iTHINK

It's not just about what we think, but how we communicate what we are thinking. Blogging can be very personal but it can also be very manicured. Our thoughts are not always manicured.



This week we are reflecting on patterns of thinking but these patterns are often shaped by our language. For example in the Chinese language, everything is contextual. Each word has meaning based on the words it is combined with. This shapes the way people relate to the world and the way they relate to one another. In the Chinese culture, life is circular and everything is connected. You cannot have light without dark and one compliments the other.




In the English language, things seem to be more linear, more direct. How does this shape how we interact with one another? We interact head-on. Assertive. We also have a culture of where freedom of speech is honored. Because I was born speaking Chinese, I think this has shaped the foundation of how I see the world. I recently took a personality strengths test at work and found how important connectedness is to me. On the other hand, I have lost much of my Chinese language skills and have grown up in American cultures, speaking the English language. My relationship with these two languages has truly made me adaptable to many different ways of thinking, being and connecting with others. This is one of my most valuable skills in my Social Work.

In reflecting on which hat I wear, I would have to say it depends on where I am at physically and mentally. In one day, I can wear all of them! Because connectedness with others and the world is something which is super important to me,  it is also important for me to understand how I am easily affected by these connections. My most valuable skill in Social Work is also my Kryptonite.


         

                                                                     Kermit gets it...

Balanced Brain

balance

One of the things I love about studying social work is the amount of self-reflection I am assigned. In this week's reflection, I found that I am as just as rational as I am emotional. As much as I like to organize things (even my checkbook), I also love to be an artist (and create mixed-media art from my garbage). 

I personally feel like I am fairly balanced between my right and left brain. This is something that I have noticed since I was a young adolescent. While I am not 100% ambidextrous, I am able to write with both hands pretty well. I also was introduced to this activity while I was an AmeriCorps volunteer which is able to determine and exercise each side of your brain. Which way does the ballerina turn for you and can you get her to turn the other way?

While the ballerina turns right for me upon first glance, I am able to see her from my left brain and switch back and forth. Sometimes it takes me longer than other times but it just means that I must change my focus (literally). I am happy to say that currently in my life I feel like I have a lot of balance. My ballerina spins every which way with a hot pink tutu. I think this has been due to a conscious effort to find balance after experiencing major imbalance at my last job. One year ago, I felt ungrounded and completely right-brained and emotional. Because this job consumed most of my time, I was constantly in a world where everything was abstract. 

Now that I have a job where the hours do not consume my whole life, my job is straightforward and the mission of the work is something that I am proud to stand by, I feel balance again.

Now my world has a foreground, a horizon and identifiable objects.

This is also pretty much what my view is on the other side of my driveway now!

Obstacles

What do your obstacles look like?

Well, right now one of my biggest obstacles is figuring out my last year's internship. I have an opportunity for this upcoming year's internship with my work but I am really concerned with the following year's internship which must be different. It seems as though one of my goals is turning out to be an obstacle to full-time paid work at a place which I really enjoy working at. 

Another obstacle is how I view time. I am often a person who is willing to work really hard but I easily succumb to living in the present moment. In the present moment, it seems best to take full-time work but in the long run, it will be unmanageable and still be able to finish my MSW.

I would have to say though that my biggest obstacles often look like...me.

I guess it just depends on how I view things. For the most part, I'm a glass is half-full kind of gal. I often go by "Lucky Liu" because I really do feel like a have a lot of luck and success because of my optimism. Where I become my own obstacle is when I either am indecisive about something or when my optimism is overkill and I plan on doing too much at once.

I once had a friend/landlord say that you should never regret a decision because at one point, that is what you wanted. I like to think of this advice whenever I change my mind about something :)

How do I plan for the future when I can't see the future?

I don't have an answer for that...

"He said it's all just in your head and I said, 'so is everything' but he didn't get it." -Fiona Apple

***Apparently I have been updating the wrong blog link...here are the last few entries.

CONVERSATION ON FREE-WRITE EXERCISE:

When and where did you decide to do a free-write exercise?

     Well, I just moved into a new place and while things have been hectic for a little bit, I decided to take care of this class assignment sitting on the deck of my new barn-house loft overlooking the trees and vineyards in Sebastopol, CA. My mind has been racing with things to do, plans for the future, schoolwork to catch up on, etc. and my new serene space seemed like the perfect place to purge these thoughts outside of my brain.

What did you write about?

     Wedding planning...and how I have not enjoyed a single moment of it. I wrote about how I don't really care about the whole wedding part, I care about what happens after the wedding. I want to focus on mine and my partner's every day life, not this one day out of our lives. I wrote that I either want to elope or just have a super casual wedding. I wrote about how other people's expectations or requests have played a big part in confusion about what both my guy and I want. I ranted and raved about how I say that I don't care but I must care if I'm so hesitant to make decisions and so resistant to many ideas that have come up. I realized in my writing, that I am concerning myself with what other people expect and want. I also realized that my own expectations of my wedding day are conflicting.

