Coming into focus

While the semester doesn't begin until August 25, my first course, Online Learning, opens today. This is basically a quick course designed to get students familiar with learning, discussing and collaborating online and be familiar with the tools to do so. So I hopped online this morning to get oriented and see what I could start on! One of the first discussions I came across was titled "Introduce Yourself". Only the instructor and peer mentor for the course had posted so far, but in the half dozen paragraphs of the instructor's introduction, I learned that my dream job exists. Not directly exactly, but I learned that the instructor currently is a medical librarian, helping connect health professionals to the newly developing resources and information in the field. And I was intrigued. That is exactly what I want to do for mental health professionals and patients. If there is a position like that in the health field, then surely there is in the mental health field. And sure enough, in my online search, I found a site for the Association of Mental Health Librarians which I absolutely intend to join. This is just what I had been looking for, and it puts the pieces together for a clearer picture of what I am striving for.

Furthermore, my mind has been full of activity. Remember when I mentioned my brain felt dull and I was worried about getting into the swing of things? Well, I've been practicing using it much much more in the past two months, gobbling up news articles and opinion pieces, blog posts, and then having meaty, meaningful chat conversations about it all with my friend over Skype. It's like I just had a little slump in learning how to be analytical without being judgmental. I'm more than ready to dive into the material and participate in discussions, very eager in fact. I've got ideas, and I'm not afraid to share them!

Dreams evolved

What do you write about when no words will come? And how do you care for yourself when no thoughts come either and you maybe judge yourself a little for it? And what if all the thoughts that come to you, you really shouldn't or aren't prepared to share? This is my conundrum. Well, I'll just ramble for a bit.

I've been spending my days learning about the MLIS program at San Jose State. The website is extensive, with dozens of blogs and resources on topics from career development, internships, and student research to info for new students on registration, study tips, and how to succeed at doing all of this learning and collaborating with other students all online. My excitement level is rising as I learn about many different opportunities for library and information professionals, often in positions without "library" or "librarian" in the title. So, while it would be fun to be a Librarian, there's a good chance I'll end up being a "librarian" by another name. Which would still be just as sweet. I still have my dark-rimmed glasses and brightly colored cardigans.

Tucked in the back of my brain while I explore all of this is a conversation I had with my former therapist regarding the two directions my ambitions were drawn toward-becoming a therapist, or becoming a librarian. She had me sit there first with one idea, then with the other, making sure to observe what feelings arose. At the time, the passions were stirred more while I held the idea of being a therapist, how challenging yet fulfilling that felt as I attempted to experience it as realistically as possible. Yet, here I am entering school for librarianship. Because I am so ready to. And while the memory of my therapist's voice is there asking me what changed, ultimately it is myself I've had to have the conversation with. So what changed? I asked myself. I paused. I sat a lot and thought. I sat a lot and DIDN'T think. I sat with the different dreams I still have. I still dream of providing therapy or counseling. I still dream of being a librarian. In fact, I dream of both these things so much, there MUST be a way to combine them. My big conglomerate of a dream is to be in a position to distribute mental health resources and information. It'd also be nice if I could do this with other people of the same mindset, people driven by loving kindness and compassion. I still dream, oh yes, I do. My dream hasn't changed so much as my dreamS have evolved together into something even more tangible, even more realistic as I sit with the idea.

The best part is I don't have to figure it out all at once and I'm on a path that's going to teach me a lot and give me a better idea about how I can apply what I'm learning. I'm still interested in eventually getting a second masters degree in counseling. I'm still interested in checking out public school or academic libraries, as well. And the other best part is I don't have to wait for the *perfect* job to practice lovingkindness and compassion toward all beings. I don't have to go to school to learn how to be kind and patient with people, or how to offer encouragement and joy and really listen to people, or how to open up and really acknowledge another's suffering. I can start right now, where I am.

How to write (well)

If I knew this, I'd have many more blog posts with lots of ideas all nestled neatly into place. But somewhere, I stopped being good at organizing my thoughts and presenting an articulate argument like I could in school. I realized this just recently when I asked my sister-in-law, who teaches English lit and writing classes at University of Washington-Tacoma, to give me an essay prompt because I was bored. I can't even quite remember the prompt fully, I'm so out of practice. Something about American literature, Robert B. Ray, and "rejection of final choice". (I'm sure she's cringing if she's reading this right now.) I decided on the character I would write about and then only mused in my head about him, not even knowing where to start. I used to have the English essay down. I could write 7 pages up in a night if I had to (and I usually had to, the procrastinator I was/am). In the end, my papers weren't perfect, but I could sure argue a point with plenty of text to support it if I had to. This scares me at a time I'm preparing to go back to school. Can I still have an intelligent discussion? Do my reading comprehension skills still measure up? Am I really just out of practice? Have I been so busy ingesting information and knowledge that I've forgotten how to chew it up and process it?

