Sunday ... no, now Monday. Sigh.

Jones Beach, A Sunday in November

Just because eye has not seen
Is no alibi for never peeking.
Because ear has not heard
Is no excuse for not eavesdropping.
There are days like today
To gull-flip a double passport
At the border of small infinities
And stare at shells
That talk out loud
-Catherine Barry

Today is the last Sunday in November for the year, and in twenty-three minutes it will be over. So I'm a little late in sharing this poem. But no matter.

I was first attracted to this poem because its title reminded me of my father-- he grew up in Queens, New York, and spent time at Jones Beach. I've never been there. I picture a gray, wind-whipped seascape, the sand wet and dark, the air cold and unforgiving. Every time I read this that is the image in my mind.

It is the first four lines that captured me when I read them. I don't really know what the author means. Whatever interpretation I make is burdened by the elusiveness of the last four lines. I can't decipher them at all, really. But I like the way they sound. Poetry is as much music as anything else.

Just because eye has not seen is no alibi for never peeking. Because ear has not heard is no excuse for not eavesdropping. Whose eye and ear? Hers, mine, ours? Is she exhorting herself or her reader? Or both? The Biblical reference is clear. But to what end?

I have only amorphous thoughts about her meaning. But the words nonetheless have distinct resonance for me. Something about determination and freedom and opportunity. Small infinities. A contradiction in terms that somehow makes perfect sense to me.

My eyes are fighting me now. They want to close. They don't care that I haven't reached an ending. They betray me.

Mostly I just wanted to share this poem. Kind of for my dad. I went to Mass this evening and he was on my mind there too. Missing him. Missing watching him pray after Communion when I was old enough to understand how much it meant to him. And I would wonder what he was praying for, and wonder what I should be praying for.

Columbus, Ohio. A Sunday in November. Small infinities.

A Title I Won't Regret

I love to sing. Few things bring me more pure enjoyment than wrapping my voice around a harmony. I appreciate others' beautiful voices. But, at any given moment, I would rather be hearing my own. Not because I think I'm better. Simply because I love to sing.

What does this observation have to do with anything? It has been on mind. Not long ago, I was quite happily sweeping and mopping at my sister's soon-to-be home, serenading the dust bunnies, noticing how a voice sounds ricocheting off the hardwood floors and bare walls of an empty room. Cold and harsh and big. Naturally amplified. So different from the warm, rich textures of a sound-scaped recording studio.

How much, if at all, will it matter to me if I never perform again? Am I okay with saying that part of my life is finished?

Here is the truth: I find letting go hard. And yet in many ways I accept loss without a fight. And that is not just with singing. Many of the best things in my life have just happened. I didn't go looking for the music. The music found me. I welcomed it. I treasured it. I nurtured it. And when it left, I sadly watched it go. But why did I not go out and find it again for myself? Was I lazy? Was I spoiled? Did I conclude that nothing could ever be quite as magical as the experience I had singing with Ron? I suspect so.

And maybe that's fine. Maybe it is true. Things don't always get better. My life has had moments of perfection that cannot be recaptured. The comfort is in knowing that the potential for experiencing perfection is not bound to any one moment or time. It is ever-present. It is perhaps purposefully fleeting. If every second dripped with perfection, perfection would cease to have meaning, would it not?

These last few weeks I have lived in a bit of a parallel universe. I had a chance to carpe diem in one area of my life, and carpe I did. And, as sojourns in the land of fantasy usually are, it was sublime.

The saying goes that life is short. Although I agree wholeheartedly with that observation, I'm not sure that's altogether the point. Whether life feels short or long is relative to the moment in which we are contemplating its passage. I spent a good portion of two Friday nights ago doubled over on my bathroom floor, waiting for the next spasm of vomiting to wrack my body, and time slowed to a tortured crawl.

What I do believe is, long or short, life is singular and, until something ends it, inexorable. I will never get the last three weeks, or the last 42 years, back. There are no do-overs. And I think a good proportion of human happiness can hinge on how we come to terms with that reality. Every day we have the choice of what to do with the hours we are given. And then we have the choice of how to evaluate the outcomes of those decisions.

No regrets. That's an ethos espoused by many. But what does that even mean, really?

I have regrets. I have made some astonishingly poor decisions in my life. Mostly my regrets are for things that ended up hurting not me (or not only me) but someone else. I can't absolve myself of remorse for the choices I've made that created shock waves of consequence for people who deserved better. To do so would be arrogant. Regret is proof of conscience.

