I think I have a resentment

I'm not sure how "real" the resentment is, in terms of how accurate my perception is vs. momentary emotions, but, for right now, it is what it is.

As to what I'm going to do about it? Let the same situation play out once or twice more, to see if the same results happen or not, first of all.

And, after that, go from there.

And, it's in part my fault, and it seems better now.

Beyond "fault," my emotional state is still less than perfect. My new job has eased me from emotional burdens of the previous one, but it's put me in an even smaller town, and it's kept me in newspaper journalism.

Good-better-best haiku

Sometimes the good is

Enemy of the better;

An impatient move.

Sometimes better is

The enemy of the best

Also impatient

But at other times

Rather than wait, strike quickly

While iron is hot.

Wisdom is knowing

What is impatient, what is

Prudent and timely

Or foot-dragging fear,

Perfectionism, or just

Procrastination.

Wise self-honesty

After that, we may never know

What the best move is.

Procrastination

Is still a move, anyway

And so we move, move.

Fear the enemy

Of good, better and best all

But it cuts both ways.

Fear of sitting still

And waiting in the silence

Is just as deadly.

Death, secularism, and the depths

Did I wait too long to cry for my friend Kishi? Did I not give myself emotional space to really feel Kishi’s … death, not “passing”? I wonder. I’d like to feel … to express … to cry 10 percent of the tears that Melly has. Will I? Will I ever?

She is the first person besides mom and dad, and an AA guy I knew more in passing than knew, since I got sober. And, she’s the first — no, not secularist — atheist friend I’ve had die since I’ve reaccepted my own secularism.

And, it makes me mad. There is no god to be mad to. Unlike gratitude, anger feels better, I think, when expressed at someone. And, I won’t “see her again.” I see no heaven, no paradise existing for a future spiritual life, certainly not on the “orthodox” Christian model that’s metaphysical, yet not. I was imagining Marie offering me some sort of consolation along that line, without even first pausing to say, “I know you don’t believe that.” And I’m angry about that … I think. 

Though I haven’t given myself “space” there either.

It almost feels like the distressing from moving out of Marble Falls has gone too far. As though it’s sucked emotionality out of me in general.

Missing Kishi … maybe it will be more a dull, aching pain than something about tears, something that gradually sinks in with the lack of a Yahoo Messenger late-night conversation time any more. And, yes, I already miss that.

And, feel guilty about not trying to look for her online sooner after I moved.

Three weeks later, it still hasn't totally sunk in ... but I still am angry, as well as sad, as well as guilty.

You were gentle and sweet beneath your hard-shelled exterior. You were a beautiful person, even if you often didn't feel that way about yourself.

Do New Age techniques and rituals help 'manage' PTSD?

A good Facebook friend of mine, Karla McLaren, who came out of a New Age "professional" background, says the answer can be yes.

Why? The repetitiveness of the rituals combined with the smorgasbord of different "modalities" is the key, she says.

My houseguests showed me something I really hadn’t been able to see before – and strangely, my despair lifted that weekend as my curiosity returned. I had always known that the New Age attracts a very large number of traumatized and dissociative people (that’s actually one of the central premises of my books and tapes). However, I had never been separate from New Age beliefs, rituals, and paraphernalia long enough to observe how these rituals help people manage their post-traumatic anxieties, depressions, dissociative tendencies, and other troubling symptoms.

Throughout my life, I had noticed that the New Age population was in large part a very sensitive group of people. In conventional medicine or psychotherapy, the level of awareness and sensitivity these people struggle with has been characterized as a form of pathology. However, sensitive people like my friends and me are made very comfortable in the New Age. With the endless treatment choices offered in the New Age, sensitive people can find an abundance of ever-changing supports, crutches, or remedies for just about anything they suffer, think, feel, or imagine. All of these New Age remedies and paraphernalia are quite soothing – and yet I finally saw during my friends’ weekend visit that the soothing had no lasting effect.

Very, very interesting.

That said, no, this doesn't really "manage" PTSD at all.  Note again her last words: "(T)he soothing had no lasting effect."

Even some of the latest neuroscience-driven treatments, with the best of science behind them, from what I have read, on a matter vaguely related, from a book about introversion, may be less lasting, in terms of long-term help, than doctors would like to believe. How much more something that's not scientific.

Anyway, Karla's whole series of articles is worth a read.

Gratitude without god

When I first heard of this idea, a decade or more ago, I was in a psychological place where I was learning more and more about the idea of gratitude.

But, at the same time, I was pretty well down the road to my secularist, contra-metaphysical philosophical naturalist stance of today. I had tried “working with” ideas of “spirituality” but found what I was seeing promoted under that guise was New Agey-type metaphysics that, even if technically not religious, was indeed metaphysical and impossible to square with my re-emerging philosophical naturalism.

But, I was still trying to wrestle with this issue.

Having heard the phrase “an attitude of gratitude” in both New Age-type settings and from traditional ministers, and it being, for various reasons, an idea that I agreed with, I was trying to figure out how to be grateful if there wasn’t anyone to whom to be grateful.

Finally, I realized that I was mentally enshackled by the New Agey “present situations” that I had recently been in, plus my childhood religious preacher’s kid background.

Instead, why couldn’t I simply have an “attitude of gratitude” without a personal object for my gratitude?

And, so I do today. Little mental tools such as reminding myself of three good things that have happened for/to me today, especially if I had an active part in any of them, help this process.

