Month: September 2012

Spaces and Boredom

By / September 22, 2012

I have been pondering focus and space. These are frequent subjects for pondering and this particular round was triggered by something Sara Zarr wrote on her blog.

Technically there is the time to do [social media and internet browsing], but it leaves my mind fragmented. Also, and this is the main thing: I think creative people need to feel “bored” or lonely. I think you have to endure that rather than immediately soothing it because after the initial agitation is over, the funnel unclogs and you can actually get some stuff into the well, and out of it.

Since reading that, I’ve been paying attention to how often I wander down to my computer to check one thing. I’ve also been noting how I feel before reading through my regular internet stops and after. The truth is that while I feel like I want to check my sites and get them taken care of before settling in to work, I actually find myself less able to prioritize after I’ve read snippets of a dozen things. I have to step away from my computer, sometimes all the way out of the house into my yard. Sometimes it only takes a few minutes of sitting, others thirty minutes or more, but it will suddenly become obvious to me what my next priority should be. Quiet space gives my thoughts a chance to settle and I can see what is important.

It occurs to me that the impulse to check the internet, or read a book, or watch a show, are my brain telling me that I am bored. If I force myself to accept the boredom and live in it, then my brain begins to dredge through thoughts and memories. I start to tell myself stories. This is where fiction and blog posts come from. Boredom is my friend.

I could finish off this blog post with a commitment to do better or a new set of rules for myself. I think I’ve got enough shake-up-my-life challenges for the coming week without adding another one. Instead I’ll trust that observation impacts the observed. The fact that I am paying attention means that I’ve changed my behavior and will probably continue to do so. Perhaps I’ll set a specific goal in this area once I’ve returned from the retreat and cleared the returning home tasks.

An Illustration of the Difficulties of Writing while Parenting

By / September 20, 2012 / 2 Comments

I had 30 minutes before I needed to pick up Kiki from school. Then I had 50 minutes between returning home from that trip and picking up Gleek and Patch. Link would arrive home by himself about half way through the 50 minute period. In theory, I had a good hour of time for writing, so I grabbed Calcifer and headed out back, away from the internet, to begin typing.

15 minutes later Howard came looking for me because he wondered where I was and to check that I had a clock to keep track of departure time for picking up Kiki. I did. Calcifer, being a laptop, is clock equipped. The conversation with Howard touched on a couple of other topics and together we used up 10 minutes. I wrote for 5 more and then closed Calcifer to depart for Kiki’s school.

Kiki and I talked in the car on the way home. I like being the one to pick up my kids from school. It gives me a chance to hear snippets of their day and to assess their mood so that I know how the afternoon is likely to go. Kiki was tired, but chatty.

We arrived home and I had about 50 minutes before the second pick up run. I grabbed Calcifer and headed back outside. The weather was too lovely for being indoors. Kiki followed me, mostly to find our kitty, but also because her thoughts weren’t done unspooling after the school day. She sat next to me and kept talking. I like talking to Kiki. She is clever and funny. We laugh a lot so long as we’re not in a contentious conversation, which this one wasn’t. We laughed together for about 20 minutes before she wandered inside to take a nap.

I had 30 minutes left for writing, with one likely interruption when Link came home. I began typing.

Kiki came back out of the house with the phone. Link had called from his school to tell me that he was staying late and would need a ride home as soon as he finished something up. It would probably be another 10 minutes or so. I stayed inside to be near the phone and settled to begin typing. 25 minutes left.

No sooner had I settled myself and woken Calcifer from sleep when the phone rang again. Link was done because the computer network at school was down. Could I come get him?

I drove to retrieve Link, a 15 minute round trip. We walked in together and spent 5 minutes finishing off our conversation and settling him in for the afternoon. I had 5 minutes before I was due to leave.

I typed, just barely hitting the post button on the blog post I’d written before heading out the door about 3 minutes late to pick up Gleek and Patch.

Total elapsed time: 95 minutes
Time spent driving: 30 minutes
Time spent talking (while not also driving): 40 minutes
Time spent writing: 25 minutes in five pieces.

The blog post I wrote was the one that precedes this one. I wonder if it would have been a better post if I’d been able to focus on it uninterrupted. I’ll never know, but I do know that I wrote today. I also do not begrudge a single minute of those interruptive conversations. They were each important for different reasons.

