Before taking Rev. K. to the airport this afternoon I emailed Liturgy Prof about being a bit stuck - part of the reason I realized I was having a hard time picturing what this paper was actually supposed to "look" like - how detailed, etc. in addition to my little research pit/rabbit trail excursion. Prof emailed back. Said to ease up on myself some, that I will have the rest of my life as a priest to figure this stuff out. That the page limit should indicate level of detail... not very detailed. Try to hit the bigger pieces of the service, etc. so I could finish and get it in. Okay... so that gave me a little breathing room and better idea of how to narrow in.
When I left my apartment it was actually sunny out instead of gloomy gray. That was a refreshing change! Changed my mood. Got Rev. K. to the airport for her flight. She tried to give me a couple last minute GOE pointers in the car. Gave me a little hug and peck on the cheek saying something assuring about GOEs as we parted. Awww. Sweet mentor. At the x-mas party someone found out that she'd been my sponsoring priest into the process and said, "you must be proud of her" and she'd said something like "yes, I am proud of her." On the way home went through McDonald's for a happy meal (with one of those teeny sodas - got a Coke... yeah, yeah I know... bad! bad me since my M.D. wants me to try and avoid caffeine on this medicine.
Got home and had my little snack, and was in a different place than I'd been yesterday. Had left the ethics stuff on the desk to remind me to work on that some instead of getting trapped by liturgy when I got home. Might make some progress before appt. with Dr. H. And you know what? I did make progress. Got some work done on the ethics paper. Woo Hoo! Not quite as much as I'd hoped, but still something. Something typed in is much better than just staring at a little stack of folder, notes and reader.
Had a good appt. with Dr. H. The bad news... Dr. H. is going on vacation on Thursday until day two of our GOEs - ack! So I'll be pretty much on my own as I get ready for that task. Said to call or email in the next day or so to update on where I'm at. Very kind of Dr. to not charge me for our several phone conversations last week. They weren't like an hour long appointment, but if you added up several 5 to 15 minute calls you might be at a half-hour or even 45 minutes. I don't know, I wasn't timing. I think in addition to seeing me as patient that Dr. H. also likes me as a person and sees me as kind of a colleague since I'm going into a helping profession, so maybe that's a gift... wants to support someone who's a poor graduate student and would like to see succeed??? In any event... pretty cool.
So, the appointment. Actually started on kind of a humorous note. I was a bit grumbly and frustrated even though I'd finally gotten work done on the ethics paper. I admitted that while I don't tend to say it out loud that when I'm going through stuff like this there is cursing in my head such as "F***!" or "What the Hell?!" Kind of embarassing to say the f-word in front of someone who knows you're going to be a priest and the most caustic language they've probably heard you say to date is "crap" or freakin'. But hey, I never claimed to be a saint. I had a life before seminary, including a fairly blue-collar dad with a bit of a temper, so I'm no stranger to what Spock would call "colorful metaphors." Anway, we laughed a little about the internal cursing. Dr. seemed to relate. Even at one point later in the session describing what it's like to be wrestling with something and in the midst of it you think, "f---" I said exactly! and laughed and asked, have you been hiding in my apartment? Dr. laughed and said no, I'm just going off what you said earlier. Heh! :)
As to more of the "meat" of the appointment, Dr. H. started by pointing out that at last appointment the plan was to finish two smaller projects that had no emotional baggage and then to work on the project for my elective, and then the ethics project. I'd finished the 2 projects and the thing for the elective. Then I finished another liturgy assignment that I hadn't known if I would get to, instead of working on ethics. So... the original plan was to get at least 4 things done and I got 4 things done. I'm also much more on track at the end of this semester than I was last semester, so that's good too. So try not to discount that and beat myself up over getting stuck this weekend.
Dr. H. noted when people get stressed or anxious there are two typical patterns - people either simplify (sometimes over simplify) or get more detailed/complex. Said that I seem to be doing the detailed thing, getting caught up in lots of possibilities and analyzing. Says that because I'm bright and because of ADD I tend to think of things in a complex way already (says it's kind of a curse in some ways to be a smart person with ADD because of this). Has mentioned my being bright or smart at our last couple appointments. Dr. H. knows from the test results I obtained from the Dr. who did my psych eval for the discernment process that my IQ was in the superior range on the WAIS (my full score on that test was a 124 with a possible error of +/- 7 points, in the last couple years on a couple online tests I've scored from high 120's to mid 130's). So... I don't know if Dr. is mentioning it because of this complication that it adds and really wants this to sink in so I'm more aware of it (also it's thought intelligence compensates for ADD so people may not realize what's wrong and not figure it out until later... if ever). Or it could be Dr. H. is trying to boost my confidence by gently reminding me of my ability. Maybe a little of both.
Anyway, said that because the ethics paper revision had been pushed off it had more emotional baggage attached to it. We discussed that some. Dr. thought possibly that (in addition to maybe needing a break) lead to avoidance behavior. At first I said that this was different than in the spring. It did not have that same block/wall and "no, no, don't make me do it" feeling. However, as we talked I realized that there was something similar.
The block before wasn't so much in sitting there trying to plough through it staring at a blank computer screen or at my books and coming up with nothing. It was that whenever I tried to sit down and work on it that I would feel an inner resistance - nope, can't do it, need to park my butt on the couch and veg on TV instead, or get involved in something else than my paper. And this weekend there was something like that too it. Was getting sucked into the internet and into some TV watching before I ever fell solidly into the land of liturgy books and got overwhelmed by all that information. Dr. said that even getting absorbed by the liturgy stuff could have also (all this subconsciously of course) been a form of avoidance. Thought that it was good that I recognized some similarity between what I felt in the spring and what was happening now. But then I felt a little frustrated and down... "*sigh*...yeah, but if it's the same then I haven't gotten anywhere" I kind of grumbled. Dr. H. didn't agree with that.
Dr. said that if that's happening(avoidance type getting stuck/off track) it's likely I need a mental or emotional break and I need to give myself permission to really have a break rather than feel guilty about it. Said sometimes a change of scenery works wonders (much like today) - that nature is always good, but could be anything. Instead of being focused on this one thing (assignment) that seems huge and like the whole world, by getting out and seeing there's other stuff going on outside your apartment you connect to the bigger world and it puts things in perspective, gets you out of your house for a change. So you can relax some and regroup and it might be easier to work on stuff when you come back to it - rather than sitting there trying to push through and ruminating or doing something else in your house to avoid the assignment and then feeling awful about not working on it. Better to make a conscious decision to step away and take a break.
As predicted, Dr. says my mantra should be simplify, simplify, simplify. Heh! :)
Said as I finish up ethics paper... work on the easy parts first. Go find a couple blurbs to plop in to make my point. If I need more I can go back and flesh it out more later. Did I address this point? Yes? Okay move on. I might find when I finish that it's adequate and I don't need to go back and do more. I was telling Dr. H. how I'd gotten stuck making a transition from into/thesis statement and preview into the real body of paper this afternoon. I didn't think what I was trying to say or do was all that complicated, but Dr. H. seemed to think that it was a bit complicated. Didn't say I needed to simplify that, but I did find that observation a bit surprising. I didn't quite see how the connection/transition I wanted to make was complicated. To me it just kind of made sense. Oh well.
Now that I've taken some time to think about this and record stuff before I forget, I guess I should go apply this advice.
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