12/22/2013

Shuffling and Meandering

I'm still here.  Sort of shuffling and meandering my way through the holiday season this year, so far.  It's not that I'm depressed, really; I just don't feel that inspired.

Good news:  I received my work assignments for next semester, and they were basically what I wanted.  Now, I'm super nervous about teaching my first college class.  It's kind of a loosey-goosey, unstructured class about college success and good habits around: study skills, organization, time-management, health and stress relief, etc.  If anyone knows any great resources, please let me know!  I've been given very little guidance so far and am starting to research and figure out the planning process and logistics on the fly.  Hopefully, I will have a couple of colleagues' syllabi for guidance.

Tomorrow morning will find Zoey and I on the road to Oregon for Christmas.  We will be staying at my brother's house and splitting holiday time between his family's, my parent's, and my sister's family's houses.  As usual, I imagine I will have some difficult feelings come up...

To that end, my leadership program gave me a new process called "Trigger Tracking" in which you look at your feelings and stories around a particularly charged situation and try to gain perspective on the "source event" that initially created this trigger.  In the end, the hope is to release some of the emotion associated with the source event and establish new beliefs or stories.  I tried it out on a trigger that came up for me yesterday at a Transition community organizing retreat and it worked pretty well, so I'll have it on hand to work with the family stuff.

By the way, my leadership program weekend went well - sorry for not reporting back on that.  The sleeping situation kind of sucked, as I was on the floor in a cold-ish room full of people, the one nearest me a snorer.  So, yeah, not much sleep.  But it was wonderful to roll out of bed and head out into the meadow for an early morning "sit" (sitting awareness meditation in nature) with a group of my compadres.  I enjoyed the increased sense of community and belonging, also.

On the break-up front, S took off to stay with a female friend this week.  I met her previously and don't believe there is any romance there, but it's interesting he took off after we had some nice connection on my birthday and were going to talk this week about "us" and future hopes that were recently verbalized.  I'm feeling it as a distancing maneuver and am glad in a way because I am in no way ready to let him back in to my heart.  I may never be ready, but when we are talking about meaningful topics and are both in a vulnerable place, old feelings do come up.  I can't help but feel closer to him.  So, it's better to get some space and focus on my own life.  I'm doing some dabbling in online dating as a distraction.

I hope to post over Christmas, but just in case:  Merry, Merry Christmas!  May your holiday be filled with warmth and light and love.

12/06/2013

Bad Attitude

Bad Attitude.  That's me right now.  Santa might be skipping my house if this keeps up...

I have my monthly leadership training time this weekend (Saturday morning through Sunday evening).  I'm not looking forward to it, for some reason, though I am pretty sure it will feel good once I get there.  I just feel kind of sad right now, likely due to my break-up, and it feels vulnerable to be in a group of 25-30 people when you feel that way, at least it feels that way to me.  A lovely woman from the group who I've Skyped with a couple of times since our last gathering pointed out that there will be a lot of support from the group available.  That's a good way to look at it, but somehow it's not helping right now. 

Also, I just found out this morning that the administrators at my college are offering considerably less hours to us next semester as CTE counselors.  This is not what was originally communicated.  We were told there would be assignments that we would bid on and that we may not end up with the ones we have now.  We were NOT told there would be a lot less cumulative hours to choose from. 

We have known for a while that under the current administration (our Dean retired over the summer), we were less valued on the campus.  A lot of innuendo and rumors have been flying around.  But, again, it was more about changes, not being cut to just a few hours a week or possibly none at all!  I am both angry and scared at the same time. 

I know there is one full-time counseling position soon to be announced in general counseling, which I will apply for, but I'm imagining there are a lot of people who will apply for that.  I have a good relationship with other general counselors but not a close relationship. 

Part of the problem is that we were located in a completely different part of campus than the rest of counseling and student services.  It was near the Workforce Development office but it kept us somewhat isolated - a definite disadvantage now.  I want to call up our Vice President (she's been our interim supervisor) and grill her about all this, but I don't want to shoot myself in the foot regarding possible opportunities.  Oy.

Finally, it is FREEZING, as I know it is times ten in many parts of the country that have it worse than we do.  Camping outdoors, especially considering I hate camping to begin with, sounds simply awful.

Oh Lord, I need an attitude adjustment.  Thanks for listening.