software.

In short - the problem might really be the problem, or it might be a symptom, or you might think you understand what that little error message meant but clearly your command of the Microcrap Help Language is lacking. Yes, it does require telepathy sometimes. No, you can’t have any of my magic beans. Next time mention all the error messages up front and I’ll chat with the little metal box in more detail.

(This ‘you’ of which I speak is not ‘you who read the blog,’ but ‘you who can’t figure out where the CD goes and think the mouse with the really long tail doesn’t need to be plugged in.’ In other words, I’m venting, oh yes.)

This apartment hosts two laptops, two desktops, four cell phones and a PDA.

I have a Treo and a Pocket PC that Geekfarm signed out to me. I also have my laptop and personal cell and old moldy win98 desktop. The Treo plus a PDA would seem to be overkill, but the PDA was solely for the purpose of bossgeek “beaming” his notes to me from his PDA so I can then invoice people for the hours he spent anti-virusing and updating and installing stuff.

Of course, the Pocket PC and Treo do not speak to my Powerbook. They do speak to my personal cell in Bluetooth, however, and to each other. Roommate’s laptop doesn’t talk to anyone, so far as I can tell, nor does his antiquated desktop.

I’m having to put my head back into geek mode, and also into helpdesk mode — a customer brought in her desktop today saying it wasn’t booting, but was putting horizontal red lines on the screen. Of course, my first thought is, that’s a display problem - and the pc booted fine and displayed fine. And then I thought, I ought to run antivirus — then promptly got involved with three other tasks, and wala! the customer comes back, and I explain, and she says she’s going to pick up a flatscreen LCD and that should fix the problem. And then as an afterthought, she asks about a message that pops up about windows backdoor.

Ooooooh, should have run that antivirus. Because messages don’t pop up about the actual windows backdoor that’s part of windows, and there are trojans with ‘backdoor’ in the name.

It figures that after I spend thousands of dollars on an education in my ideal career, I can’t find work, or even a good volunteer gig, in that field - and then find a decent job in a different career path I’d given up on. AAAARG. I’m so far behind in geekery that I feel pretty dumb listening to the guys talk in shorthand about networking crap.

Item 1: Part time job at computer geek shop acquired. Geeks urged me to further my career by acquiring certifications, because “you have a lot of what we’re looking for and you could go somewhere.” This, despite my protestations that I’d rather be a therapist.

Item 2: I appear to have been issued an intern number already. Big Government Entity (They Who Determine Licensure) shows me on their website. It’s a good thing I have no stalker issues, they also slapped up my home address, which I will be changing promptly once a real workplace has been made real.

In other words, slight movement from prior state of “complete standstill.” Stay tuned.

It’s been a while….

40+ pages of fic written. Not the fic I should be writing, but a new one. But I believe that it will assist in completing previous WIPs… such is the nature of a series. I have a habit of starting new fic to help me work through blocks, which is both good and bad - if I ever had a hope of completing the series to my satisfaction each new fic means I’m that much farther from ever finishing.

NO ONE is wanting interns. This is a bad thing. I will now be reduced to interning for free and having a side job, which is what burnt me out in the first place…. I plan to stick it out for a couple more months at least, in hopes of finding paid work locally. I really really really do not want to pack everything up and move, really, and I want to do it even less while it’s in triple digit temps here.

I have two saved drafts of posts, one of them over a week old. You would think I had no time, but it’s just the fic that ate my brain, taking over. And going out yesterday to see a movie, and lunch, and going to a friend’s house and watching all the illegal fireworks go off. The cops kept going on the tv news, threatening a major crackdown on those, claiming they had a task force specially for catching folks with their rockets, but I sure didn’t see anyone and I was in a really active neighborhood. There were no less than six houses within a block of friend’s house shooting off rockets for hours. Apparently there is someone local who runs fireworks up from Mexico and makes a living selling them — I can believe it. There were some mighty purty sparkly things going off.

Me: … so I don’t really feel so hot, lately.

Him: What do you believe?

M: ?:-/

H: Do you go to church? What’s your sense of the divine? Do you feel connected to it?

M: Um… I used to go to different churches. It sort of depended on whether I found a ride, and with whom. But that was a long time ago - I gave up on that when I couldn’t find any one place with a theology that made sense to me.

H: So what about now?

M: What about it?

H: Do you believe in God? A god? A divine presence?

M: I guess you could label me ‘agnostic.’ I used to think I believed. I’m not so sure what to think, any more. I always thought that you should be able to ‘buy in’ wholeheartedly, that somewhere deep inside you should feel the solidity of your conviction, that your whole being should rest on whatever spiritual belief you find to be true. Which isn’t to say that ‘true’ and ‘factual’ are the same, like some spiritual sorts want to claim. I’m thinking in terms of personal Truth.

H: So you don’t believe in anything.

M: … It’s not that simple. If there’s anything I could say I believe in these days, it’s that nothing is that simple. Nothing important, anyway. If everything were truly a matter of believe or disbelieve, like an on/off switch, it would be easier. Wouldn’t it?