Good-bye, Kishi

A good, good sobriety friend of mine, Kat Wyke, aka Kishimojun, died Wednesday. It's hard to believe, in one sense, yet, on non-sobriety related health issues, she had already beaten the odds, otherwise.

Kishi was about my age. She had Crohn's disease. If you're familiar with it, that alone is why I say she beat the health odds.

She also had ahd bladder cancer about 18 months ago. It appeared to have been caught quickly enough and "beaten," but such was not the case. It came back with a vengeance within the last two months or so. Just under a month ago, all of a sudden, he had bad stomach pains, as the recurring cancer seems to have been virulent and fast spreading.

I had been negligent in trying to stay in touch with her online with me recent move, and yes, I'm kicking myself for that. She had told me about the stomach pains before I moved, but still sounded positive about her prognosis. Alas, it was not to be. She was in a coma two weeks later, at the start of this week, with kidney failure following quickly.

Kishi, often being semi-homebound when her Crohn's flared up, became active in learning, and progressing in, the ancient Japanese stitching art of temari.

For a picture of her, and some of her temari work, please see this photo album.

Changes, transitions, fears, anxieties, the future

Well, I have escaped a newspaper job that wasn’t right, not just as a newspaper job, but as a job, period. That said, I’m now in a smaller, and poorer, locale, in Texas and still in the newspaper biz.

I think my sister somewhat understands my economic and employment fears for the future, and certainly my larger psychological ones. I’m not sure even she totally gets them, though.

My three brothers don’t, at all, I think. That’s in fair part because of their conservative to ultraconservative political stances.

The oldest, a former (for now) minister who got pushed out of his last church, should understand. Older than me, the last I heard, he was working as a bank teller, which is nowhere near the job it was 20-30 years ago, and teaching driver’s ed on the side.

Brother No. 2 has had the same employer, on a smooth career track, his entire life. He’s not a full tea partier type like Bro. 1 (and 3) but, he’s conservative enough.

Brother 3? Blue/gray collar white … outdoor field sales in the oil patch. Fits well in tea partier demographics. Called Obama a “blackie” once, and who knows what he’s said when I’m not around.

Well, given the current energy exploration situation, his job is as safe until retirement until that of Bro. 2. Of course, he overworks himself, in part out of hyperactivity … he, like me, could do “more” with his workaday life, probably. He gives himself away too much, which I still stay stuck in fear.

All I can do is do my best at detaching from anxiety, and living in today while hoping for tomorrow. It does sound trite at times. But, it is what it is.

And, I turn 50 in little over a year. Supposedly, by the time most ppl get to their mid-50s, they start getting happier again, after a dip in the 30s and 40s.

Of course, those studies are largely based on families with kids, and 50-something parents largely enjoying the empty nest. I’ve not seen breakouts for childless adults.

Mistakes were made ...

And they were made by me in coming to Marble Falls, Texas, last December.

Yes, I didn't know how crazymaking my current job would be.

But, some other things I perhaps could have investigated better, and had a rethink about coming here.

Driving around a couple of the dammed lakes of the Highland Lakes today, I saw how many gated communities there are here, out in unincorporated areas. That said, when I was here, I saw the numbers of rich houses in incorporated places.

I knew this place was pretty conservative, but had hoped that the money factor might make more of the conservatives at least relatively enlightened. I don't think that's the case, though, and the number of private communities seems to underline that.

I had that knowledge, plus some demographic information, that said, already back then, maybe I shouldn't go.

But, I wanted out of Odessa. And my psychological, PTSD-related fear of being "trapped" was still running. And, I thought this place was close enough to Austin, as well as perhaps more non-parochial, to be OK. And, I told myself that my intuitional fears were just fears of change.

I blame nobody but me for not explaining that to support group friends and others better.

That said, I hope to listen to those intuitions better.

Failure is an option, and not necessarily an orphan

Some poetic thoughts after reading this very interesting column.

Failure IS an option

I am not a failure,

And I am not the sum of my failures

But I am a person who has failed, and will fail,

Many, many times.

I am also anxious, fretful, and pessimistic –

A toxic brew.

Accepting that failures are not moral faults

Is not always easy to do;

Even harder to accept

Is that because of luck and the actions of others

Failure says little about my skills in many cases.

But self-flagellation

Is a means of trying to assert control

Rather than feeling powerless from its lack.

But that’s not reality.

The truth?

Many of my actions

Have countless outside tangential influences.

But even that is not all of reality.

Even my most important actions, most consciously decided

Have many subconscious influences

From chaotically driven, chaotically competing subselves.

Kennedy and others were all wrong here.

Failure has just as many fathers as victory,

Even if they scurry for dark corners

After the lights of the mind are turned on.

Work-related ... and the dreams get weirder

I've been having more vivid, to much more vivid, and more remembered, dreams again the past couple of weeks. Only problem? They're generally not pleasant.

They're not nightmares, exactly, but they're all about work.

But, only in a general sense.

They're about working at my current job, but the actual day-to-day events have zip, zero,  bupkis to do with my normal work.

I don't know if part of it is summer heat (we're not scorching, but we're a few degrees above normal for this part of the world and I'm very sparing on AC use) or what. But, it's making sleep less restful, that's for sure. And, since I had an earlier, but less vivid and less work/but not work bout of this ... wondering why it's back, and back in worse condition.

Could it be the recent loss of our one staff writer?