Gnosce Te Ipse

One thing I'll note about my post below, about sailing the SF Bay. It is indeed technical sailing; there is the risk of collision above all, with other boats or land, but the adage: if you can sail SF Bay you can sail anywhere is simply not true. Sea swell is usually easy to manage, but the thing I do not want to ever have to do is ride out a storm at sea. Boats, even relatively small sail boats, can do that, and experts vary on which of the handful of methods of riding out a gale or storm is best...but it is the waves, not the wind, that can flip a keelboat over. Specifically, breaking waves, steep waves that the boat loses control of going down (or up) the face...any boat can capsize in bad enough wave activity. The bigger ones are just safer because of size (paraphrasing Nigel Calder in his monumental book). The thing about ocean sailing is that, unless one is in a storm or some bad swell, the waves and swell are generally easy to manage (though seasickness is an issue for...

More than twenty years ago, I sat in a small bleacher in one of the gymnasiums at CSULB, first day orientation for a sailing class; just curiosity. The instructor, maybe in his fifties, went into his spiel: "All the stuff you see and hear and read about the myth of sailing boats...the blue blazer and white trousers, the captain's hat, the ascot, dinners at the yacht club...the skipper quietly smoking a pipe while staring out to see...the first thing we have to do is clear all that up; I want you to know that all that stuff is totally and completely true ." We all laughed. It was quite a few years later before my first time on a small sailboat, a very funny story I wrote about here a couple years back. But I did not really sail or learn to sail until about four years ago when my wife said a group was going from her work, mostly nurses, that one of the ICU nurses was a skipper, and that we could sail on San Francisco Bay for the day for about sixty or seventy bucks a pi...

Last night I had bad dreams. I don't have a therapist anymore (and am generally doing okay with that) but need a place to process the feelings. So, here I am. Estella was in the dreams. I still have to write the final chapter or two of her story, and mean to. I am finally emotionally strong enough to do it. But she was in the dream, as was R, the therapist who pulled her from me, even if our marriage sucked, we had a real friendship, and usurped her for himself. There are only two things I remember from the dreams though the emotions were so, so strong. One: I have been watering the vinca on our "lawn" (and I don't know any real lawns at our altitude)...trying to get the vinca, which is supposed to choke out anything and take over as ground cover (and is not that name related to "conquer" in Latin). Anyway, as the vinca fights with some hella tough clover, every weed known to man, and oregano I think, it surely needs water. So I ran the sprinkler i...

to those who commented below, and others whom I am sure read who did not comment, but stood alongside me, and even stand alongside me, during this time. I'll take this time to update... I saw my therapist, Sharon, for the last time Tuesday morning. She had been off Monday for the holiday and it was her last week in practice after many years of seeing clients. I know she had a long stack of people, some she had not seen in years, waiting to get in to say goodbye. My heart goes out to her, actually, during this week. And the parting was wonderful. It really was. I can look back on six years and say that she acted in my best interest at every turn; that she never lied to me or acted in an insidious manner. In short, she did her job as a therapist and a human being. May God, in whatever form she understands God, walk with her the rest of her life. I was lucky to know her. The sad thing is that she was only a therapist, of course, not a family member, can I even say a parent. ...

Hello to all who read here. This is a personal post, a support post; I am reaching out, even in the blogsphere here where I rarely journal anymore. There are a few things I need to say and I have a prayer request or two. Considering I rarely ask, I figure this is okay :) One. I have talked about my therapist retiring at the end of the month. That is a fact I have to accept. My winter and spring have been good, good enough that I would have cut down on my visit frequency, I think, if she were not retiring. My time with S has been very, very helpful, though it was me who brought in Foa's awesome book on OCD two years into my therapy! My therapist had heard of those tools, but I take credit for bringing them exposure work into that relationship. S was very good with seeing the interpersonal, emotional fuel that feeds the OCD fire, my struggles with intimacy and fear or anger and criticism; it has been a good six years. Yeah, six freaking years. Today I got up the courage to ca...

Big changes are on the way for me; well, one at least. My therapist of the last six years is retiring. Yes, that does rather suck, though I am glad she is moving on with a new phase of her life, I have just weeks to figure out whether I want to contact my insurance company and look for someone else to continue work. Mostly, I've been thinking that I wanted a break. I beat serious depression years ago, and with S (short for my current therapist) have made enormous strides with my anxiety/panic/OCD. The latter, surely, a tenacious and clingy monster to fight. A true mental illness, in my view (and I guess just about everyone else's). This last year or so has been especially good for me, even the last 9 months. The long, at times imperceptible climb out has finally appeared to be just that: a climb, OUT, not a walk through more thick woods. I have greater insight, meaning (clinically) I can sense an obsession more often than not...of late at least. For quite some time I ...

If this blog had another name, that would be it: Peniel. Is that not, "one who wrestles with God." Something close. That would be me. It's strange, since I began writing about Brian's book (and I am not done, as you will see) I have cut the personal content here, as if I suddenly found myself in the book review pages of a newspaper. Posh. I must remind myself this is not publication, this is a web log. The hardest thing about this activity is the lack of community sense. I need to put a counter up; I surely get very few comments, nearly none. Writing into the void. Rather existential. I had my vasectomy Friday, finally. Stayed home from work Monday (though I thought I would not have to beforehand). I am sore, and the stitches are bugging the heck out of me, but it was not that bad. I will say, when they ask, "would you like a valium IV?" say yes. I did. Almost worth the surgery. My friend Allen who drove me there and then home (very kind of him)...