Week 38: Sept 17th-22nd: Saying goodbye to my dear old companion

I have to defend my dissertation proposal this Friday. I'm fighting off an illness as we speak and I'm totally not prepared for my proposal defense. This upcoming week is going to be hell.

As for last week...

My 5 things:

1. Took the original Riley in my life, the Jetta to the junk yard of Friday. Now, this was actually really difficult for me.

The Jetta and me before parting ways 9/20/13

  I cried. Even though the Jetta's been parked in the garage, not being used for over a month now and even before that I was not the one driving it, saying the final good bye was hard. I owned that car for 11 years... 11 YEARS! It had 67,000+ miles on it when I got it, and it ended with 194,000+ miles. I was really hoping to take it to 200,000 just like Marshall had hoped:

From the episode Arrivederci, Fiero: How I Met Your Mother

2. I baked my very 1st apple pie. I cannot believe how SIMPLE it is to make fruit pies. One of the easiest desserts ever. Granted, it wouldn't be so if I was not using a premade crust. Someday, I will make my own crust but for now, the ready-to-bake crusts will work for me.

3. I took a nap yesterday. I'm fighting off sickness and have waaaaay too much coming up soon that I need to be present, alert, oriented and WELL for.

4. We have some house guests staying with us so J has been acting as a tour guide and showing them the sites of San Francisco. It is fun to tag along, since the only time I ever seem to go over there is when I'm with people who are visiting.

5. Spent a whole day doing laundry, going grocery shopping, cleaning house, preparing dinner. Taking care of the home. It's a bitch to do some times, but it really is worth it.

Weel 35: Aug 26th-Sept 1st- closing the chapter on the methadone clinic

This past week marked the end of my practicum at the methadone clinic. I decided to look back to this time last year and see what I had to say when I was just getting started. This entry was just after my 2 weeks of training: August 31st, 2012:

A list of concerns prior to starting my last practicum:

• It is working with substance abuse issues
• It is at a methadone clinic
• There is an element of mandated treatment (which gives you quite a bit of resistance from clients)
• I'm going from my prior caseload of 2 clients to (currently) 6 but that number will be 10-15 within the next month.

"I'm actually curious to see how I react to this experience of working at a methadone clinic.
I'm sure there are going to be many stressful times ahead, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it impacts me, in what ways I end up growing as a clinician and as a person in general."

Now, after a year's worth of 4am alarm clocks, avoidant patients, endless paperwork, and hour long commutes (one way!) I have completed this chapter and I must say, it's almost like it never happened. I cannot believe I was there for an entire year. Where did the last year even go? Oh, perhaps I was half asleep through all of it!
I learned so much about myself as a clinician, about my limits, and the lengths at which I can push myself. I'm sure these lessons are just the tip of the iceberg for what I will continue to learn throughout this process called graduate school.
I've already started my new practicum at a residential setting for women in recovery who are also mothers and some have their children in the program. It comes with a whole new set of concerns and after being there 2 weeks I can already see how this site is going to stretch me thin and test my limits. Hopefully, I'll be able to come out of it with the same admiration for my clients and my co-workers that I've left the clinic with.


My 5 things:

1. Got a new planner! This is a HUGE thing for me. I could not survive without a planner and I do not think that is an exaggeration. At some point in community college my best friend and I discovered a planner that I have been hooked on ever since.  Here is the link to their site I promise it is  The best planner you'll ever use.
 I have been using these types of planners since... probably around '03 or '04. I've even tracked them down depending on where I was living (they are not sold at most stores). There was a year where I thought I'd try a different type because I was having a hard time locating one. BIG mistake. Thankfully, they're easier to find these days and I even managed to find some sold in Hawaii and California.

They're August to August, which is pretty perfect as a student. Apparently they make January to January now as well, but this one suits my lifestyle pretty perfectly and has for the past...10 years. Wow, I've been in college 10 years now? Oy!

2. I took a few naps, which I rarely ever do anymore but my schedule proved to be just too much for me.

3. I turned in my 3rd draft of my proposal on time! There were actually a few things I could/should have done more to it, but I did what I was able to and that just has to be good enough. Time is running out, I am supposed to defend my dissertation proposal on Sept 27th!! Yikes!

4. Despite this absolutely crazy insane schedule I've had, I managed to turn in some of my internship application material drafts to my Faculty Internship Advisor EARLY!!

5. Yesterday I started on some wedding things for my best friend that I've been put in charge of. I will have to post photos of the process of my crafts when I am finished. It is hard to feel like a maid of honor from 700 miles away when I won't be there until basically the day before the wedding. Thankfully she's put me in charge of some things so that I can feel like I've contributed (plus I think it is a relief for her not to have to worry about).

Week 34: Aug19th-25th- Zombie woman going through the motions

I'm how many days late posting now? That just shows you where my mind's been at this past week. Doing double duty for practicum at both places just about killed me. I've fallen behind on pretty much everything so it is no wonder I'm almost a week late for posting.

