It really exists. The Snipe. What multitudes of Scouts have been dispatched with flashlights into the scary woods to hunt over the generations. So I always assumed it was a myth, a hoax perpetrated on the young. But I saw one today, a brown shore bird hunkered down next to a pond at Nisqually.
We had a very productive Bird Walk, 20 to 30 people mostly experts at spotting, hearing, and identifying hundreds of species of birds, the birders stalking like insects with extra metal legs as they haul their spotting scopes on their backs around the refuge.
A spotting scope is a wondrous device, much more powerful than my binoculars [ancient, heavy Porro binoculars 7 X 35 with individually focused lenses which I carry around my neck by a leather thong, the original strap having disintegrated as soon as I inherited them from my father. His name, Lewis A. Elwood, on label-maker strips from the '70's, is attached to the scuffed brown leather case.] A spotting scope has a very narrow view, making it hard to locate the bird independently with naked eye or binoculars, but shows individual feathers with a breathtaking resolution.
I was able to see, with or without assistance spotting them:
Peregrine falcon
Snipe
Rufous Hummingbird
Anna's Hummingbird
A coyote down the dike road, lurking about and wishing this crowd of people would disperse so he could hunt
Cinnamon Teal pair
Ruddy Duck
Yellow-Throated Warbler
Redtail hawk
A muskrat
Mergansers
Buffle Heads
Northern Shovelers
Pintails
Redwing Blackbirds, a favorite from my youth in Eastern Washington
Two [or more] Tree Swallows, brilliant blue back and light front, delicate
Cormorants
Mew Gulls
Greater Yellowlegs
Song sparrows
A rabbit
Kingfisher
Eagles on a nest
Great Blue Herons
Very Large Wheeling Flock of Geese
Marsh Wren
And because I decided to accompany the de facto leader back by a longer route than I would have taken, I spotted a tiny hummingbird on a nest because overhead I heard a "tick, tick, tick", looked up and it was there, just settling into a tiny nest which looked exactly like all the thousands of clumps of lichen nearby. Also, I was particularly blessed, because the leader spotted them and had them in his scope, to view two juvenile Great Horned Owls snuggled on an aspen branch, indistinguishable from dozens of other aspens. Finally, nearly a year from when I started visiting the Refuge and coming on Bird Walks, I saw not one, but two owls.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Validation
Intake at the DVR went very well last week, with a plan set to meet with a psychiatrist to assess what is going on with me. They hadn't been able to schedule me yet. This morning I received a call that there was an opening for an appointment today. Even though I wasn't sure I was ready to make my case about what I think is going on, i.e. the nature of mental defect, I met with a psychiatrist today.
I spent an hour talking a mile a minute about my life at school, what types of things threw me and what I was better at, and various jobs and what didn't work well, and the longest job I've held, and outcomes, and so forth. The "negative feedback loop" I get into when criticism causes my performance to worsen. All over the map. Able to crack him up both intentionally and unintentionally, which is always a big payoff.
The doctor said he has seen hundreds of people with Asperger's Disorder, pointed out that in the DSM-V the term "Asperger's" has been eliminated and replaced with Autism Spectrum Disorder. And that I should stop obsessing about it. It's just that I've known all my life that something is haywire, and things go wrong in my life that I have no control over, but that the symptoms are largely invisible. I'm just a screw-up, a person who doesn't care and doesn't try hard enough. So, yes, I've been desperate for validation, powered by my intense frustration at my life. So I can say, yes, this is where I am, and be able to move on from there.
Just yesterday I went to a workshop at WorkSource and afterwards explained to the presenter what I think, that I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. "I don't think you have it," he said. Which didn't hurt too much, as I would not expect him to be an expert.
In any case, the person holding my fate in his hands, the gatekeeper if I allow him to be, delivered his verdict: Anxiety Disorder, ADD, and, yes, Autism Spectrum Disorder--Mild. And wrote a prescription for a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and will forward his findings to DVR.
It's taken several hours to decompress and for my relief to sink in. I've been feeling excess energy drain off all day. And, oddly, to begin to move on, already.
I spent an hour talking a mile a minute about my life at school, what types of things threw me and what I was better at, and various jobs and what didn't work well, and the longest job I've held, and outcomes, and so forth. The "negative feedback loop" I get into when criticism causes my performance to worsen. All over the map. Able to crack him up both intentionally and unintentionally, which is always a big payoff.
