Stretch

Got a late start tonight, 8:30, and just finished a couple of minutes after 10:00.  Banks was limping tonight, so I took him for exactly 45 minutes around St. Ed’s, brought him back to the house, grabbed a bottle of water and continued on my way.  Sometimes I like to mix up my footwear, and for the last couple of days, I’ve worn my canvas shoes, without socks.  A painful blister is forming on my left foot pad, but for some reason, there are just times when I need to feel a little less encumbered than I do with sweat socks and tightly laced sneakers.

Why the late start?  I hesitate to admit that I took yet another post-work nap, but I did.  Before you start thinking of me as the Narcoleptic Blogger, let me explain.  For the past few weeks, I have been working towards my clinical license, which means a weekly session that I and another student have with a licensed clinician.  We staff cases we’re working on, make assessments and diagnoses, and provide feedback to each other.  I am one month in, with 23 months left to go.

The process is challenging and empowering and humbling.  Mostly humbling.  I went in today with a case I had all figured out; all I needed from my mentor and my peer was validation of my brilliant assessment.  What I got was pushback.  And rightly so.  My old, old habit of judging still sneaks up on me at times, and Bobbi and Tomeka called me out on it. 

It is not easy to present your work to others, place it under a microscope and dissect it.  But it also stretches your mind and enlarges your capacity to understand and to empathize.  And when it’s done right, it leaves you very, very tired.