I distracted myself from the more and more 'official' uncertainty of my future by working on contact juggling with Matt. Actually, I hardly touched the ball in the turn with him, but instead scrutinized the way I move my arms to play with the ball. As long as I don't get lazy and complacent, juggling and unicycling offer awesome opportunities to improve my use, and get more into the idea of the 'unified field of attention'.
I hardly managed to find someone to work with in the rest of the turn time, somehow I managed to start working with those students who just were about to have a turn with Kaz, first Sharon, then Briar. I noticed some familiar pattern of thought arising while idling, luckily Rossi asked me to help her a bit while she gave a table turn to Amanda.
Libby's writing and research session turned into a bit of Kindergarten. Tony and Ana stopped Libby nearly after each sentence, often just to ask about the exact things that she just said, or wanting to know pretty much unknowable things. The continuous interruptions stretched our sessions out a lot, so that there was no time for some practical work left.
Back home, I notice much I need more debriefing and exchange about our work - frustration and aggression rear their ugly heads again, and I can hardly concentrate on more constructive thoughts. I don't like the idea of organising another intercontinental move, and I have no inspiration where to go after my time in Australia, and how to organise setting up a practise in an entirely new environment. I was aware that making a living as AT teacher won't be a piece of cake, starting over somewhere else looks at the moment like an insurmountable task.
Yet all that desperation won't help to tackle this task, nevertheless I realise how familiar the Don Quixote role seems to me, triggering lots of habitual unproductive coping patterns. Striving for sanity in a mad world doesn't feel like getting into the flow of life, but rather like swimming against the stream. Especially as I don't have any reliable support here, or any positive outlet for all the (self) destructive thoughts whirling through my mind. Well, I gotta keep breathing.
Showing posts with label Amanda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amanda. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24
Tuesday, February 9
Strong stimuli
During my turn with Margaret I discovered an interesting detail of my faulty sensory appreciation. I was convinced that I moved my shoulders back in certain situations, while I was in fact arching backwards from the thoracic spine. I felt an inner fight starting when I inhibited this movement, and humbled by the discovery of this blind spot in my body map.
I did a bit of chair work with Amanda, looking for more sensitivity in my hands. I get a better idea which parts are moving and which are held, although still fuzzy. It's hard to distinguish who is doing the holding, just being present still happens only for some short moments.
The discussion of this weeks reading with Vivien turned into pure pleasure. Although FM's writings are far from easy, she embodied an amazingly subtle understanding of his words, and guided us through some important aspects of the text.
Vivien then went with the large groups through spirals and hands on the back of the chair, another pleasure to observe.
Back home, another stimulus was waiting for me - preparing the kit for a skype interview. Just after I send Robert Rickover an email to negotiate a time for it, the disk of my laptop stalled (and hasn't been accessible since). I had already tested the bluetooth headset, and even with 64k the sound quality was okay.
A lot of anger about faulty technology surfaced temporarily, yet I inhibited going on a ride with them, and started thinking about alternatives. I can go online with my MiniMac and even with my phone, there must be another way...
I decided to upgrade Skype first, and then connect the head set. But even five tries to connect to skype failed - wrong network settings. I found a symbian version of skype and gave that a go. However, although I have a keyboard on the phone, I couldn't access the underscore character (_), so I had no chance of typing in my user name...
There's luckily the option to sign up for an account in the skype client, so I simply created a new account and, voila, I connected without problem. I checked all the gear with a call to the 'echo' facility, the sound isn't too good unfortunately. Anyway, that's at least one working solution, although probably not really suitable for recording.
I guess it takes some computing power to digitize voice, wrap it into nice packets, send it over the network, all the while receiving data and decoding it. I remembered using the old version of skype, so I downgraded and indeed, I could log on again. I don't remember what I used as microphone, so I went ahead and connected the head set.