H: I was just wondering - it just seems to me that if you felt a connection to something beyond yourself, it would be easier for you. Maybe you wouldn’t be having such a hard time.

M: People. I have a few friends.

H: You have family?

M: Practically speaking, no. Technically, I have parents who don’t talk to me, and a brother who does when he remembers I exist, and a sister in law who generally has the attention span of a gnat and the follow-through of an unmedicated six year old with ADHD. I have hoards of uncles, aunts and cousins I never talk to, most of whom I’ve never met.

H: So you’re alone. Bad parents, few friends, no church.

M: This is unusual how? Most Americans are in the same boat. Studies have been done - it’s a trend. I’m a trend setter.

H: That’s not something most people would brag about.

M: Meaning is something Americans don’t teach kids to look for. I am a product of my society. I came to understand all of this pretty late in the game. Remember Maslow? I have most of the basic needs met — I’m working on the rest. It’s okay.

H: You’re okay?

M: Actually, I’m more ‘okay’ than I’ve ever been in my life. If you have time I’ll list all the ways I’ve never been okay….

No, I’m not posting a commentary on another BSG ep. Yet.

No, I’m sort of getting other stuff done today. I’ve been meaning to clean house for a while, and it’s Monday, and there’s no job to drive off to so today’s the day. It’s nearly 9 - I’ve already made a batch of almond lemon curd, done a load of dishes, made coffee, sent off a resume for a part time position (YAY for email and people who use it) and will probably snail mail another before the day is through.

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time re-reading and taking notes on a prior fic novel, to whittle away further at the prep work to write the sequel to it. It’s been a few years, much to my dismay. The sequel is something I thought I had a handle on several times over the last year, but something always happened to derail it. As Seema said the other day, sometimes taking a long break really helps regenerate the interest in whatever you’ve lost interest in, and that certainly seems to be the case. I also have a 60+ page WIP that I’d stalled on, and the solution flashed into my head the other night — I’ve been deleting pages of dialogue and rewriting it in hour-long sessions, off and on. I’m letting another WIP rest, after both Seema and I had a go at it.

In between, I’ve found a yoga podcast, rented yoga dvds from Netflix, and generally tried to figure out how to keep my habit despite the oncoming end of my ability to attend actual classes. At fourteen bucks a lesson, it’s not in my budget. I have to find a job. Doggone it.

… isn’t what you think it is. Seriously.

There’s research ongoing into happiness, and it’s not just “what makes you happy” it’s “what are the biological components” and debunking lots of assumptions about what would make us happy. There are studies going on that look at happy people and not-happy people, what helps the not-happy, what doesn’t help, what parts of the brain and/or chemistry are involved….

I’m listening to a program right now about happiness and whether you can manipulate it. You can. Check it out if you have decent bandwidth (you can download and listen, too).

It’s done. Those last couple of hours I needed are done, done, done. Now all that’s left are two short papers and a final, and I’ll have the papers finished tonight and emailed to their destinations. I have a bunch of forms for supervisor to finish. I have a stomach ache. I have a new online project, which I am still tinkering with and will link from here later in the week — I’m trying to zap the muse a little. Heck, if it fails, it’s just a deletion from forgotten.

I made someone cry today. I have to tell my clients I’m leaving. This one isn’t handling it well. I feel bad for the guy, but oy.

1. Fourteen hours of therapy left! (grrr, no show people!)

2. Tummy not good. I somehow upset it yesterday, tmi deleted last night, and been urpy and moany all day, not to mention headache-y, but Excedrin Migraine rulz.

3. Parentals not coming to graduation. But, Female Parental was true to her codependant nature and sent Large Monetary Sum. Debating whether to follow trend previously set and purchase yoga lessons/therapy sessions/massages for self. Or blow the whole wad on One Massive Party! Or airline tickets to Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, or possibly (given current rates) somewhere closer to home, like Canada.

4. Field Placement ends on June 1, due to massive sweeping changes in the system with which I am unable to negotiate. I knew the changes were coming; we all thought it would be later in the year. But, no. So I will be shiftless and job-seeking, and probably doing temp work unrelated to my chosen field to pinch-hit with the bills until I locate Actual Real Career-Related Work, thus hoarding my savings account for a possible relocation to Somewhere That Is Not This Town.

5. It’s ALMOST OVER! ZOMG!

The shock, it comes in waves and squiggles and blinding flashes. How four years can feel like FOREVER. How quickly it can end.

Big Test done. Not sure how I did. Likely passed, possibly didn’t, not caring overmuch one way or another due to excessive burn-outedness.

Two measly assignments and a final left in my graduate school experience. And 17 hours of therapy, which will likely not take three weeks to complete. Booyah.

Kind of a so so week, leading into the BIG TEST O DOOM on Saturday.

Out of eight appointments, four have actually showed up. Two appointments that didn’t show were in Distant Clinic. Bah. Still, if most people show tomorrow, I’m still ahead of the game. And if they don’t, I study.

