A dream with a roomful of life baggage

Wow, what a dream during a Sunday nap.

My current job, the president of our smallish company, some of the reasons I don't like being here and don't like the feeling of him watching over my shoulder (the dream included him having an office at my newspaper), people invading my office space, an old bed of mine being there, and a seemingly magically growing plethora of home utensils and such popping up in said office, and there's enough symbolism for a monthload of Sundays.

Now, how the hell in today's American hypercapitalist economy, do I get out of here and get a quasi-intellectual, or public service nonprofit, or other job, or real career, to suit me better?

I'm clearly an introvert

This piece from Huffington Post about introverts has a 23-point "symptom" checklist.

Of them, the only ones that I totally "miss" on are:

1. Trouble with small talk. No, I'm a ham at times, and as a smally-town newspaper guy, more seriously, have had to learn this.

5. Not "too intense." That said, I think this isn't a totally valid check point in general.

12. Expert in one thing? Nope. And like No. 5, I think that's not totally an introvert's deal in general.



Some are spot on, like sitting at one end of a bus or train, wanting down times, and definitely on "networking." Geeze, that is SUCH an extrovert-salesperson type thing.

On the other hand, the "wanting space" factor, at one end of a bus, etc.? How much, with me, is that introversion and how much is that hypervigilance over abuse survival? Indeed, the question might apply to other introverts, and even be related to different responses to child sexual abuse, resilience, and more.

Others are spot-on, too. In a kind of funny way, No. 14, about screening calls is.

No. 16, about the constantly  running inner monologue, is much more serious. And, taking it as a legit marker for introversion, rather than the chicken-egg of "wanting space," nonetheless, this too has to relate to abuse survival, and how introverts and extroverts differ.

Even though I'm totally a naturalist, also, I totally get the "old soul" deal, and felt that way before I became a teen, let alone in my 20s. It added to the discomfort of dad's physical and emotional abuse, plus his failure to deal with the parents of neighborhood bullies. I felt like more of an adult than him.

But, is that also somewhat chicken-and-egg?

No. 19, on internal cues? Yes. Maybe introverts are more intuitional?

No. 20, indeed, on "big picture." I'd add that that picture is often more nuanced.

And yes, I am a writer.

Who killed Steve Snyder?

That inner child? He
Was smothered with a pillow;
He died years ago.

Who killed him? They? Me?
An I would be too active
For such brutal work.

That's how an old soul
Gets started. A young soul gets
Strangled in childhood

While being adult
Enough to know nobody
Will listen to him.

In his fragile pain
A soul older than parents
Is lonely indeed.

I hate change ... when it's too much, too quickly

And, in the workaday part of my life, exactly that may be happening ... a meeting tomorrow with my boss and somebody from the corporate office, detailing what will happen next at our local group of two newspapers when my boss moves on, as she told me today that she's doing.

All this as I still try to get out of newspapers, and at the same time try to figure out ... from newspapers to where? And what geographic location?

And, all this just 3.5 months after moving here from a bad job, which I needed to escape. And feeling I've been sold a partial bill of goods now. And, per my previous post, still wondering what I need to do to change job/career paths, and where I go to learn some tips, tricks and techniques for how to do that, while doing another slow burn at feeling unskilled by nature, negative nurture, upbringing issues and more.

I don't expect too much sympathy, or empathy. First, there's people in today's America in worse circumstances. Second, from the majority of family, I don't expect sympathy or understanding about, or acknowledgement of, the background issues I just listed. Nor do I expect much of anything else. Add in my irreligiousness, and that cuts down more on the sympathy route.

It's also cuts down on the amount of confiding I can do.

I hate change, too much, too quickly, especially being sober for years and no way to hide from it, and being older, and somehow feeling more trapped by it.

Sometimes, I'm a survivor, in a good way. Other times, I'm a survivor who only wants to survive and not risk the risks of being a thriver more.

A man child

THE MAN-CHILD LIVES

I feel like a man-child

Wandering in a digital cybersea

Still a naïf about so much in life

And, because of that, and because of why that is,

Still wary, still cautious, still guarded.

While human nature is malleable,

Nonetheless, like crude stell on anvil forge,

It becomes brittle with too much beating.

And so, I am guarded, and wary of situations,

As well as people;

Opportunities though such challenges may be.

How many others, like me,

Were made old souls, more than born,

From premature aging

Or premature beating on unforgiving anvils?

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.