[

mood

|

reflective

]

I'm trying to give more emphasis to being the beloved. By "being" I mean taking my foot of the accelerator at times to be rather than do, not that easy after being enculturated in a society which applauds doing. By "beloved" I mean intentionally acknowledging the connection between God and I. Acknowledging also that this connection has been extended by God Himself through His love for me. That isn't easy either, because I so often am more aware of my un-loveliness and struggle to experience God's loving-ness. Especially that His love is directed at me. Since I feel so unpractised at being loved for just being, it seems easier to return to doing and therefore receive recognition and acceptance for what I've done. Or, at least, numb the pain of being un-lovely by distraction of busyness. I, on my own, couldn't be loved without having some work of value to offer. But God is seeming to call me to view myself as valuable in and of myself. So I'm trying to practice being. And I'm not particularly good at it yet.

[

mood

|

jedi

]

Sometimes when I look back it seems like my life became fragmented. What I mean is, it's like there is a huge rift between life before and life after. Life before I was able-bodied. Physically, at least, I was normal. Life after became explanations starting with, "I know it's bizarre, but I can't do that." This might sound elitist in an odd way, but I've become initiated into a club to which, if you are able-bodied, you don't belong. And, it seems to me, there are club secrets. What is it like to live every day with a non-typical physical limitation? Well, I know. What's it like to be acutely aware of your body, the activities you do and even the casual posture you employ at rest, because, if you don't, you might face lingering pain? I know what that's been like for me. What's it like to employ creativity in order to do the most ordinary daily activities because you're unable to do them the ordinary way? I know that too.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the postage shop and the lady asked me to fill in a form, something I can't do. So I started one of my, "I know it's bizarre..." explanations. Which meant we had to wait for someone to give me assistance to fill out this form. As we waited she began expressing sympathy. I told her how I coped by getting on with life, because if I hadn't faced this with courage I would properly have killed myself by now. That wasn't hyperbole, either. The thing is, though, if a person isn't willing to be with someone in the agony I'm not sure they can understand the courage, the victories. There are two sides of struggle, hardship and a fighting spirit. Struggle seems, from my experience, to be almost the fabric of life. If you're not willing to be there in your own hardship, if you're always running away to something more palatable, if you're not willing to bring the fighting spirit, then is that a way to miss out on life? I don't know? But I think I'm still very much alive in the struggle.

[

mood

|

resilient

]

Life is a pretty full on experience. I don't know about you but there are times I try and imagine the future. Then, BAAM! My mum is diagnosed with cancer (end of 2004). That wasn't in any of my imagined futures. There's an identity adjustment. Mum becomes mother, wife, sister and cancer patient. I become a support person for someone with cancer. There's a job adjustment there. I put aside my work to keep her business operating.

Mum is just beginning to recover from the treatment. Then, WALLOP! My arm goes haywire (end of 2005). Through overuse my arm sustains an injury which develops into a chronic pain condition. The injury clears up, but I still experience nagging, persistent pain when I use my arm. The other arm becomes affected. Driving, writing, using the keyboard or mouse, playing sport, art, texting on the phone, even using the TV remote all become either limited or completely out of bounds for me because they aggravate my arm. In literally one day I go from being an able-bodied person to having a disability. There's a huge identity shift!

I can't build a living around the work I once did. The most positive direction seems to be to re-train into an area where my physical limitations won't prevent me from working. So I return to being a student and take a new career direction. The main context for my life outside of home becomes school. I build friendships. These friends become precious to me. Then, BIFF! SPLAT! Relationships fall apart (end of 2007). One of those relationships involves a lecturer and a lack of respect for my boundaries. Because of his lack of integrity in our relationship I also lose my best friend. BOOM! Trust in the school environment disappears (beginning of 2008).

And, THUMP! Finances stretch to breaking. My weekly income won't cover my basic weekly expenses.

I feel like I've gone 12 rounds with Mohammed Ali, except this has been going on for years. I feel like huge parts of myself are just rubble. I'm starting to experience depression in response. The question I have to ask myself is, how come it's taken so long to become depressed?! Despite all that's happened, despite the depression, I'm still moving forward. Where is that strength coming from?
Underneath it all, underneath the rubble and the pain is a foundation of hope which keeps bubbling up. My foundation is Christ.

Thousands of years before Christ Job said,

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him with my own eyes--I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
Job 19:25-27

[

mood

|

angry

]

It seems we spend a lot of our time and energy trying to be something else thinner, smarter, louder, more serious, more fun, quieter, less smart, bigger, richer... I'm all for self-improvement, but I'm not so sure the energy expenditure is always worth it.

