The afternoon was proceeding ahead of schedule until the cab failed to show at the doctor's office. Dispatcher screwup. By the time I got a cab the schools had let out with the hundreds of buses, the hospital shift was changing, early shift county DPW workers were headed home, rush hour, & the wait for prescription at CVS had gone from mid afternoon 15 minutes to the late afternoon hour, forcing me to occupy time by going to the library near closing time mainly to use the men's, room, then wander around Dollar General trying not to spend money, then back to CVS, then walk home as sprinkles fell from the lovely cummulus clouds that had been billowing up all afternoon. By then my feet were hurting - I"m waiting for new sneakers. But as I passed the Greek Church the bells began ringing. I think they just celebrated Easter.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

Waiting for a cab in front of my shrink's office building,
looking across the street at the entrance to the psychiatric emergency room
as an ice cream truck parked on the corner plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" over & over.
Thinking of Nicanor Parra, the great Chilean anti-poet:
"Either God is everywhere
or He's absolutely nowhere"

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health, poem

Reblogged from diycouturier.com 

Labels: mental health

Rainy all day. Crosstown to see shrink. I enjoy one-to-ones with his young MSW assistant,  but when other patient/clients are there  it turns into Group-Lite, I say very little to people I don't know, the level comes down to, "Bob likes to write. What do the rest of you do to stay active?" & "Bob is getting rid of lots things. Do any of you have problems with clutter?'   I was in several groups at the clinic I did not like for how they were conducted.  But when I was in a day program called "partial hospital,"  six weeks, M-F, 9 am -3 pm, I  went through the program with the same group of about 12 people (all younger, many had been to college  or were college age, generally an intelligent bunch with a variety of issues). The entire day was  groups focused on different topics, well-run, & locked  up tight.  Some very serious personal stuff was discussed.  Some people wept.  We  got to know each other.   Group confidentiality was the #1 Rule.

Filled out a brief questionnaire on clinic services. Generally high grades except the last; Would you recommend the clinic?  Gave it three on a scale of five. It's a public clinic. If your insurance can put you elsewhere, go elsewhere.

I took cab to CVS, walked home from there in light rain, Puttered around a bit. took an Ambien & went to sleep for four hours. Conked right out with radio on.  Didn't sleep well last night.   I earned it.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

I pulled down a long rambling crazy  post from yesterday about a very serious problem I have in this apartment. It was something I wanted to share with the few regular readers of this blog, not with anyone who happened to be searching the topic & came across it.

I stayed at Gina's last night, which I rarely do & then only if I'm watching some movie that ends at two a.m., just pull up the afghan & nod off. But I had to step away from the situation here, which is multi--faceted, away from the internet have a calm night with the company of cats & Star Trek Next Generation reruns. I had a decent six hours of sleep on her couch  without Ambien. Got up, make a cup of coffee,  watched the news, made a list things I can do here on a cold rainy day that aren't especially taxing, come home & see if the few steps I did take on Friday to improve the situation had any good effect. Indeed they did.

I've been very depressed. When something happens to snap me out of it too fast,   I  can be pushed into manic phase.(other depressives have also reported this phenomena). I really want to avoid that. I need calm plus energy.

For the first time in weeks, thanks to  to the new  locked door  laundry room  system here, I have  bags of clean clothes & other stuff, & I can keep them clean & wash them as often as I need & add to them & secure them.

Because of a tub drain problem, my bathroom has fallen into an unclean condition, & that will be taken care of Monday.

I have a new vacuum cleaner on the way that ought to just right for this apt.

Gina resides a few blocks away on a suburban street, next door to a friendly couple, a Rabbi & his wife. I walk in my  front door about 11: 30 with a cup of 7-11 coffee,  Sitting on the radiator in the vestibule (there was smoldering fire behind it a few weeks ago from tossed lit cigarette),  smoking a ciggie beneath a new "No Smoking" sign was the fearsome, never-smiling, probably sociopathic, female tenant of this building. One look at the woman you know this butch queen has  done time at least in the county lockup for something, most likely assault & battery.  Don't fuck with her. Don't  say hello. Don't even give a nod of the head. Just brief eye contact to acknowledge  I'm aware she's there. She's  tougher than any guy in this building & she knows it. I'm so far down her food chain I'm not even a snack. Just swim on by. She's actually  out of her territory in this place, this generally quiet, working class, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, & she's not the first tenant like that to land here.