Preparing to Unfold

By / September 20, 2012

Next Monday I’ll board a plane to attend a week-long writer’s retreat. This week has been one of preparation. I’m working to help Patch finish his book report early so that Howard is not stuck with a last minute homework scramble. We’re practicing with Gleek and Patch so that they know how to do bedtime on their own. We’re helping Link and Kiki meet deadlines ahead of time. I’m doing laundry, cleaning house, and stocking the larder. At the same time I’m letting some of these tasks be incomplete, because one of the points of this trip is for me to learn that Howard and the kids do not always require my help, and for them to learn how to step up and help themselves. This learning is necessary since I do things for my family without even thinking about it. I am always performing small invisible tasks which make life go more smoothly, even when I should let the kids struggle with doing these things for themselves. I’m working on it, but truly the only way to convince myself that disaster will not result if I stop doing is for me to step away completely and see that disaster does not occur.

The other reason for the trip is writing. I am quite curious to see what happens when I fold away all the parent thoughts, house care thoughts, and business thoughts simultaneously. What will emerge in the space thus created? I’m hopeful that it will be lovely words and stories. I realized today that I’ve been feeling the same reluctance about writing fiction that I do when contemplating starting a new book or TV show. I know that the story is going to take up residence in my brain and use space until it is complete. I have so many ongoing projects that it is hard to want to sign up for another one. Yet I’m going to. During this retreat I’m going to unfold four writing projects which have been waiting for me.

1. The Strength of Wild Horses. This is the follow up picture book to Hold on to Your Horses. I’m going to attempt to focus on this one first because I want to emerge from the retreat with a completed text.

2. My middle grade fantasy book about a video game playing Tomte (think house elf or brownie) who befriends a young boy. I’ve got the first bit of the book written, but it needs to be restructured and expanded.

3. A magical realism book for which I only have fragments and pieces. I know where it is set, I have a couple of characters with attached emotional issues. The book wants to have themes of dealing with mental illnesses and the fairy tale Tam Lin will be referenced in relation to those. This one feels important, but I really need to collect more pieces before true drafting can begin.

4. Somewhere Before the Blinding Light. This is a short story/novelette/novella which I’ve already drafted once, but needs significant revision. I want to set it on a colony world which was primarily settled by people from India. This means that I need to do some research into Indian history and culture in order to get the social structures right. The story deals with themes of memory and choice because there is a technology which allows selective memory erasure.

Those are the projects I intend to work on. It is entirely possible that some other project will materialize and demand attention instead. This is the danger of turning over so much brain space to my writer self. I am certain that I will also end up with ideas for essays and blog entries, some of which will be completed and posted as the week progresses. Next week is definitely going to be interesting.

How Can the Schools Contact Me, Let Me Count the Ways

By / September 19, 2012

I appreciate that my kids’ schools try to keep me informed. I really do. When Kiki was starting school a decade ago events and deadlines got missed because notes didn’t make it home or were never handed over to me. I remember being frustrated about the lack of communication. Now things have swung the other way and I feel like the schools are like a child on the playground shouting “look at me!” every five seconds.

Any time the elementary school has an announcement, they send a note home with the kids. Both of the kids, so I end up with two copies of every note. Then I also get a phone call telling me all of the information that is contained in the note. At the same moment that the automated system is calling me, it also sends me an email to tell me the exact same information. One announcement and I’m notified four times.

The junior high school both calls and emails for every announcement. Except that in addition to the automated announcement system, sometimes one of the junior high secretaries will also write an email to tell me the same information.

The High School also uses an automated phone and email system. It has the added fun aspect that most of the time the emails are not actually emails, but links to an audio file of the phone call. Also the principal’s messages are always attachments, never in the body of the email.

If all the schools have announcements on the same day, I’ll get three phone calls and four emails.

This is not all. The attendance system is separate. If any of my kids have an unexcused absence (If I didn’t call early enough to prevent them being marked unexcused, or if the teacher just fails to mark them there) then I get a phone call about that. There is a super extra special phone call and email combo that automatically contacts me if a child ever is absent from the high school flex class that they’re supposed to attend. That phone call will be a recording of the principal’s voice speaking very sternly about my student’s bad choices. Except the only time I’ve ever heard it was when my student was off doing school business and the teacher who was supposed to excuse her forgot to do so.

I did not sign up for any of the school PTAs this year because last year they averaged 1-3 emails per week per PTA.

