And That’s About Enough

Fuck.

It’s been a long damn day of study.

I’m all done in.

I could use another two hours of work, but I can’t do it.

I have written two different reaction responses to material.

I finished a book.

I read another dense chapter in another.

I watched one video of an hour and a half and launched into another four-hour documentary.

The level of discourse is deep and I appreciate all that I am learning and I’m tired.

Pooped.

Done.

I also am getting settled into my life, my home, my new space.

I got furniture assembled today and organized.

I hired someone from Task Rabbit to do the work and honestly, I’m so happy I did.

The woman was really kind and quick and it took her, a skilled person, she’s got great reviews, three hours to put together the furniture I ordered.

I did not have three hours to spare today.

I should probably not be blogging, but you know, the blogging saves my fucking ass.

I need to get all the cobwebs out and I need to process and this is where I do it.

Oh, I know, you’ve had to have noticed, I’m not blogging as much or as regularly as I have in the past, but I am doing it when I need to.

It feels like a need.

Just like writing in the morning feeds me and helps me to get ready for my day, the blogging helps me filter through everything that happened and helps me to not ruminate too much on what the day has brought.

It brought laundry.

My first trip to a laundry mat in years.

Sigh.

I’m not going to lie, its not optimal.

I wish I could use the laundry that is here at the house, but I don’t have access to the garage.

On one hand its fabulous, I don’t have to go through the garage to get to my place anymore.

“I am so jealous of your space!” The woman who came over exclaimed looking at my place.

I had to say, it did look pretty spectacular today, the sun was shining in the windows, my God it gets such beautiful light, today was my first time being in the space most of the day, so I got to really see how much light came in.

So much.

I was reluctant to leave today.

But I knew I had to.

I had to do laundry and I did it and yeah, it wasn’t super fun and I feel like the laundry mat rips you the fuck off with the cost of drying and dryers that don’t really dry, but it is what it is and I did study the entire time I was there, which set the stage for the writing that I did for my classes today.

I still have to do a response in one of my classes, I did two out of three today, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do more.

I had to shut down the video I was watching, which I have watched before for my Freudian Analysis class three years ago.  I remember being fascinated by it when I watched it then, now I’m just tired from it, it’s a bit dark and like I mentioned, four hours long.

That’s a long time to watch anything about psychoanalysis and I’m a psychotherapist, it’s material I do enjoy, but it’s a heavy-handed version of Freudian analysis and I just got a bit worn down by it.

Anyway.

I am happy to say that as my home becomes more and more realized, that I am resourcing myself by being in the space.

It is warm and sweet and inviting.

It is also pretty and fun and colorful and it smells good.

I like the good smells I do.

I can look anywhere in the space and I will find something beautiful to rest my eyes upon.

I really like it and I like how unconsciously I have found things that fit together in interesting and arresting ways.

I don’t set out to create these patterns, but they are there when I step back and look, colors that blend with each other, complimentary shapes and pleasing ways of things coming together.

I will, as I have mentioned, post pictures soon, but it’s not quite fully realized, I still have to get my dresser and it will get set up next week, yeah, I re-hired the woman who helped out today, especially since next Sunday I will be deep in a ten page paper.

I can’t spare the three hours of assembly the product says it will take to assemble.

I mean.

It’s hella cute and had I the spare time I would totally do it, I have the tools I have put together plenty of things before, but this is an active act of self-care to delegate this out.

I have to focus on that paper and I have some ideas percolating, so hopefully it won’t break me.

It’s going to be a big week as I end my time with Liberation Institute and say goodbye to some clients and to the group I have been working with the last year and a half.

I also have to get the rest of my things together for Grateful Heart.

Like now.

I’ll be sitting with a friend from school to design my website on Wednesday and I will be getting a phone number and setting up a Square Reader.

I need to research that too, find out how long it will take for me to get the reader, etc.

Jesus.

I just did it.

Now my brain is officially fried.

I just set up and ordered my Square reader.