What I refuse to regret, however, is letting life, letting possibility, in. Even though I know so well that it can and will end up hurting. If regret is proof of conscience, hurt is proof of hope. Of the capacity to remain open to those moments of fleeting perfection. "It's better to feel pain than never feel at all. The opposite of love's indifference." That's from Stubborn Love by The Lumineers.

Stubborn love. Yes. I'll watch perfection walk away. The perfection of my voice intertwined with another's in song. The perfection of holding another's heart within my own, if only for a week or two of suspended reality. To watch it go is painful. But I will not have regret insult or cheapen the moments of perfection I am given. I do not crave indifference.

Falling

I fell today. For the second time in less than a week. Hard. I'll be sore tomorrow (I already am). Last week's tumble was just a fluke. I stepped down weird and my ankle turned. Tonight it was lack of attention. I almost fell off the same landing yesterday when I forgot there was one more step. And I even thought about it today when I was on those stairs again. But somehow it didn't fully register, and all it took was me having my back to the room to forget where (or even that) the landing ended.

Is it the same in my non-physical life? Do I keep falling off the same damn ledge every time? And if so, is it because I keep forgetting that it's there, despite vigilantly reminding myself to be aware? Perhaps. But I think not. I think it isn't forgetting. It isn't inattention. It's stubbornness. It's a desire to be on the ledge, even if it means I might step out into air instead of onto the hoped-for solid ground.

I don't forget how much it hurts each time. That much is certain. But, so far I'm only bruised, in body and in ego. Nothing has broken (except that baby toe that one time falling down the cellar steps. That one stung for sure. And maybe my heart a time or two). Does that portend inexhaustible resilience? Or foolish cockiness? Will I always be able to get back up, massage and ice whatever's damaged, cry a little and keep on climbing up on ledges?

I think my sisters hope I'll start paying closer attention. Not that I'll remain stationary, but that I'll look a little closer before I step, much less leap. Watching where I put my feet. God knows they've helped me across many a literal and figurative stream, steadying me on the rocks and willing me not to slip. And then when I fall they are bemused. They shake their heads. And give me epsom salts and a good stern talking to. I have excellent sisters. We rarely trip over the same hazards.

And I am reminded of a poem (actually it's a song lyric) I wrote several years ago about falling. Evidently I've known this truth about myself for awhile.

There's a letter I once carried from a girl I used to know.
There's a question I once buried, and hoped it wouldn't grow.
There's a truth I have proclaimed and a lie that I have lived.
And the answer that remains, leaking anger like a sieve.

And this is where I stand, and this is how I fell
And if I never land it may be just as well.

And the room was almost empty and the past came to the door
And I lean against it gently, and I end up on the floor.
But if I push too hard the bruises might not heal
So I let down my guard and know exactly how I'll feel.

And this is where I stand, and this is how I fell
And if I never land, I think it's just as well.

And it's best to keep is simple, keep it sweet.
And of course we'll it quiet and discreet
Keep your distance, keep your head
And most of all keep on pretending that you're somewhere else instead

So each of these confessions arrives in masquerade
And each on is a lesson, and each a debt unpaid
Beginning at the end with no much still to lose
Empty paper and a pen and decide which words to use

And this is where I stand, and this is how I fell
And if I never land, you know it's just as well.

What's in a name?

I have a very low threshold for the smell of rotting food in the garbage. There are many unpleasant scents I can adapt to but that one I cannot. And so, just as I was settling in to work on this blog entry, I noticed the unmistakable putrid odor, and I got back up to take the bag outside.

The air is perfection tonight: warm but crisp. I was instantly nostalgic for football Friday nights in the marching band. Just a little cooler and I'd also have been flooded by images of Halloweens of my childhood, setting out in the twilight, clutching empty pillowcases and returning in the dark, hands now weighted down with bounty, slung over our shoulders. Yes, it's almost that kind of air tonight.

There's a crescent moon. Full moons get all the poetry, dramatic and dreamy as they are. But crescent moons are charming. Whimsical. I don't know if the one I just saw is waxing or waning. There's a metaphor there to be explored some day. But not tonight.

This post seems rambling so far, does it not? But it's actually an appropriate prelude to the topic I mean to explore. Today is World Mental Health day. Stinking garbage and la bella luna fit right in.

I am a therapist. I've been a counselor for nearly twenty years. And, in truth, I have always been one. My father used to admonish me, when he'd overhear me talking to my best friend on the telephone about his adolescent angst (wall phone in kitchen = zero privacy), "you know it's illegal to practice psychology without a license." He meant it. Heh. Well, Dad, I've got a license now. But who even knows if I'm any more skilled today than I was at 15. If I am, it's possibly owing more to 27 years of experiencing life than any formal education I've obtained.