Sometimes I think it's like we build castles. For some people their castle is their body. For a few days I spent some time with someone who had built a castle out of his mind. His body was being progressively affected by a disease, but he had so much to share from his mind. Because of that I miss him even though I knew him only for a few days. But the people I admire most of all are those who's castle is their soul. It's kinda of noticeable we're generally encouraged to build castles out of everything else first. Not just that we're somehow invalidated, made to feel less than, unless we meet some arbitrary, vaguely specified, un-meetable standard. Castle-building is great. Striving after those stupid-as standards isn't.

[

mood

|

fascinated

]

I'm doing an assignment on cognitive-behavioural therapy. One of the main things behind CBT is that our bad feelings come from the thoughts we think, perhaps subconsciously. They use the term automatic thoughts or self-talk. If those thoughts are somehow inaccurate (like not the full story, an over-generalisation, filtering out evidence for the positive, etc) then our emotional health is less than ideal. If we change our self-talk to something more accurate our emotions will be healthy.

I'm quite happy with the idea that this process of generating helpful self-talk might be quite a helpful treatment, but I think more recent discoveries in neuroscience cast doubt over the idea that emotions only come from cognitive (albeit sometimes unconscious) thoughts.

The emotional routes through the brain seem to be very quick, efficient but not necessarily detailed. For example the fear reaction is very fast causing us to react to a danger that hasn't fully registered with our "conscious", rational mind. I was describing this to my mum when we were presented with the perfect example. We were driving out of a car park when suddenly we noticed headlights rushing straight towards us. We braced for impact moments before we realised that a highly reflective sign in front of us was reflecting our own headlights back to us. A rudimentary image of headlights speed through the amygdala of our brains before other parts of our brain analysed the more detailed image.

Some neuroscientists think that in a similar way we code situations with emotion as a very efficient way of informing us using our past experience. Emotions actually contain information. For example people were involved in an experiment where they were presented with the option of choosing from two packs of cards in a simple betting game. Some cards awarded points some took them away. The researchers had rigged the game so one pack of cards produced higher wins and simultaneously so many losses that the other pack of cards ultimately produced better results. The people with normal brains eventually switched to betting on the winning set of cards even though they couldn't rationally say why they preferred that pack. People who had brain damage which affected their ability to access the emotional information in their brain continued to randomly choose from both packs.

I don't have room to fit that in my assignment, and I'm not sure it's exactly on topic. But that is one aspect of emotion as I believe it which might be a little different from the traditional CBT view.

[

mood

|

exhausted

]

If I go to bed this early will I get to sleep?  Hmmm.

Did some crafty stuff.  Pictures will appear on my website when I finally get it going 100%.  Decided I need to do things like that to force myself to do something other than work.  I'm only in my 20s and my body complains already.  Tend to use work to occupy my mind, or rather to ensure it's not occupied by other things.  Then I wear myself out, and I'm a bit of a wreck.  Very good at pushing people away... without them noticing.

We put stickers on notes for kids.  There's some cute Pooh-Bear ones.  Can't use the I'm blue ones by Eeyore.

Missing someone very badly.

[

mood

|

caring

]

Here’s to the quiet folks, the kind folks, the ones who get left out.

Here’s to the misunderstood and unknown.

[

mood

|

productive

]

So much for getting back to the computer. Now I’m nervous about RSI.  So I’m trying speech recognition.  It is expecting an American accent, but of course there is not one American accent.  This works in my favour.  When it won’t recognize a word I attempt an American accent.  I’m not much of a mimicker.

The biggest problem is psychological. I’m used to typing responses hunched over a keyboard not chatting to my monitor. However the whole purpose of this exercise as far as I’m concerned is to prevent giving myself further damage.  The worst thing would be to lose my ability to write by hand.  So with a combination of writing my hand and using speech recognition I hope to keep myself healthy. I’ve given myself a break from the computer over the last few days and, yay, no pain.  We’ve changed the setup of the computer, and that helps too.  I think it’s the mouse *ironic* that’s the real culprit, but at least if I’m typing less it should help.

This wasn’t too bad was it!

Talking about American, I hope all my friends are ok.

[

mood

|

blank

]

Now that I've moved I should be able to appear here more regularly.  I can stay up late at night without keeping flatmates awake (or stressing that I am), and I don't need to stress that I'm holding up the phone line.

