tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70342122024-03-18T22:24:13.387-05:00hmmmmmmmmm.............success and failure are your journey*......birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.comBlogger765125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-55206429056841030092010-05-29T16:49:00.003-05:002010-05-29T16:53:36.489-05:00pillsafter crying ridiculously to a friend, i worked out and my pills kicked in and now i feel good. great even. the pill thing is weird. very weird. that my whole life - the goodness, the sweetness, the sunshine and pleasure in my life - all comes out of these little bottles. maybe i should stockpile them in case of apocalypse. but seriously: isn't it weird? i feel like i am truly myself with all birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-21827725801193846652010-05-29T09:20:00.003-05:002010-05-29T09:28:11.168-05:00got re-hired for fall!It's a really bad job market in Chicago - they're cutting 18% of teachers district-wide - so I feel extremely lucky to finally get re-hired. Third time's the charm, I guess! It's funny too when I think back, I gave a really terrible interview here. I think I was pretty far down on their list of choices, for various reasons. But things have worked out well. In other news, check out my kick-ass birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-52879900770479239772010-05-24T19:11:00.004-05:002010-05-24T19:20:30.322-05:00May in the gardenI spent all afternoon yesterday sketching in the garden of one of the members of our meetup.com sketching & painting group. here's a lovely photo of where we were, and here are my two sketches: It's gotten hot in Chicago all of a sudden... today at school I felt like I was wearing a plastic bag, in my customary polyester tunic and slacks. I need some cooler clothes! Some of the women were wearingbirdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-50399864946298876322010-05-22T09:04:00.002-05:002010-05-22T09:13:02.251-05:00here's what's on my mind today...at this job so much more than the last two, i am getting a sense of how completely the students' lives are overshadowed by gang violence. every one of them has lost someone close to them. every week someone knows someone who is killed. already this year more people have died in Chicago than in our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and every one of them is known to some of our birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-55733857523848982002010-05-18T21:31:00.001-05:002010-05-18T21:32:48.487-05:00today's side effect - went back up half a step on the meds, and today at the end of the day i am exceedingly crabby and impatient, to the point where i am childishly pouty during a meeting (embarrassed to be called on it, in a sort of passive-aggressive way, by two different people). going back up to full dose tomorrow - will try ramping down again in the summer. :Pbirdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-54269270774213405622010-05-17T21:35:00.004-05:002010-05-17T21:54:23.388-05:00shadowsSo for a long time now I've had this major problem with sleepiness - falling asleep as soon as I sit down, to the point where I've had to stop driving. It started last year when I raised the dose of one of my medications. Since then I've been tested for and treated for sleep apnea - I'm not sure why really, considering that it's obviously one of my medications - I guess I just really really did birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-33323087999383726152010-05-16T19:14:00.004-05:002010-05-17T04:55:06.401-05:00turning of the seasons thinking about graduation as colleges around us have theirs... the elm tree in the park is producing millions of those fluttery papery seeds that always remind me of the end of the year at harvard... every year moving out of a room that had seen so many ups and downs but overall another good year of friendship and scholarship... i think i DID appreciate those things at the time tho i allowed birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-24697759355409127672010-05-09T11:07:00.002-05:002010-05-09T11:07:53.412-05:00beautifulWhat a gorgeous day it is in Chicago. A beautiful day for being right here, right now, not for worrying about the future or mooning about the past. Right here, right now. Beauty and light... such beauty and light.birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-53858156905369887792010-05-08T15:29:00.004-05:002010-05-08T16:28:02.555-05:00nostalgia...Busy week at work... took on a project that unexpectedly took more time and energy, and had less help, than I had expected. I think it's finished now... or at least one phase of it is finished... enough that I can bow out of the rest of it I think without seeming to drop it in the middle. We are supposed to be finishing up the year with our service learning projects. I don't think I can manage birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-46816323022311159172010-05-01T07:01:00.006-05:002010-05-01T08:10:42.238-05:00happy spring...happy again... my new meds (well, new a year ago now) have really turned me into a different person... mostly i'm happy, most days - almost all days - i'm glad to be alive. Pema Chödrön says, “I’m glad to be alive to agreeable, I’m glad to be alive to disagreeable. And I’m glad to be alive to sour and sweet and tingly and itchy, and refreshing and cold and hot and the whole thing. And it doesn’t birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-31292809843701904582010-04-17T00:45:00.007-05:002010-04-17T06:18:02.902-05:00lossa year ago today i said goodbye to someone very important to me. some of you know that story - some don't - no matter - now it's a year later. i am a numbers girl - i remember numbers and dates forever - and anniversaries are in my subconscious, in my bones and blood, and they bubble up and burst. often, i am confused by a wash of inexplicable emotion until i recall that it's an anniversary - birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-64971738033322446232010-04-02T10:33:00.011-05:002010-04-02T11:02:31.334-05:00spring break trip to Milwaukee :)Went Milwaukee with Miriam for a day... Just a quick dash through some of the photos... First, we went to an amazing photography exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum... for those of you unfamiliar the museum was designed by the amazing architect Santiago Calatrava (here's a photo of the whole museum... and get this... the "wings" close at night!!!!!)The exhibit we saw was called Street Seen: The birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-45214522332194464862010-03-21T12:15:00.004-05:002010-03-21T14:02:21.433-05:00Happy Ostara!A day late, just noticed it on the calendar. I remember how cool it was to find out that the root of "Easter" is "Ostara," the goddess of spring or something. Those old old things persist. Like there is a river in Iran whose name sounds sort of like "Cyrus" (in Persian), and they think maybe it was named for him but got corrupted during the centuries when people forgot that Cyrus the Great's birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-24645467060964701312010-03-01T20:04:00.002-06:002010-03-01T20:30:25.715-06:00tide in, tide outdepression seems to be coming back - last 10+ days. i fought it, then panicked about it ... didn't get work done, started to feel like i'm going under at school. now remembered to accept it and just put one foot in front of the other, not make a big deal out of it, not do the headless chicken routine (either internally or externally) nor the deer in the headlights... just do my job... ok so birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-72760871255101945962010-02-24T20:41:00.003-06:002010-02-24T20:50:25.272-06:00winter blahsso another year older... last week or two i've been going downhill pretty steadily... so tired... think the winter's getting to me... have felt over my head at school - have three classes instead of two - and a lot of new students, few of whom are at all pleasant; meanwhile most of my old favorite students are gone to other teachers. or so it seems atm. and i just got a raft of additional birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-64801676590214062812010-02-15T09:36:00.000-06:002010-02-15T10:57:01.589-06:00hip pappy bithuthday! the celebrations beginI always make a big thing out of my birthday, as I mentioned in 2006 (part 1 and part 2), 2007, and 2009. In 2008 I was in bad-job hell and apparently either had no fun for my birthday or failed to comment upon it. In 2005 I posted on my birthday with no mention thereof. Go figure. Anyway, my celebration began on Saturday at the Art Institute, where I met some fun people (through my Meetup.com birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-15416781092233188262010-01-29T00:26:00.003-06:002010-01-29T00:32:22.795-06:00disciplineNo longer doing the nightly checkins here - easier via email to Nadly - too boring here!My meditation instructor recently reminded me (and it's now a post-it on my mirror) that discipline isn't, by definition, something cruel that hurts you. It's something that helps you, that you want... something you even enjoy. This applies most centrally to meditation, which I'm still not doing. *sigh*But it birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-1565793435359566122010-01-21T20:06:00.002-06:002010-01-21T20:15:20.172-06:00i made a commitment to write every night to assess the care and kindness that i had given to myself that day, as a reminder of my goal of giving myself what i need. i set this goal so that i won't seek what i need in another, so i don't get those frushes and crushes, the idea that someone else can make me happy - so i don't get hooked on other kinds of things either, thinking any thing will make birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-42281829100160033792010-01-17T01:04:00.005-06:002010-01-17T01:23:42.094-06:00healing thinking... six things that have helped meI felt that the previous post was depressing me so I thought I'd revisit something I learned in the intensive outpatient program over the summer... six ways to think positively, to undermine self-sabotage. It has really been a life-saver for me - stuck on a post-it on my bathroom mirror - how many mornings has one of them caught my eye and helped me start the day on the right track, or go to bed birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-71257329031659768952010-01-16T23:43:00.002-06:002010-01-16T23:49:36.807-06:00spent the whole day in a state of extreme "poverty mind," feeling like i needed - really needed - something outside myself. scrambling for it, casting about in hopes of finding it. even though i saw what i was doing, i didn't stop. didn't take a shower, didn't eat.feel drained and flat. plans tomorrow to work all day. had planned to have long dog walk and meditation in the morning, but those havebirdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-6242620597845046432010-01-16T09:44:00.001-06:002010-01-16T09:45:23.394-06:00i know going for a long walk will make me happier than getting on the computer. but i did the latter anyway.birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-38649907826719384342010-01-15T23:47:00.002-06:002010-01-15T23:50:40.256-06:00At least writing these checkins is making me mindful of my poor self-care and able to see those stirrings of frama before they get going. That shit is so addictive though...birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-22775429427575847332010-01-14T21:31:00.002-06:002010-01-14T21:56:03.742-06:00home alone tonight... chance to reflect in more spaciousness... tired tho... ... ... sometimes i miss people i haven't seen or spoken to in a long time, as though i just saw them days ago. i don't know why i still miss them so much. nadine would probably say because i am looking to them, still, somehow, as someone who would have made, or could make me, happy. she might say that that is imaginary birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-79045061654035408762010-01-11T18:50:00.002-06:002010-01-11T19:04:46.465-06:00wow, has it really been since the 5th that i haven't posted? nadly emailed me a nudge and i appreciate it... i think Harry Reid *should* step down over his racist remarks. just sayin'. i haven't posted because i haven't wanted to look too closely at the self-care thing. maybe because i had a bit of frush-frama again, looking to someone outside myself with whom i hoped to become friends, as birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7034212.post-34015067974455388282010-01-05T21:35:00.002-06:002010-01-05T21:48:24.567-06:00Today feels more like a deficit in the self-care accounting. Self-care red ink. I hung out with aforementioned Larry, he of the frush-frama (the one who seems like he wants more from me, emotionally, than I'm able to give. Can't we just hang out and go to meditation? No, I don't want you to help me put up my shelves, write my lesson plans, or worry about me crossing the street or working with birdfarmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08375896388806726010noreply@blogger.com1