I just received the questions for my "Comprehensive Exam," essentially a short, reflective, APA paper that covers what I learned through my Leadership program at UVic. It's due next Sunday, I believe, so it's unlikely that I'll update anything here until then.
But Wow, when it's done I'll have an enormous burden off my back so I'll be able to deal with other life-stuff much more effectively. Looking forward to that reading list. Looking forward to trying to lose these 10 pounds I've added since last September when everything seemed rosy. Looking forward to opportunities to play music and write songs again. One last step.
0 Comments
I still like a little Mike Knott now and then.
British Columbia has declared a public health emergency over the recent rise in fentanyl-related deaths. Good on 'em.
The numbers themselves are harrowing. The Globe and Mail wrote, B.C. had 76 illicit drug overdose deaths in January, the highest total in a single month since at least 2007. At its current rate, the province could have 600 to 800 overdose deaths this year, Dr. Kendall said in a news conference on Thursday. B.C. had 474 such deaths last year, a significant increase from 211 in 2010.
It seems to me that "state of emergency" is an appropriate term to use, considering those statistics.
I think it's shameful that anybody needs to die due to poor public policy. I believe these deaths stem from a refusal to educate people due to matters of criminalization, which creates an abusive black market. I don't know how to write about this as a coherent post with a beginning, middle, and end. So here's a bulleted list:
The following podcast with Johann Hari discusses an upcoming UN summit on worldwide drug policy:
Hari made this succinct thesis, paraphrasing Ruth Dreifuss, who legalized heroin in Switzerland:
When you hear the phrase "legalization" what you picture is violence and anarchy. What we have right now with the Drug War is violence and anarchy. We have unknown criminals selling unknown chemicals to unknown drug users—all in the dark, all filled with violence and disease. Legalization is the way you restore order to that violence and chaos.
I agree. Bring it out in the open and regulate it for safety's sake. Let's stop this prudish silliness and learn how to deal with culture without criminalization.
Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of SuccessWHY THIS BOOK? I've come to a point in my life where I've come in close contact with decisions to potentially "throw the baby out with the bathwater." I don't want to do that. I would prefer to grow and learn; I do not believe I have an inherently "fixed" mindset. I'd like to read this because it might give me some insight about the strategies I can use while I'm making such life-changing decisions. I'd like to see a "growth mindset" model and try to apply it to my relationships. Harriet Braiker's The Disease to Please: Curing the People-Pleasing SyndromeWHY THIS BOOK? As I noted a couple posts ago, I wouldn't be surprised if I suffer from a degree of "people-pleasing syndrome." I don't think it's extreme—I'm good at saying "no" to too much responsibility—but my desire to please everybody has certainly not boded well for some of the decisions I've made over the last year. Daniel Goleman's Emotional IntelligenceWHY THIS BOOK? I have struggled to assess whether I have any emotional intelligence at all. I don't seem to respond to events like I'm supposed to and I feel like I can't empathize with people as much as I could. Perhaps a primer in emotional intelligence is in order. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die; Cherish, Perish: A Novel by David RakoffWHY THIS BOOK? Because it looks amazing. Rakoff's couplets, as much as I've heard, are astoundingly dense and entertaining. I'd love to read a novel's worth of them.
Recently, I've had to battle some existential despair. I don't feel like I know who I am anymore and I don't feel like I know anything. I catch myself muttering angry things to myself, correcting myself, and then getting angry at myself further. It's a slow descent, a windedness I don't think I've ever felt before, like being compressed under a pile of rocks, stone by pebble by stone.
A recent episode of Hidden Brain talks about "The Power and Problem of Grit" highlighted how grit--a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's passion for a particular long-term goal or end state, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective—helps us build resilience, but it also makes us stick with lost causes.
As I've been trying to work through my own issues, the idea of "grit," of sticking through things in order to get the best outcome, has been interesting. I kind feel as if the grit I've adopted for my life has been generally positive, but sometimes negative. Recently, I've had trouble identifying the positives and negatives, however. It's as if I've gone grit-blind.
Two days ago, I wrote about my habit of people-pleasing. I discussed a little about how my desire to please people often gets in the way of my self-image and well-being, how my "niceness" impedes me. Today, I saw this little video on YouTube:
The video appears to advocate for the sort of honesty I wrote about a month or so ago, but also seems to act in an apologetics-styled manner towards said "nice guys," even to the point of potential victim-blaming. Although I don't agree with the video, it makes me a little uncomfortable. I'd like to share my innermost feelings, but I don't want to side with MRAs in the process.
But I'll admit that I have my share of inner tug-o'war. I've said before that I suffer from a Sylvia Plath-styled neurosis, where I can't help but feel like two worlds are in constant stress inside me. I cannot imagine an angst-free internal moment of my life; my insides are a constant tug-of-war between libertine and responsible citizen, between "nice guy" and... well... again, how would I know? Which brings me back to grit. I will stick with being a nice guy it keeps on hurting me. Although I may attribute it to an endless capacity for hope, it might instead be a matter of single-minded stubbornness. I have grit, and perhaps even resilience, but that doesn't mean I point that grit in a good direction. As the summary of the "Grit" podcast suggests, But other research has also pointed to a potential downside to grit. Like stubborness, too much grit can keep us sticking to goals, ideas, or relationships that should be abandoned. Psychologist Gale Lucas and her colleagues found in one experiment that gritty individuals will persist in trying to solve unsolvable puzzles at a financial cost. And that's a limitation of grit: it doesn't give you insight into when it will help you prevail and when it will keep you stuck in a dead-end.
I don't trust myself enough right now to assume that I can assess when my grit "will help [me] prevail and when it will keep [me] stuck in a dead-end," but I look forward to getting myself to a point where I can.
That means that I'm going to have to "know myself," however, and I don't think I can do that right now. So I'll work for an epiphany or settle for a manufactured one.
|
Musician.
Teacher. Photographer. jeffnords ONLINE:
Bandcamp YouTube: Music+ jeffnords PLACEHOLDERS: (infrequent haunts) Amazon | DailyMotion DeviantArt | Duolingo | Flickr | FVRL | Kik LinkedIn | MeetUp | MySpace | Pinterest | Playstation | Reddit | Snapchat | SoundCloud Spotify | The Internet Archive Tinder | Tumblr | Twitter | Vimeo | VK | WattPad Archives
April 2024
|