So I feel a little bombarded, particularly this week when all three schools are very focused on their upcoming Parent Teacher Conferences and school fundraisers. I am over-contacted. Yet I am sure that every day the school secretaries get phone calls asking questions about exactly the information that they’ve handed out multiple times in multiple ways. They bombard me because it saves time answering parent questions over the phone and like spam, sending multiple messages is as easy as sending one.

Today I got a phone call from the school that I was very happy to receive. It was one of the teachers calling me directly to talk over concerns about one of my kids. We talked and problem solved for about 20 minutes and agreed that a conference with additional staff members might be beneficial. This is the heart of why I put up with the noise, the candy sales, the demands, the emails, the phone calls, because, in the end, all of those things begin with adults who care passionately about helping kids have the opportunities that they need. Some of the programs which are noise to me are vital for some other child. Because of this, I will exercise my patience. And submit a suggestion that maybe it would be possible to allow parents to opt out of the automated announcement phone calls.

Strategies for Dealing with a Bully

By / September 19, 2012 / 3 Comments

Here at Chez Tayler we are currently managing a couple of situations where one of my kids feels picked on or bullied. This is nothing new. We deal with iterations of this almost every year. We’ve also dealt with situations where I needed to teach my kids not be mean to others. In helping my kids analyze their experiences and formulate strategies, I’ve realized that many of these strategies are fairly universally applicable. So I am going to offer them to the internet as tools for dealing with bullying.

Before I begin talking strategies, I feel it is important to clarify that not every negative social interaction is bullying. Bullying is persistent and there is usually a power differential. If the kids have roughly equal social status you can get all sorts of nasty conflict, but it is not quite the same as bullying. What gets fascinating is that sometimes two kids both feel like they’re being bullied because they perceive the other person as more powerful and popular than they are. Some of the strategies below address true bullying, others are more appropriate to other sorts of social conflicts. I’m going to put them all down, because I can’t be certain which strategy will be most helpful in a given situation. Please be careful and cautious, bully situations sometimes get worse for a time as the bully lashes out at the social shift. If there is any risk of physical danger, get allies–adults, teachers, other parents, friends, people who will help keep you or your child safe.

1. Lay Low. This sounds like the common, and often useless, advice “just ignore it and the bully will stop,” but it is not quite the same thing. Laying low is not hiding and waiting. It is lowering your visibility for awhile to give you space to pay attention to some of the other strategies on this list. Avoid the places you’re likely to see the bully, try not to draw attention. If you are a target of opportunity, or the bullying is taking place in a particular social context, laying low may be all that is necessary to defuse it. This is why the “ignore it” advice still gets handed around. Sometimes it works. Laying low can also resolve social conflicts that are not actually bullying. However if a bully is deliberately seeking victims, this may shift the target, but will not eliminate the behavior; other strategies have to be used.

2. Identify allies. True allies are people you trust to listen and act fairly, not just people who will always take your side. If people only choose sides, you find yourself in the middle of a West Side Story conflict; two groups ready for battle. In theory the staff at the school are impartial people, who will judge fairly. It is not always the case. Look around at how other people are reacting to the bullying. You’ll likely notice some people who do not like it but are not saying anything. These could be allies. Parents should be allies for their kids. Listen in detail, don’t get instantly outraged and defensive. There are two sides to every story and until you know both sides, you are not ready to aim your outrage at the most appropriate target.

3. Identify Causes. Another common bit of advice is that bullies are actually scared inside. This has truth in it. Most bullying is not deliberately malicious for maliciousness sake. It is immature personalities flailing around trying to defend themselves from social harm or to scrabble themselves into a better social position. Some harmful behavior is just inconsiderate and clueless. Feelings of insecurity are a huge driving force for meanness. Figuring out where the hurtful behavior comes from does not necessarily make it hurt less, but it definitely strengthens the person being hurt. It gives you a chance to come up with ideas of how to change the social context. Often clues to the shape of the pain are embedded in the bullying itself. For example: the insecure girl seeks to tear down another girl who she perceives as a competitor. She is trying to push her insecurity off onto someone else.

4. Risk Assessment. Sit down in a safe place to figure out why the things the bully did hurt. Is it physical injury? Is it that you’re afraid that other people will believe the bully’s words? Figure out what the bully has power to damage that matters to you. This lets you focus on undermining the power of the bully carefully and consistently. It gives you specific aspects of the bully situation that you can focus on and untangle. Also spend some time thinking through what power you have. What allies can you bring into play? What new allies can you acquire? What consequences will there be if you take action? What can you do to remove the power of the bully over the things that matter to you? Identifying what you’re most afraid of and what you most want to salvage from the situation helps you better assess what you are willing to risk in order to make the bullying stop. When the bully has no power over anything that matters to you, the bully becomes irrelevant.