Negatives: The phone rings a lot here.  I strongly dislike phones.  (Talking about phones it's 9:45pm and the business line's ringing. *half-hearted growl*)  Will I just start to be taken for granted and organized by the ESJs?  I'm skating on thin ice in regards to a breakdown, and they just can't get it.  Another conversation for which I just haven't got the energy.  Wish someone had my back for this one.

Positives: I will be able to get away from the tv.  I can stay up late at night.  I won't have to travel at the end of the day to be there in time for dinner only to kick around after dinner wishing the tv was off with so much to do but not able to do it there.  (Though I will be cooking dinner here more often.)  Living expenses much lower.

All this 'cause I'm seriously thinking about studying next year.  I think it's a bit nuts to make such serious plans when I'm feeling not exactly fragile but hardly in the best mental condition I've ever had.  Thing is I'm feeling I'm supposed to and lead into this by my favourite higher power.  Which is an "enough said".

[

mood

|

stiff

]

( Finally! Rarotonga 5Collapse )

[

mood

|

accomplished

]

This is late.  Having trouble connecting.  Agh!

( Rarotonga - 4th InstalmentCollapse )

[

mood

|

blah

]

( The Rarotongan Experience - 3rd InstalmentCollapse )

[

mood

|

kinda good

]

( The Rarotongan Experience - 2nd InstalmentCollapse )

[

mood

|

retrospective

]

While I was in Rarotonga I kept a journal of my thoughts and experiences so I could transfer it here.  So here is the first instalment of my account as I wrote it.

( Written on My First FridayCollapse )

[

mood

|

tired

]

Hey.  It's been a while.  I'm going to spit out a whole list of happenings at you without taking time to share deep feelings on them.

As you know my mother has health issues.  She's right in the middle, actually more than halfway through, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.  Now although these are horrible things their ability to control symptoms like nausea are excellent now.  She's doing wonderfully.  The fatigue has just started hitting her properly this week.  We really expected her to feel it much sooner than this.  We expect a full recovery.

I've gone flatting.  It's working very well.  However, because now being online means using up the phone line and I'm not around this PC as often as previously I'm getting online only sporadically.  I often wonder how you guys are doing.

I have a car.

I'm going through a tough time emotionally (some of you already know/have guessed).

I'm halfway through writing something to post about Raro.

[

mood

|

complacent

]

Ok I promised an update, and it's coming.  But I'm off for a holiday for two weeks.  So I'll see you 'round.

[

mood

|

stressed but in denial

]

I picked up some brochures about Uni yesterday.  Even just doing that and looking through them makes me feel better.  It's like being in the academic environment feels good to me.  It does help that the lecturers I know are really nice.  I'll probably be at a class on Friday.  This is for my mum so I can take her notes etc.  Just doing that might be helpful... I mean in helping me find myself (since it's an environment where I feel like an expression of myself is relevant/applicable as opposed to the majority of social situations).

Doing something like thinking through the information I got is very future positive.

Also my gluten-free peanut bread is yummy and I'm going to cut myself another slice even though right now I should be doing something else.  Mum got a breadmaker for her birthday, my idea.  You know what she said?  She couldn't think of a better present she could have received.  I like being able to give really good gifts.

Actually scratch that bit about I should be doing something else.  No, it's fine if I decide to go to bed and read...  I just know if I do I might have a hard time getting this thing done.

[

mood

|

weary

]

Yes, well I suspected for some time.  I have workaholic tendencies.  Worked till passed 11 one evening, and tonight till 9:30.  And then after I finish work what do I do?  Oh, I work on stuff for this event coming up in my church.  I have been saying 'no' to some things because practically I just ain't superwoman.

Where's my camera.  I want to show you something.

.... ...



I didn't do any real work on Thursday.  I went out and spent some time with a friend, hence the (mild) sunburn.  It was probably SO good for me, but at the same time today that puts me behind.  Anyway she gave that to me.

I kinda feel the need to keep ahead with work.  I just want to be a bit clearer than I am.  It looks like I'm going to be going back to lectures.  So in one sense, yay, and in another, uh-oh.  The subject: literature.  The thing is my mum is enrolled, but she might not manage to get to the first few lectures and she's asked me if I would go instead.  The professor, when he found out about Mum, was the sweetie he is and got me all teary eyed with his compassion.

Anyway I'm promising myself I'm allowed to sleep in tomorrow.  [edit]  I mean today...

