mja blog

  • Observing

    Some notes and exercises from counseling session.

    • Disengagement from the present
    • Self as concept, labels
    • Thought fusion
    • Struggle/control of emotions –  “clean” emotions
    • Actions
    • Consequences

    Exercises

    1. Separating thoughts from self. Example thought: “I am boring” -> I am thinking I am boring -> I notice I am thinking I am boring -> (funny cartoon voice) I notice I am thinking I am boring. (I chose Marvin the Martian – cracked me up).

    2. Awareness exercise. Close eyes or focus on fixed point, no distractions. Think about awareness of feelings, sensations, sounds. Simply observe, no pressure, no control. Focus on breathing (10 breaths). Acknowledge awareness of wandering of thoughts, refocus on breathing.

    This post from Very Happy Phil pretty much covers the session.

  • Laptop keyboard problem fixed

    Since attaching an external USB keyboard my laptop keyboard had been useless – press certain keys and the wrong characters came out. Wasn’t a huge problem until recently when I wanted to take the laptop somewhere without lugging along the external keyboard. We needed to access data from a password protected Sandisk and ended up locking the thing because of the keyboard issue.

    On a day off so searched the net to find someone on Yahoo with the same problem. And the solution was to turn off the NUMLOCK key on the USB keyboard. Problem solved!

  • Mixed messages

    It was about five minutes past knock off time and as I was packing up the phone rang. It was our chairman, who had phoned to speak to someone else who’d already left for the day. When I mentioned the late hour he said why are you still there then, and started asking me about my workload and if I thought it would get easier now the annual reporting was done. In the next breath he was asking me about my holiday, barely listened to my reply before asking if I had the latest cashflow report done yet. I’d just had an intense day of payroll, and trying to get the books into order after a week off so it was very tempting at that point to hang up the phone. I’m afraid I finish very few conversations with this man without thinking him a fool, which is a shame really because I think his heart is in the right place, he gives so much to the organisation. Just crap when it comes to dealing with people.

  • Big dust storm

    Looked a nice sort of day when I hung out our new guest room sheets. An hour or so later was sitting at my desk updating the dog rescue site and noticed the smell and taste of dust in the air. Looked outside and everywhere is a pale orange smoke – thought fire at first but no smoky smell. Realised it was a giant dust cloud. Phoned mum, was over their side as well, came up from Broken Hill. On the net – images of bright orange sunrise in Sydney, meteorological estimates of the dust cloud reaching Brisbane by 10am. Dead on.

    Dust everywhere, horrible stuff. Had planned a day of intensive house cleaning, not much point. Will have to wash the sheets again I think. Go away dust!

  • Now that I’m forty

    Can’t believe I’m 40, how on earth can that be? just shows how time marches on while your state of mind flitters and dwells at different points. Age is irrelevant, really. Apart from giving your body a shelf-life.

  • Oops forgot

    Went through a whole day yesterday without realising it was my wedding anniversary. H reminded me when I got home in the evening, he’d got us a yummy cake from the Cheesecake Shop to help celebrate.