Just Do the Work

Lately I have been going to therapy. Just about every week I meet with a psychologist, one who specializes in cognitive therapy. This type of therapy is defined as follows:

1. Cognitive behavioral therapy (also known by its abbreviation, CBT) is a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that takes a hands-on, practical approach to problem-solving. Its goal is to change patterns of thinking or behavior that are behind people's difficulties, and so change the way they feel.

So far I feel that I have made a number of "breakthroughs". Part of the therapy is a sort of meditation practice in which you quiet your mind, and make note of the thoughts that flow through you. You identify the patterns, and then determine the actions needed to change the ones that do not serve you. 

One of my patterns stems from my natural tendency to lean toward the "dramatic". As a writer, I color my experiences with descriptive thoughts that tell a story. The story then becomes my reality. I have to be more mindful of the stories that I tell myself, as my reality can go one of two ways; having a negative or positive effect on my overall outlook and mood. 

This is much easier said than done. I have been using this thought pattern my whole life. Changing it will take practice...not only in making the unconscious - conscious but also taking the time out of my day, every single day to meditate on my state of mind. 

It is frustrating to me - to know so much about how to help myself and not be able to have the immediate satisfaction of just being better by default of knowing what needs to be done to fix it. 

My mantra going forward is: JUST DO THE WORK. 

Blast from the (way) past

Facebook is great for the simple fact that you get to keep in touch with all of those people that, when you were a kid- you tearfully promised to write to... as the moving van pulled out of the driveway.

I moved around a lot as a kid, and each place was so different from the last that I feel as though I had a few different versions of "my childhood". Each town was it's own micro-universe. The world felt so much bigger, and goodbye felt like it would definitely be forever.

One of my friends from the third grade, Megan- recently sent me an invite to her wedding after re-connecting on FB. I am super excited to go and can't stop thinking about how we would have turned out had she not moved away after only being my friend for one year. We may have gotten into more trouble than we each managed to do on our own!

Megan was unlike anyone else I had ever known. Both of us had just moved to Fitchburg, and didn't have any real friend group yet. She was tiny, but loud. She had a last name that was harder to pronounce than my own. At the tender age of 9, she already had a dark side, just like- me... which I hadn't found  an outlet for until we met. We naturally gravitated towards each other.

I was a quiet kid who liked to read a lot, and had animals and trees for friends. I believed in magic, and would read loads of books on anything having to do with the occult. My natural disposition was not sunny. I remember being asked by teachers why I would never smile. I told them that there was nothing to smile about. The way I saw it, we were stuck inside a prison (school) all day while the whole wide world was out there enjoying the sunshine.

Unlike me, Megan was outspoken and mischievous. She would lie straight to your face and then shrug it off when caught in the act. She would say what she felt and didn't give a shit who heard her. I loved this about her because while she said what I thought, I would just sit back and laugh without any guilt associated with the social repercussions. To this day I have a mischievous side to me that I credit her with. Her rebellious attitude and blatant disregard for authority rubbed off on me.

I remember the first time I tried to be like her. I told her mom that I was allergic to peas, so that I could pick them out of the homemade stew she'd made. Her mom laughed, and just humored me because, like- who is allergic to peas? At the time I thought she bought it and was so pleased with myself because I had for the first time said something un-true and didn't feel bad about it.

I honestly don't know what normal 3rd graders did at that age, but we were sneaking out her window to cast magic spells in her old deserted barn in the back yard. Her imagination was wild. Even more so I think than my own. Using stolen candles and found objects like the bones of rodents and flowers from someone else's garden- we built an altar. Then attempted to wake the spirits of wise old horses that we believed were still stuck in the barn.With her I could see things that were invisible to everyone but us.

I think we believed our own stories to some extent. The mundane hum-drum of everyday life just wasn't as interesting as what was going on in our heads.

Unfortunately, as quickly as our friendship began it ended/when her family moved to North Carolina the following year. Now here we are as adults, with loads more stories to tell- and I can't wait to hear them.

NICK DRAKE Essential Songs

The blue notebook

From the ages of 15 to 19 I had a journal that has become my favorite out of  the many journals that I've kept throughout my life. It's blue with yellow pages, held together with a black strap. The cover is worn and scribbled on. Unlike the others, I kept it as an open journal. I didn't consider it's contents private. I was not the only one who'd written in, doodled in, quoted in, and dreamed in it's yellow pages; but so had almost all of my friends. It's like a time capsule, bursting at the seams with teenage angst and nostalgia.

This book holds some of the most sincere writing that I have ever been able to conjure up. The journals before this one, and after do not show the same free-flow writing, or un-edited, raw poetry. This is what I think makes it beautiful, and more interesting than any of the others.

For the past two years I thought I had lost it. Then recently, I was sent a box of books that had traveled across the country with me to Seattle a few years ago during one of my destruction for the sake of recreation phases. In one of the boxes was my special blue notebook. I had been looking for it and was fearful that it was permanently lost, so when I found it in the box I was more than elated.

While sharing some of the entries with Monika, we got to talking about how there are times when art comes more easily. It only happens when your inner critic is quieted by the flow. The flow can only be turned on in one of two ways: uninterrupted hard work and passion, OR the overflow of emotion that pushes the art out of you seemingly without any force or conscious thought. Being young, super emotional and uninhibited was the drive behind all of the entries in the book, and it shows.

Sometime around the age of 19 I lost track of it. In one of the last entries I wrote about meeting James; the man of my dreams and moving in with him. I clearly remember tearing through my first apartment with him after realizing that I had misplaced it. I was awash in this strange feeling that I had somehow lost myself. I was happy and in love but creatively blocked and mentally bored. In a tear filled-rage like one of which James had never seen- I ripped the place apart. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BLUE NOTEBOOK????The apartment looked like a tornado had blown through it by the time I finally found it.

Back inside the familiar yellow pages I started to miss the comfort in being sad. I searched for a way to get back to that place of creativity. I needed chaos. I wanted it. Not knowing that this was simply a need for flow to return; I started down a spiral of self destruction that would become the pattern of my life for the next 10 years. Without chaos there was nothing to put down on the page. Without writing I was not myself. Without a sense of self I had no purpose. What could have been a productive time in my life became a stage for self created drama that was the opposite of conducive to my being. How could I have been so blind to this?

I know that writers often force themselves into experiences that they would not otherwise be inclined to get into for the sake of  having material for their writing. Unfortunately the only time that I felt proud of my writing came from experiences in which confusion and drama reigned supreme. I guess I can't be too hard on myself for falling down that rabbit hole...since it's a common mistake, but still- it feels good to identify the source of something that has affected me for years with no resolution up until this point.

Carl Jung said: "Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life, and you will call it fate".

I have a clear goal now to dig deeply into the well of passion, and climb back out of it on a rope-ladder built of hard work and determination instead of this never-ending loop of drama/insanity. I am feeling more and more like an adult every day, and with age comes wisdom. The past will no longer be the basis for how my future is shaped. New outlook. New vision. New me.