Mid-Summer Night's Dream

Today is the last day of July. Do you KNOW what that means?



It means that tomorrow is the first day of August. And THAT means I have only one month left of summer before I have to go back to classes. I have been doing a remarkably good job of actually relaxing since that root canal. Something about a heavy dose of benzodiazepines that will drain the workaholic vibe out of you... The point is, I've been relaxing, and I've gotten a taste for it. I have also not watched television this month. Not once. So I am actually relaxing as opposed to vegging out, which I think is different.



I've been enjoying my down time in "flow," a concept made accessible by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-born psychology professor. Flow is an enjoyable state of mind wherein the task at hand is suitably matched to one's skillset and abilities and provides meaningful feedback so that the person can become actively and mindfully engaged in what they are doing. This is something that just doesn't happen when passively viewing entertainment. Television and movie watching flow experiences are few and far between (the exception perhaps being trying to stay one step ahead of a really good MYSTERY! on A&E). It happens much more often with games, good conversation, sport, tasks and problem-solving activities. It's the feeling of falling into a groove, when you are doing something and are so engrossed that you suddenly look up and it's 8 hours later and you don't know where the time went.



And I've gotten a taste for it.



I've even felt more like I can fall into flow at work. When I get a good counselling session going and feel totally present, always adjusting my gameplan and strategizing to give my client the best therapy I can. Getting feedback directly from the client in terms of how the session is going for them. Yeah, it feels like the days when I was training and HAD to pay such close attention for fear I'd really screw something up.



And that's the thing. Once you become good at something, the challenge lessens. In order to experience flow, you need the right amount of stress. You need to be challenged enough to keep you on your toes, but not so much that you feel hopeless and give up. If your skills are solid, that's great... but the danger is that you will go on autopilot and not be truly present. It doesn't matter how skilled the therapist is, if they are not present in the therapy exchange, if they are bored, if they are multi-tasking in their mind, the client loses out.



Right now I'm present.



And it feels good and I don't want to lose it. Which is why I started to get a little weird and possessive of my time in the past few days. Suddenly my inbox is filling up with messages from the University. Workshops are being advertized, working groups are planning when they will meet, the mailroom is being reordered for the incoming students, and I'm expected to register. Oh, and a paper that I gave to my supervisor almost 5 weeks ago, which they told me they could turn around in 48 hours, is still sitting on their desk. There are still deadlines counting down in the summer "break." There are things I have to DO.



But I'm enjoying flow too much.



And before you say anything snide, yes, of course I know I can apply my newfound flow prinicples to school work... I just don't want to yet. You see, it's the thing about meaningful feedback. Last year, it was pretty non-existant. In one class I didn't get any feedback until after the semester was over. In another class, the feedback was meaningless because the prof belled grades on such a steep curve... you had no idea what your skills were really like. In another course, my only feedback came in this form:



"Very good paper. A."



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I had to stop writing before I was actually finished that post and now we're a good week in to August and it doesn't have the same oomf as when I wrote it on July 31st. I have a meeting with my supervisor today and don't want to go. It feels like detention somehow, only I go alone and not with a cadre of 1980s teen archetypes. My prof is no evil Mr. Vernon, but just as clueless at times. Not their fault, it 's a generational thing. And this not-quite-a-summer has infected me with a sort of teenish agnst -- a feeling of not-quite-fulfilled-and-i-want-something-but-don't-know-what feeling. So yeah, I don't want to go... I want my breakfast club and I'm not getting it there.

If John Hughes were still alive I'd want him to make a new movie for all of us grown up teens as we ride gen X into our middle age. And I hope he'd remember that some of us are still in school, some of us didn't have a good prom, and some of us had grandmothers who felt us up on our birthdays. But I guess that's what Avenue Q was for.

Time to download a few soundtracks and make one last push for the summer that never was but might still be.