5. Extinguishing Behavior. Most bullies are not very self-aware. This means that they can be experimental subjects like Pavlov’s dogs responding to stimulus and rewards. Once you’ve identified some causes and the risks, you can begin to remove rewards for behavior you don’t want and add them for things you do. A boy pulls the girl’s hair because he likes to hear her shriek and he wants her attention. She can begin by stifling her shriek and turning away instead of turning toward. If she also rewards him with attention for a positive behavior, like holding the door open, then the boy will shift his behavior to match the rewards he wants. This tactic works best when applied slowly and subtly. It is particularly effective if allies are part of the plan. Five people working in concert to eliminate an unwanted behavior can make it vanish quickly. Be aware that extinguishing one behavior may make a new unpleasant behavior emerge.

6. Keep Records. I add this one with caution, because for the most part we should let go of the small social harms we receive rather than holding on to them. But if you are dealing with a true bully, someone who persistently tries to undermine you or harm you, then this one is critical. Employ it when the victim is at serious risk of physical or emotional harm. Write down information about bullying incidents, what was said, where it happened, who witnessed it, any proof you have that the incident occurred. These records are first for you, to help you identify patterns. Second they function as evidence if you have to convince someone in authority that they must act against the bully. I do not recommend that children be the ones to keep records. Parents should encourage the kids to tell the stories, but parents keep the records. Do not let the bully know about the records. If the situation resolves, stow the records and let it go.

I know there are other strategies out there, but thus far circling through these has been enough to empower my kids to handle their social conflicts. If you have additional thoughts and strategies, I’d love to see them in the comments.

In Quest of an Edible Lunch

By / September 17, 2012

The volume of kvetching over school lunch offerings increased this fall. Though that sentence does not paint an accurate picture. My kids would state their complaints if asked, but mostly they engaged in silent protest. Two of them independently decided that they would rather go hungry than eat anything served at school, and a third began hauling salt and spices to school in order to doctor the meals. Adding up all the information makes clear that something has changed in our current kid and school lunch configuration. Paying for school lunch bought me a measure of stress relief, but this year the kids are not demanding as much from me in the way of homework support, so I have extra cycles to explore home lunch options.

I began by ordering some bynto boxes from Goodbyn. These are three-compartment containers with lids. I figure we have a better shot at getting the kids to actually eat lunches from home if I can make the presentation enjoyable. The boxes are due to arrive at the end of the week. Until then my kids will be bagging it. I fully expect there to be challenges in the form of lost boxes, boxes left at school, and boxes not rinsed out after school. My junior high and high school kid have both been subjected to the indignity of having to actually seek out their lockers and learn how to open them so that they will have a place to put their lunches. I guess they’ve just been carrying all their books all day long.

The biggest challenge for me is going to be coming up with variety while keeping the prep process as brainless as possible. Kiki does not like sandwiches, while Link does not like wraps. Patch does not like cheese very much and everyone else does. We’re going to have to do some experimentation to discover which foods best survive transportation to school and sitting at room temperature. In theory this should be familiar ground. I grew up bringing lunch to school and considered buying school lunch to be a treat. I know how to do this, but knowing theory is different from practiced knowledge. It is going to take us time to add this into the rhythm of our days. That process is going to be disrupted by my departure next Monday, or maybe it won’t. There is every chance that Howard and the kids will own this process in my absence and I’ll come home to discover that there is a working system.

Let the quest for edible lunches commence.

Emerging Sunshine

By / September 16, 2012

Last week was moody, hard to get anything done moody. About all I managed to accomplish were the bare minimum parenting and house tasks. Oh, and I started going to the gym again. Then on Friday, things felt better, as if a cloud had passed over the sun and moved on. Saturday brought a professional event when Howard and I accompanied Brandon and Emily Sanderson to the League of Utah Writers Round Up in Park City. I’ll admit that I felt apprehension about going. Some wisps of worry clung from the week prior making me think that my departure would result in some unspecified disaster at home. The feeling also came as a foreshadowing of the larger worries I have about leaving my family for a week. Yet I put on my professional clothes and went anyway.

