Damned technology.

FYI my computer is on the fritz. Or is it spritz? It's not working so with this borrowed one I am telling you that right now all writing is happening in my large head....soon, the laptop will be repaired and I will be back at it.

Stay tuned.

Silly little process.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about why some people are motivated to make changes in their life and some would rather talk about it than do whatever work might be necessary to give them the changes they so yearn for. I haven't been able to stand far enough away from the "issue" to see it with perspective, so I'm not sure if it's about nature or nurture or hardwiring or what. Yesterday I met with Chris, my Ironman training guy (no, I am not doing the Ironman) for a few new weight and/or lifting routines to add to my daily (almost) workouts. Our meeting time was 3PM and I'd decided earlier in the day I'd like to make the 10 minute walk to the place of torture before he'd show me the machines and contraptions he wanted me to start using. Normally I am great at time and knowing exactly how long it might take me to get from one place to another, but yesterday, I managed to "forget" about the time so that I was running behind, and needing to rush to get there. I knew this was not about really forgetting since my day was planned around this activity, and so it got me to thinking: what the heck am I up to now?

Part of it is the truth that I woke up with this morning: the sorest triceps I've had in maybe ten years. It's almost too much to type, and while I do love this feeling, it's the process of getting it that I seem to be avoiding. Another truth is I actually love going to the gym. I'm a bit of a "gym rat" and enjoy the place, the practice, the community that becomes the gym. The other truth is I love the hard work and I really enjoy a good sweat. So what's up with the amnesia and avoidance?

Here's the part about change that allows me what I want: I did it anyway. I saw myself avoiding, I felt the inertia that comes with unconscious fear and whatever else that becomes the sludge I have to find myself through, and I didn't give into any of it. Is this nature or is it nurture? My parents wouldn't hear of us "giving up" when things were hard. This was spread evenly between emotional experiences and physical ones. We spent, as a family, a huge amount of time out in the wilderness, on trails and fire roads, in the brush, and atop peaks and ridges and passes, and didn't see hardly a soul out there. No families with kids, for sure. It was not part of our process, not even one bit, to think you could stop or "get out of it" or turn around. There wasn't really even a narrative about it being something other than cool and normal.

I remember now that I used to get really anxious before these trips. That meant pretty much every weekend in the spring, fall and winter (too hot and too many snakes in the local mountains in the summer, besides, summer was reserved for long backpacks in the Sierra) I'd get out my boots, two pair of socks, pants, shirt and jacket before a fitful teenage sleep. Was it the anticipation? The realization that this would be "hard" and that I would have to muster whatever it took to get to the top (one trip we did five peaks above 5000' in one day)? I'm not sure, still, but that feeling is that same one I was lugging around yesterday as I had to trot to the gym to get there on time.

Client's often come in wanting change, whether it is to feel happier or not to feel so miserable. Few actually want to do the work that might be required, and would rather they could read a solution in a book or have the therapist tell them what they need to do (as long as it's easy and doesn't take too long) in order to get past whatever has brought them in. Some are driven by insight and believe that all they have to do is understand the issue, the problem, the reason and they will "know what to do to make it better." Often, though, what is in store is either learning to say "no" to yourself and doing what feels impossible and/or too difficult no matter what. This could be as simple as not taking a drink when you feel crummy to having to leave a marriage because you are getting hit everyday. Whatever, once the preparation is done, the understanding complete, there is the simple and sometimes very difficult work of just stepping off that cliff, one foot in front of the other.

Now here in the middle of today I am stuck again in the push and the pull. For instance, I have a cord or more of wood to stack; wood that is now covered in snow and in the way of the snow plow when it comes. Wood I need, wood I helped split, wood that is ready to get onto the porch. Wood that is still in the spot it was yesterday when stacking it was on my list. And now, today, I'm at the end of the procrastination line. I know I'll have fun doing it, I know I will feel accomplished and glad for it being taken care of, but still, here I sit, writing, drinking tea, petting the dogs by the fire.

Is there a self-help book for this? The one that tells you to put it on a list, prioritize it, come up with the worst case scenario and then explains out to just get up forgodsake and put on your boots and gloves and get to work?

That's what I am looking for.

Routine.

