The importance of being where you are. The moment.

Being a social work student has taught me plenty.  What interventions to use with specific clients. How to evaluate them. How to research. How to be unconditionally present.  How to meet clients where they are, instead of where I (as a clinician) may want them to be.

But this semester? In a class around the topic of grief and loss? I learned how to sit with my own feelings.  To be ok (or begin to be ok) with them.

Because it is not just being able to be ok sitting with clients and their feelings, it's important to be able to as an individual, be able to sit with our own.

It is so often that I think that because I have been trained in specific skills that I should have all the answers.  That I should be able to handle every situation thrown in my direction with perfection and the "right" ways.  It's a lie.

Learning to be ok with where I am as an individual, social worker or not, has been a great new way to be able to look at my life, and look at the decisions that I am very quickly going to be needing to make.

It's ok to be sad.  It's ok to grieve the end of something that I thought I was ready for.  It's ok to be happy, to continue living.  To continue growing.  To continue to make choices and decisions because without them, you are stagnant. Unchanging. Because without making a decision, you are, in fact, choosing.

And what fun is a world in which you are unable to change?

It is the lesson I am most thankful for.  Learning to be OK with where I am.  To accept it.  And to keep plugging along, whether the days are smooth like a lake in the morning, or challenging and scary... a day in which your footing just isn't always sure.

It's life.  And if I can't accept and be OK with where I am, how can I expect others to be just as OK with where I am?  Being where you are. In the present. In the moment.  Living.

I don't throw "haunted" out there often, but seriously...

My apartment is.... Haunted.

No, this is not a "Happy Early Halloween" post.

As cool as that would be, that is not what this is.

This is a "Holy crap my apartment is haunted and I promise I'm not making it up even though I thought it was just a microwave that was broken, but now JM and I bought a new microwave and holy crap that one is turning on by itself when it's not plugged in too WTF!!!!" post.

It's scary as all get out. And right now, JM is at work, and I am as far away from the microwave as possible. Because 1) it is creepy. 2) it is haunted and 3) it's brand new and still turning itself on when it shouldn't be.

WTF. I know this apartment building is old. And I know JM and I had a super cheap microwave before, and it was probably just short wiring itself.

But now, the new $70 microwave that we bought yesterday? Yea. That one is turning itself on too.

And, seriously. WTF. This is bananas. Like Rachel Zoe project, watermelons and bananas. Stupid.

And creepy. And it's still another 5 weeks until Halloween. Creepy.