So that's a given.  I have my own problems.

Labels: home furnishings, mental health

I was missing Virginia, my counselor at Bridgeway House, who died suddenly a few years ago around Christmas. How when I was stressed out by practical stuff I 'd walk over there - once Bridgeway you're always Bridgeway, wait my turn, plop down in the chair in her small office, decorated with photos of her poodles, & she'd smile & ask, "What the problem, bubbala? You should stop by more often, we miss you." I'd leave with some reassurance & do-able advice, or she'd look someone up in her massive Roledex & make a call for me. While I was thinking of her, handyman Louie came by with the monthly exterminator. I learned the laundry room is still available but I needed the key from the woman in the apt next to it. Someone had indeed hammered the coin boxes. Then I reminded Louie the bathtub drain had to be snaked. Louie asked if I could wait until Monday. I said, fair enough. Louie's word is usually good. So I walked up to the bank for couple rolls of quarters & suspected Virginia was still being my angel.  But she was just preparing me for an larger problem in my apartment.


 Plus, my new, inexpensive vacuum cleaner that received very good user reviews on Amazon shipped.

Labels: home furnishings, Mahalo, mental health

When you suffer from depression you have to keep routines. The routines keep you going. Things have to almost take care of themselves. The dishes get washed before you go to bed, you bath daily, you wear clean clothes, you do laundry & put clean sheets on the bed every so often.  That way, as the clutter & dust collect around your negligence & indifference,* you never fall so far into chaos & as to feel you can't, with a little bit of effort, pull it all together.

Well,  this apartment building is making it very difficult for me to  hold it together. Basic repairs not done; the laundry room closed, maybe because one of the desperate tenants took a hammer to the coin boxes, I don't know. Haven't had a visit from the exterminator in two months.  & the tenants themselves, increasingly a collection of stupified men hanging around outside with vacant expressions.  One of them set fire to debris behind the vestibule radiator, carelessly tossing a lit cigarette  it.

Now I'll have to buy a folding wheeled cart & become one of those folks hauling laundry to the laundromat, which I always detested & haven't needed to do in years.

Last night I reminded Gina how desperate I am for a couple of large snap together shelving units, available at the Home Dept we pass every week, never mind my need for a basic computer desk. Should invest in a better vacuum cleaner, too. The one I have is really for small spills & crumbs.

* This apathy is very difficult to explain to non-depressed people, who tend to flippantly dismiss it as laziness. But in fact the depressed person can feel it through 40 hour work weeks, doing your job well enough that the boss has no reason for complaint, but you take no pleasure even from the aspects of the work  you like, which is really depressing.  Depression ruins the enjoyment lazy people get from being lazy,  so don't believe lazy people like being depressed either, or gloat that depression is suitable punishment.  A suitable punishment for a lazy person who likes clean clothes is forcing him to use a laundromat.

Labels: mental health

On the suicide of talented, troubled Cindy McCready, I posted on FB:

"R.I.P. It's a terrible thing to realize your demons are driving you & you're just along for the ride."

My old friend,  poet  Jim Ruggia, always a more descriptive writer than I,  commented on my post (in part):

"For a lot of people it's a highway at night out there, lights and flashers careening and strange half lit figures on the road side."

What Jim wrote is what happened to Cindy. She went to Nashville at age 18 with her great voice, good looks & ambition. She brought whatever  demons she had with her. Part of the ambition, perhaps even the  strongest  part, was a belief she could escape them if she became a success, a star. Fame only compounded her problems in the sense that they were writ large for all to see. She would have screwed up her life just as much & in much the same way  by staying home.  She might have, however, been less isolated in her out-of-control misery. Maybe even had fewer enablers & few more genuinely helpful friends.

A couple of other FB friends were critical of her for what I think were the wrong reasons.  Why do we believe celebrities ought to be better at handling their demons than we are?  Because they have money to throw at them?  Because they  can afford expensive lawyers & luxurious rehabs?