I downloaded the registration packet to acquire an intern number. I need the number to be employed. I need to graduate to get the number. I need the office of Whoever Maintains Transcripts to get the ‘incomplete’ off my transcript so I can acquire an official transcript to finish the form to get the intern number. And I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach as I wait for the big bad wolf to blow the straw house down. As I asked my supervisor tonight, “whose a$$ do I have to kick to get the incomplete changed?”

Feeling much better about other things, like the graduation ceremony. The people with whom I have an actual relationship will likely be there. My parents will likely say they aren’t up to the drive, as according to my brother both have been declining somewhat. My brother and sis in law will probably bring wacky adopted nephew, and we’ll probably go out for something tasty before they drive home.

In thinking about all the angst surrounding my mama… I’m realizing it isn’t about her at all. It’s about me owning up to the fact that there wasn’t really a relationship, in the sense of two people knowing each other intimately and accepting each other anyway. She can only accept me if I behave like the ten year old she misses. I can accept her the way she is as long as I don’t have to sit and listen to her for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch - I’ve noticed that (probably due to the therapist part) I have this subtle confrontational thing going on, and the one thing anyone who spends more than a day with Mum knows, is you don’t confront her, you let her be as illogical and daft as she likes, and don’t puncture her delusion that the world really ought to function just as she seems to expect. Challenges Are Bad. Conformance Good. You Must Be Like Me Or You Are Wrong!

Good grief. I was raised by a Borg.

Yes, I tend to catch up to things on Friday.

I have learned that therapy with children in Real Life Situations is fraught with agita. Working with an ultra demanding foster care agency in addition to a kid who won’t look at you isn’t fun. And of course the newbie gets pushed around, and of course I have to call back and say “You know, my supervisors just won’t let me be that much of a wimp.” But not in those words.

I have learned that my former job is too intimidating - the gal they got to replace me quit after one day. Of course, she also claimed to have bookkeeping experience to the boss, then said to me, “I don’t know about it.” Not good. Honesty is the best policy. So, now I have to teach my boss quickbooks. I’ll give him one afternoon.

I saw signs Roommate has returned from his week out counting bugs and turtles and owls and foxes (foxen? foxi?) in the wild places soon to become housing tracts — random luggage strewn about the apartment. But I think he’s buying his new car this afternoon. I’m glad - his old clunker was leaking oil badly, and I could foresee taxi duty if it continued.

I have been thinking about writing, but getting home tired and headache-y and cranky. And sort of stuck on the WIPs at the moment. I think I’ve plotted myself into a hole. Hopefully digging out won’t require a huge deletion.

Overheard in New York: The Voice of the City You’ll go in with a straight face and roll out on LOLlerskates.

I had two out of four scheduled clients show up today. One was an assessment for a schizophrenic. One is never really aware of the intolerance of our society until confronted with the mentally ill. Schizophrenics frequently have little insight into their own difficulties and can’t articulate what’s going on with them, and this one was so isolated by people who treat her like she’s crazy that I could tell I was the first person in a long while who actually listened to her talk. She cried for a while, and the rest of the time she was angry, repeating over and over that she wanted a job, wanted help, and no one would help her. To which I replied, what kind of help do you need? I can see why some people make a career out of helping people like this - sometimes in a budget-crunched system all you can give is compassion, and sometimes that’s the difference between scraping by and jumping off an overpass.

In other news, tomorrow the clinic is closed due to one of those holidays the government offices take off, but the rest of the world doesn’t. I’m going in to train my replacement at Job. Hopefully, the gal will be quick on the uptake.

Really, I just want to sleep. Yesterday I had to cancel an appointment due to a migraine, which plagued me all day, until I got home, hurled lunch, and crashed for four hours straight, which meant I couldn’t really sleep last night. I kept waking up to find the Roommate’s tabby asleep in awkward spots, like between my feet, on my hip, or tucked up against my abdomen with her head in my armpit. I had this long, now-vague half-waking dream, in which I re-imagined every story in the C&C series - sort of the series I would have written if I started it today. Quite different, and some of it stuck with me after I woke up this morning. I was groggy most of the morning even though I had my requisite double-strength coffee. Today, I fear, I was not quite on my game. So I got home this afternoon feeling quite inadequate and with the first vibe of short-timer’s disease - I know that I will not be hired at the clinic, and it’s April this Saturday, which means seven weeks left in the semester, which means…. I need to find a friggin’ job in my field of choice.

I think I need yoga now.

Got home early as a result of rescheduling - two no shows today due to miscommunications on the part of others, one reschedule, one show.

I made a CPS report today. I had very mixed feelings about it; a teenager wandering the streets and consistently ditching school, and who knows if ze’s being fed real food or if the parental unit is merely doling out a portion of the welfare check. On the one hand, I may have scuttled a working relationship with a well intentioned, forgetful, seriously impaired client. On the other, the kid needs supervision. And who really knows if this is something CPS will do anything about - they have an exchange answering their line, which should tell you something about the volume of calls, and you just know (with a sinking achy pit of the stomach) that most of the calls are for cases of serious abuse.

I have to wonder sometimes if making therapists call in any suspicion of any abuse only results in more cases of out and out abuse, in the end. Ostensibly part of what’s addressed in treatment will improve the chances that abuse won’t happen, but get someone in who’s not SO abusive and actively seeking treatment then force the therapist to break confidence and rat them out, and guess who won’t trust any more therapists?