So, World Mental Health Day. If "every day is Earth Day to a farmer," then certainly every day is Mental Health Day to a therapist. But I didn't celebrate it. I didn't even know about it until I heard it randomly mentioned on the radio. Evidently, we think the earth is in greater need of our collective attention than is our mental health. We couldn't be more wrong.

But that also is not the theme I wish to explore, at least not directly. What I thought about immediately when I heard it's Mental Health Day is how much I do not care for the term "mental health." I am sometimes accused by my sisters and the occasional observant friend that I can get bogged down a bit in semantics. And perhaps this is one of those cases. But hear me out first, before you tell me to quit splitting hairs already.

In truth I'm a little surprised it's still called Mental Health Day. It seems the current preference is "behavioral health." I work in behavioral health care now. Because we all know that mental problems are just behaviors gone all sideways, right? Depression makes it hard to get out of bed. So does arthritis. But arthritis is just an illness. Not a mental or behavioral one.

Admittedly, we've come a long way. We used to have insane asylums. Loony bins. Madhouses. People weren't mentally ill, they were crazy. Lunatics (ah, see, la bella luna!). Nut jobs. To a lot of people, they still are. And, often enough, we call them mental. "She's a mental case." "He went all mental on me." The word itself is pejorative.

So, what's my problem with it? I do believe that cognitive dysfunction is central to many of the problems that bring people into therapy. Learning to think in a different way is a key to recovery.  I do subscribe to Cognitive-Behavioral Theory. And there are the two terms, side by side. Mental and behavioral. But don't let's forget about emotions. If you forget about feelings, your quest to understand or change your behaviors and thinking will be an exercise in futility.

Of course, some psychiatrists and neuro-scientists would have us believe it's all about finding the proper combination of medications to balance out a brain chemistry gone haywire. And they are right. It is about re-calibrating our chemical circuitry. But not through medication alone. Aerobic exercise re-calibrates brain chemistry. So does a welcomed hug. So can sex. So can a sunny day. So can sharing honestly. So will a massage. Or stroking a pet. Or a hot bath. Or a belly laugh. Or praying. You know what else all those things, along with the proper medication, will help improve? Diabetes. Heart Disease. Hypertension.

It's all connected. Diabetes and depression co-occur at an astonishingly high rate. And we're not sure which direction is causal- diabetes leads to depression or vise versa. So why is it less stigmatizing to admit to being diabetic, than to being depressed? Mood disorders are exacerbated by poor emotion management, poor diet, and lack of exercise along with underlying biological predisposition. So is hypertension. But it's easier to get insurance to pay to treat hypertension than depression.

Every mental health disorder I have ever treated is a bio-psycho-social phenomenon. Most "physical" disorders are too. Thinking, emotional and behavioral change is necessary for someone with social phobia to walk into a party without coming undone. And maybe a daily dose of something to keep those neuro-transmitters firing properly. Thinking, emotional and behavioral change is also necessary for a diabetic to embrace a low carb diet without coming undone. And perhaps a daily dose of something to keep that insulin firing properly.

In New York, where I started my career, at least one county calls their social service department the Mental Hygiene Department. Hygiene? No negative connotation there, no sir. No listing, however, for the Physical Hygiene Department.

Okay, so while others give me occasional feedback on my semantic fixation, my personal concern is that I may tend towards belaboring points through redundant example. And without a face or even voice to gauge whether I've reached that level here and you are now zoning out, I can only guess.

But it is late and I am tired anyway, so my own mental health is pleading with me, for love of all things good and holy, to go to sleep before midnight tonight. And so, I shall employ my cognitive, emotional and behavioral awareness to comply.

And maybe, in a half hour, that eye-catching crescent moon and I will be setting together.

The more things change, indeed.

At some point in the next hour or so, I will officially reach the five year anniversary of my arrival in Columbus. October 1, 2008, was perhaps the longest day of my life. It started out with Bruno climbing into the cupboard above the refrigerator to avoid capture, necessitating some very rough handling by Ron. And then off I drove in the pouring rain. And before I reached Tupper Lake thirty minutes later, Sara's paws were a bloody mess from tearing her claws off against the rigid plastic carrying case. Sedated though she was, her struggles were ferocious. And desperate. And futile. And she wouldn't stop. Four hours to Syracuse and she wouldn't stop for more than a few minutes at a time. She was a wreck. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And the rain poured down. And my tears poured down. Thirteen hours after I left, delayed by a visit to the emergency vet in Syracuse to bandage Sara's mangled feet, we made it to my townhouse. The rain had stopped around Buffalo, and the night was much like this one- warm and slightly humid. Delicious. Even exhausted as I was, I noted, and felt inordinately overjoyed about, the summer-like evening air.