Everything was fine. Even the hard bits were fine. Gleek and Patch had a major argument and resolved it for themselves. When I arrived home all was happy. Of course the next two hours involved conflict piled on conflict featuring Gleek, who picked that evening to push on the limits and then repent of all wrong doing she has ever committed. Yet despite how exhausting those two hours were, they cleared up some significant emotional turf for Gleek. Hard does not always mean bad. So I am both reassured and I continue to be concerned.

The sun continues to shine today. I feel normal. This is evidence that last weeks moods were primarily driven by thyroid imbalance. I hope to spend this week in calm preparation for my upcoming absence.

The LUW Round Up probably ought to get its own entry. It is a smaller event and more literary focused than most of the events we attend. I liked being at an event where genre fiction was not the primary focus. They had classes on Creative Non Fiction and Poetry. I was able to attend portions of those classes. But my favorite part was getting to present. It reminded me (again) how much I love teaching and presenting. I need to be doing more of it.

Music Therapy

By / September 14, 2012 / 1 Comment

I carry a sonic mood alteration device in my pocket and I forget to use it. The device is my phone and it is fully capable of playing music. Or it is now that I’ve actually taken the trouble to put music onto it. I’ve always been very passive about music. I listened to the radio, or the mix tapes my friends made, or whatever was played by the DJ at the dance. I had definite preferences for what I liked, but I’ve never sought out music and claimed it for mine. Definitely not the way that Howard does. Last fall I spent time seeking visual things. This fall it looks like I’ll be curating my music collection. Because there is real power in music and I want my phone to be full of songs where I hear the first few notes and think “Oh I love this song!”

Also, the gym trips are much nicer when I get to pick the music. Today is much better than the last four days. I just need to keep moving.

Take Two Doses of the Gym and Call Me Next Week

By / April 21, 2014

I went to the gym today, for the second day in a row. I feel quite grouchy about it, because the gym trips were not the result of some reasoned decision to be more healthy. They did not spring out of self control or determined change. My choices were either to run until I was sweaty and endorphinated or to sit down and cry. Howard persuaded me that the running option was better. It was a near thing, I’ve resisted this sort of “go to the gym” suggestion for months, like a child faced with vegetables she didn’t want to eat. I don’t know why. I used to love going to the gym. It represented freedom and self mastery. I guess it has just gotten hard to want to leave my house, which should probably have clued me in. I last went to the gym…a year ago? Longer? Howard has been convinced that regular exercise is part of the solution to my anxiety troubles. I know he’s right, yet it took an attack of depression to get me actually moving.

The medical stuff: A year ago a blood test showed that the dosage for my thyroid medication was too high making me mildly hyperthyroid. We lowered the dosage and my anxiety abated. I then employed thyroid dosage as one of my anxiety control rods. Two weeks ago I tested in the Hypothyroid range, which explains the weight gain, and makes the continuing anxiety feel like a mystery. It also showed me that I need different anxiety management methods. We raised my dosage, and now, ten days later, I’ve been beset with depression. This feels so backward. And dumb. Hypothyroid is associated with depression and the medication Maybe it is a coincidence, or maybe it is not. But the depression would have me believe that I am doomed forever and will never figure any of it out. My logic brain says we are going to continue to take our thyroid medicine, let things settle, exercise every (expletive) day as part of the medical treatment, then take all the data to our doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks. At least this way when my doctor asks if I’ve been exercising, I can answer that, yes I have, and it still has not solved everything. Or maybe it will have solved everything and then I can just have a pleasant chat with my doctor and not see him again for another year.

I saw a commercial for depression medication which used animations for the visuals. It was a woman with a sad blue umbrella over her head that rained on her. Then she started taking medicine and the umbrella rested closed near her instead of looming over her head. I loved how the commercial implied that medicine was not a magical solution. It is a much more realistic expectation than images of happy people running through fields of flowers. My depression experience this week has been like that. It loomed over me making everything wet…until I ran on the treadmill and it all backed off. I can still sense the sadness out on the horizons of my brain. I could go fetch it and wallow in it if I wanted to, but I can also function and get things done. All the important and urgent tasks are easy. I even feel satisfaction and accomplishment for a brief time afterward. But for anything long-term or creative I’m having trouble wanting to get things done. It is the classic “loss of interest” symptom of depression. I’d suspect this of being a hypothyroid depression, except for the stuff in the medical paragraph. Brains are complicated and weird. Last week I was normal for me, which means mostly happy with occasional anxiety. This hit me Monday afternoon.

