Saturday, February 17, 2024

Best in breed

 Last night I dreamed that I had entered a dog show… as a dog. I do not mean that I was occupying a dog body, but that I was rehearsing my dog tricks in my human body.  Sit. Shake. Roll over. And so forth. My human partner was one of the women in my doctoral program, and she was a very cooperative and hardworking teammate.  I was thinking I was a pretty decent contender for best in breed as the only human in the competition - but I woke up before I could find out our scores. 

Monday, February 05, 2024

In flagrante delicto

 C has announced she is leaving (moving to a different role within the same organization), and this brings to mind two immediate thoughts, selfishly, about how this impacts me. The first thought is that I am glad I have become more capable of being pleasant when I am irritated, because I have often felt irritated with C, and as her new position holds some clout, it is a good thing we will part on good terms without my having shouted, will you please make some space for my existence here? The second thought is that her departure leaves space for my existence here and that means having more responsibility than just showing up and nodding along while C does all the talking. This is, of course, one of those double-edged swords; floating along without much responsibility has left me feeling somewhat bored and useless… and at the same time it has freed me up to work sort of slapdash, peck, peck, poke. With time in between these brief moments to do my own coursework, go for walks, and so forth. A quiet kind of a life.  I am looking ahead now at re-engaging with work again, and my feelings about this are ambivalent. But if it was my call whether to have C stay or go… I would choose go.  And she’s going. 




Friday, February 02, 2024

A big pot

 Today I went back to my old workplace, just for the day, just for the moment. It is an interesting phenomenon how much better I am when I am there only for a moment, how every moment of that moment I am on, totally on, and so every word is completely attuned, filled with energy and responsiveness, the way I would like to be all day, with everyone, every day, throughout the year. And of course I am nothing like this on the 178th day when I say get your books out, read page 12-17, and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Don’t bug me. I’m trying to answer 158 emails before the end of the day. That’s just reality intruding the way it does. It feels excellent to be excellent for a moment before I vanish, leaving behind the impression that I always look this good, which we both know I do not. In my counselling office I want to believe I am as aware of the 360 degrees of worldviews around me, but I get so fucking tired of being asked to change people’s classes. (Why why why is that tied to this job?)

In today’s immersive experience I actually forgot, though briefly, about my being a student myself, and being a student has been at the forefront of everything for the last year. I forgot about logging in to the student portal and participating in the student thing for the day. And that’s okay. I choose to let today go by without that responsibility pulling at me.  Just for today. 

On Tuesday I was offered a new job, a counsellor job at an elementary school. It tells me something sad that I was offered a job for which I did not apply and without an interview. I had to turn it down as it was more FTE than I have time to be. But it made me think about the future of my career, whether it leads me back to where I came from or whether it continues down this post-secondary pathway. Presumably I will need to learn to speak up more if I want my current route to lead anywhere else. My mouth-shut strategy can only take me so far. 



Monday, January 29, 2024

Thank you goodbye

 Today I received an email inviting me to a 0.4 counsellijg contract at an elementary school. I find it strange that it was not an invitation to a job interview, but rather an invitation to a job, with an offer to work around my schedule if I didn’t like the two days that were being offered.  This is, of course, a sign of the times and a sign of how few mental health counsellors there are available right now, compounded by the fact that the public school system is becoming more nightmarish every year. I have no experience with elementary school children and I think I would rather keep it that way. And 0.4 is more of my freedom than I would care to lose. Tomorrow I will thank this principal graciously for contacting me and turn down the offer. I have enough on my plate, and having never been particularly good at recognizing that, I am trying to start. It’s funny, when I quit my full time job in March I was disappointed that they didn’t have a small contract to keep me slightly connected. But now that it has been almost a year (how did that happen?) I can’t say I miss it anymore or that I would accept a contract like that at this point. My new life is so much calmer.


Saturday, December 30, 2023

In the end

Yesterday afternoon I met J for a drink at a nearby pub. It seems like such a civilized thing to do as an adult person, to drink beer while the sun is still in the sky. They encourage this behaviour, you know, by selling $4 pints, which was okay by me. We each had two pints and I was still home by 5:30. J is getting married next summer and I have threatened to wrestle with his mother for the right to walk him down the aisle. I mean, this isn’t a joke. I am going to start weight training. J is one of my favourite people in the world, so much so that I am willing to fight his mother, who I also happen to think pretty highly of, apart from her insistence on being involved in her son’s wedding instead of me. 