I am the sister who bears witness to the passage of time. Eliza, interestingly enough, is the sister who for many years created a calendar as a family Christmas gift, replete with nostalgic photographs and stories. Meanwhile, remembering her own birth year often eludes her, and she doesn't even seem to care. Rita is the sister who first set up a Google calendar, and then convinced Eliza and me to join and give each other open access to our schedules. But I am the keeper of dates. I am always late. I resist making definitive plans much beyond a 24 hour cycle. But every anniversary, happy or tragic or even mundane, gives me some kind of pause. I cannot drift through such days obliviously. The past whispers to me, and I find myself awash in memories of where and what and who and, sometimes, why. 

I titled this blog "The More Things Change..." after trying to name it many other things and finding each of those titles already taken. So, I am hesitant to assign much deep import or profundity to it. After all, how significant can a tenth choice be? And yet another part of me is inclined to believe all those other titles were unavailable for a reason. I like to consider things like that. Ascribe meaning to the randomness. It makes for a better story, does it not?

Five years post apocalyptic moving day, the blog title seems imminently relevant. The implied second half of that sentence fragment is "the more things stay the same." Change and sameness. Co-existing. Perhaps inextricably bound. Change is the only constant. And yet in stepping away from one moment and into the next the differences are mostly imperceptible. Until in a single heartbeat everything changes and it is impossible to imagine that the entire world did not also come to a standstill and undergo a rearrangement of its very essence the way you just did. The world just went on? Impossible. My world will never be the same. 

My world will never be the same. I am not who I was five years ago. Except, of course I am. No one who knew me before would find me unrecognizable now. Nor do I. I am me. I am just 42-year-old me instead of 37-year-old me.  I'd like to believe the best parts of me I've retained and what is different is all for the better. But the truth is more complicated than that. Always.

I have learned that I can love and want someone other than the person I thought I'd love and want forever. But I don't know if I believe in forever love at all anymore. And recently I've had some unsettling realizations about who and how I choose to love.

I have observed and experienced, again and again and again, how little the world is interested in fairness or justice. I knew that before I moved here of course. But I've tried to stand up to it more than I ever did. Demand that the world explain itself rather than choosing just to slam doors and fume.

I have learned that communicating and being with the people who mean the most to you is both blissfully easier and radically more difficult when you live mere minutes rather than 12 hours or 3500 miles from them. Oh, how my sisters have taught me about me in ways uplifting, terrifying and maddening. 

I have walked a crooked path towards re-embracing a faith in God. I almost said re-discovering, but that is not true. I have not "discovered" God or faith. I have chosen to believe. I have decided that choosing to believe is every bit as valid as believing without question. The determination to choose to believe is no less a blessing than having no need for such determination.

Five years. A third as long as I lived in the Adirondacks. Tempus fugit. The first five years of my life in New York defy belief in many ways. Catherine at 27 was unrecognizable from Catherine at 22. To me as much as anyone. I changed so much. But I honestly don't know that I grew. Transformation and growth are not the same process. These past five years I have grown. I am more grounded. More secure. More ... me. 

The more things change, indeed.

Still Life at a Diner

Caveat: I started this post on September 8th. So the "this morning"  I speak of was then, not today, September 13th. I considered chucking this post. Wasn't sure I was "feeling" it anymore. But for now, given my relative lack of output, I am trusting that anything I start deserves to be finished. "Feeling" it or not. And, sure enough, I'm still feeling it plenty.  

So, this morning I had breakfast with my sisters in a small town diner. At the table next to us was an elderly man and women. I presume married because they were sitting next to, rather than across from, one another. I watched them peripherally for most of their meal, and just before they got up to leave I leaned over to my sister and whispered to her, "have they said a single word to one another since we've been sitting here?" "No," she whispered back. She had been watching too. Later, she did observe that the woman had put creamer in the man's coffee. But nothing else. No words. No touch. Nothing but two people eating, looking everywhere but at each other.