I will get it sent to me in the mail and hopefully it will arrive, it should, by the time I have my first client who will be using a credit card.

This is happening.

I think I have done just about all that I can today.

I have to call it a day.

Or a night.

I’m cooked.

Time to make a cup of tea and wind down, get some sleep and leap into what is going to be one hell of a busy week.

Seriously.

You Look Radiant!

My neighbor said to me as I was parking my scooter and securing her for the night.

He’d just open the door to the fenced gate and perhaps it was the sunlight hitting my face, or the big smile on it, but it was sweet to be acknowledged and I smiled harder.

I’m happy.

I feel really good.

Today was a good day.

Most days are, let me be honest, but I had just secured a new person to work with this evening after work and I feel like she and I are going to be a really great fit and I was relieved and happy and felt like I was being carried and taken care of.

“God has not brought me this far to be dropped,” I told myself this past weekend when I was still processing all that had happened, the what’s and whereof’s and why’s of being let go when you have been told that you’re the perfect, well fill in the blank.

When someone tells you you’re doing it perfectly and then let’s you go, it stings a little.

Be that as it may.

I am not perfect.

I fuck up all the time.

I’m human.

I am a spiritual being having a human experience.

And humans are messy and silly and stupid and hard-headed and stubborn and crazy, at least this human is.

I’m grateful for all the messy and the learning, especially learning how to communicate and not to take myself too seriously.

I heard something amazing today.

AMAZING.

From my supervisor while we were in session.

Slight sidebar.

Nothing says starting a busy week at work and internship better than getting up extra early to go to school to get that one piece of paper that the supervisor has to sign so that I can be registered for another class this fall semester.

And I went back to school after meeting with my supervisor to make sure it was filed correctly before I went into work and did my full shift.

Yeah.

Like that.

Anyway.

We were talking about communication and how a client communicates with us and my supervisor quoted Lacan to me.

It just about fell off the couch.

My supervisor quoted, “every time we speak we communicate less than we want and more than we know.”

Holy shit.

Story of my life.

I had never heard that before and it resonated with me on a very deep level.

I am communicating all the time and most of the time I’m not saying what I want.

I have spent years, decades probably, trying to say what I want and so often I am not getting it all out.

I am afraid to say what I want for fear of not getting it, so I’m not going to ask.

That, however, presumes that the person whom I’m engaged with can read my mind and well, that maybe magical thinking, but it’s certainly not logical thinking.

No one can read my mind.

And yet.

There are clues.

There are clues in my voice, in my body, in the way I respond to someone.

It’s pretty obvious if I don’t like you and I want to say it’s very obvious if I do.

There are grey areas and I have found that when I don’t like someone it often times has to do with seeing some characteristic in the person which reminds me of something I don’t like about myself.

Which, I just realized, makes me realize what I do like about myself when I think about people in my life whom I do like, they must represent parts of me that I like.

I have smart, capable, hard-working, brilliant, funny, loving friends.

I must have some of those qualities myself or I wouldn’t be involved with such high-caliber people.

I just wouldn’t.

Like attracts like.

So I was happy, so happy, to get to hear this woman tonight who has what I want and is smart and busy and educated, grateful and full of solution.

I’ll take some of that please.

And then happily pass it on.

That’s what I do best.

Share my experience, strength and hope with another person so that they may do the same and the learning deepens and the love grows and my life expands and grows and it is extraordinary.

I have extraordinary people in my life.

I also have an awesome job.

It was so good to see the family I work for today, I missed them and was grateful that everyone was feeling much better.

I got lots and lots and lots of hugs and I got lots of compliments on the food I cooked and loads of snuggles and it just filled me right up.

So much love.

I am loved.

And I get to love right back.

It’s a pretty amazing job.

So.

Yeah.

Radiant.

Full of light.

Oft times full of bullshit too and perhaps a touch of crazy, but for the most part, I really do feel the grace rather than the drama.

Grace over drama is one of my favorite acronyms for God.

Great out doors is another.

And.

Good orderly direction.

There’s a few more, but those are my tops.