On the other hand, leaving it up to the therapist when to call may result in a bunch of therapists who never call and a bunch of kids who suffer as a result.

It’s a tough call. Is being bounced around foster homes any less traumatic to a kid than mom or dad committing some form of neglect?

Wasn’t I just having a Friday yesterday?

Twas a decent week, but a very busy one - my schedule is undergoing some upheaval. Tomorrow I have to work a few hours to finish off some projects at the job.

At the clinic, I have now bumped up against CPS reports twice, which is befuddling to my supervisor as he’s not had to make one. I’m wondering if he just doesn’t talk about people’s kids with them at all.

My back hurts. I think I’m going to go read a book. I’ve ordered graduation announcements. And three weeks to go before Big Expensive Certification Test, and I haven’t studied in two weeks. Yay! Also, I have once again rediscovered the color of lipstick that looks good on me instead of making me look like I kissed a barn. The receptionist at the clinic carries her Mary Kay inventory in her car.

In other words, life as usual - full of grumpiness, occasional good cheer, and some occupational stress. No writing done this week, but, meh. I need to get back to yoga, though.

Things I learned this week:

If I keep the external HD actively transferring files it won’t lose them. Thus, leaving files moving to and fro saves them. I need a new HD.

If you try to start a group for socially anxious women, no one will show up.

450 out of 600 hours accomplished this week. 150 hours to go. 9 weeks left til graduation. All I need is 17 hours/week. Since that’s my average, I may make it yet. No, not positive enough - I will make it!

High maintenance clients = pain in the ****. Especially when you’re part of a clinic expected to serve the client’s needs.

Or in some cases, just a yo-yo.

specifics deleted

I had a moment this week where I was struck by the deep-seated feeling of rightness that can only come when goals are met and your life is pointed in the right direction, and something down there in your soul recognizes that.

Then I had about two days of screaming terror, and two hours of “gah, the little girl won’t even look at me,” and then my second supervisor (or is it the third? I’ve lost count now) said I was off to a good start, on the right track, and going to do fine.

That would have been nice to know yesterday when I was curled up in a little ball in the front seat of my car in the parking lot. (Well, I wasn’t. But I thought about it. Driving home across 20 miles of rural two-lane roads almost feels like the same thing.)

Tangentially, you know you have a lot of books when a supervisor tries to give you a copy of a resource for assessment and it’s something you can identify and name the author….

Well, all day.

I got to the clinic this morning to find that no one told me I had appointments today.

I’m all kickin’ it in jeans and a sloppy shirt, and whoa! assessment! Nothing like jumping in with both feet. Checked email and sure enough, I need to set up my clinic email at home, cause daaaaang, it would have been nice to get the “I’m on vacation as of 10 am tomorrow call me if you have questions” email last night.

Treatment planning while stunned and dazed is no cup of tea.

Though I was in a bit of a panic, it seems I have managed through a phone campaign to make 13 appointments next week. I may also have chided a couple of people into showing up for group. Well, not chided. Persuaded, hinted strongly, whatever. Because social anxiety doesn’t go away overnight, and I tend to agree with the cognitive behaviorists that it may be conquered only by practice.

The funny part of all of this is, I used to be totally anxious about social contact, in the way of the geeky. When I was a kid, I was a geek - even though there was no such thing then, and also no home computers, and also no gaming in my rural hamlet pop. 25,000 people spread out across the miles of rolling hills. I fit the profile. I was the kid who checked out 200 books in one summer, mostly those with horses, dogs, awkward kids trying to figure out life, fairies, wizards, rockets, and sandworms. I was also known to pilfer from the adult sections, and since Mom assumed I was sticking to kids’ books and I was a good girl that I wouldn’t be reading SMUT, she never checked.

So it was just me and books. Tom Sawyer, all of Blume’s girls, Taran, Alec Ramsey, Laura Ingalls, any adolescent isolated from the world ala Island of the Blue Dolphins, and also lots of women who found themselves wandering around in gloomy mansions with mysterious male owners who Brooded and Seemed Evil But Really Weren’t, kept me company. Also dragons and other animals of all kinds. Oh, and Alice - though I never did figure out how to Go Ask her. And C.S. Lewis’ animals, the Pevensies, and those pesky hobbitses. Sounds a little crowded but we all fit neatly in my room.

The problem is, you have to share a world with someone to get along with them, and hardly anyone in my class read books the way I did, and no one understood my cute quips alluding to anyone in books, so, geek. Which helps me understand completely how some of my clients end up with no friends, isolated from or in conflict with their remaining family members, and left only with a therapist to talk to — is it any wonder people end up hearing voices, and that the voices are all critical of them?

