hello. anybody still out there? i suppose that's a silly question since there were about 10 of you before. well, if you are, I'm back, at least for today. after about 9 very long months.
2011 was a year i'd just as soon forget about, have wiped from the hard drive, excise from my very soul. i was optimistic, almost to the point of being hypomanic, when i began writing this blog last august. the depression i'd been facing since the end of 2010 had seemingly lifted with my decision to change direction in my career. (you can look back here if you need a refresh on that.) oh, and with a whole lot of intensive therapy. more hours than i can remember. i'm not complaining; in fact, i'm very thankful, as it may have saved my life. i understand if that sounds melodramatic, but if you know me, you know that i have no patience for drama, let alone melodrama. if you don't know me, you just have to trust me.
you might remember that i returned to school last semester to take some psychology courses. i had looked into programs in the bay area and decided that i wanted to get a masters in counseling, a degree that would put me on a [rather long and challenging] path to get a license to become a marriage and family therapist (MFT). as would be expected, there are several good schools here, and i decided that i would prefer to stay in san francisco proper and attend san francisco state university. it was a respected program that would grant me access to the important san francisco/bay area networks that i would need to eventually become successful here, and it was a state school, so the tuition wouldn't bankrupt me. big bonus.
i may have mentioned before that i love school. and, not to sound like a complete asshole, i'm really good at it - which, of course, is why i've spent so much of my life doing it. if one could make a living being a professional student, i'd be first in line. i should figure out how to be one of those people who sneaks in to take tests for other people (hopefully using ridiculous disguises, because that would increase my enjoyment), or write people's term papers, or something. however, goddammit, i'm not amoral, so i guess that's out.
anyway, i liked the two classes i was taking: abnormal psychology (at which, of course, i already considered myself an armchair expert) and theories of personality. this was september, and i finally got the GRE behind me, and if i didn't feel great about it, i knew i didn't bomb it either. the day after the test, i started a new contract job at a technology company down on the peninsula. it was scoped to be a three-month project, which would get me through to the holidays, and it paid well, and it was half-time, so going to school simultaneously should have been no problem.
if you've ever done contract work before, however, you know that all is not always as it seems. i had previous experience with the hiring manager, at a different company, and i think he was more interested in hiring me on the strength of that experience rather than because there was a fully-defined project with a defined deliverable. i'm not criticizing; this happens all the time. people know there's work to be done and they hire somebody they think can help them do it. and many times, that ends up fine and the work gets done and everybody's happy. then there are the other times, and this was one of those.
i was really busy and pretty happy for about four weeks. the people with whom i was working were smart and motivated and problem-solving types, and although that seems like a given, believe me when i say it's not. sometimes people have real problem with "outsiders" coming in and telling them what to do, too, so it's a delicate balance. you need to seem helpful but not overbearing - it's a political game. these folks didn't have that issue; they seemed genuinely glad to have the help. relief.
but then the work started to ebb to a trickle. the project had started in a different group, and now that there was some foundational work done, they all of a sudden seemed keen to take it back and run with it. (this happens all the time too.) plus my assigned "stakeholder" (yeah, that's a fancy word for "boss") was changing positions within the company, which was going through a fair bit of reorganization in general. none of this was great news for me as a consultant, and after a couple of conversations with the person who'd hired me, we decided that my time was better spent going out and marketing my services to others rather than waiting for a couple hours of work to come in from them. no harm, no foul, even though my expectations had been to be with them for another couple months. i'd started another small project in the meantime, so i wasn't going to be totally without a paycheck.
however, all of a sudden i had a bunch of time on my hands. i never worked more than 10 hours a week, and my two undergraduate classes, although i still enjoyed them, weren't enough to fill the rest of the time. i started to feel fatigued most of the time. my friends were busy with their own shit, so my social life was nearly nonexistent. summer was definitely over and early rains were starting. if this doesn't sound like a good recipe, it's not. by thanksgiving i was having trouble getting out of bed. by early december i'd quit my last contract job - before completing it, which was something i'd never done before and about which i felt horribly guilty. essentially, i left the house to walk my dog, go to my therapist, and when there was absolutely nothing left to eat. my therapist had begun, several months earlier, to look for another provider for me, as she was uncertain that she was able to help me any further. (when your therapist quits on you, you know you're really fucked up.) the first week of december, she gave me an ultimatum: i could choose to be hospitalized (for the third time in my life), or i could go someplace safe where there was someone to look after me. if you've been hospitalized for mental illness, you know this isn't really a choice. i immediately made plans to return "home" to pennsylvania to stay with my mother "for the holidays." little did i know, at the time, how many holidays it would be.
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