Coach training is a mixed bag.
On the whole it is FANTASTIC:Three 8-hour days of nonstop learning, coaching and being coached, plus a required free coaching session (yes I will start offering them to the general public once I have more openings) and this time - dinner with a lovely new friend who flew in from Tuscon.
And then there is:Three 8-hour days.
Oh I apologize, I fell asleep for a few seconds just thinking about it.
These days are on the weekend, which means you run right to work again, making your life feel much like hell with a way too low thermostat. (Los Angeles - wtf? You suck right now!)
Back to a pro:I returned renewed, full of joy and feeling so utterly seen and heard and
appreciated for who I am! Yay for play!
And a con:I felt increasingly distant from H. I just had a growth spurt in three days; in person it would be difficult to show, on the phone, how can I even begin? The initial high of flying through class feeling contained and cherished and seen and most importantly - LIKED - my gawd, a place where I am actually popular! - helped my attitude for the first day or two with H.
But then the exhaustion kicked in, the dissonance.
"Why can't he see me like my practice coaches can? Why is he such a worrywart? Why can't he be soothing like my friends? Why can't I talk to him like I talk to my classmates?"
Which quickly leads to,
"We're going to break up."
Hold Stillness
On my way out of my unethical graduate school, I took an expressive arts therapy class as a positive way to conclude a traumatic program. On the last day after I presented
my final project (
a video and a song I just wrote), my classmate came up to me and told me not to go back to NY.
She gave me a drawing as her aesthetic response. It was a swirl of blues and greens with striking red words that said:
Don't leave, seriously. Hold stillness a little longer.
There was no stillness to hold at the time, only broken shards to pull from my flesh as I waded out of the mess that was San Fakecisco.
Those words stuck though.
*
"We're just not going to work," has about become my favorite phrase lately. It is a default; it is like the song you hear on the radio whose awfulness shocks you so much that you cannot stop listening to it and soon its rhyming, two-word chorus taunts you at work and drones you, horrifically, to bed.
All sins are washed clean in the morning and so, thankfully, are bad refrains.
Things feel fine in the a.m. light, or if not fine, then normal. I hit snooze too many times. I pick clothes while brushing my teeth with orange toothpaste I never liked but was leftover and free and free is good.
I drive in a hurry somewhere, thanking God for my staying alive while scanning my rear view for police cars; those buggers always pop out of nowhere and I never see them until they are parked on the side of the highway, having pulled someone over, and all the cars around me and I casually slam on our brakes, gleeful it is not us.
And somehow this going-ness soothes me. Having something external, something actionable is refreshing. It is grounding. It makes me feel normal for once, not a ball of melancholy and collection of odd words. It makes me feel like every other mediocre American. It helps me relate to people.
Things are less important.
"Maybe we're just going through a phase because we haven't seen each other in a while," I said to Selena yesterday morning. "Or maybe we're going to break up. Who knows. Just have to see how it plays out," I shrugged, looking for my sunglasses before dashing through the door.
"Have a good day at work," she called from the kitchen, not completely paying attention to what I was saying.
This is daily holding stillness.
It is not zen. It is just what busy people do.
My beloved MB,