Most people I talk to have a notion of reality that consists of me=bad, everyone else=better, and sometimes they develop this based on feedback they get from everyone around them. The problem is, if that’s mostly negative, which it often is because the dominant notion of mental illness remains harshly judgmental — people remind me of flocks of birds that pick on a wounded member until he falls; shaming a depressed person by ignoring their obvious misery or by telling them to ‘cheer up’ or ’stop crying’ or other instruction, thus invalidating their feelings, is very common and leads to the person not only feeling more depressed but very alone into the bargain. Moms are great at attempting to be supportive but only making it worse — “you just need to get out more, honey” doesn’t work if you make that your only response. The thought in the mind of Child is, “You just don’t understand.” They’re both right, and they’re both just as stuck, and eventually when Child can’t “get my act together” Mom sometimes forces the issue by… throwing them out of the house, inviting cousins over, setting up Child with a nice young man/woman they happen to know….

When I went through my depressed phases, I knew that I was different. Why couldn’t I bounce back? Why couldn’t I feel normal? And these questions come up in therapy, and I answer “you can, just not right away.” Part of my job is hanging in there with the person so they don’t feel so alone. At some point I can say, this is what you need. Connection with others. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, a lot of people are harsh and reject others who aren’t “like them.” Yes, it’s tempting to act like everything’s fine, ‘fake it til you make it’ — and sometimes faking it is required, as a workplace will demand a smiling employee particularly one who deals with customers. Plus, with friends, you have to make a real effort to be there for them, just as you expect them to be there for you — you can’t just lie there sucking their energy. Even though you don’t have much of your own, you have to get up and slog off to the movies or set up a birthday bash once in a while. But there has to be a time and a place you can be real with another person(s) and if you have no one things will continue as they have been. Relationships enable change. And while hiding under a blanket is tempting, you will only sink deeper into loneliness.

Can’t resort to the introvert defense, either. I’m one. Somehow, by chatting with people in and out of class, and at work, I’ve developed friends. Introverts don’t dislike being around people; they simply need time on their own once in a while. I write and read during mine. It’s how I recover from a day of therapy. And really, therapy is getting easier the more I do it, because asking difficult questions and confronting the inconsistencies in other people’s lives — making them more responsible for their feelings — is something that comes out of you while you are working on your own issues. (On your own time, of course.) I learn things every day about myself because I am talking to so many people.

If there is a point to my ruminations, it’s that loneliness is epidemic, and those who rely on external validations and never develop the ability to cope are most vulnerable. American culture is a horrible place to live these days. We are all going a hundred miles an hour to support our families or just ourselves, and we can’t seem to recognize that society is fragmenting around us. I’m not just talking about “the crisis of the American family” or broken homes, I’m talking about whole families with no divorce that are falling to pieces internally, that externally everyone appears to hang together but emotionally everyone’s forced to be two people and maintain the pretty picture. I’ve seen divorced couples working together to the good of the kids who have more sane relationships than the parents sticking together for the kids.

Maintaining a marriage is not as important as developing an emotionally healthy environment. We’re failing all the way around. I just talked to a 20something who got hooked on meth and smoked/injected with her family members. Beautiful person, shattered life, no clue what the future holds, because she doesn’t know anyone who isn’t emotionally broken, therefore has no idea of what to do to escape the drug culture. There’s hardly any help for her, except this is California, and we have programs to assist women in getting back on track with education and temporary financial support. But unless she has people to give her the emotional support, I can predict the end result. She isn’t alone in this. I see this all the time.

This is why I’ve slid further and further from the Republican party I used to be in — I cannot stand the continued stance of “marriage first, save the babies, but give nothing to the lower classes and let them continue to suffer with no insurance, no help with the zillion kids they have because they aren’t educated about options, and let’s pressure people of all demographics to adhere to our standard of normal with no respect for their internal realities.” Because it’s not realistic, it’s not healthy, and it’s really no wonder that the one person I know who is most seated in denial, dishonesty, and selfishness is also the most outspoken conservative Republican I’ve ever met. You can’t help people who cling to illusions of superiority while spinning out stories of the most morally bankrupt behavior.

I’m not liberal, either. I want balance. Balanced books, balanced minds — yes, I’m an idealist. But then, I wouldn’t be a therapist if I weren’t radically optimistic. I’m also pragmatic; you will never, ever be able to force people to conform completely to your idea of normal. Somehow that internal reality will come out, either as mental or physical illness. People tend to gravitate toward groups they feel normal in. So I don’t believe legislating morality is right, and I don’t believe that we will be able to continue on our current political course without backlash and serious consequences for society and human rights.

I’m afraid, for my clients of all backgrounds and for myself, who doesn’t conform to the “normal” that’s fermenting. I’m afraid for my country. It seems the schisms between various groupings are growing wider, people are polarizing, and if I were seeing this behavior in a family I’d be quite pointed about confronting it and identifying specific issues being ignored. This country needs therapy — not everyone’s idea of ‘touchy feely’ therapy, or TV therapy, or any other stereotype, but family therapy where someone calls the members on their shitty behavior and gets them to think about what they’re doing to their sisters and brothers. Robert McNamara talks about empathizing with one’s enemies. I fear we can’t even do that with our own fellow citizens — no wonder we’re so fragmented as a society.

I scheduled a full day of appointments. Plus a group, which I intend to get going if it kills me. One person shows up, all day — the least likely person to do so, funnily enough — and the rest? Who knows? Except for the one who decided she wasn’t going to come back at all. She called and left me a message.

