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There’s something about Sunday night
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Big blinking neon life arrows

I feel like the universe is presenting me with a bunch of enormous, blinking, neon arrows (and did I mention "with bling"?) pointing to this job I just interviewed for.

I got in for an interview because the girl who worked my internship last year now works at the agency. She gave me the supervisor's name and number after I didn't hear anything further from the web submission of my resume.

One of the counselors at my internship said, "Oh, who's the supervisor? I know so-and-so," who, it turns out, is the program director and sat in on my interview. I was able to name drop (fun!), "Oh, I think we have a mutual colleague . . ."

I had mixed feelings about the job, though; preconceived notions that, though the interview smashed through them, were hard to shake.

So I went to talk to my favorite professor. "Is this agency good? Is this position worthy?" She said yes, and mentioned that she thought a former student of hers, D--, might work there. "D--?" I said. "What's his last name?"

It turns out that he is the same man I corresponded with after I was accepted to grad school. He was just finishing up his last year and had volunteered to contact incoming students to answer any questions they had. I had a million. We e-mailed each other for 2 months!

So I called him at work. I think he vaguely recognized my name. He was very nice and helpful (just like two years ago) and gave me his work address so we could e-mail further and I could pick his brain about this job.

The upshot of it all is that, if I don't get called back for a second interview, or even offered the job, I'm going to be seriously pissed.

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Friday, March 14, 2008

A good lesson

So I've been seeing a counselor this semester, on campus, half to address the massive anxiety I have about my future (i.e., what do I do when I graduate and how do I not completely lose it with the stress?) and half to observe and learn more about therapy. I got matched with a man who, well, I would prefer not to see a man anyway, but also, I could, really, immediately, tell I wouldn't feel comfortable with.

But I'm stubborn, and had already waited 3 months to get to see someone, so I stuck with him once I knew he did a lot of work with cognitive-behavioral therapy. I knew that's what I needed, plus, I wanted to see an experienced clinician administering CBT.

I don't know why I ignore gut feelings. I'm pretty ridiculous about that.

I quickly grew tired of his style, and of CBT in general. But I stayed with it at least a month and a half. At our last session, something else came up (a discussion topic) that I wanted to pursue, and since I knew he also did a lot of interpersonal therapy work (another modality I wanted to see in action), I suggested that direction instead.

I have this idea that because I'm comfortable in general with therapy, it can be successful no matter who I work with. But I had to confront the fact that I really am growing more uncomfortable with him, to the point that I started to dread the appointment we have scheduled for next week.

It's not anything in particular (unless you count that I think he talks too much for a therapist, and sometimes I zone out and miss half of what he says), it's more about a personality fit between counselor and client that's just not working.

This is actually not something I've encountered as a therapist myself--probably because most of the families I see are mandated to see me due to community service, and they don't have much of a choice to see another counselor unless they are very difficult and I defer to my supervisor. The therapeutic relationship (though important) just isn't discussed (though maybe that's only through my failing to bring it up).

Something that does happen a lot, though, is that people will stop coming, not even returning my phone calls, and I don't know why. It doesn't keep me up at night, but closure is nice. And I think I now realize why it happens.

I don't particularly want to talk about it with my therapist. I should talk about it, but I don't feel like it. I just feel like stopping our sessions. So I called the center receptionist and cancelled my appointment. And my counselor called me back to reschedule.

I knew he would. I call my clients, too. Even if they say (as I didn't), "I'm ending my counseling. I'm not coming back."

I don't want to call him back and explain, because I can't even figure out why in the past week, I've gone from being somewhat committed to (though unenthused about) counseling to suddenly being unavoidably uncomfortable with the idea of returning. I just don't feel like dealing with it. I don't need closure, or termination, I just have other things to do with my time.

Yet, because I hate it when clients just stop communicating, I feel some responsibility to him to tell him why I'm terminating. So I know that I'll feel really guilty if I don't call him back.

But I don't want to talk to him! I don't want to feel guilty about someone else's feelings and I don't want that to push me to do something I don't want to. I'd lie and say something came up and I don't have time for it, as one friend suggested, but I know that I would, as a counselor, probably push some more to get my client back in session. And I don't want to go through that myself.

Ugh. I feel like an idiot being bothered by all this.

But it's a fantastic lesson on what my clients could potentially be struggling with as well. It gives me great perspective.

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Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Glorious sadness

Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south detroit
He took the midnight train goin anywhere

When I was in college, I had what I thought was a great idea for a short story. I think it was about an abused woman. My boyfriend at the time started yelling at me, "Why can't you write anything happy??" He didn't understand when I said that sadness was more compelling.

I've always been drawn to it. I have that luxury, I suppose, given that I have had a overwhelmingly normal, functional life filled with much happiness. There's a hyperreality to sadness, an idea of, "this is it; this is what it means to really feel."