Yes she did abandon her kids &, as Jim also noted, shot her dog "in one last contemptuous act before shutting out the lights. " But coming from Jim, this is more observation than judgment.  He  understands there's more important causes  for outrage.  & if one must choose a symbol of wealthy arrogance as madness,  Cindy McCready is not a  good one. She was just someone who fucked  up her life, & got a chance to do it in a very public way, & when she decided she couldn't unfuck it, she angrily ended it. We can mourn her.

Labels: mental health, music, obituary

Crosstown to shrink today. I knew up when my cellphone acted up calling for a taxi that it would be day with delays & I should be patient. When the driver took a route I wished she hadn't,  we ran into a detour.  Doctor was 1/2 hour late. Driver on way back was doing her end of shift paperwork & sat at green lights until cars behind us honked. CVS filled only one of my meds, I had to sort that out then wait for the second.

I think I'll have the clinic receptionist do the taxi calls for me from now on. She's on a first name basis with the dispatcher,  ends the call with, "Take care bubbula."  My friend Edie calls me bubbula.

I could get insurance to cover cab to clinic (wish I knew that when I was traveling to Newark), but it involves a lot of paperwork, the taxi is six bucks plus dollar tip  each way every other month, & sometimes I only go one way & then walk & bus home.  I think I can handle the expense.

I have to get to the library.  I have books way overdue.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

Cabbie radio dial twiddler on way back from clinic. Right wing crap when I got in the taxi.  He twiddled,  Let's Hang On by the Four Seasons came on, I started grooving to that,  Halfway through he twiddled to the news station.

My shrink is not a therapist. He has a young MSW assistant who likes to get conversations going in the waiting room.  If there's other clients present,  I don't tell her much.   How are you, Robert?   My best friend died last week.  That chat was not happening today. Three others there, I wasn't bringing them into it.  It's no group.   But I try to bring any emotionally fraught situations to the shrink, if they're happening about the time of our bimonthly appts.  I also want to convince him I'm handling it.  I have about five minutes to do this.  My best friend died. He was in California. I wasn't his only best friend.  I haven't been sleeping well the past few nights, it's starting to catch up. I'm not really grieving yet,  I will, I can handle it.

We went through the death of my first girlfriend in February, but that was a whole other thing. I hadn't seen her in decades.  I had to reach back & make a claim on the two years I had with her, & what it meant to me & maybe to her.  It was on the whole a nice project for a poet.  I enjoyed revisiting young love.  Let it glow.  It doesn't require  realism, only a carefulness regarding nostalgia.  This is different. I feel a vacuum.

The shrink poked around a bit.  Known me a long time, He seemed to think I was o.k. I wasn't ducking it.

Oh yeah, here's something I noticed & noted in part because it was the kind of thing Bruce Longstreet noticed.  An older Haitian woman, immigrant, was in the waiting room. She was talking about her new job as a home health aid.  She worked 34 hours per week, averaging  two hours each for her clients.  She makes $9 an hour. She needs a car for the job.  The 34 hours are spread across more than 40 hours. She doesn't  receive health insurance from the job. She's receiving  Medicare & SSD.  SSD permits a certain amount of additional income in occupations not impacted by one's disability, &  encourages these jobs to eventually  become a path out of SSD. However, if she were on Medicaid or a Medicaid HMO, the additional income would disqualify her from Supplementary Security Income & she would lose Medicaid. Sometimes SSI pays only a couple of dollars but is crucial  for the Medicaid. This woman liked her new work.  Also, the additional income affects her Section 8 housing & Food Stamps, if she is receiving those.  All additional income must be reported for those services. She'll pay higher rent & receive a smaller allotment of food stamps.   In reality, it might be very difficult for her to use her new income to raise herself up.  She says she will need a more reliable car "in a year." It's very positive in the  mental game to think that far ahead.