[

mood

|

exhausted

]

I'm twitchy.  And exhausted.  Work is a little stressful, looking after my mum stretches me more (and I don't want her to see that else she might try too run around when she shouldn't), but I still have these drives to find outlets.  Why do I always need to be doing creative things?  It's the very fact that I haven't been creating enough that makes me twitchy.

I was doing the dishes (while instead wanting to catch up further with work and do one of my many projects and read my book), and I was feeling sorry for myself.  I thought, "Oh, didums!  You poor little martyr.  You're not the one who just had major surgery."  It made me feel better.

Today I thought that I REALLY earn the money I'm earning right now.  That made me feel good, like I'm even allowed to spend the money I earn.  Though I'm not a big spending personality.  That said I usually purchase something a bit bigger because I haven't spent it on little things.  I should aim for something to save for.  What I really want is my own little flat.  *sigh*  Nice little flat.  That will be a while coming, I mean as far as owning one.

Ok, careers... I've given myself this year to earn a little and to make some decisions.  I haven't yet been to Uni... that is to say I don't have a degree and I haven't committed myself to one particular line of study.  So what do you think?  I've been tossing up most seriously between librarian and counsellor (specialising in gifted individuals).  Today, by the way, was the first time it crossed my mind the difference in pay those careers might involve.  I guess that isn't very important to me.  I wonder sometimes if I think librarian in a sort of short sighted way and partly because counselling freaks me out a little.  Is librarian the easy option in my mind?  Or is it a lifestyle that really attracts me?  Counsellor/psychologist is a career track with a lot of development and side-shoots to explore in it.  I'm thinking clinical and research primarily with writing (books/articles) thrown in too.  Would I be able to leave my work at work?  With librarian that doesn't sound hard, with counsellor...?

Do what you're good at they say.  Well the people intelligences, interpersonal and intrapersonal, keep popping up in those top spots (7 intelligences).  I would put that other intelligence called "existential" by one test under a wider umbrella called "abstract", an intelligence with abstract/intangible ideas.  If that was part of every test for intelligences I would imagine it floating to the top.  That seems to fit more with the counsellor career.  And yet being a librarian sounds so nice.  Working with computers, databases, information, books and people.  Getting a masters.  Variation in the work.  Enjoyable environment (low stimulation on the senses, yay!).

I guess I'm almost giving myself this year also to find myself somewhat.

Goodnight.

[

mood

|

happy

]

Superficial analysis indicates that your type is infp.
More complex analysis indicates that your type is infp.

The complex analysis is better, but neither can be assumed to be correct if they achieve different results.

http://www.psychtypes.com/php/test.php

And another:

http://www.cognitiveprocesses.com/assessment/develop.html

Your Most-Used Processes
  Based on your response, these are your top three cognitive processes in use:

  Fi : Evaluating; considering importance and worth; reviewing for incongruity;   evaluating something based on the truths on which it is based; clarifying values   to achieve accord; deciding if something is of significance and worth standing   up for.

Ni : Foreseeing implications and likely effects without external data; realizing   'what will be'; conceptualizing new ways of seeing things; envisioning transformations;   getting an image of profound meaning or far-reaching symbols.

Ne : Interpreting situations and relationships; picking up meanings and interconnections;   being drawn to change 'what is' for 'what could possibly be'; noticing what   is not said and threads of meaning emerging across multiple contexts.

These definitions are the copy protected material of Linda V. Berens and Telos   Publications, Huntington Beach, CA and may not be used without the authors express   written consent. All other material is the exclusive property of Dario Nardi,   2004 and may not be used without express written consent. Please contact us   for permissions.

  Your Developmental Report
  Your pattern of responses indicates a developmental level in each cognitive   processes. Since this is experimental, this report may be in error.

  Si,Se
  You are generally not aware of engaing in this process. You find it bothersome   and unhelpful from others and question its value. You may mistake its use for   something else. You may avoid or try to shut down situations that involve this   process.

Te,Fe
  You notice this process and enjoy when others use it but only occassionally   find yourself engaging in it. You may marvel at others who do it very well.   It doesn't appear useful to you personally and can annoy you if others use it   too much.

Ti
  You value this process as a helpful aid, even if you do not engage it that often.   You trust it contributes to life, particularly when done by others who do the   process well. You might recruit others to help you do this process for you.

Ni,Ne,Fi
  You sustain and grow yourself and those around you long-term through this process.   You are at your best, your peak creative and leadership moments when engaged   in this process. This is a lead role; it is who you are and what you truly do.