Tonight as I was driving, "Missing You" by John Waite came on the radio. I have loved that song since it first came out when I was a teenager. It resonates perfectly with my history of unrequited love. The song is more about a love lost rather than unrequited, but the words fit for both: "I hear your name in certain circles and it always makes me smile. I spend my time thinking about you and it's almost driving me wild. And it's a heart that's breaking, down this long distance line tonight. I ain't missing you at all. Since you been gone away. I ain't missing you. No matter what I might say. I ain't missing you at all. I can lie to myself." That perfect juxtaposition of devastation and the desperate attempt to deny it.

As I sang along to my unofficial anthem, I found myself thinking again about the couple from this morning. Was there ever a time in their relationship when they would have felt that life-wrenching loss if one of them had turned away? "And there's a message that I'm sending out like a telegraph into your soul. And if I can't bridge this distance, stop this heartbreak overload. I ain't missing you at all." And if not, if their love was never intense to the point that losing it would trigger "a storm that's raging through my frozen heart tonight," is that a tragedy, or a blessing?

Seeing them made me feel sad. For them. For me. But perhaps unfairly. Perhaps this man and woman sat there in utter contentment. No words being needed. Not because their relationship has withered but because that is just who they are as people, perfectly suited to one another's silence. Or maybe they are angry at one another. Maybe we looked through a window into this moment in their lives and found them at odds, but loving one another enough to keep their weekly breakfast date. Loving each other enough for her to offer, and him to accept without resistance, the wordless endearment of the exact right amount of creamer in his coffee.

It is so easy to look at others and think we know. We know exactly what we are seeing. We resist when others are so presumptuous in drawing conclusions about us, but we are so quick to do it ourselves, frequently to total strangers. And why? Why this reflexive tendency to interpret and catalog each other? Why do we even care, even when the events or people we are deconstructing have no bearing on our lives? That scene at the diner: utterly inconsequential to my life. And yet consequential enough that my sisters and I discussed it. And it was still in my mind hours later, triggered by a song.

What does it tell me about me? The sadness I felt seeing them, assuming that their silence reflected a relationship gone dormant, devoid of vitality. If I am thorough in my self-assessment I recognize that it triggers a fear- a fear that love cannot remain vibrant and passion-filled. That too many years together will lead to dullness and complacency and silence. And I have plenty of examples of love affairs much longer than any I could have now, starting halfway through my life, that are still glowing from within, where the familiarity of 40 or 50  years together has resulted not in complacency but deep contentment. My aunt and uncle, married almost half a century, seem that way. Playful. Joyful. Alive.

But how do you know which you will be, should you be lucky enough to make it that far down the road together? It is choice? Or personality? As with most things, I suspect it's both. And if I am blessed to have that chance, I will fight with everything I am to stay awake and alert to love. My aunt and uncle are grateful for one another. Of that I am certain. And I suspect that matters more than anything.

By the way, here's a lovely version of Missing You as a duet between John Waite and Allison Krause.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plFRyYVDw7I

Number 2

So, I created this blog on September 1st. It will be September 6th in half an hour and I have not yet posted again. Not an auspicious start to this adventure.

The problem is not a lack of thoughts. The problem is a surfeit of thoughts. And I just went to check the definition of surfeit. I do not want to misspeak and it's a word I've not used in quite some time. Sure enough, the first given definition is having an overabundant supply. Interestingly, however, it also has a sense of being overly indulgent in something. And its etymology is from Middle English, Anglo-French and Latin words that mean to overdo. So, probably that second sense came first and usage has simply changed.

I love words. So much. I've often said I wish I had become a linguist. And yet, I have recently met someone who not only loves words, he has pursued them, through several languages. I can sometimes recognize the roots of words, but most of my knowledge comes from rote memorization. He, on the other hand, knows words. He sees their DNA. Which allows him to appreciate and use them more precisely. Which is a thing of beauty. Though it strikes me that almost certainly the majority of the time, the beauty of his precision is known only to him. To others, they are just words, one as good as another. His mind alone gets to savor their nuance. As when the vintner is faced with the unsophisticated palate. The subtleties of bouquet he painstakingly worked to infuse mean nothing to the uneducated tongue; it is merely red or white. I am reminded too of a former boyfriend, a consummate builder, who once constructed a foot bridge that would have supported a tank. No wood was 'wasted.' It was just the beauty of his design, the knowledge of the fundamentals. He sees wood like my friend sees words or the vintner sees grapes-- what belongs and what does not. But no person who has crossed that bridge would ever know by looking. It is just a bridge. Or a glass of wine. Or a word. But, no, to the ones who know the wood or the grape or the language, it is so much more.

