A SONG OF MYSELF

So here I am - Dax Hays for 2013 - bleary-eyed - expectant for the dawn.  I really should be in bed by now, but I'm not.  I think too much of magick, mystery, sex and death.  Diversions. 

It's been a short week, what with Labor Day and all.  I've had a lot of three-day weekends here over the past month, and after this weekend will begin the steady rhythm of the standard Nazi 40-hour work week that I'm oh so used to.  But this is not a bad thing - in these trying times it is good to have steady work.  I ebb and flow.  I get things done.  I will survive.  My dream will endure and evolve until even I cannot recognize it anymore.  It's the way of things.  I can dig it...

Time for more valerian root and other sleep drugs.  Night.

BACK TO REALITY

There are so many processes I could have chronicled as of late but which I haven't here because honestly I'd forgotten about this blog!  I really need to pay it more heed, however, as it's a good exercise for me.

My girlfriend and I got back together, first of all.  We still don't live together, though, and we certainly aren't married.  However, as for my description back in February that the relationship was "unraveling," I suppose that was inaccurate.  We still dig each other's company.  I even took her and her boy to New Orleans and Florida recently for a little vacation.  It's all good.  However, I know that she is still upset with me for giving her an engagement ring quite some time ago but then moving out eventually and never sealing the deal.  She does not consider me officially as her "boyfriend" because of this.  I guess it's still somewhat complicated in that regard...

Spiritually, I see myself drifting back and forth into a "Dark Night of the Soul" type thing over these past few months.  I went from meditating often and doing my LBRP to getting the blahs and feeling my connection to the Source dwindle.  It's like a cloud going in front of the sun, but I keep the faith underneath it all and feel like this uncertainty will serve to strengthen my faith in the end.

Professionally, there may be a problem though.  My company's president (I work for a prominent mental health care provider in the state of Arkansas) just released a memo entitled "Organizational Restructuring" in which he speaks of what amounts to downsizing and "position elimination".  A couple of weeks ago or so, our Clinical Care Coordinator left the company abruptly and though he did give us a rather lengthy email in which he was blowing smoke up about everyone's toga, it was unclear as to why he split (he was one of those who liked the power and seemed rather entrenched in that position as the supervisor of all therapists) until now.  Seems like he knew something from the get-go that few of the rest of us did.  There will also be "salary caps" and no more annual raises.  Hence, I see the folks with talent jumping ship here soon enough, and the local job market will once again be glutted with therapists - if it isn't already by now.  Don't know what the damage is going to be overall yet, but it doesn't sound good.

I have to remind myself, though, that I'm in a good place fiscally.  I've no debts.  I've a nearly new car that's paid for.  The place where I stay is paid off.  There are many perks.  Job-wise, though, I'm in my comfort zone.  Perhaps these events are meant to spur me on to greater things.  Who knows...

HERE i GO AGAIN...

I'd all but forgotten about this blog for looks like over a year, and looking at other blogs that seems to be what happens in general oftentimes.  Time has clicked on by, but recently I have promised myself that I would focus more on cultivating daily habits which would lead to my greater sense of spirituality and self-expression.  Quite honestly, the inspiration for this all began with what appears to be the final death throes of my almost ten-year relationship with my girlfriend.  This unraveling has been happening for quite some time.  Out of respect, I do not wish to mention her name or say much about the affair.  What I can say is that breaking away from her has released a lot of energy in me - both physically and mentally.  Though we haven't lived together for over a year or more, I was still putting more energy into the relationship than I thought.  But enough about that...

Professionally, things have gone swimmingly.  I never thought I'd find a career that would fit me so well, engaging my heart as well as my mind.  There have been some snags along the way, but these have been surmountable and for the most part understood as part of the way of things.  Though I have to drive a good solid hour to the site and a good solid hour back every day (somewhere over 100 miles each weekday), I work well with the people that I'm with out there - and actually the distance helps greatly with preventing the awkwardness that is having to encounter a client outside the treatment milieu in public somewhere. 

So I'm off to reinvent myself once again.  What shall I do?  What forms will this new energy take?

1. The physical body.  I have already begun to get more consistent exercise via daily walks and sessions on the elliptical machine.  Changing the diet is more challenging, but generally I'm just reducing my portions pretty much.  Lately I've been consuming a lot of Clif Bars and Slim Fast shakes as meal replacements.
2. The mental body.  I've taken to downloading some really good audiobooks and listening to them during my hour-long drives to and from work.  I mostly favor non-fiction.  Some of my latest reads of this sort has been Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as well as a set of lectures by the Buddhist scholar Jack Kornfield entitled The Jewel of Liberation.  I also read a bit at night before going to sleep.
3. The emotional body.  Basically spending time with my family and friends covers this one.  Honestly I draw a lot of emotional fulfillment from my job, though of course in turn it can also be very emotionally draining at times.
4. The spiritual body.  I'm finally returning consistently to meditation and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram on a daily basis.  A type of meditation that I'm doing now involves me watching my breath, allowing my thoughts, and then when the thoughts begin to carry me away I tell myself silently that "these are your thoughts.  They are not you.  Allow them to pass."  That helps.  I also have a small digital cooking timer which I use to keep these meditation sessions at ten minutes apiece.

There are other goals that I need to make specific objectives for as well.  One really cool thing that I'm really compelled to do is to build a building here at our place wherein to shelter my musical equipment and give me and my friends a place to jam.  This house that we live in presently was poorly built in so many ways and doesn't have a good open area to leave my stuff set up in any manner of a useable fashion.  A setting apart is needed for this most important endeavor.