My 5 things:

1. I had a meeting with a professor from the "Office of Professional Development". It was not mandatory, but I wanted to meet face to face and go over my proposed site list for internship sites and see where I'm at. This professor was also one of the ones on the committee that initially rejected me for applying. She said they were on the fence about me, so they rejected me to see my response. They weren't sure I was ready. Apparently, my appeal did exactly what I had hope it would, and it made them realize that "oh, no this girl is actually ready". She said I needed to take that kind of writing and apply it to my application materials.

2. I met up with a girl from my program who used to work at the practicum I just started at. We met up for coffee (I had ginger lemonade, yum!) and I got to ask her questions about the site, the people, the rules, etc. This discussion naturally lead to internship talk, as most of my conversations do lately.

3. We took a day trip to Dillon's Beach, one of the few beaches that allows off leash dog play. It was the pup's first time to the ocean.

Felt like we were back home on the Oregon coast :) He only know California as of now, but he'll soon get a taste of WA & OR.

4. I completed 33 weeks of this "5 beneficial things". That isn't exactly an amazing accomplishment, but I was struggling for coming up with things, and that is still pretty good. How many people can say they're still upholding their New Year's Resolution?

5. (Went to bed that Friday at 8:30pm. I was soooooooo zonked from doing double time, I obviously needed it.

I'll be back tomorrow with this past weeks 5 things. Over and out.

Week 20: May 14th-19th 2013. The waiting is over.

My 5 things:

1. Went running. Only once, it was a post-Vegas run over the weekend and it was necessary. My running was on a role there. I do believe that was positively correlated with my stress level leading up to Orals. Then Vegas happened. So, it is just a matter of getting back to 3 times a week. I'm happy with 3 times a week.
   
   
2. I actually let myself take a nap. That is rare in recent years, and I usually try to fight the urge but I was just exhausted and I allowed myself to sleep, despite not having been as productive as I'd wanted to. Turns out I was able to wake up from the nap and give my kitchen a much needed cleaning, as well as the floors in the house. So it was definitely worth it. 
   
   
3. I made the decision to stay here. J had a business trip up north Thursday-Sunday. I wanted to go, to be able to see family, to accompany him on the road but I knew I had so much work piling up and that I really couldn't afford to take more time off with all these deadlines looming. Instead, I stayed here and holed myself up at home. Aside from going to work on Friday, I didn't leave the house. I was able to get wquite a bit of school work/dissertation and research stuff done.
   
   
4. Watched tons of silly movies/TV that I would never subject J to out of respect for his manhood. I'm talking dramas, romantic comedy, and amultiple episodes of an ABC family TV show. Bad stuff (but oh-so-good in that horrible way)
   
   
5. In my Women's Group that I co-lead I utilized a new technique I've never done before, that is out of my usual realm of practices. I did a spin off of Gestalt's "empty chair" technique. It actually ended up being pretty effective, although not all patients participated to the fullest..which is expected in a group. Either way, I was proud of myself for reaching outside of my usual bag of tricks for last week's group.

After a weekend of consistently checking and rechecking my email for a message from my latest interview and watching as my phone didn't ring, Monday arrived and I was beginning to lose hope. "By the end of the week" she said. The interview took place on Thursday, so I assumed that meant Friday. When Friday came and went with nothing I assumed that perhaps meant some time over the weekend, surely by Sunday (that is, in fact, the end of the week). Sunday then came and went and Monday had arrived with not even a peep. Thankfully J came come after a weekend up north late Sunday evening so my attention was focused mostly on him. Monday morning I got up much earlier than him, had my coffee and read some research articles for my Forensics class. After a hearty breakfast of banana-oatmeal pancakes and strawberries and a silent phone, I spent the rest the morning catching up with J and hearing about his trip before he had to head to work. I checked my phone and out of no where, I had somehow missed a call and had a voicemail waiting. It was her, calling to offer me a practicum placement. FINALLY! After over a month of my hopes being hurled around on an emotional roller coaster of rejection I have a place that actually thinks I'm good enough. What a relief.

It's not what I want to be doing, it still working in substance abuse...so it's actually really a killer to my future career hopes of being in Forensics field...or really any field outside of substance use. It's a residential setting for women and children (the women are in recovery). So, it's going to be an estrogen party for me on a daily basis. Oy! That's going to take some getting used to, especially since currently most my clients are male, my supervisor is male, and my clinic director is male. Soon I'll be surrounded by vaginas galore with little testosterone in sight. Should be... interesting.
 Choosing this site has closed a LOT of doors I am really not ready to close. It's actually going beyond closing them, it is flat out nailing the door shut with an extra large padlock and chains. That is going to take some mourning. I mean I can fight and fight until I'm blue in the face, but in the end I needed to make a decision: to hold onto an idea that had me drowning by myself in this ocean that was my dream , or to latch onto a lifeboat that would sail me away from that ocean and onto land where, although the safety is comforting, it won't ever make me feel the way that ocean did.

I suppose that's a common theme in life. Keep drowning for the possibility of something likely unattainable or get to safety and miss out on whatever it was I was risking my life for. The trouble is...knowing when to grab on or when to keep struggling.