J told me about his father-in-law (to be) dying from brain cancer. He chose to end his life using MAID and J talked about going to be there with him at the end of his life, supporting his partner through this. This story was particularly significant because J and I normally laugh together, only laugh together, because J is one of the funniest people in the whole world. And most of the time when we get together we just make each other laugh. But yesterday was different. He told me that they are talking about adoption, which is incredibly expensive if you go through a private agency. And he told me about being sent out to buy potato chips because that was what his future father-in-law wanted to eat for his final meal, and wandering around the grocery store trying to decide which chips, because no one had specified. And wanting so much to get it right that he bought every kind, bags and bags and bags, so as not to disappoint.  And for some reason this was the part of the story that made me spill over. And that’s not something we have done together before either. And when we hugged goodbye in the parking lot we said I love you, and that was also new for us. I think we are both growing up. 

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Whatever the cost, I will pay

The pharmacy after dark. The elderly - and safe - shoppers looking for compression socks and reading glasses have gone to bed, and the opiate addicts have awoken. A young guy with a tattoo that covers his entire neck and some of his chin ignores the line and drops into the chair you take when you are invited to consult with the pharmacist. The pharmacist does not look at him but knows he is there. No eye contact. Gives him the methadone drink. It seems wrong that there is no privacy for this interaction- but maybe they don’t want to be alone together. I don’t know. 

I am at the pharmacy after dark because I forgot to pick up my migraine medication earlier in the day, when I meant to. Although I considered it, it’s not really a medication I should skip for a night. Doing so is likely to bring on a morning migraine, the dizzy kind. I didn’t remember I had run out until I was getting ready for bed, and annoyingly this meant getting dressed again and going out when I wanted to be in my pajamas. I didn’t bother putting on a bra. (What’s the point when you’re wearing a winter coat anyway?) The pharmacist looks me in the eye when he asks what I need. My lack of neck tattoo is working for me. 

I don’t want to be around the neck tattoo guy either. It isn’t that I do not understand what brings him here - I really really do. I lived with my sister while she was spiraling down the same pathway. I lived in the same house with her as a child, the same house that may have caused the whole trauma that made her start. I don’t know anything for certain but I am familiar with the genre. It makes me sick to my stomach. Not in an ‘I’m better than you and you disgust me’ kind of way.  More like an ‘I know you and it makes me so sad to recognize you that I can hardly breathe’ kind of way. Sometimes I think I am done with all of that heartache, and sometimes a kid with a fucking neck tattoo can make it all rise up in the back of my throat and suffocate me while I’m standing in line waiting for my bloody migraine medication when I just want to be at home in my pajamas. 

Whatever. He’s taking methadone, and that’s several steps further down the road to recovery than my sister ever attempted. So maybe I should celebrate Neck Tattoo Guy, smile at him. Give him a fist bump in front of the rack of compression socks. Or at least make some fucking  eye contact. But I don’t want to. I want to make it to the liquor store before it closes. I want to get home and get back into my pajamas, take my migraine medication, and pour a big glass full of Irony and Hypocrisy, and drink deeply. And congratulate myself on dodging another migraine, whatever the cost. 

Sunday, December 17, 2023

Before you crash

Tomorrow is the first day of my holiday, and so I booked myself to fill in for C for a day, because heaven forfend that I should take a day off. I have trouble slowing down, like a downhill skier who needs some runway (is that the right word?) at the end of the race to lose the momentum that threatens to make them crash into the boundary fencing. I will ignore the nagging inner voice that asks me if I want to work five in a row because, why not be productive? I have plans, other plans.  I have a book I want to read and I have time to read something that isn’t a psychology textbook or a peer reviewed journal article written within the last seven years (because everything written prior to that is trash). I want to read a quirky little book about time travel written by a Japanese writer.  He’s not Haruki Murakami, but really, who else can even come close? We shall see. There has been a lot of buzz about this book, and if you travel in the nerdy sort of circles that I do, you’ve probably already read it and moved on to the sequel. Please don’t tell me it doesn’t live up to the hype; I don’t care.  I’m reading it anyway.