Three years ago, the most frustrating therapist to try to teach up-to-date practice patterns was Pam. I’ll probably never forget her approaching me at the office one day and saying to me, “When you are scheduling these teaching-things, feel free to leave me for last. I’m just here for another few years and the less I have to learn the better.” . . . . I taught her the new materials anyway. I was later assigned to meet with her every 2 weeks to review her caseload with her. Since I have been moved into middle-management, Pam has been calling. A lot. More questions than ever before. It had gotten to the point that everyone screened their calls … everyone accept me. The running joke at the office has been, “Don’t answer it, it might be Pam.” When my resignation was announced, Pam approached me tearfully, wondering why I was […]
Squirrels are common, but gifted creatures. Ask any backyard bird-lover if they have squirrel-story and they’ll share a frustrating narrative of how they tried in vain to prevent a squirrel from eating the bird-seed from their feeder; they are savvy, persistent, and creative. My dog, Adeline, has chased many but caught none; they are quick and elusive. Sit in a local park and you’ll watch social creatures run up and down trees, leap from branch to branch, and scurry across the length of the most narrow rope or line; squirrels are graceful creatures. Their carcasses also litter the shoulders of our roadways. . . . . I saw him from 75 yards away. As I came around the bend, he lifted his head from the ground and looked directly at my vehicle. I was only traveling 45 mph, and I lifted my foot from the accelerator. I started coasting and […]
I was going to spend less time online and on my phone consuming. I was going to take that newfound time and communicate, create, and explore. Yet – despite cutting back on my digital life – I haven’t had time for those things. Instead, I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs, which have no value to me whatsoever. I don’t have a favorite team or a favorite player. There’s not even a team that I’d rather see win. Yet there I am watching television while an unread book rests at my feet and the content of a blog post is echoing in my mind. I never used to be or feel this way – I don’t know when it started. I used to sit around all night, every night, watching sports and cheering on various teams until – somewhere along the way – these last 8 years – I lost the […]
I have this omnipresent pain inside me: a constant and gnawing pain that I’m always trying to distract myself from feeling. This pain is – generally – a kind of a minor background anguish that only occasionally gets bad enough to take over my life, but it’s also never not there. It’s hard for me to describe the pain without resorting to figurative language, but I think it’s the pain of meaninglessness, the fear that my vast interior life will die with me, and that my brief miraculous flicker of consciousness will not have been for anything. For me, at least, there is a terrifying depravity to meaninglessness, because i calls into question not only why I write and read and garden and eat and love and everything else, but also whether I should even bother, which is a line of thinking I genuinely cannot afford to indulge. Of course, […]
She surprised me. I never would have thought that she would have said it. And while I don’t remember the exact words, the idea is worth ‘putting to paper’. “You are just as black and white now as you’ve ever been.” How could that possibly be? I see way, way, way more nuance in the world than I ever have before. I know that I know less than I ever appreciated before, and I say so often. When she asks me a question, I answer, “I don’t know,” or, “I couldn’t say,” more than 95% of the time. But those moments don’t resonate. What resonates with her are the times that I take a stand; when I have read about, or have sufficient knowledge in, an idea, concept, or subject that is empirical to defend a defensible position. Those are the moments when I am unwavering. Those are the moments […]
There was an unexpected finality to it … an anxiety an moment of doubt that I hadn’t expected. After all, I had spent the last 6 weeks preparing for this moment. I had already downloaded all my private message conversations from 2 different accounts over the last 13 years. I had already downloaded every post that I had made over that time. I had printed PDFs of every meaningful ‘note’ that I had published. Still, there was a brief moment of hesitation when I received that final warning. I clicked the blue button, despite the hazard sign: the warning that I will become disconnected from everything that is going on in the world, experience FOMO, and inevitably lose touch. I clicked the blue button, because the benefit no longer outweighed the risk; the negatives had begun to exceed the positives. Now the experiment begins in earnest … (Wish me luck)
Victoria has pains. Perhaps there is a reasonable explanation for each one. Maybe each abdominal pain, each migraine, each painful experience without apparent injury … maybe I am wrong and perhaps there is something there that we don’t have the fidelity or understanding to identify as a source of nociception every time. Maybe not. This afternoon Victoria had her annual physical. Her pediatric physician had an uncanny ability to blame the stomach complaints on stress, foot pains on soft-tissue strains, and – most annoyingly – headaches on dehydration. You see, Victoria probably doesn’t drink enough water. No one drinks enough water. Her physician doesn’t even drink enough water. By her physician’s account, if Victoria drinks more her headaches will disappear. Perhaps they will; they probably won’t. I wanted to inquire how she reasoned that everyone drinks too few fluids, yet only a small group of people get headaches, and how […]
I enjoy FB; it shows me what is going on in the lives of so many friends, some I’ve met in person, many I’ve not. Messenger has been indispensable while helping me establish meaningful, deep-friendships with a variety of folks who I will likely never meet in person (but I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna try) Instagram has offered me an opportunity to (virtually) meet a great many people, many in my own community who share a passion for landscape/outdoor photography. Twitter has exposed me to a variety of people and ideas that would have eluded me otherwise. Google makes my computing life exceedingly simple. My bookmarks sync between devices as do all my word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files. My photos are backed-up on Google’s cloud. Many of the PDF files I’ve hoarded along the years are accessible across all devices as well. Amazon has almost anything that […]
I talked in front of a group of folks in February and tried to convince them not to be accidental assholes. It took me less than 2 months to become one myself. Last night, Victoria brought home some classwork that she had completed; some of it needed to be corrected and brought back to her teacher. They were math papers – double digit addition and subtraction. Christine had already looked over the papers earlier in the evening while I was cleaning the garage; now she was at a tri-training event and I was looking things over. “What did your mother say about these?” I asked. “She told me that I needed to start dong better or there would be consequences,” she said. “Well, she is a lot kinder than I am,” I replied, “because I am taking your dessert from you now. That is your consequence – no more dessert […]