First things first, hit the little button on the phone alarm and give myself five more minutes of sleep. Do it again. Maybe even again. It's now 5:20. Do the stretch that Val Leoffler said would change my life if I did it everyday. So far so good. Get out of the German flannel sheet layers of a warm bed, try to remember where I put my glasses, head to the bathroom to pee. Turn on the kitchen light, check the temps--this morning "outside" read 18.2º and "inside" 51.1º--put on the water for tea, or for the unusual morning, like this one, coffee. Grab the dogs' cong and stuff with kibble and a little chicken, start working on the fire. This morning I had to scoop out some of the ash in order to make sure there would be enough room for the wood that will be necessary throughout the day. Cut up a little kindling, set it in just so, crumple up newspaper, mostly unread, and give it a light. I've been known to be a little heavy handed with the fire as of late, which generally means I put too much in to start and then it doesn't, start, or does but goes out easily. Start with pine, get it going, move to some hard wood to keep it hot while I'm out, off to a walk with the dogs in the now snowy meadow and maybe, if it isn't too icy, I'll walk to work.

Get my phone, calendar, wallet, sunglasses, warm hat, and camera into my backpack. Start thinking about what's going to be for lunch. Take the dogs out to pee and poop and run away from me because they love the snow so much they'd rather be prancing around and in trouble than inside and eating breakfast. Remember to find my slippers, again, but wear my crocks out and freeze my toes. I often freeze my toes. Turn my attention to the blue sky, the first light of day, the snow stuck to the pines in my backyard. Think, "wow, I really live here."Start thinking about what's on my schedule for work. Decide there is nothing I need to prepare for; am relieved that the days of feeling like I have to prepare are over, at least for right now. Think about what to wear to work. If I walk, I won't be able to wear my pants (cotton, the death fabric in winter) so will have to plan for more in my backpack.

Start thinking about the time, look at the time, remember the dog walk will be a little slow getting there due to the icy roads. Think about the one homeless guy here and worry for him. It's now 20º, but that doesn't make it warm enough to be an older person living in the frozen wilds; even if your voices are telling you it's the only safe place to be. Wonder why it is that I've had cold toes, due to improper foot attire, since I was a very young person. What does this say about me? Okay, time to stop writing so I can get the toaster out and my little egg pan. I need to make my lunch, clean up my coffee dishes, make my bed.

It doesn't vary much, this routine. The weekends and holiday's are different, of course, but still recognizable. I could run a clock by my routine, and be about in the same place at the same time every morning. Like today, a little behind due to writing and ready to fry my eggs.

What's your routine in the morning?

Gratitude.

This one will have to come in parts. I'm still trying to get this "writing thing" down. I think about writing a lot; when I first wake up, when I'm out walking, sometimes when I'm cooking dinner, and most certainly when I'm sitting in the awful light of the Mammoth Hospital ER waiting to evaluate a patient who is potentially harmful to self and/or others (as I've been several times this call schedule). For reasons that have to do with total pitch darkness and cold temperatures, I haven't been able to get myself out of bed before 5:30 in order to make time for writing. Now, too, there is making a fire for warmth, which takes time, and the aforementioned training I am doing, mostly in the afternoon and evening, taking time and much effort. I think about writing while I'm strengthening my mostly non existent core muscles or practicing my form while doing lunges and squats in the forest. Okay, so now I write. In parts.

Around our office we often discuss why some of our clients, maybe even most of them, do not seem to have or express gratitude about what we offer them. Not the kind of, "I'm a piece of shit and couldn't live without you" gratitude, but more of the, "hey I notice you are a./feeding me, b./housing me, c./helping me get MediCal, d./listening to me talk about my terrible feelings, e./getting me into re-hab, f./keeping me out of jail," gratefulness. Perhaps what we are looking for is an exchange that recognizes our work? It doesn't feel like ego to me (but, please point it out if it does to you), more like a place to recognize that others (us) are working hard to give you opportunities or to make your ends meet a little more.

We are, in my office, mostly women. This is the first thing I wonder about. Do we participate in the message that we are taught, the one where we are expected to be helpful and invisible? Maybe some of us, but most of us are rather crusty about "not working harder than the client" and while we are good at our jobs and take what we do seriously, it's not all that we are so we don't need people to need us so we feel valuable or important. Maybe it's that, as women, the expectation is we are there to "mommy" those who didn't get what they needed way back when and so they get to project their "bad mommy" deal onto us? They take the food, the clothes, the cash, the services, the help and feel entitled to our efforts. The "I didn't get it then so I deserve it now" point of view, perhaps.

Not all clients are in this group, of course. Some are too sick, too fragile to notice much. Their voices or their addiction is much to loud and drowns out everything else, literally. But often the one's we, as a team, work the hardest on end up being the most entitled and least grateful. I'll make a confession here: I do not do well with entitlement. Don't like it, don't believe in it, think it's cultural and therefore not really a part of what is real about the human condition. It is the American way, if you think about our cultural dialogue or the way we, as a collective, treat the planet, so I get that, but still, my hackle goes up when I hear the call of entitlement.