Bruce & I were very tight for about six years. I came to think of him as my best friend.  I thought of him as my best friend until he died. Yet, I was aware Bruce was likely a best friend to a number of people.  Jim C, certainly, since high school. I trust Jim every bit as much as I trusted Bruce. I didn't hang out with Jim as much. That they were best friends  endorsed the both of them to me.  There were others. three or four people, college friends of his who had scattered to other places. Bruce & I were dissimilar people with similar backgrounds. White, middle class, not affluent.  He also may have had two brothers & a sister. Bruce had a much better relationship with his father.  Jim & I struggled with our strong, admirable  dads. Jim's  father, fortunately,  lived a lot longer than mine.  My parents divorced when I was a teenager. Bruce's & Jim's parents stayed married.  Jim & I were accustomed to being in relationships with women.  Bruce was stuck on unrequited love all the time I knew him in Jersey. He did better in other states.

All three of us had what philosopher Alan Watts called, "The irreducible element of rascality."

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, Mahalo, mental health, obituary

Would've wished my sister happy birthday yesterday but she unfriended me last November after I declined an invitation to a party at her house. She wouldn't take a polite no for an answer so I had to give her an impolite one. I had my reasons & they weren't all about her.

The split that occurred between us a decade ago was instigated by me &  had its source in one thing & one thing only: She would not accept the diagnosis of major depression given me by a team of mental health professionals. Even when it was explained to her by my therapist. Took me a couple of years to wake up to that. She subsequently confirmed it on a number of occasions. I was a contemptible person, a con man (an extraordinary one if you think about it, to pull off such a complex con for so little reward).

She would point, still, to a number of slights & insults & say I'm just too pig-headed to apologize. But I don't like being around people who have the effect of making me feel worse about myself. Some of the  other tenants in this building make me feel worse.  Unlike me, they sit out front on the steps all day long.  I pass them thinking, "That's not me, that's not me, that's not me." Online I'm a respected poet & writer, still a free form DJ  appreciated for my music knowledge, & for some I'm just an  online friend who stays in touch, or tries.   My online persona is not a facade; it's the result of real accomplishments. The writing exists. The  radio programs exist.

Not everyone needs to know the details of my illness, or anything at all, for that matter. Some older staffers at WFMU have an idea of what happened to me back there in the late-90's, most don't. Same for poets. A few old friends couldn't make the adjustment. I saw that & backed away. For others - who lived farther away - it explained a lot, but didn't touch them directly.

The professionals always ask you about your "support network" for recovery & continuing care. Many depressed people I have met way over-estimated the understanding they would receive from family & friends. But there's a difference between those who just don't want to deal with it & want everything to stay the same, & those who don't believe anything is wrong with you except that you are a brilliant liar.

What depressives really want is a link to "normalcy." This is actually very easy, & when the help is divided up among a number of people, it's really not much at all.  Gina provides it by setting aside about an hour every week to go to supermarket, a routine she needed to get into anyway. Sometimes we add a quick stop at the branch library.  If I'm a little too gabby on occasion, it's rarely talk about my problems, just an abundance of subjects.   Plus, by walking over & feeding her cats on late Saturday afternoons, I have some much-appreciated private couch potato time with a satellite TV, watch a classic movie or a ball game.

Labels: mental health

I've been writing much about depression these past few days, but the subject is still too painful, too personal, to share my deepest feelings & thoughts. I've never aspired to a really intimate public prose or poetry.  Making such a choice for one's writing or art is not evasive, especially if one is giving it away.  The world or some small part of it might well benefit from my being more candid & confessional.  I've always been open to expressing myself privately on request.

We had a number of cats when I was growing up. I don't recall any of their names. They were outdoor/indoor cats, the hazards were many, the odds against a long life even in our suburban neighborhood.  But it was an interesting place for  cats.   All were  friendly, part of the family without making the sort of demands or needing the attention our nervous little dog Susie  required.  When I was a young teen one of them disappeared for a day or so. I was concerned, not yet alarmed. I noticed the door to the attic was open slightly. We had a very cluttered attic, a classic, decades of stuff up there along with the Christmas decorations. I tisked, sss'd up the stairs & heard a distant meow. I went up there & tracked the cat to a pile of old draperies hidden behind a trunk. It was fixed, so it wasn't having babies. I reached over & stroked the cat, & it screeched when I touched its tail. I got a flashlight & had a closer look at the cat. There was a distinct crookedness in the tail. The cat had gotten its tail caught in a door or something, badly  sprained or broke it & the injured cat had retreated to a secure "den" to mend. It wasn't visibly suffering. Except there was no food or water up there. I told my mom. She said put   some food & water nearby & leave it alone. I did, checked on it every so often, scritched its head.