I am dying by increments here - it would not be the end of the world to have a few weeks overlap, I’ll still be able to walk with the rest and get hooded in May. But it’s a doggone irritation to go through all the trouble of photocopying material, planning out the first group session, and have no one there. On the plus side it gave me a productive session with the one who showed, who was busily psyching herself out all day in preperation for it — “I’ve only just gotten comfortable with you,” she says, and she’s been coming since last July. Monumental anxiety, there. On the minus side? AAAAAAGH! I need ten hours this week. I’ve had three. If everyone shows up tomorrow I’ll have nine.

And people aren’t emailing me back! Tres annoying.

1. studied with a friend for the certification test for … six hours or so. We took breaks for yoga and dinner and margaritas. I think next time I will make the margaritas — I was pretty lightheaded for a while and started reading the material aloud in cartoon voices. One margarita shouldn’t do that.

2. spent two hours with a client who ended up being committed. It’s my first time dealing with that, and I was the only therapist in the office on a Friday afternoon. I think in future that client will be showing up on Tuesdays when we have a full house from now on. It was wrenching to watch EMTs trying to hold down someone I’m fond of. Kept me up late and slept in late, so only showed up in time for an hour of yoga Saturday morning instead of the two hours I’d hoped for. Still recovering; at least I’m not endlessly mulling over and planning out the next conversation with Client as I was Friday night.

3. the crisis interrupted a discussion with a therapist who is arranging office space, so that on Thursdays I can see children. It’s going to be an hour each way commute. I still have details to iron out and paperwork to complete so the hours count. I’m a little worried about what the therapist/supervisor thought of me disappearing like that, but at the time I was afraid to leave Client alone.

4. my roommate departed for LA to attend a training on Friday morning. Empty apartments are not good for anxious people. I will use this experience to inform my treatment of anxiety ridden clients, no doubt.

5. Going to get storage media today. Debating between another external drive and lots of DVDRWs. Don’t forget to back up soon.

Okay, so I heard back from the supervisor o’ the other clinic. She’s sorting out when she wants me, i.e. when an office is available. I’m not sure if it will be available. Also not sure how it’s going to work with the current schedule.

I have 100 of 300 hours necessary to graduate, six weeks into a 17 week semester. That’s 200 hours in 11 weeks I need to do. If I get 20 hours a week, I’m done. I did 17 this week. Oooooo, gonna be close.

crosses fingers

I may have mentioned that at the clinic, I have a clinical supervisor who reviews my case notes and general therapeutic behavior, and an admin supervisor who looms about the halls telling people to attend training seminars and meetings and generally keeping his finger on everyone’s pulse.

Today I asked him about hours with kids - know any placements where I can do child/family therapy? Behold! The opportunity awaits! I have to drive a 45 mile round trip once a week, but in California terms, that’s nothing - I used to do a 30 mile round trip for high school. All he’s waiting for is a green light from the clinical supervisor for that region.

And of course, the groups-for-children-of-divorce program I’m trying to get on board with is on the same day as the commute-to-clinic, but I may be able to change that around. And if I do, that means Wednesdays off, four days of clinic time, and Wednesday night playing with kids. Hmmm.

I don’t know why I didn’t ask the admin supe sooner. The guy has his finger on the pulse of every clinic within a hundred mile radius.

In random news, it’s freezing cold, it’s raining, and I’m gonna light me a fire and curl up with a book and hot cocoa, go me. Friday! Three day weekend! Wooo!

The school bought one copy of the study guide for the test on April 22. Now they are too honest and law-abiding to make copies for the test takers. This is a licensing exam in most other states, and a professional credential in California, and I had to pay 250 interest-bearing dollars to register for it. So, a little concerned about that. Thank you, Amazon, for second hand study guides.

And, on top of the absence of study stuff and the lateness of informing us there would be no study stuff, the school schedules the meeting to orient test takers and provide tips and tricks on passing it during my Tuesday class. Strike Two!

Job interview results: eh. Going through the motions, I called to check and they are still interviewing. 15 mins. per interview times two weeks? That’s a lot of applicants to review. At this rate they may make a decision… oh, about 2008. And I thought County Mental Health moved at glacial speeds.

I am millimeters from telling the job I’m quitting. Now, I really would do better to hang in there and make the rent (even though it doesn’t pay much other than that) because the rent, she is nothing to sneeze at. With the unexpected forty dollar increase, I had to cut back on the grocery trips. I am now eating those cup-a-soup thingies that I refer to as “styrafoam noodles” because, well, yeah. I went to the store tonight and got one artichoke, one package of sausage, and one medicated chapstick. Oh, and two half gallons of ice cream because I am a total sucker for two-for-one sales, and ice cream is the fifth food group stop-looking-at-me-like-that.

