We interrupt this program.....

for a non-spiritual mini-rant, because I just need to vent.

I really hate my damn job. I'm sick of being mistreated by staff, belittled, overworked, and threatened. I got off of work 5 hours later than I was supposed to, meaning I worked a 13 hour shift with one damn meal break. Meantime, all hell is breaking loose, and I'm informed by one kid that two of the other kids are deliberately causing confusion in an effort to get the chance to attack me. After all that, another staff bitched at me when I finally did leave, and some of them hadn't gotten to eat yet. Well sorry, would've stayed if I could, but it's not my problem. Try 13 hours with one meal break, asswipe. I need to get out of that shithole. I actually am one of the few staff that attempt to enforce the rules, and NOTHING happens. The kids get no consequences. Nobody gives a damn. We're just babysitting the next generation of inmates. Our only contribution to society is our recidivism. Hell, even the kids that leave "successfully", I know of at least TWO, graduates from the sex offender program of all places, that have gotten some teenage girl knocked up within 4 months of leaving. And these are our success stories? What the fuck.

There, I feel a little better now.

The Pursuit of Happiness

I've been feeling in a bit of a funk lately. Dealing with a lot of loneliness. I feel like such a recluse sometimes, holed up in my house(when I'm not at work) somewhat doing my studies, or when I do go out, always going, again, alone. Depressed at the fact that I haven't had a serious relationship(or for that matter, anything beyond a first date) since 2007. I look at those who have achieved goals I thought I would have accomplished by now, and it just adds to it.

And I realized that the minister's (paraphrased) prayer at church today hits it spot on: "Help me not to envy the talents and gifts of others, but to enjoy what I have been given." That's at the heart of it all, I suppose: I want what, at least at the moment, I can't have. I see my family pressuring me to get married and have kids, I see others enjoying their social lives while I'm still in school, I see myself in a job where there's no real room for creativity or growth, and I want to change it all. I want the wife, 2.5 kids and a picket fence, the job where I feel like I'm actually accomplishing something, and friends to go out with on payday, or to go hiking or swimming or kayaking with.

I try to reframe it. For the most part, life is actually going pretty good for the time being. Yes, I'm single. But when I do find the right person, I'll appreciate her that much more. Yes, I'm still in school, but when I am finished, it will qualify me for better jobs(hopefully) and further enable me to help the population I have chosen to work with. Yes, I'm in a dead-end job where supervisors try to belittle me and take advantage of me and disrespect me, but I'm also in an internship where, even after only being there for two weeks, I've managed to get them signed up to participate in a major local festival that's going on this month, that they had never even heard of prior to my mentioning it, and they're talking about the possibility of me being an intern again there next school year and making it a paid part-time position, with intent of going full-time after I graduate. So if things go well there, the light at the end of my bad-job-tunnel is that much closer. So why can't I be happy with my life as-is?

I guess it just takes time. I caught my first real glimpse of true inner happiness in undergrad, thanks to a couple of years' worth of therapy, a support group for adult children of dysfunctional families at a nearby church, and learning how to make real, meaningful friendships which helped me learn that I actually was capable of being a happy, functioning human being. I question my life now - have I really had such a dramatic and deep string of negative circumstances in the years following undergrad that I lost all of the progress I made in those years? As a mental health worker and aspiring therapist/social worker, a part of me wonders if we really truly "lose" such life lessons, or whether we just get "sidetracked" and have to figure out how those life lessons fit in to new circumstances and things that happen. Since I do my internship on Mondays and Tuesdays, and will probably be switching to Day shift at my paid job during my weekdays(since I'm part-time, I make up my own schedule - I have to keep my weekends Evening shift because of work and class, but I'll probably go Day shift on my weekdays, to keep a more consistent sleep/homework schedule during the week), I've been debating going to a local ACA group. ACA is Adult Children of Alcoholics. It's geared towards, obviously, adult children of alcoholics, but it also welcomes people from dysfunctional families in general, because while my parents weren't alcoholics, my mom was raised by alcoholics, and therefore the behavioral patterns are still there, even if the alcohol isn't(what one co-worker once referred to as a "dry drunk"). Maybe that will at least help me keep my own issues in check, because, if I can't sort out my own life, how can I really help others?

When sociology students visit Creation Museum - CSMonitor.com

When sociology students visit Creation Museum - CSMonitor.com


Somehow, I actually want to visit this museum. I just wouldn't want to do anything to contribute to its funding.

I hope to have more deeper entries soon. Getting settled into my internship and class.

Fear

"You have nothing to fear but fear itself."

This is a concept I have been trying to remember a lot more lately. Although I hide it well from most people, those who really know me well, know that I can be kind of a high anxiety person. New situations make me nervous, sometimes even to the point of feeling sick to my stomach. Both in my current job and the former part-time job, I had to call in sick within a couple of weeks of starting due to stomach bugs, and I'm sure that my nervousness of a new job was a contributing factor as well. I have anxiety about a lot of things. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday it was over working part of first shift in addition to part of my usual second shift(Saturday I worked 11:00am-11:30pm, Sunday I worked 8:30am-9:00pm, Monday I worked 1:00pm-9:30pm - a big part of why I haven't updated in a week); yesterday it was nervous about student orientation for interns, which further overwhelmed me and made me more nervous than I already was - a 30 page paper involving our internship? A biopsychosocial assessment? A checklist of things we should look at involving the organization we're interning at? I don't know how much of this my field supervisor at the agency knows about what I'll have to do this semester, considering when I got accepted she simply said I would "be in charge of 2 or 3 clients", whatever that means. And considering I start Thursday, but somehow she thought I was supposed to start on way back on the 6th, I'm a little apprehensive.

