Whirlwind month

As if January didn't have enough excitement, February comes bounding in with a bang. The month went by so fast, and yet, I can't believe it's only been a month! I feel like all the things I have accomplished and started doing couldn't possibly all fit into one month. That middle school writing assessment scoring session when I first asked the teachers where they needed volunteer support and that because of I'm now a teacher's assistant in a middle school ELD class? Yeah, that was still in January, along with asking the Berkeley School Volunteers coordinator about volunteering in the counseling center at Berkeley High, emailing the counselor, not getting a response, walking in to see her, and immediately establishing the times I am to come in every week. And did I really look at 9 rooms for rent in the span of one week? Yes, I did, and in the rain, too. And only one week later found a place that has accepted me. It is also hard to imagine that in one month I completed the entire process of applying to three graduate programs in school counseling, two of which I didn't decide on until a day before handing off the letter of recommendation forms (I might add that I also managed to lose one and find two more people of reference this month, too).

I'm also sitting in on a couple of the best classes I have ever taken at Cal. I was never this excited about any of my English classes, which makes me a little sad that I wasn't a Psych major after all, but I can't ignore all the really cool people I met through being an English major, too. I'm happy for how my life has gone, but I wish I had a better idea that the human mind is my passion, and not literature (no dis on lit though! I still love a good read). The Clinical Psych class I am auditing is taught by Allison Harvey whose sleep lab I work in. She is an amazing lecturer and it was really great to finally meet her this afternoon after all this time working in the lab. The other class, Psych of Personality, is taught by another person from the lab, the postdoc, who I've met a few times before and embarrassingly forgot he was a postdoc and asked if he was a GSI (graduate student instructor) for the class, to which he responded with a chuckle that no, he was teaching it!

Oh and somewhere I have found room to socialize. My friend Andy and his roommate Rachel are getting a CSA box every week of local farm fresh fruit and veggies, and I have been included in brainstorming and cooking dinners every Thursday night (and sometimes Friday, and sometimes Sunday, and the occasional Tuesday...there are a lot of vegetables) as well as writing for the new blog Andy set up. We are skeptical as to whether it will be interesting or if anyone will read it, but if you are interested, it is beyondthekale.net. He also lives over by a climbing gym that is predominately for bouldering and also has $5 Fridays for students! I've really been enjoying myself and my very own shoes should be arriving in the mail soon. There have also been a number of parties, including a late christmas party, an afternoon tea, a picnic movie night, and my friend Suzanne's dance show (woo!).

Yes, I know I basically just rattled off my calendar, but it feels like a lot has happened since I got back from New York on the 5th. A lot of things are changing in my life, and you know what? I don't feel anxious about any of them. In fact, I'm very excited to find out whether I will be moving away for grad school in August (and where to!) or if I'll be staying another year in Berkeley, tutoring and volunteering and learning so much still. I'm excited to be moving in with a few very nice people (fellow Cancers too!) and their very sweet doggies and a kitchen (no more hot plate!!). I am excited for more dinners, climbing, watching friends in various artistic endeavors and moving forward ever forward. Hurray for 2010! My friend Jesse said he felt like this would be a good year, and right now I'd have to agree.

What's that noise?

The other day when it was raining, I was listening to the rain drip various places on the outside of my house when I heard a huge commotion underneath one of the west facing windows. There is a pipe or vent of some sort there and I thought perhaps a huge amount of water dumped out from somewhere above onto it, so I left it at that. Today, while it was raining, I heard the same type of commotion and decided to check it out. A squirrel was in the rosebush! And then he plucked off a rose hip and started noshing on it. What a cutie.

He decided to finish his meal at the dinner table. Hey look over here!

January gloom with a cut-out paper sun

Hello Berkeley of twenty-ten! It's nice to meet you. I just got in from New York yesterday evening and boy was I teary-eyed to see the lights (and darkness) of the bay during descent. This really is my town. I feel a connection to it that I don't anywhere else. That could be because all my stuff is here and I have a place to be where I am cozy and can ignore things when I want to ignore them or go out and enjoy when I want to enjoy. I do miss having a cat on my lap though.

Though I've spent the last couple of weeks in melancholia, I'm grateful for a time to mellow out. I've been overanalyzing the simplest things and now that I'm writing my personal statement, all the cynicism is coming through. I'm worried my paper sounds like a train wreck where everyone died. That's sure to get me into grad school. I feel inconsistent and rambling, as though I am trying to muster up clear answers, but I don't have them, making the answers I give not really what I mean and not exactly coherent either.

Maybe I really am cynical by nature. Last year I was feeling so positive and jubilant and had so much to talk about. Now I am once again stuck in abstract-land (which by the way doesn't have nearly cool enough roller coasters) just running in circles inside my head.

I want to do more activities this year. Please, if anyone wants to go jogging, hiking, exploring, lunching, and the like, let me know. Sometimes I'm horrible at conversation, but it's still nice to have someone to do these things with.