But the job is driving me nuts. I’m thinking, counseling is where I need to be full time, because I can sit there all the livelong day listening to people who have no motivation, no ability to self regulate, no discipline, no capacity for taking another single minute of the torment of their depression, and I can talk to them and listen and ask questions like “if you leave here today are you going to be all right? do you think you can make it, or should I call the crisis center and take you over and have you admitted? because we don’t want to let you go if you intend to commit suicide.” Yet going to the job and listening to the bickering that results from certain individuals not wanting to listen to each other and acknowledge points made? AARRRRR. Business is easy, people! Get with the program!

Which isn’t to say there aren’t clients I’d rather not see — how do you do anything therapeutic with someone who’s high? I’m still figuring that one out, because he keeps showing up that way. But you know, when you prefer sitting in a room with a guy who’s flying higher than the clouds rambling about his youthful transgressions and all the ones that came after that to sitting in a room listening to sales people argue about who’s really paying salaries here, and you don’t know what you’re doing, and come ON just do your job! Well, there’s a message here.

The only solution I see is drop-kicking the job. Being available five days a week for group therapy and training and client sessions will get me to graduation faster, and saner. Though poorer.

Mick was right, you can’t always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need. wooo! wooo!

I take books to read when I go to the clinic, just for days like today when three out of the four people scheduled call to cancel. (Which is a notch above the infamous “just doesn’t show up” — at least I’ve made that much of an impact on some of these folks. I tend to cut most of the clients a lot of slack, because I imagine that if I were hearing voices shouting in my ear that the cops were coming for me and the power strip I’m using to plug in the fan is bugged by THEM, I wouldn’t pay much attention to clocks either. Who knows what kind of voice comes from clocks?)

Usually the books are recent-published “keep up with the latest theory” kinds of tomes — not so thick, not so very steeped in psychodynamic (the latest iteration of Freud’s pet theories) theory. I checked a book out of the library that’s easily three inches thick, by a psychiatrist named Yalom. I’m familiar with him from a textbook for a class - the guy writes these long, lazy, anecdote-laden books about his approach to group therapy or just general therapy, and you could seriously hurt someone with them. Yalom has also written novels, logically involving a therapist in some way or another, and a few smaller books containing case studies or essays. Right now I’m in the middle of “Existential Therapy” which is his synthesis of a lot of the older theorists’ approaches, including Freud, Bandura, and a host of others you might not recognize. Including Helmuth Kaiser. I am now interested in finding Kaiser’s work; he wrote very little, a book and a play, and I am most interested in the play. But. He doesn’t exist at Amazon, or any of the usual places online. He doesn’t exist at the library, college or public. I found only one website with his name, the rest were all referencing Kaiser Wilhelm.

I have a professor who recently found two first edition copies of C.S. Lewis books in his storage unit. He has two sheds and a 10×10 storage full of books — I guess he’s been keeping them since the early 50’s. I asked him about this Kaiser fellow and he knew who it was, just not whether he had anything he wrote.

I’m thinking I’ll email Yalom. He has a website, after all. Maybe he has a copy he can scan? I’m guessing it’s so old that the texts are public domain…. Hmmm.

ETA: Well, that was fast. He emailed me within a couple hours of sending one to him and gave me a head’s-up to the editor of Kaiser’s work. It turns out that I was spelling Helmuth with a single L and amazon has two L’s, otherwise I would have found it without bugging people. Oh well!

I have such mixed feelings right now. Just blew into the apartment for lunch after the fated interview. It’s for a therapist position on a school campus - not a school counseling position, but a therapist on campus to do crisis intervention and therapy with kids and families.

I totally muffed the interview. But, I have my reservations about working on a campus anyway. And, they would lay off every summer with no benefits for three months. So I wouldn’t want the position, but I muffed the interview! Arrr!

Maybe I’m being hard on myself. Maybe now that my first interview as an intern is over, the rest will be easier. But there was just something about being told “fifteen minute interview” combined with “here’s some scenarios” and the umpteen times I had to sign waiver this and hold harmless that — I don’t know. I think I briefly had an out of body experience.

I totally had my head on straight going in there, I thought. Man. I get it all together, and leave it in the car.

… and I know where it landed.

I have been seeking a secondary placement. At first, I was afraid the clinic would go belly up. Now it appears it won’t. I say ‘appears,’ because no one’s said anything definite, but the atmosphere there is less fraught with peril than before. Now that I’ve talked to a few people about various placements, I’m starting to get excited about adding some variety to my schedule and leaving Dull Office Job With Side Order of Rabid Conservative.

I’ve spoken to two different people, one supervising a substance abuse facility where they also employ therapists — not all substance abuse programs are alike, and a substance abuse counselor is not the same thing at a therapist; I did not realize this myself until I was confronted by one who had a really shaky idea of counseling ethics — and one who supervises a clinic specializing in getting folks off the medications. Let’s just say that working at either place while simultaneously working at the clinic I’m presently at would be like traveling from the north pole to the equator every day. Like, completely different methodology, completely opposite notion of ethical and appropriate. Still, both have opportunities for play therapy with kids, or other sorts of experiences anyway.

