Thursday, July 29, 2010

Fly me away...

Hello my lovely readers! I am off on vacation...wait, don't get too excited for me. We are going to the landlocked state of North Dakota, woohoo! No sunkissed beaches for me!

No really, it is a vacation and I am actually really excited. It has been 2 years since I have been home so visiting the familiarity of my hometown will be really nice. Plus, I have a lot of family that I haven't seen in 2 years or more. Plus I saw that there are thunderstorms in the forecast! :) Its been 2 years since I have experienced a real live midwest thunderstorm...enough of this damn Seattle drizzle, I want some earth shattering lightning!!

What is the catch you ask? Well Rachel is coming with and this is the first time I have introduced a girlfriend to much of my family and also the first time I have brought anyone from my Seattle world into the (very much different) North Dakota world. Wish us luck!!

I will be back here to tell you all about it :)

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Girl with the Owl Tattoo

...yeah, I used the reference, I never claimed that I wasn't a dork!
So, I finally got my owl tattoo and I love love love it!!

How adorable is he?! How could you not love a tattoo with a cute owl and books?!




He is also special to me because he represents all that I have acomplished and all the drive I need to find in order to finish. As I mentioned before, Ive felt a bit of a *blah* reaction to any graduate academic acomplishments. Im also lately feeling very burnt out and apathetic towards the process, which I hate. So, I rewarded myself :) I wanted to mark my finishing coursework and give myself motivation to get back to working on my dissertation. I think it has worked, Im a dissertating maniac lately!!

Friday, July 23, 2010

Why is therapy a taboo word?!

Ok Im going to preface this post, please do not think of me as a psychologist-to-be when reading this! Im not writing it as a way to promote my field. Obviously therapy and internal self growth are things that are important to me on many different levels, but my career choice is only one of those levels, this comes from the other layers...

I am in therapy. I am soon starting couples therapy. I have been in therapy multiple times throughout my life. Why is this something that people have a hard time saying? I pursue therapy not because I am psychotic or because I am painfully depressed, but because I am alive! Life is difficult, it comes with sadness and heartache and stress and...well, pain. I want to be able to understand my way of being within those struggles. I yearn for a deeper understanding of myself and that is what therapy means to me.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of therapy clients do struggle with psychosis and debilitating depression, and that is a lot of what therapy is there for. I am by no means trying to belittle or downplay the significance of that. But, that doesn't have to be all that it is there for! For some reason, our society has this negative view of therapy and the people who pursue it. We (the people in therapy) are looked at as this helpless person who can't deal with life, so we go to someone else to walk us through it. I view us as strong people who are able to acknowledge the fact that life is hard and sometimes talking through it helps! Why do people who get labeled as strong when they are working out to better themselves physically but weak when they are trying to better themselves internally?!

And then there is couples therapy which has an even worse stereotype. Im going to state the blatantly obvious here, but relationships are hard, really hard!! In my mind, couples therapy should be the norm rather than the ultimatum presented when everything is falling apart. Very few couples actually pursue therapy until it is the one string they are left with to grip onto. So, what happens? Society thinks that is what couples therapy is there for, a way to hold on to the small piece that is left, or a cleaner way to let go. What does that leave the rest of us with? Those of us who pursue couples therapy as a way to help us get through the rocky parts and come out of them a little less banged up?

I understand that this is all a vicious cyclical experience. Couples who do pursue therapy before the relationship is hanging by a thread don't want to tell anyone for fear of being labeled as doomed. So, nobody knows that people do go to therapy before that point, so they think that is all that it is there for...and then nobody goes. You get the picture. Its the same thing for individual therapy, albeit to a lesser degree. But still, nobody wants to mention that they are in therapy for fear of being labeled "crazy"...so the stereotype that society holds remains there.

What is my point here? Im proposing that those of us who are in therapy as a way to better ourselves and deepen our self awareness, speak up! I am in therapy! Let it be known, it is a sign of strength and personal growth, not of weakness.

Dr Cannon Lucy.jpg

Friday, July 16, 2010

To Kindle or not to Kindle.....?

Ive been so painfully torn about the Kindle reading device from Amazon ever since it came out! On one hand; I love that its easy to carry around, can fit a ton of books, gets new books very quickly, and has a dictionary built in! (I usually have both a book and a dictionary on hand!) Plus this commercial and song are brilliantly charming to me!


On the other hand though; I LOVE books! I love the feel of a book and the pages and mostly the smell! (I sound a bit odd, I know) The one thing that has been tipping me towards the kindle side though is the fact that you can put it on "speak mode." This means that I could read it anywhere and then also listen to it in my car. That is the one thing that books cant do. Side note: I love audio books for my car and I have tried syncing a book that I am actually reading with an audio book while Im driving....didn't work so well, its frustratingly hard to try and find your place every time you switch!

Anyways...my mom knows about my decision struggle and decided to take me out of my misery and just get me one! Awesome right? Yay!! I have ordered a few books and am ready to try it out. Stay tuned.....

I know I have fellow book lovers out there, so does anyone else have one? Thoughts?

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Heat wave!

Ahh seattle, it rains for weeks straight, then goes right into 90+ degree days! I know 90 doesn't sound too bad for some of you out there, but the short lived nature of it here in the pacific northwest means that most people don't have a lot of fans and very very few have AC. So, we just do what we can to cool ourselves until it passes....once it does though, summer is quite spectacular here, in my humble opinion!! :)
Seriously mom, this crappy little fan is all we get?!
By the way, they do get more than a fan....they get my homemade gourmet pupsicles!! :)

On a somewhat unrelated note; I think the heat is making them true blue BFFs!!
How cute are we?!

I sure hope everyone else is staying cool through the heat and enjoying your summer!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

...but I love the library!

My school shares a building with the Art Institute, which is....interesting! Generally it is not a problem because we have our own floor, but we do share a library. AI students treat this shared space like a coffee shop (at best, a bar at worst); talking, laughing, fighting...basically everything loud you can think of! This has been my biggest complaint about my grad school experience so far, how can a grad school not have an adequate library?!

Anyways, AI is on break so I have been enjoying some blissfuly quiet library time. Today though, they are doing new student tours, which is slightly annoying, but at least they are only in here for about 5 minutes at a time. Just a few minutes ago though, I heard a tour guide make a painfully blasphemous statement! He walked in with all his new students and said, "I can't believe this is still needed in our digital era, but.... (rolling eyes and scoffing) this is the library"Gasp! And he said this, right in front of all these books! How insulting!

As you probably know, I love love love books! So, this hurt me :( Not only do you people ruin the library experience with your gabbing, music listening, and facebook-ing, but now you are insulting the books...to their faces!?! This passionate bibliomaniac is deeply offended...