I feel grace.

I feel full of grace.

I feel graced.

And am.

I’ve not been dropped.

I have just been carried somewhere unexpected.

It’s so lovely I don’t always know what to do with it.

But.

I am happy.

And that, in the end, is all that matters.

Happy.

Joyous.

Free.

Hey, God, It’s Me

Carmen.

And hey, I’m listening.

I heard you and well, yes, let’s do it.

Yes please.

Yes, oh my God.

Yes, I’d like to.

Yes, yes, yes.

Heh.

I had a little serendipity come and find me this evening when I was in the student kitchen at school having my dinner break before my last class of the day.

One of the women who is in the program, but a year a head of me, came into the kitchen to get her dinner and I thought as she was putting together her dinner, I should talk to her.

I had seen her yesterday at the practicum workshop and hadn’t the time prior to class to speak with her, I had, very in passing, talked to one of the team and made a tentative appointment to see him today at lunch, but decided to have lunch with one of my friends in the cohort.

We had such a nice lunch and a good catch up.

And.

HA.

I got another invite to travel.

Not sure when I’m going to do it, but I am.

She lives in Miami.

I have always wanted to go down for Art Basel and maybe this upcoming year.

Not this year, it’s like in two weeks and I have already made all my travel plans for the year.

But it’s nice to know there’s another place for me to go and I have a living amends to make to Miami.

The last time I was there, well, I was smoking crack and wasn’t perhaps the best citizen in Dade county.

I wasn’t the worst either, let me be clear, my ex might have had that title wrapped up.

But that’s another story.

A book actually, but yes, for another day.

My friend had extended the invitation before and I just said yes this time.

When?

I don’t know, but yes, I’ll be going.

So.

Yes.

I missed the 12:30p.m. lunch appointment, but I had bumped into the person at school and I think he’d forgotten about me anyhow, he’d mistaken me for another student.

I just smiled and walked on.

Then dinner tonight.

I sat and eat my dinner, coconut curry chicken with brown rice, carrots, and cauliflower.

And a persimmon.

Have I ever told you how much I love persimmons?

So much.

To the moon and back.

A thousand times.

Just saying.

LOVE them.

And I had the little voice inside my head, say, you really should talk to her.

But I kept my silence.

Then.

She paused at the door to the kitchen.

I sat and watched her.

She was having some internal dialogue.

She turned and chuckled, acknowledged what she was saying  to herself and grabbed a cup of water from the tea kettle.

“Actually,” I smiled, “I’m glad you turned around, I saw you yesterday at the practicum workshop and I was going to see Jeff today and it didn’t happen, and well, I have a couple of questions for you.”

We talked.

She gave me all sorts of fantastic suggestions.

I asked questions.

She clarified.

It came out what my interests where, where I had thought of applying, what I needed for the site approval, when it made the best sense to apply to a site and where I should look.

She made a suggestion.

I just about died with disbelief.

What?

What?

You don’t say?

No fucking way.

Ok.

I’m so checking that out.

In our conversation I had said that I was overwhelmed a little bit, that I was a full-time nanny and that it was hard sometimes to just get my papers and reading all done on time, let alone do all the extra work that I was feeling I had to do for practicum applications.

She broke it down in nice little chunks for me.

Then I asked about references and letters of recommendation and then I had a thought.

And it was like she read my mind.

Spooky.

“Wait, you’re a nanny?” She asked.

“Yes, I’ve been doing it professionally for the last ten years,” I replied.

“And you’re interested in psychodynamics and psychoanalysis, and Gestalt?” She cocked her head, “well, of course Church Street (where I was planning on applying, which is the Gestalt orientation school site), since you’re interested in Gestalt, but have you looked at the UCSF program for infants and mothers?”

What?

No fucking way.

Yup.

UCSF Infant Parent Program.

Well, hello.

I found it on the placement site and I’ll probably be applying there, along with the CIIS sites, Church Street, Golden Gate, and Pierce Street.

