Archive for the ‘On My Way Out’ Tag
I consulted with a few friends about the appropriateness of publishing my Holiday letter, and we all agreed — I’m old enough to get away with it. I don’t have to worry about my resume, and I think my reputation is sufficiently solid. I know this contains no pornography or even indecent language. So I should be good to go. Enjoy! Or not, as the spirit moves you.
MONA’S LETTER
As I write this it’s 3:55 p.m. here at The Waters of Excelsior in Minnesota and night is about to fall. Have you noticed that, at this time of year, it really does fall? In a few minutes I’ll turn on my Christmas lights ready to greet me when I get back from walking the halls for a half hour. (I have to keep my phone happy by completing its red circle. I don’t know how my phone knows what I need to do, but it says I should, so I will.) Anyway, to get to the point. I’m beginning to receive Holiday greetings from kind and timely friends, so I guess it’s time for me to roll my own news off the presses. And yes, I do have a bit of news.
Activities: I’ve been involved in the establishment of a Resident Council here. It seems that our first order of business has been to examine and encourage improvement in the way newcomers are welcomed. I think you know I’m an oldster here, in more ways than one, having moved in at the very beginning — December, 2018. By now we’re basically fully occupied with a waiting list of those who want to join us. I continue to find it a wonderful way to live, like being on a perpetual cruise without the potential for rough waters. I also enjoy the weekly meeting of our poetry/writer’s group here, expected to produce something to share every Friday. Most Thursdays I’m also in attendance at the Bible Study group currently led by Pastor (and musician) Mark Abelson from Mount Calvary Lutheran Church. Not always, though, because when son Doug is around there are many days when I’m off to various conflicting entertainments: The Guthrie Theater, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Cantus, The Bach Society concerts, and probably other things that are slipping past awareness right now. Oh yes, I should mention that I’m enjoying being the Correspondent for the Connecticut College for Women class of 1951. I didn’t like finding no news about us in the college magazine, as if we were gone and forgotten, so I volunteered. You do have to move pretty far into the back of the section to find us, though. I’m involved, too, in establishing a writer’s group at the Southshore community Center.
Travel: August saw son Douglas and me spending fourteen days cruising with Viking’s Octantis down the Great Lakes. It’s the same expedition ship we were on last year in the Antarctic. The difference from typical cruises is exemplified by the chemistry-classroom-like auditorium with lectures and documentaries on the broad screen up front instead of a performance theater. I don’t get to gamble, but I do satisfy my brainiac self while enjoying a cappuccino without having to pass a test at the end. While Doug takes advantage of every off-ship excursion he can fit in, I’m happy to stay on board most of the time. But I did enjoy the visit to the Ford Museum in Detroit. Wow! Those presidential limos are much longer than they seem when they appear in the news. And I enjoyed sitting in the seat that Rosa Parks had occupied on the bus when she refused to move to the back. Next year we’ll be anticipating a 2026 cruise to the Arctic on the Octantis’s sister ship, the Polaris. But, if all goes as planned, before that, in August, we’ll be cruising Viking up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Saint Paul, assuming there’ll be enough water in the river. Finally, I should mention that I did not renew my license to practice at the end of May, but, based on my academic and writing credentials, I am still available for tutoring and consulting.
Writing: Closest to my heart is working on a manuscript, intended to be a book if I can make it through the search for a publisher. Its initial title was On My Way Out, the personal story of my career in psychology with lots of tales of events along the way as the years and psychology changed. For example, My conditioned response reaction to Vaugh Monroe’s Blue Moon at the romantic high school after-prom party. But I changed the title to A Healthy Woman Was a Crazy Person when I realized how contemporary the ending was as men are now dealing with their “problem that has no name” in reaction to the success of the women’s movement. I’m available to share more info about that – eager, actually.
Summary: To tell the truth, I’m glad I’m on my way out. I’m so grateful for all the blessings I’ve received along the way, but I’m in no rush to close the door behind me. There’s just too much left to accomplish and enjoy. I have no doubt we’re entering a period of historically significant and probably startling change. I hope for all of us that what lies ahead will come to reflect the message of love we celebrate in this season displayed in the growth of kindness, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, justice, and peace. In the meantime I’ll try to do my best.
