Psh, I Can Write a Better Blog Than That

HOLY CRAP I'M BACK AFTER LESS THAN 7 DAYS!!! I still contend this will not hold for long. But at least it happened once. Boom.

So, the last few months with my flippant moods, I've become painfully aware that "be where you are" is somehow not happening here... It's supposed to. But it's not.

So now I'm wondering "well how the hell DO you be where you are."

Spoiler alert: I have no freaking clue.

In the great irony that is life, last week I was stoked about my free online classes for the most part. One in particular, "Inspiring Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence", I have not been very amped about. First off, it's an Industrial/Organizational psychologist whom I have not had the best of luck with nor do I like the field... like, at all. It's like fast food-- you got into some I/O subject, forgetting how much you're not a fan and it's not until after you've started eating it that you think, "Hmm, yea... This is not a good life choice."

Additionally, the professor is super jazzed about mindfulness.

Also, I was super bummed that the course was not about how to manipulate people via emotional intelligence but is instead how to improve your leadership skills using emotional intelligence... probably isn't a good thing that my mind immediately interpreted the course in a sociopathic way and then made worse by the fact that I was disappointed when it was not "How to be a sociopath 101".

But, I digress...

So what is mindfulness, you ask? Excellent question, dear reader. Mindfulness is the hot new thing for psychology and therapy. I've been to countless presentations on mindfulness and every time they describe it (if they describe it at all) as "being mindful of one's own internal state"... um,... I'm pretty sure when I had to do vocab sheets back in 3rd grade I failed when I used the word to define the word. Is no one mindful of how holy unhelpful this is?

And this is why I continue to attend presentations on it-- it's hot shit, it's everywhere, I clearly am missing something since I'm not totally infatuated with this process which seems like half-assed meditation. You sit quietly and intention examine your body state-- are you hungry? Is your heart beating quickly? Are you stressed? And in this process of wondering how/where you should relax, you ACTUALLY RELAX.

Holy shit. Didn't see that one coming. Shit came from NOWHERE.

To clarify, I'm not saying we don't need to relax, I'm saying how is being insightful, self evaluative, and conscientious a "hot" "new" or "thing"? Pretty sure "check yourself before you wreck yourself" has been around much longer than "mindfulness".

But then as I'm sitting here, watching the videos on emotional intelligence and the hotmess I/O-ish presentation of "look at all these studies that suggest mindfulness is hot shit and those that don't practice it get Ebola and other issues that are catastrophically worse than Ebola."-- I just cannot help but think, "Oh shit, I'm like 2 seconds from getting Ebola because I don't practice mindfulness."

Check yourself before you wreck yourself, Lauren. Pretty sure by taking the time to critically assess if your being mindful is actually in a demented sort of way mindfulness. You're mindful of not being mindful. Mindful requirements? Done. *whew* A neurotic moment a day keeps the Ebola away!

Before anyone goes and googles Ebola-- it's a virus that eats off your skin that made the jump from monkeys to humans (knew I shouldn't have touched that shifty monkey) and there's only been like 3 cases in the United States ever and you die a slow horrible painful death in 3 days... which, actually, compared to AIDS which we also got from those shifty jungle banana-throwing motherfuckers, is pretty quickly. Either way, don't google it, no one wants to see that.

So at least once every hour, I catch myself being negative and thinking how I should stop.

Today was the worse when I was reviewing one of my new syllabuses (syllabi? syllaboose? syllabusi? English, go home, you're drunk) and immediately started judging the shit out of it. This was consolidated (via mindfulness? maybe? probably not?) to 4 questions on the message board.

I think that teaching is one of the hardest jobs in the world and I believe that I could never do it. It takes the patience and dedication that I don't even have a fraction of. So when I see a syllabus in the context of: the teacher has taught the EXACT same class before in the previous semester (and some semesters before it) in the EXACT same program and essentially only needed to tweak here and there and change the dates, I am PISSED. This is the first time I have ever met you (which, yes, is a lot of pressure conveyed on a syllabus) and you hand me this, and I get the distinct feeling that me or a gorilla in a suit (I'm not talking to that damn monkey) could teach the class better, I feel something is messed up with this picture!

And so begins the battle royale as 30% of me tries to meekishly say, "Well, you're not a teacher-- you don't know." and "Try to be positive-- you can control how much you get from this class.", the other 70% of me negative nancy's back, "No! This is bullshit! An 800-level class doesn't mean you do high school level shit 6 times more than what is necessary!" Am I being practical or negative? What do you do when shit is genuinely impractical? How do you be where you are or be mindful? I'm upset that I'm wasting my time doing things that could really only waste my damn time. How is mindfulness helpful in this situation?

As I alluded before, I have no answer to these questions. I guess there's just a fine line somewhere that distinguishes between "be where you are" and "shit, this situation is not good so let's take this time to think about otters holding hands."

And when all else fails, partner up with a gorilla in a suit. No one fucks with a gorilla in a suit because you just KNOW he means business.