End of days (of 2009)

Things I have learned this past year:

*Relationships are hard work. Really hard work. And I'm not always cut out for maintaining them. Though I am reveling in the fact that I am more comfortable than I have been in a long while sharing with my parents and rebuilding my relationship with them. Having different beliefs than one's parents is always difficult and letting them know that is even tougher. It's hard for me to not feel like I am disappointing people and this has been one of my greatest challenges in developing an honest and trustful connection with the people who raised me in a certain way and hoped for certain things. I am at a point where I truly feel the proudness they have for their children and have a clearer picture of them as people and not just MY parents. I think that the most honest way to connect with people is to see them as individuals and not just all the roles they have taken on throughout life and managing to experience this with my parents has been an incredibly fulfilling experience that has convinced me of the unending support I have through my family. My siblings and I have grown closer and closer throughout the years and this one in particular saw a lot of intense raw reality in expressing our joys and sorrows with each other. I am so grateful for these relationships, for sharing a history with such unique individuals. Yes, there are still many issues on this front, but I feel a sense of stability from my family for once.

Non-relative relationships have been more of a roller coaster, meeting some wonderfully beautiful people and also continuing longer term friendships (beautiful minds and essences-I think you may know who you are and thank you so much for your friendship) that have greatly expanded my perspective, but also seeing some friendships deteriorate and not knowing if I had the energy to reconstruct them or whether or not I should expend the energy to make things right. When are things ever right anyway? That's the difficult part. Becoming close to another person requires investing so much of multiple resources both concrete and intangible it is hard to determine when continuing on and sorting things out in tough times is realistic or better to leave alone. This is my biggest challenge on the friend front. I am no model friend, believe me. I admit I have hurt people I care deeply about, though it has not been intentional. I'm thinking that the same difficulty in seeing my parents as separate from all their various roles I associate them with comes into play on this level of relationships as well. Does anyone else have a difficult time in tactfully maintaining one's own mental sanity and simultaneously avoiding detriment to another's? I'm sure this is linked to my fear of disappointing people and could work on my honesty and assertiveness first to myself (imagine that! I can disappoint even myself) and then to others.

*Having a sense of direction is my saving grace this year. I feel confident in my choice and confident in the possibility of changing course eventually again after I have worked in a school for a good long while. After working as a school counselor I may continue further in school/educational psychology or move on to clinical psychology as a general therapist. I get caught up in my emotions so often, it is relieving to have a more concrete idea of what I am doing with my life.

*Part of my confidence in Psychology is based in how I can personally relate to it. The newest phase studied in lifespan human development is Emerging Adulthood, said to last between ages 18 and 25. And isn't it ironic that in this past year in which I turned 26 I felt things start to fall into place and feel more like an adult? Maybe it isn't very adult for me to boast about how I feel like one, but upon reflection I don't see such different scenarios as I do different ways I have responded to them. I metacognitize a heck of a lot and I've seen a shift between rumination and action, obsessing and progressing. I went through my fair share of depression during the earlier part of the second half of this year (did you get that?), but from previous experience I was actually able to handle it much less fatalistically than I usually have. I let myself just zone out and experience it, knowing that I would sense a change eventually, and I did. Not that it wasn't hard, because it was, I just know there are harder things out there. My life is not one of those.

My apologies for such a candid post. These thoughts are spur of the moment reflections, how I feel now about what has happened, and while I've experienced misery, frustration, and despair this year, I let myself feel them very much in full and am now experiencing joy, hopefulness, and excitement. Each year brings such a variety of the unexpected and the anticipated, each day so different, routine habit mixed with nothing you could ever predict-I have no idea just exactly how my plans for next year will turn out, so I'm hoping at least that I'm ready for anything. Thanks to you all. I love you.

Emptiness of Self

And life proves to be good, yet again, revealing all my woes to be attributable to my own silly neuroses and overanalysis of nearly everything. I have been reading "thoughts without a thinker" by Mark Epstein, a psychotherapist and Buddhist who incorporates Buddhist philosophy with the western notion of psychotherapy. I will try and be brief in summarizing the gist of the book. So far, he has argued that Freud's ideas of the self which exists deep beneath layers of childhood and relationships with parents are oddly similar to Buddhism's Wheel of Life used to teach about the concept of karma, "the notion that a person's actions in this life will affect the kind of rebirth he or she will take in the next." I don't necessarily believe in reincarnation and neither does Epstein. However, he uses the teachings of each realm in the Wheel of Life to explain a different aspect of psychotherapy, viewing the Wheel as more a categorization of psychological realms, "points of self-estrangement" he calls them, where we experience ourselves through our reactions to different things we find lacking in our sense of identity. The part that is echoing to me throughout today and this past week is the Buddha's idea of self as empty. If the self is empty, then we do not experience the tensions based on what we lack or what we cling to as images representing the self. I have learned that the act of defining oneself and attaching labels decreases the capacity for change and adaptation by requiring that if one makes a statement or opinion or even encounters something which clashes with these labels, the mind is confused and must accommodate for the change. If these labels do not exist, the self does not need to accommodate or overanalyze the process. It is found that a person who understands the "emptiness of self" is very similar to what Westerners expect in a person with a highly developed sense of self. The search for self is not regressive nor is it a manifestation of a true (buried) self, says Epstein, but rather a "crumbling of the false self" through "awareness of its manifestations" without sensing a need to create new ones, a very relieving experience indeed. I found myself saying in the shower something along the lines of, "I am not ashamed of who I am, I am not ashamed of my opinions, interests and desires which are free to change. I am not ashamed of me." This type of statement may be a no brainer to some people, but for me it has not always been.