Then I remember that I have been doing a much different kind of learning lately than I did in college. I'm learning more about the empathic, compassionate, emotional, altruistic side of me, not the analytical critic. The critic became too intertwined with my self-esteem to be taken seriously anymore. It was useful with developing my papers, but I had started silently writing argumentative papers against myself and it was no longer serving a purpose other than to squash my dreams and incite fear. So the critic's been given a nice leave of absence because it just seemed it had been working so gosh darn hard that it really *needed* a long vacation. I will invite it back soon. Because acknowledging its voice can teach me something new. And because I have been preparing to have it rejoin the team. I have been inciting my dreams and squashing my fear. I have been silencing those thoughts that tell me I'm doing everything wrong. I have been developing the encourager, the nurturer, the inner parent that says I'm alright just as I am. Not just alright, but pretty awesome. It's good to have this person around just as it is to have a voice that questions things sometimes.

So because of all this learning and growing and realizing I'm doing, I naturally want to share all the methods and ideas and personal truths that I come across and that make sense to me in this process, but I'm so caught up in engorging on it that all I can do is share the ideas as they are, without giving my interpretation, judgment, or opinion. Because I am still processing. I am a process. I am not done processing. And even when I am done processing, I think I'd rather just describe my process, rather than explain it. That would assume too much about what has been a very personal journey. In the end, I do want to be a resource and to share resources that other soul-searchers might find beneficial, but I don't want to preach it. And I'm really not 100% sure how to go about it. I'm increasingly confident as I read up and prepare myself for grad school, that I can surely take this passion and blend it with an MLIS degree. Which will involve organizing my thoughts and presenting articulate arguments, so let the practice begin with blogging!

Emotional evolution

Along my emotional journey, I've noticed I'm partial to the good times and try desperately to change or "fix" the bad times. I'm sure this tendency is probably familiar to many. One of the biggest things I work on personally is strengthening my ability to cope through rough patches, so that I do not have this instinct to make everything instantly OK. Instead of turning to something else, or trying to ignore it, or even worse, denying what I'm experiencing, I've been increasingly able to sit with whatever it is, and have been opening up to a whole new experience of living. Suffering, to me, happens when I have a preference against my actual experience. If I'm feeling lonely or offended or guilt-ridden, I tend to want to feel otherwise, happier a lot of people would say. There is this obsession with achieving happiness and maintaining it, as if it is the only emotion to experience. What I want is to be able to hold out through the loneliness, through the offense, through the guilt, through the anxiety AND through the happiness.

I've currently been processing an evolution of emotions from a particular event that has been an opportunity to practice some different exercises and activities as a means of staying present instead of resorting to escaping or fixing. Initially I turn to my mindfulness practice with a walking or sitting meditation. A great resource in exploring this practice has been Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I'm also utilizing some techniques as presented in the books Buddha's Brain and Just One Thing by neuropsychologist Rick Hanson. I've also been working through The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder and have a couple other Dialectical Behavior exercises I learned from my previous therapist.

This last book almost demands an aside, but it is important enough to the story to tell it unparanthetically. While the book indicates it is for Bipolar Disorder, I very much recommend it for anyone for the Dialectical Behavior Therapy alone, though there is a workbook available for the general public. I've picked it up recently on a heavy suggestion from my current therapist because I have been diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder. The bipolar spectrum is largely misunderstood. When I hear the term, I usually think of a few friends with bp that didn't have their shit together, and life was typically chaotic for them and those around them, though I have many more friends with bp who do a healthy job of managing it. Other people tend to think of severe mood swings or erratic behavior and distorted beliefs. But really, the intensity of the symptoms and frequency of episodes fall on a spectrum. For me, I qualify as type 2 simply because I typically lie in the depressive phase and I've had at least one hypomanic episode--meaning I had symptoms that were similar to yet milder than mania that did not cause a significant decrease in my basic ability to work and play, and lacked the psychotic features of mania. I'll spare you the details and let you do your own research if you're curious, but I highly encourage anyone who has heard some of the stereotypes to find out more. One very powerful, both autobiographical and professional view on it is An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison.

Knowing this about myself is my greatest resource when processing this onslaught of varying emotions. Being aware and having a better understanding of the psychology behind my behavior and emotions gives me greater authority over it. I am not my emotions, I am much more than that. I am also the executive functioning that decides whether to act or not over an emotion. I am also the choice I make to sit with or try and escape the emotion. What I've discovered working through the grief, hurt, anger, confusion, and anxiety is the pockets of peace, letting go, compassion, love and acceptance. By sitting with all of it, I've experienced more fully and also am reminded that we are in a constant state of flux. That each emotion continues to change and morph as you feel it, that if you give it enough time and attention it will turn into something else. Pain will keep on nagging you if you try to ignore it, but if you sit with it, you give it the attention you might give a screaming baby. You soothe it, you nurture it, and you validate its existence. Then you work with it as it is, whether or not it stops screaming immediately. This goes for the positive emotions too, so I find myself trying more and more to savor those moments.

I find myself more curious and inquisitive about my state of being at any given moment. It's been fascinating to observe the evolution of emotions over time; to watch them emerge, grow, retreat and turn to something new. This observation has facilitated a new perspective: that I can sit with and experience an emotion at the same time I can be aware of it and its affect on me. By not trying to escape the discomfort, I find myself experiencing life more fully, more multifacetedly.