But I was discussing my surfeit of thoughts as the impediment to my having written even my second entry for this blog. Yet, seeing that surfeit also means over-indulgence got me thinking. Do I have an overabundance of thought, or do I over-indulge in thinking? I pinned an eCard to my Pinterest board "That's ME!" today and it fits so perfectly with what I now have learned about surfeit. It says "I've been overthinking about overthinking again." Heh.

I am a thinker. But am I a lazy thinker? Or a gluttonous thinker? Too undisciplined to choose one idea and do the work to make a coherent, start-to-finish exposition of it? Or too inclined to gorge myself on one delicious musing after the next, never stopping to digest and gain the singular nourishment each could offer? I do not know. There must be a reason that, labeled as I have been from at least my adolescence as a Writer, praised as I have been for having a Voice, I nonetheless have written very little since leaving school. Which is not true. I have written reams. Notebooks full. The stack is at my feet this very moment. But unless someone wants to read the chronicle of one young (and then not-so-young) woman's battle with inertia, mistaken for undying love and devotion, I might as well not have written a single sentence.

But, I have now written two entire blog posts. Of dubious value, perhaps, but nevertheless words, written and 'published.' (Assuming I do get around to inviting someone other than my sisters to read this thing).

As with most everything I have written, prose or poetry, it feels unfinished. Endings are hard. In writing. In life. Ah, perhaps the subject of my next post has spoken. Endings. And already I am considering how endings relate to beginnings. Vive le surfeit!

Beginnings

I suppose many bloggers begin their first post by opining on the value, purpose, nature of the medium. For those of us who are somewhat self-conscious about the idea of hoping, much less asking, for people to take a vested interest in our thoughts, yet somehow feel compelled to share those thoughts in a public forum, the experience of starting a blog is fraught. I have things to say. And I am humble (or realistic) enough to know that nothing I say can possibly be original. And yet I am arrogant (or attention-greedy) enough to suppose maybe whatever I type into this space will not be an utter waste of time for someone else to read. Certainly, it's not a waste of time for me. If I can gain perspective or insight from seeing my thoughts and feelings in concrete language, the exercise will not be fruitless. But that describes a journal. Journal writing is therapeutic and very useful for clarification and self-awareness.

A blog, however, is not a journal. Or, at least, I don't want to treat it that way. It is communication. It is me and another. I am writing with the belief that other minds will be engaging in and reacting to my words, whether or not those reactions are ever shared with me.

A blog is also, however, a stage. It is a performance. It has an 'audience.' I talk and you, should you choose, listen. It is not a conversation by normal definition. It may be a call and response, but it is not a dialogue. I have to engage you to want to listen. I have to have things to say that are worth your attention. Otherwise, it is just a journal.

Of course, I did not go to read any web articles about "how to blog." I am certain there is an Idiot's Guide to Blogging out there. And I shall never read it. So, my chances at 'success' are no doubt already greatly diminished. But, that is actually a perfect segue into introducing myself as a voice. I'm interested in being a 'success' but only on my own terms. For better and for worse.

I may make the effort to find studies and data to support the ideas and beliefs I will present. But I most likely will not. And for that reason, I will never presume to present my thoughts as authority or fact. They are my thoughts. Wrought from 42 years of experience and education. Examined by a brain with above average (or so I've always been told) capacity for analysis, synthesis and critical thinking. I have strong opinions. I also have weak opinions-- opinions that are unformed and tentative and questioning. And I'm as likely to write about the latter as the former. The latter actually tend to interest me more.

My writing, even for research papers in school, has always, always, tended to include an integration of my personal experience. Luckily, I generally received feedback from professors describing my papers as "refreshing," "unique," "insightful." I attribute that to being a decent writer and thinker, because otherwise I might have been told I was lazy and unfocused. On my senior thesis in undergrad, one of my professors commented, "You begin in a personal vein, as we have come to expect from Catherine; and although that is not customary in academic writing, it is an important aspect of your style. Clearly, Catherine, you are on the way to becoming a stylist--i.e. a writer--which is something rather rare. ... Your very personal approach to Thoreau is both a strength and a weakness of the thesis. ... I mention it but I don't put too much stress upon it because Catherine must do what Catherine must do; she is developing in her own admirable direction; and it's silly to ask her to go where she doesn't want to go." Ah, if only all my subsequent supervisors had come to the same conclusion. Grin.

And so, there it is. I shall write. About things and about ideas but most likely also with connection to how they intersect with my experience. Am I narcissistic? Or am I honest? I suppose you will decide. And I look forward to hearing your conclusions.