I have hit an impasse, and interestingly, my first thought was to blog about it... sending my thoughts out into the ether to land where they may...seeking the beauty that exists somewhere between work and play - that ephemeral silence between the notes - the sultry slip of dusk into night... waxing poetic about my life makes a jagged pill just a little bit easier to swallow.
I was running an expressive group the other day with a group of 7 men. One of the guys is clearly overidentified with the role of "the tough guy", and he plays out this role so dutifully that it ends up being terribly entertaining - so much so that he has not yet been able to identify the shadow side of this role. The side that is a disservice to the self. For example, he stepped in some dog shit prior to coming to group and didn't realize it until one of the guys sat down next to him. He thought the other guy smelled bad, and quickly realized that the dog shit was on his shoe. He quickly got up and spent a good deal of time and energy cleaning off his shoe. He walked back into the group room wearing one shoe. He'd left the other outside. But the shit was still on the floor. He picked up the shit, flushed it and returned. But the shit left a stain (and a smell that only a few could detect). He tried wiping it, spraying it with air spray, etc. But the shit was still there.
Clearly this was a metaphor for the shit that we would rather clean up cosmetically - even kick out that which has been compromised by the shit - eventually get rid of the shit itself, but forget that we have to deal with the residue. There is always residue.
I posted an excerpt from my blog about my Hill visit on my FB page and got some really wonderful feedback. I went back to read the post and realized that I have my own shit. My own residue. The good news is the residue can be cleansed, but it has to be cleaned, not covered up. And you have to cleanse it thoroughly because if you don't, the stain will go away temporarily, but it will always return. And sometimes we are so close to the shit (or so used to the shit) that we can't smell it and it takes others to remind us that the shit is still there.
So what's my shit? The Critic which lives inside of my head is always there to remind me that my shit is feeling inadequate. No matter how much great work I do, or how many people there are to tell me that my work is great, I still fear that one day I am going to be discovered a fraud. And then the critic's voice is silenced for some time, and I once again feel good about the work I do, and then something happens to remind me that, yep, I am a fraud, and everyone was wrong about me, and I'm always able to find evidence of this in my environment. Enter into State's evidence, my shining moment on Capitol Hill.
And now, the deadline has passed for my submission to present for the Expressive Therapies Summit. The easy justification for letting the deadline pass for the second time is that the National Association for Drama Therapy conference is going on the week before in Connecticut and I will need to come back to work and then fly up again to New York a week later to present for this conference. I will be taking off two weeks to go to Jordan in June and I will not have accumulated enough PTO (paid time off) to take off several days again. Not to mention that I would have to cover air fare for one trip and hotel and conference registration for another. I can't afford it. The difficult justification for letting the deadline pass for the second time is that I went on line and looked at the presenter bios from last year and... WOW! Who am I again? I looked at the workshop descriptions and, again... WOW! What do I do again?
Taking a break from self deprecation for the moment, in my own defense, I have been and will be outputting a lot this year, and I think in all fairness it would be wise to fill up from time to time. I would love to be a participant at one of the conferences. To simply play and enjoy the process.
And yes, I know that I have idealized what my life could look like over and over again: travelling all around the world facilitating workshops, getting my PhD, writing books, teaching classes at the graduate level, etc. And if I submitted to both conferences I would be a full participant in that vision. But I am already a full participant in that vision. I am constantly facilitating workshops, I will be going to Jordan soon; ArtReach is gaining more and more recognition and sliding me into conference proposals all of the time. I will be presenting for the Georgia Teachers Association in November and am constanlty running workshops around town. Choosing to go or not go to one conference or another does not change the dynamic of that vision at all, says the voice of reason emphatically to the critic. When what she really wants to do is say "F-you!"
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