They, the administrative team for the program I’m in, recommends that you apply to 6-8 sites.

I have four in mind.

And.

I realized, um, heh, I know one of the people who I will be asking for a letter of recommendation.

One of the parents I work with as a nanny is a psychiatrist at UCSF.

Heh.

And the verbal recommendations she has given me to my face have been pretty amazing, the information she’s shared with my main employer, and the fact that she has been super kind and nice and appreciative of my efforts as her nanny, well, heck, I think I will need to ask her post-haste.

It’s nice to be making some head way around this.

It’s nice to say, I’m three-quarters of the way through the weekend of classes.

It’s really nice to say, I have two more classes then I’m free.

I’ll have to do one big presentation in Child Therapy, a big paper for Psychopathology, a 15 page assessment, and a 5-7 page paper for Family Therapy.

Two papers and one presentation to go.

Then the semester break and holidays.

Yes.

But for right now.

Well.

Fuck.

It feels good.

I have some direction.

I have some ideas.

I have a course of actions that I can begin to take and that feels really good.

So.

Excuse me while I get my snack on, some more persimmons please, and a cup of tea and a bit of a video.

Then bed.

And back to school in the morning.

One more day of classes.

Almost there.

 

You Are A Self Made

Intellectual.

That may be the best compliment I have gotten all week.

Especially as it came from a dear friend.

A French friend.

A Parisian friend, there are no better for telling one that, I felt so flattered and seen and a little in awe of what she said.

“If you had been brought up a different way, I think you would be a psychoanaylist, in fact, it soothes me that you somehow made it here, to this now” she continued as we were gathering up our books and papers, notebooks and pens, departing class to hurry home to get settled down and do it all over again in the morning.

I have already, like a good little school girl, packed my lunch for tomorrow.

And perhaps like an adult.

I made sure there was plenty of coffee in my back up Mason jar.

Last day of class for the second to last weekend of the semester.

By the time class reconvenes next month I will actually be registered for the next semester.

Crazy.

How is it happening so fast?

I don’t know, but I am glad it does.

The above compliment was not the only compliment I received today at school from a classmate, earlier in the day two of my cohort in our role play for Therapeutic Communication (we did triads as opposed to the dyads yesterday–consisting of therapist, client, and observer) told me I had a really great voice.  Something akin to late night smooth jazz or love station request lines.

The smooth sounds of night love with Carmen coming right into your ear this evening.  Call the hotline for any request, Freudian or otherwise.

It was a good day at school.

I felt really connected.

I was really present.

I was on top of the material, it was helpful that I read most of it, and I got so much from my Psych(e)analytics class I just about burst with it.

I have said before that it is my favorite class, despite the horror of talking with my professor on the phone for 45 minutes this past week to discuss the paper I wrote on Mourning and Melancholia using sonnets.

Heh.

That was bound to be uncomfortable anyway, but I did get a lot out of it and every time, every single time I am in the class I learn something I make a leap, I find a connection, or see something, my brain gets lit up.

“Don’t psychoanalyze me!” The professor shouted at me.

It was a fierce admonition, but also a compliment, she could see that I understood and I turned the theory right back on her (I have no idea what I said in hindsight, but I remember how it felt to say it)  and I was happily startled by her response.

I am getting the material and utilizing it in real time in the class room.

It just makes sense.

Who knew I was so Freudian.

“Are you thinking about going into psychoanalysis?” My friend leaned over and asked after I was out of the hot seat with professor, “you would be really good at it.”

I believe she is right.

And that makes me happy.

In fact, how my friend saw me makes me happy.

It was a new way to think of myself, a new way of seeing myself, and I was flattered to be called a “self-made intellectual.”

I find it similar to the idea of what Frederick Douglas said about the “self-made man.”

Self-made men […] are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any of the favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.

I do not know that I have ever resonated so purely with an idea.

I felt honored to be seen like this, acknowledged, and deeply respected for my abilities.

I stood comparing (but not despairing, no not at all) at the reflection of my chic Parisian friend and in the window glass of the classroom.