A few days later the cat  came downstairs, looking fine, cat dignity intact, new bump in the tail, a bit sore to the touch.

Depression is not like a  hurt tail on a cat. It can make you hide in the attic for a very long time. When you do come down, if you decide to come down,  your dignity is fragile, you are changed more than a bump in the tail.

Labels: mental health

About 4 am this morning some guy was going bonkers in the first floor lobby. Just yelling stuff. It was like he was having an argument with himself or an invisible person. The cops came. I put on my sneakers & wandered downstairs. The man was on his back on the floor, hands secured behind him, & calm. Three cops. One asked me, "Does he live here?"

I leaned over the man & asked, "Do you live here?"

He answered, "Yeah."

I turned to the cop & said, "This man belongs at the Trinitas psychiatric emergency room."

The cop said, "You can go back to bed now."

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

On  Tuesday afternoon I took a taxi to my shrink's office across town. From there I walked one mile to the main library. From the library I took a bus to CVS, & walked home from there, 1/2 mile. That's pretty good for me these days.  My legs were tired. Wednesday I walked another mile, to & from CVS. Not strenuous "exercise" walking, but any walking is good for me right now.

The main library has a very large selection of paperback novels & a much larger selection of "new" 14 day books.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

Elizabeth isn't the ugliest city in New Jersey. But on a gray, damp, chilly March afternoon it seemed like it as two female  cabbies gave me tours of some of the ugliest streets, avoiding downtown traffic. Downtown is ugly, too. Not for the most part residential streets,  but light manufacturing, machine & suspicious looking  auto body shops, specialized building supplies, fenced in lots with junked cars, boarded up commercial buildings, bumpy pot-holed streets.

I was alone with the shrink's MSW assistant for awhile,  attractive young woman of oriental extraction, not long out of college. Good listener & I had some things to say, she prompted me well, I tell the stories well. Not someone I'd yet ask for advice - bring practical matters  to the older social workers who've heard everything & know what to do about it.  This wasn't a practical matter. Chat saves time with the shrink, who can only handle digests of anything important from the past two months. I think  she enjoyed what I had to say, talking about love, grief, memory, distance.   They're wonderful subjects. Would've been a  great session with my former Ph.D therapist.
***
I'd read everything readily available by author J.D. Salinger by the time I finished high school. There wasn't much of it,  & I wasn't drawn to his upper middle class characters, too young to learn from how he wrote, never went back to him.   I was recently was given the paperback edition of a recent biography, J.D. Salinger: A Life,  by Kenneth Slawenski, & read the entire book, though not front to back. Most interested in his horrific WWII war experiences in Hürtgen Forest, a tragic, ill-conceived campaign that turned into The Battle of the Bulge. It led me forward & backward in the book. I didn't recall many details about Salinger's writing. I've never understood why so many people became so  obsessed  with Salinger's withdrawal to New Hampshire, decades of seclusion (his neighbors saw him often enough),  & fanatical protection of his published works. He wrote it, put it out there, & gradually concluded he didn't owe the world anything else just because he was J.D. Salinger.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health, what I'm reading

Christmas Eve can be a little tricky for me, emotionally. But that's largely because I've rarely had an "ideal" Christmas Eve. For a number of years my then-female cohabitant & our next-next door neighbors co-hosted small late-evening parties for local friends, all of us had earlier obligatory family functions. Small gifts were exchanged, party  food consumed & much beverage imbibed. Those parties broke up around 3 or 4 am. Later, I had a few sentimental type Christmas Eves with another girlfriend,  tree in my apartment.

Apt building next block.