Since I'm a supervisor, it's my job to understand why trends happen. At our sober living house, again generally, the folks who come and go do not express a sense of belonging or gratitude for having the opportunity to live there. It's a common occurrence, so I suspect there are things we are and are not doing that add to this dynamic. I tend to think that humans need to have rituals and conversations about their place in the world, and so I've introduced some of this to the dialogue and experience of those who live in our house. For instance, I tell the residents often how hard the lead person who they deal with, the one who oversee's their daily life and makes sure the bills are paid so they have heat and electricity, works to make sure they have what they have. I figure this gives them some insight, or at least a chance for it, about what goes into their experience of home. I don't have measurable results about this, but I do think the energy around, "where's my....that you owe me," as calmed down some.

Today at our staff meeting I'll talk about the three people I've seen in the ER this week. The back story is we don't get paid very much to be on call and the work is tricky and stressful and takes away from your ability to sleep well or have time off on your weekend; the rest of that story is, we all take it very seriously when we get called in and are professional to the hospital staff and the patient in question, even when one or the other might be screaming at you. I won't look for gratitude there, though from myself I will make sure I account for all it takes for me to do this and do it well. On the larger scale I'll think about the system we have created as a society where some people find comfort in being in the ER bed, drunk out of their mind or "suicidal" (often both) because that is the kind of attention they cannot get anywhere else in their world. And, on a much smaller but very important scale, I'll be ever grateful to be able to finally have a beer after spin, tonight, now that I'm off the beeper.

More-much-on this later.

Comfort.

Let's say a long time heroin addict comes to see you. She says, "I just can't tolerate all these feelings. I'm overwhelmed and anxious all of the time now that I'm not using. Even my skin hurts sometimes." What do you offer her to help with the discomfort, the physical grip of anxiety, the dread of regret?

Okay, so now, let's say you are sitting with a man who left his children, three of them who are now adults, because he didn't like their mom and now he's feeling the shame, and the terror that accompanies a true encounter with lost time. He has a history of his father leaving and he always thought he'd be different, but now, in your office, sitting there crying, he's realizing he's probably caused the same heartache in his three offspring that's he's been running from for the last 45 years, and it's excruciating.

Or, there's the incest survivor, the one who lived with her mother who was drunk all of the time. She's finally feeling her way through the past so she might have a present she can attend to, be in, not keep at bay in whatever ways she can muster. She comes in and says, "sometimes I'd rather be dead than go through this. Isn't there something you can give me to help me feel better? Isn't there something to dull this even a little?"

To all I say, and I'm not joking, "take a warm bath, find a place outside where the earth is exposed, take your shoes off and walk around, drink some tea, call a friend, write, listen to your favorite song, and if all else fails, pray."

Absurd, yes? A warm bath is minutia compared to the rush of heroin; calling a friend when you feel like a big schmuck (and you were) is hardly relaxing; walking on the earth when you feel shame has eviscerated you might feel a little like an insult. But, what else is there, really?

Sure, some of us are more inclined to reach out to others, and being a self soother myself, my comforts are more solo, still whatever we have used to run, to numb, to get the fuck away, it doesn't work after a time. Psyche finally gets her way and the truth will not vanish even when we are loaded to the gills or locked in a cave. For the therapist, this is the time of harvest. We clap our hands and smile when this stuff starts leaking through the cracks; what better time for healing but when it feels like there is no other choice?

The songwriter/poet/genius Ferron, who I often head toward when I need a particular kind of comfort, the kind where words from someone who feels like she knows me and can pierce right through to the most tender of places, has a song called, "Shady Gate." In it she says," wash your face my good friend tells me/and clean your house in troubled times/I must admit it helps an awful lot/to go on loving what you love/you see I've trained my mind/I'm not afraid to look behind." How beautiful is that? How simple and perfect and so Ferron, who had horrific things happen to her when she was young and knows exactly how to tell us about it.

Some people go to meetings, some stare at the ocean, some like a bowl of steaming hot brown rice, perhaps some go to a movie; me, I like to walk for long periods of time with nowhere particular to go. How about you? A bath? Folding warm just out of the dryer laundry? Kneading dough? Popcorn? Standing in the wind?

What helps you to walk through your wreckage? What feeds your soul?

Diversion.

How did the listening experiment go? Did you notice anything new, different, the same?