She tall, thin, elegant, Roman nose, royale profile, bright brow, dressed in the simplest clothes, but chic, and clean and savvy.

I next to her was a bright clown, my hair pulled back in a mass of curls beneath a hot pink bandana, my pink star tattoos peeping out of my sweater collar, my bright safety orange pants a sweep of color next to her dark plaid slacks and soft grey cashmere sweater, the ameythst ring on her finger the only flash of color and therefor more alluring for being there, just there, perched on her finger like a small flower of violet knowing.

I felt for a moment like a clown.

Then.

I really looked again and saw myself.

Colorful.

Bright.

Brilliant.

Both in my mind and in my dress in my heart and in how hard I love.

And that is why I get Freud.

He is all about the love.

Yes love.

Most folks think Freud and think sex, and yes, there is the sexually charged eroticism and the titiliating sexually categorized stages–oral, anal, phallic.  And lest anyone forget, Oedipal, but the argument of Freudian theory is that it’s all about the love.

Just like I am.

All about the love.

I got excited.

I get excited in this class.

Maybe it’s the professor.

She is a hoot.

And she is hella smart and funny and kooky.

Maybe I see a bit of myself in her.

Who knows.

I don’t have to analyze it.

Suffice to say I was over the moon to realize that my friend is right.

I should go into psychoanalysis.

This is thrilling and scary all at the same time.

I am not sure what the next step is, the not knowing is always a bit unnerving; however, I can see that there is a path here for me to follow.

And as my friend so astutely noted, had I had the benefits of growing up differently, I may have made it to this point a lot faster, but regardless, I made it to this point, the guiding force behind the intellect I have been gifted with, and it is a gift, has led me here, to this fork in the road.

I am nervous to see where it goes and also accepting of and approving of this turn in my path.

Not what I was expecting from a school focused on ‘warm and fuzzy.’

Nope.

I just happened to fall into the radical Freud camp.

Ha.

How the hell did that happen?

That is a rhetorical question.

One I am happy to leave unanswered and rather to rest happily in this new bit of self-knowledge.

Now might be the time to start talking to an advisor!

Well.

Maybe I’ll wait until I hand in my final paper for the class, I do have a few things to write before the end of the semester after all.

Ha.

 

 

All The Deliverables

All the things

All the god damn time.

All the homework.

All the reading.

All the ibuprofen I took when I got home from classes today.

I got all my things situated when I got home.

Get the mail, grab the package in the hall, unpack from the day, then repack it all back up so that I can have it and be out the door when I need to be.

This morning was my first time riding the scooter to school.

It was great.

And not so great.

Great was–it started, it ran smoothly, it was a nice ride in.

I even split lanes a few times.

Although not with that vigor and vim that I saw a lot of fellow motorcyclists and scooterist doing.

I was a bit more cautious.

I will likely be for a little more time to come.

It’s just the way I run.

And I am fine with that.

In fact, I didn’t think I was going to split lanes at all and then, there I was doing it without much thought.

Except when I wasn’t and a few cycles zip past me.

The confidence will grow.

I found parking.

It was not the parking I wanted, that was actually taken, much to my surprise.  Although later in the day it was free and I could have moved my scooter but I was just around the corner on Minna Street and I didn’t feel uncomfortable parked there.

Granted I had to move the scooter a few times as it’s two hour parking on that strip of Minna, but it’s not metered and I had breaks and the building abuts Minna Street, so it only took a few minutes when I had to do it.

I won’t have to on the weekends proper.

Just on Fridays.

Tomorrow I will have my pick of the parking and not worry about it at all.

And now I know that on Fridays I may, if I don’t secure the parking that I want, have to do a little moving around of the ride.

No big deal.

The big deal was actually coming home on the scooter.

Not the traffic or the cold–the new motorcycle jacket works like a charm and is a super wind break, I was shocked and pleasantly surprised.

No.

What I was concerned about was the fog.

It rolled in big time and the visibility was hard.

I had to lift the visor on my helmet as it became too fogged up to see.