I'd like to do more writing as well, and breathing fresh life into this old blog is one way that I wish to revitalize that desire.  Writing takes attention and consistent focus to kindle the flames and build the rapport between the conscious and the unconscious processes. 

Putting this stuff out here to an audience that might actually read it helps in my mind to make me more accountable for some measure of progress.  I think it will help.

So wish me luck, friends.  And send me your ideas, if you have any!

RAINY DAYS AND SEVERANCE

These beginning days of spring have brought with them tornadoes and rain here in Arkansas. For me, they have created in me a kind of blah feeling that comes and goes. At least my licensure ordeal is coming to an end, as now I await my actual therapist number from the state counseling board. Before me lies the opening of a new way and a different stage in my professional development. It's definitely a good thing but it'll take some getting used to. Though I'll have to change where I work (most likely) along with the whole scope of things I will be doing, overall I feel a sense of destiny which has brought me thus far and continues to impel me ever forward. Sure, there will be bumps in the road, but I have a lot of things going for me. The job that was made known to me by the higher-ups of our company a month or two ago would involve me commuting to work about an hour each way every day to the towns of Clarksville and Paris. I remember travelling almost that far in the early days when I worked in Ozark, and it wasn't too bad (being about 40 minutes one way from Van Buren). The drive, as I recall, was always a good setting-apart exercise to both get my mind right when travelling there and disengaging upon the drive home. The current rise in gas prices won't help, but eventually I'm due for a newer car anyway. I'll be able to work in adult day treatments as well, which is the population I feel the most drawn to serve. Who knows what adventures await me out there? Oh constant Angel, guide me...

WORRY

Against all better judgment, I tend to worry about things. What if I totally flop professionally after graduating from John Brown? What if I'm not making the most of my time? What if my continually poor diet leads to health problems? I could choose any of a host of things to run over with in my mind, and I often do. Over the year, however, I have found ways to divert this constant morass of nagging and unproductive thoughts. I basically ask myself if there's really anything I can do about the issue right now. If there is, I will take action - even in some small way. If there's not, I rationalize and tell myself I'll pick another time to deal with it during a more opportune moment. Of course, this doesn't work every time, but I've found that this simple method is effective. Speaking from a cognitive behavioral perspective, a lot of my worry comes from my core belief that I'm lacking in different ways. Even though I was raised in a good loving home I still brought with me from childhood some feelings of inadequacy for whatever reason. Thinking back, I could have done and been so much more than I am today: the backwards-looking "what if" regarding things I might have done differently. One part of me dwells on such regret, while the other focuses on present-day opportunity (and the latter part is the one that I try to feed the most).

Being a former English major, I'm always interested to divulge the etymology of certain words. I looked for this with the word "worry" and found the following at Answers.com:

Worrying may shorten one's life, but not as quickly as it once did. The ancestor of our word, Old English wyrgan, meant "to strangle." Its Middle English descendant, worien, kept this sense and developed the new sense "to grasp by the throat with the teeth and lacerate" or "to kill or injure by biting and shaking." This is the way wolves or dogs might attack sheep, for example. In the 16th century worry began to be used in the sense "to harass, as by rough treatment or attack," or "to assault verbally," and in the 17th century the word took on the sense "to bother, distress, or persecute." It was a small step from this sense to the main modern senses "to cause to feel anxious or distressed" and "to feel troubled or uneasy," first recorded in the 19th century.

I like that image of being strangled, as that says it all.

As I often preface this to my friends, I know the thought of one's eventual and inevitable death is a morbid thought (and obviously this fact of life is a great source of worry and fear for a lot of people), but actually it helps me with being able to rationalize the absurdity of some of my worries. Who will be around in 100 years to acknowledge any of my shortcomings? What will it matter to me then pending the time I've ceased to draw breath and after my body has been simplified by cremation into dust? One could use this as a license to totally live for today and totally not give a shit about anything, of course, but that's out of balance as well. Going in that direction, you're bound to have some regret regarding what could have been or find yourself homeless at 40, having burnt all your bridges with the people you know after so many years of self-indulgent celebration. Life's meaning is something that you create for yourself as you go within the parenthesis of birth on one side and death on the other. You cannot control the happenstance of your birth or the inevitability of your demise, but you can work to make the most of your life in between.

I have my sunny day, but...

...here I am sitting inside. Indeed, 'tis the end of my 4-day weekend and I can't help but feel a little crestfallen. Actually free time brings with it its own perils, such as pointing out how poorly focused I often am. The bottom line is that I think too much.

Michael (my girlfriend's son), my father, and I did go to take a walk in the woods at a place called Lee Creek Reservoir outside of Van Buren. We've been there many times. My dad actually grew up within a few miles of there, and it's a beautiful trail with a creek and many rocky outcroppings. Unfortunately today's walk was cut short because Michael was feeling sick and asked us to go back almost as soon as we arrived. That kinda sucked.

I probably need to be preparing for the next day's day treatment activities (I work in a day treatment which serves the chronically mentally ill) but I'm feeling wholly unmotivated. The house is quiet. Jenn is reading some kind of vampire novel in the living room. Michael is in his room watching TV. And I am here getting buzzed on what's left of this weekend's alcohol. If you have the time and inclination, I would highly recommend the following beverage - the recipe of which is found here: http://www.webtender.com/db/drink/4718

I feel content, but I do have to pee a lot.