Joe B

 Today I was remembering spring break 2019 when we went home for the holidays and then didn’t come back into the building for several months. The counselling team members were each assigned a quarter of the staff with whom we were supposed to connect, by phone, and check in to make sure they were okay. Emotionally okay.  One of my favourite moments happened because of this.  I called dozens of colleagues and listened to all their anxieties.  It was exhausting. At the end of the list, I texted Joe before calling because I don’t like receiving (or making) cold calls.  I asked if I could call him and he said he would call me back in a half hour.  I went outside to dig in my garden.  And half an hour later, my phone rang.  He stole my line, saying Hi, it’s Joe; I just thought I’d give you a call to see if you’re okay. And I thought he was serious, and felt this warm wave of fondness for Joe and his unanticipated sensitivity in noticing that I might also be having a hard time. And before I could thank him for being so lovely he busted out laughing and said, Just kidding.  It made me laugh really hard. Joe is funny in different ways than he means to be, but I still like him.

I went in to my old work today to fill in for a counsellor for a day, and I felt like a minor celebrity, with visits all day from people who wanted to say hello. I had agreed to go to a social thing with the staff after work and when I agreed to do it, I was thinking that having worked at home for a long time I would have energy and interest in this.  But I found that by the end of the workday, I’d really had enough and couldn’t bring myself to go. I bailed, just like old times. 

Yesterday there was conflict at my new workplace, really the first conflict that I have seen since I started there 8 months ago. I do not think it is over and I am interested to see how things unfold. Because I am so new I still feel relatively uninvested in the issue that has occurred and don’t feel like I have huge stakes in how it turns out. My goal is just to be autonomous so that I can work without being distracted. 

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me (than a frontal lobotomy)

 I notice that November is difficult again. It was always October I dreaded the most but now November has grown heavier somehow. Of course it has everything to do with falling back into early darkness; we love that extra hour when we fill it with unpaid sleep debt. We love it for 23 hours until we note that it’s mid-afternoon and it feels like bedtime. November has been a month of dreams and I wonder why so many dreams, so many dreams.  Unsettled souls, mostly mine perhaps. I should like to tell my dreams to A, who is the Jungian therapist in our group. But that would be boundary crossing, and you know how excellent I am at maintaining my boundaries.

On Saturday I will be teaching all day, and I haven’t gotten comfortable with teaching adults yet.  I don’t know if I can get comfortable with it. It feels arrogant somehow, to pretend I know more than they do when we don’t know if that’s true at all.  I always anticipate students (like myself) who aren’t so sure this teacher knows anything about anything. Teaching teenagers is different, because they’re easy to predict and easy to beat to the punch(line). In a roomful of teenagers I am sharp and hilarious. With adults I am nervous.  And I don’t know if they think I’m funny or if they think I am a psychopath.  Today when I designed a template for their research paper, I wrote in the “diagnosis” section that they should describe the symptomology and treatment, but acknowledge that they (we) are not qualified to diagnose.  Or perform certain treatments, like prescribing medication.  Or performing frontal lobotomies. Or exorcisms. … and then I stopped typing and asked myself if this was at all appropriate.  And couldn’t be sure in the least, so  I left it like that. But I am wondering if someone will be offended.  Also, I wonder if students will actually read the template.  I may be modeling myself after my advisor, Dr. Jo, who is clearly nuts, and who said, “Goodbye, goodbye, have a nice life” as if we weren’t going to be seeing each other again in a week. Crazy Jo who concluded the meeting before that one by asking, “May I please be excused?”

In which we describe our sad

This is Saturday, a saturated day. I might describe my sad as heavy sad or heaving sad or heady sad. But it might be saturated sad. Or creeping sad or sad on toast. Any way you breathe it in, it comes out damp and grey and cold. Inhale.  Outhale.  (Can you breathe when I stand this close to you?) It is not necessary to make time or space for this conversation. I wonder why we do it anyway.