That was uncomfortable.

It is one thing to ride through fog on my bicycle with my glasses off, another to ride down Lincoln Avenue at 35/40 mph with fog smudging it all up.

I rode slow and resolved that for the future if the fog is bad I can take the park, which has a lot less traffic.

Granted the speed limit is ten miles an hour slower, but as they say, better safe than sorry.

My other thought when I was riding is don’t they make anti-fog helmets?

I wonder.

I bet they do.

Something to research.

Do they make them in glitter?

Yes.

Glitter is a color, what’s your issue?

So the scooter ride in went off without a hitch and I loved having my basket liner to carry all my food in and my books and notebooks and readers and coffee.  It all fit and a light sweatshirt, as I didn’t want to wear my motorcycle jacket in class or carry it around for that matter–what was great was getting to the kitchen at school, taking out my food from the basket liner and sticking my motorcycle jacket in the liner and setting it on the shelf.

Perfect.

So self-contained.

It was lovely.

And school was lovely too.

Good to see friends.

Good to catch up.

Good to get back into the feeling that I am not the only one fumbling around with time management or skills sets in therapeutic communication.

I am not the only one in the adventure.

There are others in the same boat and the common peril we all face–another god damn final paper to write–is a balm to my soul.

The final paper projects were handed out today and as I looked at the deliverables I wanted to vomit and in fact, my head got super full, so full with the last lecture of the day on Freud and transference, that when the professor laid out the final paper project I just about cried.

Well.

No.

That isn’t true.

But I wasn’t happy.

“You don’t look happy,” my professor said when she saw the face I made after she announced that there would be another paper due for the class.

I have no poker face.

I pasted some semblance of a societally acceptable pleasant mask on my face and hollered on the inside.

NO MORE FUCKING PAPERS!

Damn it.

Ugh.

Except, well, it wouldn’t be graduate school would it, it wouldn’t be getting a Masters in Psychology, it would be something else and I know that I am worth doing the work and that ultimately, the work will get done.

I have some how showed up for every class.

On time.

Not missed a one.

Even the weekend when I got sick and ran a fever and was out of my mind with exhaustion.

I have shown up.

I have turned all my papers in on time and I am doing pretty damn good.

I got an A- on the Pschoanalytics paper that I went out on such a huge limb for and I was happy with it.

I have gotten A’s and one B.

The one B was for formatting and should I choose, which I probably will, I can write an additional paper to self-correct that only B on my class roster.

I am not going to think about it yet, since there are so many other things to think about.

Between now and Paris.

I leave on the 20th and I refuse to go to Paris and have to write a paper for school there–although it is an option, my last paper deadline is for December 22nd.

But I can imagine no hell greater than having to write a paper while I am on Christmas vacation in Paris.

Maybe it’s somebody’s dream.

But it’s not mine.

Thank you very much.

So between today and when I leave for Paris I have to write–two papers for Human Development, plus give a presentation on an outside research project of my own developing (I have chosen teaching infants and toddlers how to use sign language as a skill that parents can develop to help negotiate communication with their children prior to the child’s vocal cords being developed in an effort to ease parental frustration and encourage another form of language skill in children); one final paper for Psychoanalysis, and two papers with transcriptions of therapy sessions for Therapeutic Communications class.

In toto: five papers and one class presentation with hand out.

In between now and December 20th.

Thank fucking God I have Thanksgiving weekend.

Four days.

I will be entrenched in my homework and I am going to do as much as possible to have what I can done by the beginning weekend of December.

If I negotiate the homework and readings well I can have three of the papers done by the first weekend in December.

Plus the final project presentation for Human Development.

Which will leave two papers to do before Paris.

One which could be optional should I choose to pass on the extra credit opportunity.

It’s a lot.

But.

It can be done.

I have faith in myself.

And much gratitude for a four day weekend next week.

As well as an awesome little scooter to get me where I need to go to get done with what I need to get done.

All the deliverables.

All the time.

All the things.

They just keep happening.