Now That I'm Forty...


Born in New York and now going to die in New York. Someday.

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Now That I'm Forty...

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Thursday, April 08, 2004

Full Steam Ahead
I've resisted blogging because I've been experiencing a bunch of good vibes lately, and I'd hate to turn ya's off with Pollyanna Overdose. But something is better than nothing, so here goes.

1) Springtime in New York City kicks major, major butt.
-finally I saw some trees budding last night. Weekly I meet in an office building with my gaming buddies and it overlooks Central Park. (I had been doing so a few months before I moved into NYC. One of them was one of the guys who helped me move in. The group itself acted as an emotional bridge, in fact, that helped me not feel so lost at the prospect of doing so. Them, and an older set of NY area friends, and my family.) Because of daylight savings time, it was daylight again when we got together and we could see details in the park. The trees are coming back to life. The great lawn was an amazing kelly-green.

2) Working only 6 hours a week kicks more butt than springtime in New York City.
-But this is mainly when I'm in the middle of a session, and I check my time and discover I only have an hour or half an hour to go, and then I'm outta there. All day, though, even though I'm home, or at the gym, or at Barnes & Nobles, or out walking, jogging, or blogging, or cooking, or on the computer surfing, or writing, or washing my clothes, or paying bills...I'm preoccupied with a subtle dread about the fact that I have to go to work. Isn't that suck? I only have to do one friggin' measely stinking lil' hour, and I'm worried about it all day.

This lends weight to the idea that I suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder. My social awkwardness, my shyness, all that good stuff. And I've got the unstable--heck, violently turbulent--childhood to prove it. My last therapist told me it was a wonder I wasn't a far worse type of person than I am, given the circumstances and events of my childhood.

On the one hand, it is always exciting to discover what the new thing is going to be happening this week with my clients, but on the other, it's scary as he77. Like, what kind of minefield are we going to be trodding on today? But this past Tuesday was proof that I can handle the explosions. In the moment, I'm good. Instrumental even. I was very satisfied with my ability to handle a crisis situation, seeing how the whole family was ballistic. And thankfully, I had help from one of the cutest social workers I've come across in a while. She had to handle the true nuts and bolts of physical placements and connections to bring my client some relief in crisis. That was the stuff I used to do in my old job. Now I'm just the psychobabble guy who makes the clinical diagnosis.

Of course there's more to it than that. I assess the tolerance levels of everyone involved, including the social worker. I interject when it's necessary--when everyone feels lost and helpless, frustrated and trapped. I stay objective and hear what's really being said. Then I feed it back in ways that I know they can accept the information. I lead them to think in ways that are helpful rather than destructive. I'm the bottom-line man. I work to make sure the bottom line is helpful, even if it means the bottom line is the worse-case scenario. Even while typing this, I feel good about my ability to do it.

But it's the hours leading up to these encounters that I dread. A formless cloud on the horizon. That cloud is why I started blogging in the first place. Here I was heading into NYC with a lot of dread, even though I had the emotional bridges to support me. Go back and read some, you'll see. I painted one worse-case scenario after the other, just to try to handle them in my mind before they happened. Just to release the valve and let the pressure out.

So my second job is ready to start training me next week. Yeah, a month after my interview. Slow movers, they. But at least it gave me time to get my feet wet in this traveling therapist situation. I told my supervisor that I was going to stick with this caseload for now and not take on any new clients. I want to see what kind of steady money I'll be making with the addition of this day job. If it's enough to be comfie, then I may add one or two more nighttime clients for savings toward my midtown office. Because come January....oh, baby...NYC practice here comes your baby boy!

Me at 4/08/2004 12:45:00 PM