Enter the voice mail. My phone periodically does not ring when I get a call, and not because I silenced it — and so it did just that today. I had sent a resume to a center affiliated with the county that does family therapy, child therapy and parenting classes, and supposed that I would not hear anything because it was a response to an ad in the paper for a paid position, and though I am in my final semester there are plenty of graduates floating about who no doubt applied. The voice mail was to inform me that if I was still interested I needed to call back and set up an interview on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Excuse me while I roll around squeeing for a bit.

There. Back now.

Yes, it’s not “I got the job” — but at this point an “I MIGHT GET THE JOB” is cause for joy. I could send back some of the student loan money. I could stop subsisting on boiled eggs until I make it to next month’s grocery budget. I could be a real live paid adult type person and not a starving student! Sometimes I start to feel like a second class worker drone. I don’t have my own office, don’t have a salary, don’t go to meetings…. Well, I could live without the meetings. But signs of being Taken Seriously would be cool.

I’ll be chanting that forever. I made the mistake of responding to “did you watch the State of the Union Address” with “No, I only listen to delusional people when I’m getting paid to do it.” I thought I could get away with a joke. I was so wrong.

OOOOOOh, eighteen rounds, and ten rounds more. “You d*** liberal!” “Uh, no.” “Well what are you then?” “I’m apolitical — I think they’re all lying bastards.” Well, it was simpler than the long explanation. I’m probably on the liberal side of centrist, actually. But I knew Boss was conservative Republican, I knew better than to expect anything but a round of “let’s convert you!” and at least I’m a short-termer at this job.

I don’t know what it is — every conservative I’ve ever met feels it’s their duty to debate me into the ground, and every dem I’ve met is always the first to shrug and drop the subject in group discussion. From now on, my reaction to anyone of any belief system, religious or otherwise, who comes at me with both barrels blazing: blank stare, head shake, and a sigh. Exit, stage right. Because I would rather discuss things than have what I say bounce off someone’s head. Because true conversation is give and take, not ignore and attack. I don’t care if you think Bush is the bee’s knees, or Kerry’s swell, or Clinton is the anti-christ — I care more about you respecting me enough to let me make up my own mind, one way or the other.

My last words were “I don’t do extremes, because they result in hostility between otherwise sensible people. So stop asking me whose side I’m on. I’m on everyone’s side, if you really want an answer.” Because I am. I can agree to disagree, and still like the other person at the end of it.

Yeah, venting. Also, waiting for a quiche to come out of the oven. A yoga session and a hot quiche go a long way toward restoring harmony, not to mention a full stomach.

And not in a planned way. Instructor of today’s class is evidently testifying in court somewhere, and since a major part of his career is flying around the country doing that, maybe I’ll have some Tuesday time once in a while.

Not that I didn’t have time anyway. Three of five clients did not show up for appointments. I spent the time doing other related things, like reviewing files and making calls. When I left the clinic at 3:20 I had a headache and a hollow spot in the tummy — given the nature of the symptoms, I opted for fast, caffienated and sugary, i.e. a frappucino from Starbucks drive thru, in hope of making it through three hours of lecture. If only I’d known class was cancelled I’d have come home and made myself an espresso shot instead.

I have this new device called an aeropress. It’s a handy little plunger with a filter on the end, but oh, the difference it makes in the flavor of the coffee. I was dubious but couldn’t resist a really cheap way to make espresso - the savings will make it worthwhile, because it will make coffee that tastes better, and give me a more precise way to portion out the beans. Previously I estimated and used a 10 cup coffee pot, and wasted a lot of coffee. Now I can make one espresso shot in less than a minute, add hot water to make a cup of coffee if I want, and make it stronger or weaker by either slowing down or pushing faster, and not muck about with cleaning the coffee pot. You press the brew straight into a cup, then rinse out the plunger and toss it in a rack. The filters can be reused until they tear, and they’re pretty strong little buggers, plus you get a year’s supply up front. Yeah, people say, sounds like a french press. But I was a doubter until I tried it.

The textbook I ordered came in. Guess I should go read it. After I have some coffee. Mmmm, kona.

Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, I have come to realize, applies to other experiences in one’s life. Jobs, for example.

Denial - “It’s a pretty good place to work. My last employer didn’t offer [perk], and I get a review and maybe a raise in three months.”

Anger - “I don’t believe he just told me off! How dare he suggest that I don’t deserve a review! It’s been four months!”

Bargaining - “Look. Give me the review and I’ll work an extra hour on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It’s a good place to work, let’s just do this and everything will be fine.”

Depression - “I’m never going to get that review. This job isn’t going anywhere. I can’t afford to just quit…. This is so not fair. But what can I do?”

Acceptance - “You know, it’s been like this all along - the manager’s stubborn and opinionated, the assistant manager’s bitter, and the shift manager appears to hate women regardless of what they do. It’s just the way it is. I’ll keep working until I accumulate enough experience to jump to the next job - a better job.”

… the outcome of my car problem. It was, of course, maliciousness on the part of the car that lit the service light, and nothing more. They changed the oil and reset the computer and called it ‘working order’.

To offset this good fortune that removed several zeroes from my imagined auto repair expense, I came home and found a dead bird, right where I could step on it and do the icky-squicky dance. My roommate’s cat may be old, but she’s s