But why do we have fear? It can be a great thing when it's protecting us from something dangerous, like our prehistoric predators or jumping off of a building without a parachute. But a lot of times it just gets in the way, it seems. Keeping us from finishing school, applying for that job we want, walking up to that cute stranger who could or could not become our soulmate. What's the point of feeling things that hold us back from our potential? In my case, why does having had a stressful childhood that led to high anxiety, have to affect me now? Where's the faith?

Maybe someday these questions will be answered. If not, there's always Xanax.

Pastor sticks up for modern view of God - Religion - NewsObserver.com

Pastor sticks up for modern view of God - Religion - NewsObserver.com


All I really have to say on this one, is that it's good to see Christian leaders sticking up for their more progressive views. If more of them did so(and this article seems to imply that there are many "closet liberals" who don't see God in the traditional sense, that are pastoring churches), maybe the rest of the religion would follow suit and become at least a little more tolerant.


Sad to say I return home, and therefore back to work, tomorrow. NOT looking forward to going back to the craziness!

Book Review: The Circular Church

My most recent completed book is The Circular Church: Three Centuries of Charleston History, by Joanne Calhoun, one of the members of the church I attend. The church truly has experienced a lot in its lifetime. It was begun in 1681, and has been housed in four different buildings, which have at various times been decimated due to:

-The Revolutionary War
-The Civil War
- a fire that was pretty much Charleston's equivalent of the Great Chicago Fire
-a major earthquake in the mid-1800s.

The church has always been the equivalent of a "liberal church" throughout the various eras it has been functioning in. While most of its members were slaveowners, slavery was an issue they constantly struggled with. They were the first church that allowed blacks into their services in slave days, and black churchmembers were given a great deal of responsibility within church operations compared to others in the day. It is even speculated that at least one minister may have been involved in helping slaves to read, which of course was a big issue of the day. Several other churches in the area are splits from Circular, including the local French Hugenot church and the Unitarian church(there is actually still a lot of interaction between my church and the Unitarian church today - the current minister at the Unitarian church is a member of Circular, and the former Unitarian minister has visited Circular on occasion since his resignation). During the Civil Rights movement, they were one of the first(if not the first) church to openly invite blacks to visit the church, when other churches were actually posting guards at the doors to keep blacks out. Today, they advertise their welcoming attitudes towards LGBTs as part of the UCC's "Open and Affirming" campaign, and have a "green" addition to Lance Hall(their "Sunday School" building, which was built to house the  congregation during one of the renovations made to a previous churchbuilding) which is one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in the South(if I remember correctly), and was made by one of the top eco-friendly  architects in the country.

Overall, a good read about a good church, which also gives a lot of insight into the local history of one of the oldest cities in the country.

Nature Walk

I think one of the highlights of the vacation turned out to be when we visited Cades Cove. Cades Cove is this little nature preserve area that you can drive through to see various nature scenery. There are several stopping points where you can pull over to take pictures, etc. There are also hiking, biking and horseback riding trails. There is also a visitor's center/gift shop, where I bought a poster of a waterfall and a book on Cherokee mythology and history. As I learned this year, there are also several historic buildings near the far end of the property - an empty house; a mill(waterwheel shown left) where a man demonstrated old ways of making corn meal; a little river; a barn. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to embrace my inner photographer and take pictures with my digital camera, some of which are showcased throughout this entry. Consequently, there is not as much spiritual "talk" in this entry, but the scenes I photographed definitely bring spiritual matters to my mind.

It started out as a very cool, foggy morning. The fog in these mountains are beautiful - and the reason that they are called the "Smoky Mountains". Although where we went in Tennessee was about four hours away from my parents' house, I grew up just a couple of hours away from a part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I remember many times as a kid, our family getting KFC after church and driving up the parkway for a picnic. Some of my favorite childhood memories took place in Blowing Rock, NC, Grandfather Mountain, and Linville Caverns. I don't think I really, truly appreciated their beauty, power, and inspiration until I moved away. Such is life.

 Throughout our trip to Cades Cove, we saw a total of four wild turkeys, thirty-four deer, and two bears. I personally only saw one bear, but my grandma did see the other one. We've seen quite a few deer before on other trips, but this was certainly the most I had seen in one trip.

 The river running through the cove was quiet, secluded, and peaceful. While my family went on ahead, I took the opportunity to stand by the river for a minute, thanking the water spirits for their inspiration, and just talking with Pleroma for a bit.

Near one of the houses that were open for touring, were some beautiful white flowers. I'm not exactly sure what kind they were. White flowers I find especially pretty. They seem to represent peace and purity to me. My favorites are the white roses. Of the flowers next to the house, I took two pictures - one is my default picture now, the other one is on the left.

This has turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of the trip. This little butterfly happened to land, and I was fortunate enough to figure out the extreme close-up features on my digital camera before it flew away. If it had happened to land on a flower rather than an open window of one of the buildings open for touring, it would have been even more perfect.

 I also experimented with my camera's (no sound) video feature, and I will close the entry with that video, hopefully it will work.

Coming back to North Carolina today was difficult. Along the way we stopped by Cherokee, NC for a little bit. We went into a couple of shops, where I bought a small medicine bag, which will probably be more decoration until I decide if I feel drawn to it for any particular spiritual purpose. 

In a way, the visit to Cherokee also made me kind of sad. Native Americans are the most poverty-stricken ethnicity in the country, and have the highest mortality, alcoholism, etc. rates. As a white person, I don't have to show off aspects of my culture to make money - it's just kind of there, everybody knows about it. On the other hand, I am glad to see that people are working hard to maintain native cultures and pass it on to others, and educate people on how we're really not all that different from each other.

I am now back in North Carolina with the family until Thursday, at which point I will have to make the dreaded return to "the real world".  I hope that this vacation will come to mind when I need to re-center myself in the midst of the craziness of life.