Onions
Missionary Monday....I am a happy little camper. By noon I had heard from 7 of my little ones. I love reading their mail. Most of them just include me on their mass emails that go to families and friends, some actually take a moment and shoot off a personal note. I remember how precious p-day time was so I am always happy to get a message no matter how it comes in. It is wonderful to read of their experiences and see how they are growing and maturing. Most of them I hear from started their missions in Danville, so it really is getting to see them grow and change.
One of my Elders had this line in his message today, "So I have a problem, the harder I try to be better, the more I realize I do wrong." Now, it went on to end well in his letter, yet it sure had me thinking once again. Ok, maybe not once again, yet a good expression of what I seem to continually feel like I run into.
I really do have a recurring feeling that the more I work to get healthier, the more I find wrong with myself. I have commented on this many times in many different ways in my posts. My feelings on it have not changed, I still think it sucks.
You do get to a point where you can accept that you need to change to be healthy and you start working on that and you start to enjoy the changes and the success, then you find that while fixing up one part, it has uncovered something else that needs tending too. Sure, I understand (and accept) that learning/changing/growing is just a part of life, yet there are times where it just feels like a continual kick in the teeth. It is like a cruel circle of life sometimes. It starts to make you a little hesitant to heal for fear of what you are going to uncover next.
Of course you have plenty of options as to how to react to it all and depending on the moment, I might be like "oh, ok, we will just add this to the list" or you select a little narrower view like "really? are you kidding me?" Sometimes you just have to let the realization come, take a deep breath, and put it aside until you can go look at it with a little more clarity. Lisa would liken situations as this to "peeling back the layers of an onion" to which my thought has become, how huge is this dang onion?
It must be one of those "brain in overdrive" days as while trolling pinterest (yes, I teeter on being a pinterest junkie) I came across this pin that says "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
Some people might jump right on that and come up with all kinds of answers. I'm so curious as to what people might answer that I put it on my facebook status to see what people would say. As for me, my mind was blank. No, really, I have been thinking about this all day since I ran across it and I have yet to come up with something.
I am not looking at it to come up with "activity" answers like skydiving or the such. I feel those are the default answers (yet, I don't have many of those as answers either). Questions like these are meant for deeper thought and reflection. As well, the question itself is a motivation. It doesn't say "what would you like to do" it states action, "what would you attempt to do."
I think that if I could be guaranteed not to fail, I'd go back to school. I would love to get back into Occupational Therapy as well as work toward getting my Ph.D. I have always wanted to take my background in sports medicine and OT and mix it with the adaptive technology field and work on how it could be applied to help our geriatric population.
This has been a desire of mine for several years now. It stems from when I was working in OT before my mission. We had a resident in her early 60's who was post stroke. It had left her physically affected including fine motor skills with her hands. She had large range motion, yet not enough to hold something like a pen or pencil. As well, the stroke had left her aphasic. Mentally, she was still sharp as a tack (and ornery as all get up!) One day we came up with an idea to help her "talk" again. We went and bought one of those cheap electronic address books from Walgreen's. We fashioned her a "pointer" that slipped over her index finger and strapped to her hand. We attached the address book to her chair and let her start typing away. We were all in tears as she started typing all kinds of things. It was kind of clunky, yet it worked and it was life changing for her. Our favorite was when the PT (who was also a body builder) would walk by and she would always type, "nice ass." You go girl! She passed away before I finished my mission and I sometimes wonder if she didn't play a part in getting me into the field I am in now.
I remember working on my Master's and the first time I learned about assistive technology, especially text to voice devices. My heart lit up and all I could think was how much something like that would have been amazing for Shirley. Of course, technology as such just was not readily available at that time. If it was available, it was still very expensive and not something that insurance would have even looked at. I always hoped that somewhere down the line I would have the chance to put it all together into something. I still have that hope. Maybe someday.
For today though, I can only wonder on which layer of the onion this dream will be located.
One of my Elders had this line in his message today, "So I have a problem, the harder I try to be better, the more I realize I do wrong." Now, it went on to end well in his letter, yet it sure had me thinking once again. Ok, maybe not once again, yet a good expression of what I seem to continually feel like I run into.
I really do have a recurring feeling that the more I work to get healthier, the more I find wrong with myself. I have commented on this many times in many different ways in my posts. My feelings on it have not changed, I still think it sucks.
Of course you have plenty of options as to how to react to it all and depending on the moment, I might be like "oh, ok, we will just add this to the list" or you select a little narrower view like "really? are you kidding me?" Sometimes you just have to let the realization come, take a deep breath, and put it aside until you can go look at it with a little more clarity. Lisa would liken situations as this to "peeling back the layers of an onion" to which my thought has become, how huge is this dang onion?
Some people might jump right on that and come up with all kinds of answers. I'm so curious as to what people might answer that I put it on my facebook status to see what people would say. As for me, my mind was blank. No, really, I have been thinking about this all day since I ran across it and I have yet to come up with something.
I am not looking at it to come up with "activity" answers like skydiving or the such. I feel those are the default answers (yet, I don't have many of those as answers either). Questions like these are meant for deeper thought and reflection. As well, the question itself is a motivation. It doesn't say "what would you like to do" it states action, "what would you attempt to do."
I think that if I could be guaranteed not to fail, I'd go back to school. I would love to get back into Occupational Therapy as well as work toward getting my Ph.D. I have always wanted to take my background in sports medicine and OT and mix it with the adaptive technology field and work on how it could be applied to help our geriatric population.
This has been a desire of mine for several years now. It stems from when I was working in OT before my mission. We had a resident in her early 60's who was post stroke. It had left her physically affected including fine motor skills with her hands. She had large range motion, yet not enough to hold something like a pen or pencil. As well, the stroke had left her aphasic. Mentally, she was still sharp as a tack (and ornery as all get up!) One day we came up with an idea to help her "talk" again. We went and bought one of those cheap electronic address books from Walgreen's. We fashioned her a "pointer" that slipped over her index finger and strapped to her hand. We attached the address book to her chair and let her start typing away. We were all in tears as she started typing all kinds of things. It was kind of clunky, yet it worked and it was life changing for her. Our favorite was when the PT (who was also a body builder) would walk by and she would always type, "nice ass." You go girl! She passed away before I finished my mission and I sometimes wonder if she didn't play a part in getting me into the field I am in now.
I remember working on my Master's and the first time I learned about assistive technology, especially text to voice devices. My heart lit up and all I could think was how much something like that would have been amazing for Shirley. Of course, technology as such just was not readily available at that time. If it was available, it was still very expensive and not something that insurance would have even looked at. I always hoped that somewhere down the line I would have the chance to put it all together into something. I still have that hope. Maybe someday.
For today though, I can only wonder on which layer of the onion this dream will be located.