Can you give examples of your conflicting thoughts/ideas?

    Yes. For example, I want the event to be easy, simple, pretty & stress-free. I want to be able to spend quality time with every person that comes. I want it to be small and intimate but I don't want to exclude any of my favorite people. I want it to be inexpensive and find a venue for free-cheap without having to hide that it's a wedding. (I called around to places and I have been quoted prices that have jumped from $300 a day to $2500 day just because I said the "W" word. 

How did you feel before, during and after the free-write exercise?

     At first, I had to kind of pump myself up to feel uninhibited. I had to remind myself to let the mistakes happen. It was almost involuntary that I would hit the delete button when I knew I typed the wrong letter. It took me a minute into the free-write (or more like free-type) to stop correcting punctuation and spelling. After that, my thoughts weren't interrupted with "oops, I messed up" followed by "oops I corrected my mess up". I really was able to dive deeper into my feelings as opposed to these individual thoughts that were strung together. After the free-write I had a clearer understanding about my wedding day hangups. My hangups are that I do  care, so much so that I don't want it to be dictated by other people's expectations or traditions. My other hangup is that I don't know what I truly want. This is something for me to think about next and maybe meditate or practice a free-write which begins thinking about what I want, uninterrupted with outside opinions.

Was this a positive or negative experience?

     I would have to say that it was a very positive thing to do. I probably wouldn't have done this without the prompt. Instead, I would kept this all in my head (like I have been). I hide it to not seem like a "Bridezilla" or get tired of hearing my own thoughts out loud. I'm usually one to keep things in my head until I have found a solution. The problem with that is that sometimes I don't have the answers and I can only get them by enlisting the help of others. So, while on one hand I have to go deep within myself to figure out what I want, I am also open to taking any wedding day advice from those who have been there or dream of their wedding day. 

Why this video?

     The title of this post comes from this song. I like the lyric, "He says it's all in my head. I said so is everything but he didn't get it." It reminded me of all the things that were in my head before the free-write. While this song is not representative of how I am really feeling about anything, I just love the song and the video is cool.

Silence is Golden Golden...

Paulo Freire always reminded us of complexity, even in language. The word 'silence' stretches way beyond oppression. It also describe something we seek and treasure. It's in silence that we gather our thoughts, center out energy, fell the love and understanding we need for taking action. Quakers, Buddhist meditators and many others use silence to connect with forces larger than ourselves. Freire also valued the reflective possibilities of silence. In 1985, I heard him speak about what he called the "tensions between silence and voice." Silence, which we often see as empty, can represent great activity. "I can spend one hour silent but totally alive. I can speak a lot in silence" he told a crowd at Harvard University. Freire warned teachers not to "emphasize our own voice so much that we impose silence on students" but to "feel out how to get voice from the other side... how to, little by little, go into silence." When we truly choose it, silence is a powerful ally to speech (Dunlap,15)" 

What is "good silence" to me? 

The first thing I think of is music. What would music be like without silence between the notes, the beats, the melody? Silence makes it deeper and makes it move you. 

How does this apply to social work?

Well, when it comes to counseling, I have been taught that a counselor does not give advice but listens and asks questions. In my own experiences or with friends, being able to talk out one's problems or situation, leads to one's own answers. 

Why are good things hard?

Just as eating healthy is difficult (in our culture)...so is staying in silence. 

In my opinion, one of the most difficult parts to silence is the vulnerability. Many people feel uncomfortable in silence (almost like they are naked). Maybe this is why elevators are so awkward, but how do you start and end a one minute conversation with strangers?

 I think it is with silence that we can really hear our own thoughts. How does one truly know one's self without taking the time to listen? Just today, I listened to a TED talk which was incredibly inspiring about the power of listening to other people's stories, the power of vulnerability and the power of self-acceptance. Here is the link to a social worker/researcher/storyteller's lesson through her work...

Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability

Health & Happiness

This week in my adventures of social work studies, I did a single case study experiment on myself (as did the rest of my cohort). I chose the wacky idea of only eating alkaline foods based on the alkaline-ash-diet for three consecutive days. My hypothesis was that I would be able to lower my acid levels according to the pH strips that I had.

There seems to be more and more awareness around cancer awareness and prevention. One of the connections to this is that cancers seem to not be able to live in an alkaline body and seem to thrive in an acidic environment. In current media you can learn more about it in documentary "Forks Over Knives" or in the book The End of Illness by David B. Agus, M.D.

While my experiment was a test in more ways than one, my results were surprising and inconclusive. I spent half of this week feeling hungry but had a lot of energy. I probably slept better and woke more refreshed having taken out coffee and pretty much all sugar (besides fruit) out of my diet. Normally when I get super hungry I get cranky but even though I felt hungry every few hours, I did not get moody :) The only strong feeling I had was that I missed flavorful foods. I got pretty bored with my combination of vegetables with no sauces. The other surprising thing was that as each day passed of very diligent work in not eating anything I felt like, my pH levels seemed to get more and more acidic! While I'm sure the health benefits were still great, it was not reflected in a more alkaline bodily state. One of my friends said, maybe your body was still getting rid of all the acid from how you have always eaten. I could have done this test for longer....but self control is still a work in progress!