Optimistically, I made a test call, and was shocked to hear the external speakers. I checked the settings, and chose the headset for in- and output. I spoke after the beep, but on the replay I just heard the lovely voice explaining the test. Bummer. My MiniMac hasn't got built-in bluetooth... which provides me with another option: getting a new blue-tooth dongle. Although I can see the device and receive data, it simply ignores all input, maybe, after all, my bluetooth keyboard isn't broken.
So instead of spending maybe 15 minutes to get skype up and running in good quality, I spend about three hours fiddling around with suboptimal solutions. Even though I got a fallback solution, I notice how much the stimulus 'fixing a computer problem' reactivates the habits I cultivated as IT specialist. What a prize to pay for the bit of flow when finding solutions provided a pleasurable challenge.
Right now, while I can't even reset the headset to be used with the phone, I can observe a lot of useless mental chatters from similar situations in the past. At least, I added some more time (and money) to remove potential blue tooth errors - and had another nice unicycle trip instead of cursing technology.
On the other hand, I notice how much I got back into the habit of surfing while watching telly. Maybe it's good to separate these time killers again, especially as there's lots of 'habitual' programming with most TV content. Another aspect of not using the laptop is the climate - the study heats up a lot. Back to basics, back to books.
I did a bit of chair work with Amanda, looking for more sensitivity in my hands. I get a better idea which parts are moving and which are held, although still fuzzy. It's hard to distinguish who is doing the holding, just being present still happens only for some short moments.
The discussion of this weeks reading with Vivien turned into pure pleasure. Although FM's writings are far from easy, she embodied an amazingly subtle understanding of his words, and guided us through some important aspects of the text.
Vivien then went with the large groups through spirals and hands on the back of the chair, another pleasure to observe.
Back home, another stimulus was waiting for me - preparing the kit for a skype interview. Just after I send Robert Rickover an email to negotiate a time for it, the disk of my laptop stalled (and hasn't been accessible since). I had already tested the bluetooth headset, and even with 64k the sound quality was okay.
A lot of anger about faulty technology surfaced temporarily, yet I inhibited going on a ride with them, and started thinking about alternatives. I can go online with my MiniMac and even with my phone, there must be another way...
I decided to upgrade Skype first, and then connect the head set. But even five tries to connect to skype failed - wrong network settings. I found a symbian version of skype and gave that a go. However, although I have a keyboard on the phone, I couldn't access the underscore character (_), so I had no chance of typing in my user name...
There's luckily the option to sign up for an account in the skype client, so I simply created a new account and, voila, I connected without problem. I checked all the gear with a call to the 'echo' facility, the sound isn't too good unfortunately. Anyway, that's at least one working solution, although probably not really suitable for recording.
I guess it takes some computing power to digitize voice, wrap it into nice packets, send it over the network, all the while receiving data and decoding it. I remembered using the old version of skype, so I downgraded and indeed, I could log on again. I don't remember what I used as microphone, so I went ahead and connected the head set.
Optimistically, I made a test call, and was shocked to hear the external speakers. I checked the settings, and chose the headset for in- and output. I spoke after the beep, but on the replay I just heard the lovely voice explaining the test. Bummer. My MiniMac hasn't got built-in bluetooth... which provides me with another option: getting a new blue-tooth dongle. Although I can see the device and receive data, it simply ignores all input, maybe, after all, my bluetooth keyboard isn't broken.
So instead of spending maybe 15 minutes to get skype up and running in good quality, I spend about three hours fiddling around with suboptimal solutions. Even though I got a fallback solution, I notice how much the stimulus 'fixing a computer problem' reactivates the habits I cultivated as IT specialist. What a prize to pay for the bit of flow when finding solutions provided a pleasurable challenge.
Right now, while I can't even reset the headset to be used with the phone, I can observe a lot of useless mental chatters from similar situations in the past. At least, I added some more time (and money) to remove potential blue tooth errors - and had another nice unicycle trip instead of cursing technology.
On the other hand, I notice how much I got back into the habit of surfing while watching telly. Maybe it's good to separate these time killers again, especially as there's lots of 'habitual' programming with most TV content. Another aspect of not using the laptop is the climate - the study heats up a lot. Back to basics, back to books.
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