That must explain why I am obsessed with 80s music. It's desperate and sad, melodies that plaster themselves across a heart and chest that is barely keeping it together. One note away from falling apart. Listening to it summons the feelings, the physicality of it in an instant.

When I was in junior high, I got invited to a slumber party at D's house. I don't know why. Perhaps her mother suggested it. We certainly weren't friends. She was sweet and kind, and popular for those reasons, but she also continually sported a leather jacket from her much older boyfriend (she started dating high school boys when we was in the 5th grade, yet as far as I knew, never suffered any vicious talk behind her back about it). To note that these jackets, the succession of them, were probably Members-Only jackets really puts a damper on how thoroughly bad ass they seemed. For she didn't date the cross country team, the basketball team; she dated the guys who took welding for the express purpose of pouring their creative energies into making water pipes and got caught smoking behind the gym instead of participating in P.E. class. Guys she somehow tamed into watching their language and politely extinguishing their butts when she came around.

This was the girl who invited me to a slumber party. This was the girl about whose parties I'd heard whispered rumors. To say I was rattled and mystified at my invitation is an understatement. I wondered if it was a joke or if she had somehow lost a bet and I was the butt of it.

It was unlike any sleepover I'd ever been to. We got to order pizza, and drink Mountain Dew in her room, making prank calls on her private phone line. Her bedroom walls were plastered with posters of Warrant, Stryker, and Motley Crue. We watched videos on MTV (a channel I had only heard about). D talked knowledgeably about the themes in her favorite song, "Janie's Got a Gun," using words I had never even heard before, and she sighed over Nikki Sixx and Janie Lane.

Then her boyfriend drove past. He and his friends picked us up, and we cruised Main for a while. It was something I knew older kids to do; never imagined I would do it, too. The high school boys blared their hair metal and tolerated us waving our arms out of the windows in the air stream and shrieking.

It was almost too much for my system. Wired on caffeine and newness, the whole evening had a dreamlike quality. It became imperative to cross my arms in front of my chest, holding myself together in an attempt to keep my chest from breaking open and merging with the night. I didn't know how to stop it, how to put on the brakes and regain control out of the heady dizziness that the night became. I didn't want to. I didn't want it to ever end. It was wildly beautiful, desperate, and sad. I couldn't have articulated it then, but I sensed something beyond my experience, beyond my maturity, about the gorgeous tragedy of boys looking for excitement in a dead-end small town, of beautiful, ripening girls, children really, anxiously expanding the boundaries of experience.

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Saturday, March 01, 2008

Putting it out there

Tim thinks I need to be specific about what I want out of a job, and put it out into the universe to let it simmer.

For the first time ever, I can be specific. I finally know exactly what I want to do. I guess this is why I went to grad school, but in some ways, knowing exactly what I want to do also blows. If I had a wider view, it would probably be easier to find a job. I could look at the job listings, usually around 25-50 each time I look, and actually find something that looks at least appealing enough to apply for. I wouldn't be crippled with anxiety, wondering what I can possibly do that won't make me feel like I'm wasting my time, or finding something that will at least position me well for what I can do eventually. Now that I know what I love, anything less than that really will feel like a waste of time.

So here goes, universe. Work your magic for me.

I want a job at a community mental health agency, doing family therapy with adolescents. I want the job to allow for some group work, perhaps with self-esteem or social skills training, maybe anger management. Maybe music therapy! Maybe dance! Anything creative that will spark the kids' interest. I want the job to have the room to grow into restorative justice and peace-making circles. I want to be able to some day write a grant for the purchase of a bunch of drums so that we can have drum circles.

I want the hours to be flexible, so I can start late and work late, and still maintain my shelter job. I want it to be maybe Tuesday through Saturday, so I can take my Sundays and Mondays to be with Tim.

And lastly, I'd like it to be within biking distance on warm days. I don't want a drainingly long commute. I won't mind doing home visits, I won't mind if I have to drive clients around in my car. I just don't want to have to drive for an hour or more in bad traffice to get to work.

That's it. This is exactly what I want. This is my job description of heaven.

Edited to say: I thought of something else. I'd love to also be able to run a movie series or book club for teens that had some therapeutic value to it. I am thinking of this as I proofread a library journal, and it seems like the young adult librarians are always doing cool things that I think could somehow be woven into a social worker's job, too.

I always thought I'd become a librarian, after spending years in the cult of ALA. If there was some way to combine the two--no, three, including the editing bits of my life that I miss--that would be the perfect job.

I suppose what it all really boils down to is that I want a job where I can be creative. I never realized what an asset that could be to therapy, and it's exciting to see that I can include that in my work. But I need a place that values it, and lets me run with all my wild ideas.

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