Everything at Once

Things I have started reading in the last year (emphasis on started, none finished):

• The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force by Jeffrey M. Schwartz
• Positive Peer Culture (Modern Applications of Social Work) by Vorath & Brendtro
• White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise
• EMDR: The Breakthrough “Eye Movement” Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma by Shapiro & Forrest
• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
• Out-of-Control: A Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Workbook to Get Control of Emotions and Emotion-Driven Behavior: Drug-Alcohol Abuse-Bipolar-Border… Personality Disorder-Depression-… by Ph.D. Melanie Gordon Sheets
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures, 2nd Edition by Shapiro
• There are at least 5 or 6 others waiting to be opened.

Things I have actually finished reading in the last year:

•  The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel by Garth Stein
• Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors by Heather T. Forbes
• Lessons from the Lion’s Den: Therapeutic Management of Children in Psychiatric Hospitals and Treatment Centers by Nancy S. Cotton (mostly)
• Perhaps a smattering of others I can’t recall right now.

I think this is a snapshot of my life – trying to do it all at once.  Rather than focus on one thing, I divide my attention and end up with no real gains.  It does not help that I currently have two jobs, one of which requires me to assign reading to students and the other that requires me to read so I feel like I know what I am talking about. 

In the past year, I have considered getting a PhD, quitting my job for various other career options, becoming trained in EMDR (or forensic social work or DBT or any number of other career-related trainings), and the list goes on. 

Even as I turn on my computer, I immediately begin to look up 10 different things at once, forcing my computer to work at a snail’s pace.  I find myself feeling perpetually dissatisfied, scattered and unfocused.  Oh, and exhausted.  And yet, I can’t imagine myself suddenly settling on one book, one are of interest, and forgetting all else. 

So, I wonder, it is a sign of an interesting character that I read 10 books  at once over the course of many months?  Or is it simply an indication that I wil lforever fail at achieving more because it I will never be able to decide what I love most?

Promises

I promise…

• to write more, here and elsewhere, but mostly here.
• to work out more and eat less.
• to do something with my career, something that will make me less jaded and more inspired.

These are things I want to do.

Chocolate Labrador

This year we purchased $200 chocolate for Easter.  $223.06 to be exact.

It didn’t start out that way.  John and I have never purchased Easter candy for one another and had no intention of doing so this year.  But Wheeler had other plans.  While we were at church yesterday, Wheeler devoured our guests’ two bags of chocolate chips, egg candies, a container of macaroons and some other miscellaneous Easter sundries.  He left behind some shreds of chocolate chip bag and a soggy candy box (cardboard not to his liking).

Upon calling the emergency veterinary hospital, I learned that this much chocolate is “highly toxic” to our 70 pound lump of stupid.  I was instructed to give him a tablespoon of peroxide to induce vomiting and bring him in right away.  As I cried on the way to the hospital with the dog, feeling responsible for not protecting him from dangerous foods, John said, “This is just one o those Marley moments.”

One gallon of chocolate scented vomit on the car seat and a $223.06 veterinary bill later, our very black, chocolate-scented Labrador, alive and well and clueless about his brush with deadly chocolate, is safe and sound back home.

The doctor warned us that the medication he received may sedate him and that his stomach would likely be irritated.  He spent his entire Easter Sunday behaving so poorly in front of our guests that I was in tears again by the end of dinner.  Sedation?  No.  Irritated stomach?  Not likely.  Still stupid?  Yes.