The first client I saw yesterday is a great story teller. He has a particular way of using his name when he's portraying himself in a tale that I find intriguing and I'm still trying to explain it to myself so that I might be able to imitate it for you. He's not seeing us by his own choice, but I can tell he is the type to 'make the best of it.' Still, about ten minutes into a fifteen minute visit, I was engaged in my own brain talking to me about our day at the office. Three people were out with the same crud that I've just now shaken off and hacked out of my lungs and I was busy trying to sort out what I could do to help, and all that more important than the fella in front of me stuff.

I noticed what I was doing, thinking about something completely different than the human being in front of me and thought of the blog. I realized, there are degrees of distraction and, if we are going to use the 1-10 scale, I was about an 8 away from what was really much more important than my own list of things-to-do.

This got me to thinking, after the dude left (you'd call him a dude too, it's fitting), what is it like for the checkers at Vons? They deal with streams of distracted humans. Most of the checkers I deal with are as checked out as the people they are helping (could not resist that one), but some of them try to have a conversation, a little bit of a human interaction. They tell me the customers who are on the phone while they go through line are the worst. On the phone?? I know it happens, I see it and am annoyed. You know how research says we all have homicidal tendencies? Mine come out when I'm in a market or a restaurant and someone is on the fucking phone. It's a look into the worst part of American society-entitled, rude, disengaged. (I say American because when I was in France, I only saw maybe two people on the phone while they were walking the street and never, ever in an eating establishment).

Wow, that was a digression. Here it is not even light yet and I'm ranting.

There is a feeling that goes along with intent. It's the same feeling that comes with real, deep listening. Perhaps it's a state? Maybe that is a better way to explain it. Deep listening is a state of being that takes work, dedication, discipline. It's a way of breathing, has it's own posture, and requires focus on everything. How's that? Work for you?

The fellow yesterday, the dude, noticed my distraction; I saw it on his face, brief and obvious. I felt bad and said, "sorry, I just got distracted by my day." He said, because he is properly socialized, "it's okay," but it's not really. He made the trip and paid for an appointment that he doesn't want to have to keep, and I at least owe him my full attention. Because this human connection matters, and my anxieties, curiosities, or self motivated distractions really shouldn't take precedence over connection.

Today, I will practice better and deeper listening. Today, I will listen for the hurt in my co-workers barbed 'joke' about another co-worker; I'll listen for the despair in the bored-out-of-her-mind-to-be-here client; I'll listen and make connection.

Wish me luck. I'll report back later.

Listen.

How would you describe how you listen? When someone is telling you a story about their life, do you notice your own inner dialogue? Let's say you are at the grocery store buying some bread, tomatoes and two bananas and you run into a friend, one who is going through a divorce, you have time, or at least more than usual, so what do you do? How do you listen to him? Do you offer advice, condolences, empathy? What's going on in your head while he's talking? Are you thinking about your empty stomach and feeling the bananas in your hand? Are you able to track your own inner dialogue and do you realize that it's been the same for the last six conversations, the one that is impatient, thinks people are make too much of stuff? Or are you anxious and wishing he'd stop talking because it leads you into your own worry about your own marriage?

Lots has been said about the art of listening. Still, take some time today and listen to yourself when someone is talking. Are you there? What are your distractions? What is your story?

I can tell you, today I will be intent when listening to the kid who is trying to keep sober; I'll be distracted when my co-worker rants about some thing at work that she doesn't like; I'll realize I wasn't paying good enough attention when the postal worker calls me, "hon" and hands me my package; I'll hear myself rattle on about whatever anxiety has me a little off balance these days. I'll hear myself play up the wetness of the wood that I've yet to stack, and watch myself try to navigate my tardiness in sending my niece her birthday present. Sometime during the day, these two concerns will enter my thoughts when someone else has my ear and I'll wonder if I am drifting or if somehow my little anxieties are cuing me about something they are talking about.

Right now I am telling myself to get on with my morning routine so the dogs get a good walk and maybe I will have time for a second cup of tea. I'm thinking about the piece I'm working on, the one about confidentiality and overlap, while I'm writing this one. I'm wondering how much it rained last night, I'm grateful my ability to sleep well has returned, amazed at how dark it is outside. I'm worrying about the homeless folks who are still believing they can manage a life here in the winter. I'm knowing they are thinking that this, the rain and temps in the high 30's, is doable and I'm imagining how I might try to convince them otherwise, and notice that they are distracted by their desire to be right and can't hear a word I'm saying.

What are you thinking about right now? Is it a theme, a singular thought, a cue? Are you amazed at how much is happening in your mind when you are focused on something else? I, for one, plan to listen really well today. Not so that I feel better, but so the ones who are speaking to me might feel noticed. That's my goal for today.

We'll see how it goes.