I swear I thought Nora Roberts wrote more supernatural stuff. This was not that at all. Something about love, cougars, and a psychotic dude. Eh.
The next book was quite lovely and made me all moody and teary. About the daughter of a man with major chronic depression. She seeks to understand how her genetics influence who she is, and ends up completely off path, numb from her feelings.
I finally finished the Happiness Project, which to be honest was so-so. I enjoyed the beginning, the conceptualization of her project and the outlining of her intent. I did not like when she started to include blogger comments, and then didn't integrate them at all. And how she would do some tasks in a half assed way, and give herself credit for them. I guess I didn't connect with the person I was reading about. Or maybe I'm just cranky. Nah - I wanted her to go deeper, and I felt she just kept skimming the surface of things. Perhaps that's the thing with our search for happiness: I believe its just a fleeting feeling in the midst of a hundred other ones, all equally valid and rich. When we make happiness into a project, we further remove ourselves from the real feeling and instead make it into a task to complete. Even now I am thinking of the many projects I've started and not completed, of my true priorities, of how I spend my time, and what I want from it. And with that, steps further and further from the rawness of my feelings.
Things are tricky right now. I'm taking on many more responsibilities at work, which requires me to fully understand what I do, be able to communicate it, and also puts me at risk for increased criticism, which I hate. I'm also learning so much. And getting angry at myself for not being further in my career, for not making more money, for lots of dumb things that come up when I compare myself to others. I recognize I have something there to process, and I'm not at all. I know I'm changing exponentially daily, each week brings a slightly different me, altered by what I am doing in a way that I am unrecognizable to myself. 
One thing I have learned is that I am a pretty scrappy gal. I am self-sufficient, I make due with nothing, and ask for less. While I'm proud of that, maybe that's not the smartest way to operate. Maybe I need to ask for more - a lot more. I need to reconceptualize how I see "work", and I desperately need to figure out why I am addicted to work. Lie: I know why I am addicted, I need to get my own treatment for it. But I am stuck - I love to learn, to research, to have a billion things to do and think about. I'm doing the same thing that I critique in the Happiness Project: I'm actively ignoring my own feelings and shoving myself into a project, hoping its authentic and worthy. Surely it is? Right?
Ultimately, its irrelevant. I should be doing a good job, I should be offering a service that my clients are contracting for. If I want to get paid more, I need to set up a business and exchange fees appropriate for that service. I should engage in learning, teaching, consulting. But I question the undercurrent that I know what is best, that someone knows what is best. I know there are standards for ethics, legal parameters around confidentiality, and basic codes for treating another human being. But when do I say enough is enough: the drugs you are using are killing you, the decisions you are making are tearing your life apart, the way you are treating your partner/child/friends is abusive? The way you are treating me is abusive.
And this is where I realize that I myself need some education. I need to face my own block if I am to offer that level of service I want to offer: in other words, to move forward in my own project, I have to face my feelings. And I've got a lot of them, and I don't like them. I have to speak them, and it feels out of control and reminds me of the vast, cavernous empty places that we all have, that we all fill as best we can. But I do know that speaking of them, staring them in their apparent infiniteness, makes them diminish and disappear. And so I'm ready. And those other books? I figured I should be giving myself credit for all those 'dry' books I read. I'm working my way through a big stack, learning how to be a better supervisor (or to quell my anxiety). One thing that sticks out to me is that I need to be so very aware of the dynamics and influences of others, both actively connecting to and then moving past my own responses. This job, it forces me to think so very deeply, and like water wearing down stone, alters me. I keep asking, "is it worth it?"
I keep waiting for something to tug at me from another direction, watching for something to help me make sense of it all. I keep noticing all these little white feathers that seem to find their way right where my feet step and wondering where they come from. I wonder who will I be at the other end? Its rushing by so fast, I want to dig my heels in and stop it. But the rush, the rush I like. After this speed, slowing down is just too slow. And there is the sickness. So I focus on the signs, the reasons, the excuses, and press a little harder on the gas.
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