And that is why I find life good, because everytime I step out of my brain, I see how good it can be and how the psychological realms of the Wheel of Life can reduce us to neurotic, narcissistic, jealous, greedy and grasping personalities, heavily burdened with varying images of the self.

Disgust of Us

I don't usually latch myself onto and become a hard core fan of friends' bands just because I'm friends with them. Groupies scare me. In fact, when I meet someone and they invite me out to one of their shows, I'm incredibly wary because I hope hope hope they don't suck or sound completely boring and typical, leaving me in a quandary as to how to respond. When I first saw my friend Cheryl's band, Disgust of Us, it was in a tiny cramped space with bad sound, and yet I heard something unique. I wasn't crazy over it, to be honest, but I could definitely hear something new and creative and the sense of cynicism was raw. If you didn't leave the show with much, you at least could strongly feel the "disgust." I've known Cheryl and her boyfriend PJ (co-lead guitar and vocals) for a good long while, and our friendship formed parallel to the band's progress. All the while I saw them get better and more confident with their creativity. Even with a bass player switch, they caught up quickly to where they'd been, Laura's skills increasing greatly with every show and Sam getting more precise and crazy (if those two things can happen together!!) all the time. So, to be honest, I formed a friendship with Disgust of Us, too, and have been impressed by their ability to fine tune their cynicism and even bring in some soft, all the while completely immersing themselves in their art every time they play.

They are also a band that has their shit together. Last night, at their record release party, I noticed for the first time this enormous sense of professionalism and entertainment. Cheryl has been able to really think business when it comes to spreading the word, while still keeping it casual and unobtrusive. And they are always expressing gratitude left and right, near and far, for everyone who helps out, shows up, and goes away from a show telling their friends about it.

Art communicates. Perhaps a reason I feel so much closer to C & P (and many others whom I've met through them) is that their music communicates honestly what they think and feel. It is not just a performance; it is also like sitting down with them for a beer (or standing in most cases! :-P) and listening to them discuss what heavies their hearts the most, and that too me, is grounds for bonding with a band as though it in itself is a friend. Please check them out. They have quite the story to tell in their music.

www.disgustofus.com

www.myspace.com/disgustofus

Please share

I keep sitting down at this screen trying to think up something interesting to write about. Truth is, not much interesting going on these days, just trying to stay afloat financially and mentally. I twitch a little when I think of writing down all my frustrations in a blog post, as though it's something unique to talk about, as though millions of people aren't feeling this frustration. But I know I'm not so unique, and I know that I am not alone in how I feel.

I feel unmotivated without a job and as if all my other volunteer activities at times are "optional." I feel I go through much of my life viewing "appointments" and even dates with friends as optional. Part of that may have to do with my social anxiety that every so often comes out to bare its teeth threateningly at me, telling me I'm not likeable, not productive enough, not using my time wisely enough to go share myself with others. Part of it may have to do with being broke the majority of the time, so that when a friend says "let's go grab a pint!" or "let's do dinner!" I regretfully must decline.

It's true that I feel happiest while traveling, while seeing new places and trying new things, but life, I guess, isn't about being happiest, it's about balance. It's about hard work, suffering, awkwardness, discomfort, embarrassment, rejection, but also about elation, excitement, awe, joy, love, comfort, and achievement. In the past I may have had ideas about why life has to necessarily be hard, why it can't just all be a meadow of hippie love, but it's clearer to me now how important balance is. I feel it when I turn down an invite after I've spent a week feeling being unmotivated and unproductive and not leaving the house a great deal. I feel that I don't deserve to reward myself with something fun, because I haven't been doing anything particularly hard other than feeling sorry for myself (and YES that is a particularly hard thing to do, especially when you'd prefer not to and feel like you have no control over feeling that way no matter what).

This is why I have waited so long to post. I was in a very low place for a long time and did not feel I had the perspective to express myself clearly. Believe me, I have typed and deleted a number of words in the past few months, trying to think of what to share, but nothing seems appropriate. I have internalized for too long, losing light of the lives of people I love and how they experience joy and suffering, too.

These moments are always the clearest for me, the moments just after awakening out of my depressed sleep. It is in these moments I have the clearest memory of depression, and also the clearest glimpse of how I may alter it. More important than that, I have the purest motivation and am reassured of my decision to become a school guidance counselor. I recently started my volunteering at Berkeley High School as a Writing Coach and though I was nervous and intimidated before hand, the two sessions I have had so far with two students of very differing abilities have gone much more smoothly than I expected. My coaching can still use some work, and I continue to try different methods, but it was really something to feel as comfortable as I did. The only thing on my mind was putting across the information in a way the students could understand, being patient enough for them to process it, and really just listening. The syntactical part of coaching writing should be as important as just plain listening and nodding and smiling and saying "Thank you for sharing your ideas with me. Please continue to share more."