When I started eating without consciousness, I honestly noticed a difference in my energy. I noticed I ate more than my body felt comfortable with. I could feel this in a tired, lethargic kind of way throughout the day.   At my work we had a gourmet food and wine event which raises money for the non-profit. No one can deny that health and happiness often go together but what is easily forgotten is both of their links to FOOD!

This is an area that is also of more prominent concern in the area of social work as well as social policy. Many schools are changing their cafeteria menus to have organic healthy meals. Schools are also incorporating gardening curriculum into their classrooms. California's Prop 37 is a hot topic on labeling genetically altered foods so that consumers are able to be conscious about their food. As we know from ecological systems perspective...everything is connected. Food. Health. Happiness. Food.

Am I missing something?

Okay, so things seem to be going really smoothly in all areas of life. I must be missing something...
I keep second guessing myself and questioning what I am doing wrong if everything seems like it's going right. I am keeping up on my homework and actually able to do all of the readings. I effortlessly have personal time. I have picked up more hours at work and do not feel stressed out in any way.

Even though summer session almost did me in, I am still pumped up on this program. While often good things take a lot of hard work, there were moments that were truly unmanageable. I definitely learned some personal lessons having gone through that though. For example, I learned that I when I feel like saying "no", that's what should come out of my mouth. I also learned a lot more about people in my cohort: about their journey into this profession, their personal lives, their work ethic and their patience.

Just like everyone else, I was able to have my check-in with Jamie. It is components of the program like this which make me feel like I am really a part of something. I was stoked to talk about goals and opportunities in the future with internships and job prospects. I felt heard about what I have struggled with in the program so far. I am excited for these webinars with guest lecturers because I have had moments where I feel like I am in a self-teach program.

This weekend I was able to take the long weekend to come up to Humboldt and spend time with some of my dearest friends. Some of these friends are people who I started work with in Alaska. Reminiscing on the work we have done,talking about our Masters programs in Social Work and Speech Pathology, exploring  our personal and professional goals, eating good food, hiking and just being together again is such a sweet thing to be able to do. I am so thankful that the flow of this semester allows me the time and mental space to be able to have this time! It is so rejuvenating and much needed after an intense summer.

I really hope everyone else in the program is having a similar experience....And if you're not...I must be missing something!!!

Interview with Me: a conversation with myself

                     Mountain pass in Tibet with Humboldt State University's China/Tibet Geography Program

Why did you choose Social Work? 
Well, I chose it because it is at the core of who I am. I once took a personality quiz which asks the following questions:

What is your favorite color?
Describe three things that the color makes you feel....

Favorite Animal?
Three things this animal makes you feel or think of....

You are in the ocean...
How does it make you feel? (describe three)

**If you are interested in taking the same quiz, answer the above questions BEFORE you see the interpretation at the bottom of the blog.

I remember the answer to my favorite animal was a human. The human connection is so important and brings more meaning to individual lives. I love people, working with them and getting to know them. 

What was your first Social Work experience?
I would have to say that it was as a result of my dad who was orphaned as a child. When he came to the United States, he opened a restaurant and has committed every year that I can remember to hosting a Thanksgiving celebration for all of the kids in the Sacramento Children's Home. 


When did this turn into a career for you?

Teaching chainsaw training in Juneau, Alaska

After I got my degree in International Studies with a minor in Chinese at Humboldt State University, I was at a loss for where and what work I would find  in the struggling economy. I eventually decided to continue to feed my travel bug and build my resume at the same time by taking an AmeriCorps position in Alaska. My commitment was to teach youth job preparedness and civic engagement by doing environmental conservation and community service.

Alaskan  youth giving the AmeriCorps oath

What is something about you that most people don't know?
Hmmm, I would have to say that most people don't know how old I am since I look like I'm 12 but I'm really 33 years old. I have also traveled extensively, taught English in Tibet, Laos and China and was a teacher's assistant at HSU.

VA Program at Canine Companions

What's in store for you in the future?
I am currently working part-time at Canine Companions for Independence. In the future I am hoping to diversify the demographic of people that I have worked with. My focus has always been on education, youth and conservation but I am looking to potentially work with more adults and specifically Veterans. Canine Companions offers an opportunity to do such a thing as they have a Veterans program while they also serve the disabled community. Although I want to experience work with a different demographic, I am still passionate about education and nature. Another goal of mine is to continue in education but teach at the collegiate level.

** If you took the quiz the interpretation is listed below...

Color: Reflects how you view yourself
Animal: Reflects how you view your significant other or the opposite sex in general
Water: Reflects how you view love

I took this years ago and if I remember correctly, my answers were something like:
BLUE: because it's deep, vibrant & a natural feeling.
HUMANS: because they are amazing, creative & funny.
OCEAN: cold, scared & afraid.

Me & the man I said "yes" to this week!