I often spent Christmas Day at my sister's for a traditional dinner, very theatrical in the Norman Rockwell mode.  But when I no longer had a car this pleasant six-hour excursion , or an overnight if I decided to attend Pottersville Reformed church on Christmas Eve & packed a sports coat & tie  (Rixons do not do church casual),   turned into a three-day, two-night  production before my shrink began providing me with an efficient snooze-inducer named Ambien. I had no lap top or wifi,  had to check my identities as a venerable WFMU  DJ &  & respectable minor poet & writer at the door along with my heavy winter jacket, & suffer being called "Bobby" by my brother-in-law, Only three people may call me Bobby: My sister, & two WFMU DJs , Stan  & Monica.

It became too much. By 2002 I felt like the most expendable & least liked  of the guests. I naively  believed I should be commended for surviving a depression that institutionalized me for a week, followed by retina  surgery (I've had four) that rendered me legally blind in one eye thus ending any hope of retuning to bookstore employment requiring me to heave 50 pound boxes & read long packing slips with minute print,   In 2002 I should have been arranging  a six-figure malpractice suit against an eye surgeon, but I wasn't yet aware my eye was permanently  ruined (the surgeon hadn't told me) or of the statute of limitations. So there went my one chance at a modest doublewide in a Cape May County trailer park with the usual nautical decor, & a Hyundai Accent, collecting SSD & working part-time in-season at a miniature golf course.

 My therapist at the time - I saw her every week - was struggling to get me to accept  this changed  situation & use all the benefits it made available, & which  I was  irrationally resisting. "Why?" she would ask, again & again. I knew but I was afraid to say. It took another 10 days in Ward 2B, no one  knowing I was there, to make the point for good. I walked away from that semi-voluntary  incarceration determined  that for anyone who could not accept & besupportive of my condition & situation, I would become as best I could a  courteous but distant character. I would not let others put me down & undermine my worth  anymore,  whether they did so openly or subtly. That is reserved to me. You can believe that what I put out on the internet is the "real" me or decide I'm behind a curtain pulling levers that manipulate  a phony persona. But any poem, good or not so good, signed by me, is not the creation of a phony.

The most remarkable thing about the community, or communities of friends & acquaintances spread across the internet from California to England, is that none of them are fakes or phonies. They may go months posting political gripes, recipes, funny photos, favorite music mp3s, or hardly anything at all, & then, boom, something bad happens to them, which they write about with candor. Because they are talking to friends.

Labels: holidays, mental health

To steal from  theologian Nikolai Berdyaev, it is slavery in everything. Slavery in religion, slavery in government, slavery in family, slavery in love, slavery in work, slavery in education.  Slavery on one side & the f*cking abyss on the other.

Labels: mental health, religion

Listening to Dr. Joy Browne on the radio. Whenever she talks about dating, how to meet people, one suggestion is always take a class at a community college.

When I was about 40, recently out of a long term relationship, I enrolled in a Saturday course in Child Psychology. Not to meet women, It was a requirement I had to fulfill.  The teacher was To-Be-Announced. When I arrived there, I noticed the class of about 25 had only 3 men, & hardly any of the women,  most looked over thirty, wore wedding rings. I thought, well, this class might have some unexpected perks.

Teacher turned out to be a large African-American woman, very opinionated, very smart, liked a loose class with  lots of free-flowing discussion. She was a wonderful teacher. The next week I saw nearly all the women now wore wedding rings.  Brazenly, I called this to the teacher's attention - it was a psychology class.  She asked, "How many of you, thinking I might be a male teacher, removed your wedding rings last week?" Sheepishly, a lot of them raised their hands. She said, "I think Bob is a very disappointed. But his disappointment is a compliment."

This teacher had some important job in Newark  Public Schools. Shortly before the end of the course she tried to recruit me into the Alternate Route Teacher Certification Program, Newark then experiencing a severe teacher shortage mostly from new hire teachers failing to finish a full school year.  I said I had no degree. She asked how many credits I had, which wasn't too far from a degree, & if I had substitute teacher approval in any school system. I said, yes, in two Union County Systems, but I'd only worked a couple weeks in one on  short-term creative writing contract.  She said I could be a full time substitute while I finished up the degree & went through Alternate Route training, & they'd apply substitute days toward tenure. I thought, they must be really  hard up for fresh meat.   So I got honest. I said, look at me, they'll chew me up in Newark. She said they wouldn't assign  me to one of those schools. I thought, sure,  that's like the National Guard recruiter in the spiffy uniform promising you that after basic training you'll never again get your fatigues dirty.