So once again I’m in a diagnosis cycle. I seem to spend a lot of time in those for either myself or those near and dear to me. I’m a bit cranky at having to deal with it, so I use that crankyness to get me to the gym where I can pound a treadmill and weights for a bit. Hopefully it is a prescription for better health.

Inward and Outward

By / September 11, 2012 / 1 Comment

I have been turning inward, staying home, focusing on family. I have been trying to teach myself that not everything is my responsibility to fix and that when things go wrong it is not necessarily my fault. These are important lessons for me, and harder to learn than perhaps they ought to be. I keep circling around like Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet in the woods, always ending up back at the very same sand pit. It seems like I should focus, work harder, not get distracted. Yet lately I’m running across articles and sermons speaking about reaching out. They are resonating for me and I’m discovering a desire to be a better friend, neighbor, acquaintance, writer. At the exact same time I feel like I should be drawing in, conserving my energy for the things which really matter instead of spreading myself out thin across too many people, too many communities.

I think about these things as I lay curled up on my couch with a blanket over my head. The blanket creates a warm darkness that feels safe. I carefully unclench my jaw. Again. I know that the clenched jaw is a signifier of stress or anxiety, but I don’t know exactly what the stress is or why it is there. It seems that these things ought to have a source, and that I should be able to follow the flow back to that source and figure it out. Find a way to reconfigure my internal landscape so that I can have interior pools of calmness instead of pressured pockets seeking to geyser. I want caverns and pools forming lovely stalactites and stalagmites, not underground hot springs that bubble with the stench of sulfur. Instead I squeeze my eyes tight, unclench my jaw and try to arrange words in my head so that I can write them down later.

Nothing went wrong with the morning. We got up on time, the kids ate breakfast and did their homework with only the mildest of nudges. I did have the remnants of the migraine which struck me the night before. Perhaps I was a little bit sick. Yet I followed my to do list through the tasks of the morning, even to the point of grabbing a quiet moment alone with Gleek to discuss some of the physical manifestations of her anxiety and how we could perhaps redirect those into more socially acceptable avenues during school hours. It was an important discussion. Gleek was quiet, cooperative, and communicative as we discussed reasons and options. I wore my very best therapist hat, dusted off and spruced up because it has seen a lot of use lately. Putting that hat on takes an effort of will these days. It feels so heavy sometimes. Which could possibly be a source for some of the tension, and one of the major reasons I must chant to myself that not every problem is mine to fix, nor my fault. Yet sometimes wearing the therapist hat feeds energy into me instead of pulling it out. Sometimes extending myself means I end up with more, not less.

My feet are cold even curled up under my blanket on the couch. This too is a sign of ambient anxiety. My body pulls warmth toward my core, conserving it for…something. When I am relaxed and centered I am warm to my fingertips and toes. Having the space and time to curl up and contemplate my cold toes is a luxury. Many days I must carry on and get things done without time to contemplate. I can go for quite a long time before I hit a wall, my ability to focus vanishes, and I have to face all the things I’ve not been thinking about. If I can even figure out what they are.

The day before, I watched Gleek in her classroom as the teacher handed out assignments. Unbidden, my brain took note of each one and added it to my task list. I tried to shake them off; they are not my tasks, they’re Gleek’s. Yet it was like getting rid of styrofoam peanuts, they kept drifting and clinging no matter how much I tried to discard them. At homework time, Gleek pulled out her work, and most of it was already complete. She has inherited from me the tendency to work ahead, get things done early, and to fret over assignments before fretting is strictly necessary. This is reassuring to me. I do not have to track her assignments. She will do it. I wonder at what point she will find herself curled under a blanket trying to untangle her thoughts because the same tendencies which make her effective at getting work done also create needless anxieties. All I can do is wear my battered therapist hat and hope to pass on lessons as I learn them.

Eventually enough words line up in my brain that I must record them. I lift the blanket off my head and wrap it around my shoulders. Then I go to my computer and type. Amorphous thoughts are pinned into little black symbols written in pixels, stored as ones and zeros through a mechanism I barely understand. All I really know is that I click and the words are there. My words, trying to wrap themselves around my experiences as a method of conveying those experiences to others. With my words I turn inwards, seeking my thoughts and reasons, trying to figure out why I am the way that I am. My words also reach outward, seeking to connect with others. The seemingly contradictory happens simultaneously through the same action. Perhaps the answer then is to write.