Mona
A few days ago I promised to talk about handling my morning depression. I thought then that I was finally going to write every day in my blog. Obviously I didn’t succeed. (Remember, there’s a rule against saying “I failed.”) I’m not sure why I didn’t manage to get that done, but I have a few suggestions. Maybe I’m getting involved in too many things; maybe it’s because I’ve reached the “I need a nap NOW” age; maybe I’m engaging in that form of putting-things-off-until-tomorrow called “productive procrastination;” maybe I’m too involved in trying to write a good query letter to find an agent/publisher who’ll be interested in my manuscript On My Way Out: A Psychologist’s Personal Tale; maybe it’s because I do stupid things like watch the presidential debates.
But enough about me. Oh yeah, that’s supposed to be my theme for this blog. What do I do about the morning depression? Well, first off, two years of excellent therapy several decades ago gave me the awareness that the morning depression I experience is best called “situational depression.” And I’ve learned that there isn’t much I can control about the situation in this crazy world, so it helps to point my neurosis toward things I can do something about. That certainly shrinks the area of concern. Then I focus my attention and emotions on the tasks ahead. Obviously that gets me to focus on the present and the nice awareness that I am, indeed, on my way out. Also, the recognition that, as my daughter puts it, “My personal problems are first-world problems” and therefore, by definition, really blessings. How’s that for thought manipulation? By that time I’m ready for the biggy – opening up the well of gratitude, joy, humor, and love that flows because of all that other stuff I’ve mentioned. How could I feel anything else? So I open my door to join the interesting, often delightful people I’ll be connecting with. Okay, is it icky to say I focus on spreading joy and love? Well, so be it. That really is my goal. You’ll have to question the people around me to evaluate my success.
For several weeks I’ve been reading sources on “How to write effective query letters,” preparing to search for an agent for my Mandala: A Jigsaw Puzzle of a Psychologist’s Life.(My original title was On My Way Out but too many people found that a downer though I haven’t reached for the door knob yet.) All agree the first sentence must grab the potential agent’s attention or it will go into the slush pile, so it’s important that I come up with a template to which others respond favorably. But the same opener is seen as a grabber by some and a turnoff by others. I’ve made many changes along the way, but I realized yesterday that I have to be careful to preserve my own voice. It kind of smacked me up the side of the head when a kind reviewer suggested I should fact check the dates. Since it’s my own life I’m talking about I realized I’d better be clear that I am correct about those dates.
Yes, having been born on the day the stock market crashed in 1929 I am indeed approaching the middle of my ninetieth decade. Yes, psychology has been in my life for pretty much seventy-seven years if we include the early years in college when I got hooked. Yes, I began my college teaching career when I was twenty-two and never really faded completely from my identity as a professor. Yes, during those years I did serve as department chair. It’s also true that my career in private practice overlapped the last of my academic years and culminated at the end of May, 2024, when I voluntarily gave up my license. It’s also true that I have published books on psychological stuff, sort of biblical stuff, and personal family memoir stuff. And I have two really neat adult children, one of each, and two adult grandchildren, also one of each. Now I’m pushing my down-to-earth story of life and times over the past seventy plus decades. Lots has happened, most of it evoking shared history with the [potential] reader.
For further validation you can check out my website at www.forgivenessoptions.com.
Thanks
ANSWER: 245 pages (depending on the font) of some 64,000 words of On My Way Out: My life With Psi, the tentative title of a manuscript beginning to search for an agent/publisher. Stories, vignettes, opinions, emotions of 72 years of psychological process and change as filtered through me, professing, practicing, and writing told through chats as if sitting together at my kitchen table. And how the ending has surprised me as interests first expressed at the age of 13 have come together in the end! Well, not really the end. Call it the stopping point for now as I plan not to renew my Minnesota license to practice. That doesn’t stop me from sharing my knowledge through what I had hoped to call PsychBytes. But I just discovered that business title is already taken, so I guess I’ll have to find something creative to call it. Oh yes, the manuscript touches on some important just-plain-history along the way.
NOW, WHAT’S WRONG WITH SITTING ALONE IN MY ROOM? “Improvements” have run away from me in the blogger world as I’ve been consumed with writing (and some other stuff I do) so it doesn’t seem to allow easy replies from any of you who might read it. If you know me well enough to have my email address please feel free to email a response.
My next project here is to change my photo. I wish I still looked as young as the current one suggests, but honesty requires an update – a photo taken as COVID restrictions were coming to an end.
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