I didn't apply. Later, Star-Ledger exposed that  Newark Alternate Route hires were being assigned classes with no mentors,  Your first month or two was supposed to be closely supervised by an experienced teacher. New teachers - none with a degrees in education  -  were being assigned classes with little or no mentoring, clueless about discipline, class plans, educational materials. Schools were so understaffed that mentors couldn't be spared. Newark seems to have solved the under-staffing problem.

I do know a couple of guys who used Alternate Route to become public  school music teachers. I had thought there was a surplus of music teachers, & these two guys, tho good musicians,  lacked broad experience, including  basic keyboard skills.  But both became very good music teachers.

Labels: baseball, mental health

My shrink likes to know anything that has upset me recently. But he's not there for talk therapy. So I have to vent ahead of time,  to my friend Gina verbally, or in an email to one of my online  confidantes, then edit it down to the most important information & points, in under five minutes. I need to do this only a couple of times each year. If I get too rattled about something, I get all wound up & anxious.   What gets wound up must unwind, & that can lead to depression.  In matters where I can make a quick decision & stop the winding up process,  I make one.

I could vent longer to the shrink's freshly-minted social worker, who looks about 21. Young social workers love to hear you talk, it's the only way they get experience. But they're solicitous rather than insightful. An experienced social worker has heard everything  & discourages you from struggling with any situation where  nothing tangible  is there to be gained.  But if you choose to  struggle, they want you to battle, &  are kickass allies.

I told my shrink  what bugged me & why, &  for the first time in all the years I've known him I caught a glimpse of a WTF? expression in his face. Then the phone  on his desk rang,  the moment was lost. When he hung up, he had me elaborate a little bit. I'm not interested in  discussing the ancient history anymore, I glued that together years ago. This current situation required a practical decision that chose itself, since it is the same decision I currently make for every social event:  Avoid em. Who invites or how I get there don't even factor in. I didn't think the event was an exception.  To imagine it as exceptional would also be delusional.  I had dealt with it the best way I could  without a personal therapist helping me design a strategy for it that would make  the event a ... teachable moment for those involved. We all need a teachable moment now & then.
***'
If I'm as smart, devious & persuasive as a few people give me credit for, I'd have won two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships by now, have  a poet-in-residence  gig at a college, & a show on Sirius radio.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health

Ever since Hall of Fame Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt announced she had early onset dementia at age 59,  I'm sure many of us around her age have been observing ourselves.  Summitt said she had been forgetful (she also says skip the "pity party"). Forgetful for Summitt probably isn't the same as for the rest of us. As a high profile  coach of marquee basketball program, she's also an executive. She has assistant coaches handling aspects of training, defense & offense. She has personal assistants doing paperwork, taking her phone calls & e mail. She has interns working as statisticians & doing basic research on high school prospects.  She has scouts, a network of spies, trusted former players &  high school coaches who contact her personally,  She has PR people. She has to  keep a handle on all of those, recruit, deal with alumni,  make public appearance s & do charity work,  still be a mentor to her team. She's the boss. One wonders what it was she forgot  & how she remembered she forgot?

I was standing at the branch library check-out desk across from a clerk about my age. She's a bit ditzy. While she was checking out my books I was reading a flyer about a musical program at the main library on Thursday Oct 20 at 7 pm. I mentioned it to her. She said it was free but I needed to sign up for tickets, which she had in her drawer. I said, "It's this Thursday."  She said, "No, next Thursday,"

Suddenly I became very confused.  Next Thursday? What date is today? I didn't know today's exact date.  But it's Monday & a week after Columbus Day & more than halfway through October. I also remembered "True Grit" was written by Charles Portis, because I ordered  the novel  from the main library without writing it on a post-it.

As I was sticking the books in my backpack, I asked another clerk filing books what the date was. "October 17th," she said with no hesitation.

As I walked past the main checkout book, I got the other clerk's attention, tapped on the flyer & said, "This coming Thursday."

I ain't the one with early onset dementia.

As for Pat Summitt, it'll be no big surprise to anyone including herself if she wins another National Championship this season.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, mental health, sports