The doctor said he has seen hundreds of people with Asperger's Disorder, pointed out that in the DSM-V the term "Asperger's" has been eliminated and replaced with Autism Spectrum Disorder. And that I should stop obsessing about it. It's just that I've known all my life that something is haywire, and things go wrong in my life that I have no control over, but that the symptoms are largely invisible. I'm just a screw-up, a person who doesn't care and doesn't try hard enough. So, yes, I've been desperate for validation, powered by my intense frustration at my life. So I can say, yes, this is where I am, and be able to move on from there.
Just yesterday I went to a workshop at WorkSource and afterwards explained to the presenter what I think, that I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. "I don't think you have it," he said. Which didn't hurt too much, as I would not expect him to be an expert.
In any case, the person holding my fate in his hands, the gatekeeper if I allow him to be, delivered his verdict: Anxiety Disorder, ADD, and, yes, Autism Spectrum Disorder--Mild. And wrote a prescription for a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and will forward his findings to DVR.
It's taken several hours to decompress and for my relief to sink in. I've been feeling excess energy drain off all day. And, oddly, to begin to move on, already.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Short Blurb
I stayed up too late and woke too early but went to a Stress Management class at WorkSource, led by a gentleman I am already acquainted with, very nice person. I let him know what happened with my last position, but didn't have time to go into the Autism Spectrum issue. My plan is to email him and set up an appointment to get more support for whatever transition I'm going through.
I called back a very nice person at a facility in Lacey and was very honest about my situation, and we had a very civil and friendly discussion of whether or not this would be the ideal position for me [not], and I left the door open to reapplying if I feel differently in the future.
Sometimes I have waves of compassion and joy for figuring out what is going on with me and why my life never quite works right. Fifty years of being misunderstood; a childhood teased, bullied, excluded, rejected, confused, hurt, lost . . . The clarity is incredible, lovely. But after this conversation I want to cry. I've never liked closing doors, but it's time.
I called back a very nice person at a facility in Lacey and was very honest about my situation, and we had a very civil and friendly discussion of whether or not this would be the ideal position for me [not], and I left the door open to reapplying if I feel differently in the future.
Sometimes I have waves of compassion and joy for figuring out what is going on with me and why my life never quite works right. Fifty years of being misunderstood; a childhood teased, bullied, excluded, rejected, confused, hurt, lost . . . The clarity is incredible, lovely. But after this conversation I want to cry. I've never liked closing doors, but it's time.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
More Hodgepodge, and Faith Unconcealed
I almost got a job by mistake the other day. It was horrifying. Ninety-nine out of a hundred applications I put in don't even receive a response, let alone an interview. I had accidentally applied to an unfamiliar company which turned out to be an agency, forgetting that agencies hire anyone, sometimes without even interviewing them. I did need to interview, however, and that was a saving grace.
Even though I am a seasoned, accomplished nurse, I have to be thoroughly oriented to a station to be able to perform well. Orientation lets you become familiar with an area, wiggle around in it and know where you are, turn around three times to settle in like a dog going to sleep. Jumping into a new area without orientation is terrible. You don't know who anyone is, how they take their medications, where the medications are on the cart, and inevitably medications are missing which ought to have been ordered to make sure they are in stock. It requires nerves of steel and impeccable organizational skills.
One time at "Mountain View" [well, it was like death for me to work there] I was forced to work a shift in a completely unfamiliar station, due to people calling off work. My first two hours were taken up with a resident whose narcotic medication had been allowed to run out and who needed a new prescription, and who was screaming at the top of her lungs until the situation was resolved. This put my med pass very late. There were three people on IV antibiotics, two of them twice during the shift, and representatives from a mortuary kept coming in the back door and setting off the alarm. It was a shift from hell, but the residents were all still alive when I finally left, two hours overtime. The next day I received a reprimand because someone had wanted juice with their medications, which I had no idea where to find, and didn't have time to run all over creation finding some, and I stated that I hadn't any juice. They didn't like how I put it: I haven't got any juice.
So that's what work at this agency would have entailed: jumping into unfamiliar facilities at unfamiliar stations for a shift from hell, every single time. Disaster. Even if I survived a few shifts, something would have gone wrong, and all the misery would have been in vain. It was too late when I realized this after I applied. I was enveloped in terror. I couldn't sleep without nightmares about working agency. So during the interview, as I am not allowed to turn down work, it was necessary to let the "Aphrodite", the interviewer, know the situation without actually saying, "don't offer me the job."
My approach was to fill out all the paperwork and sit through the interview, but let Aphrodite know that I was extremely terrified of taking assignments under the circumstances, and she eventually figured it out.
The great thing was that for the first time during a job interview I ended up revealing that I was a Baha'i, and teaching the person something about the Faith. It came up because she was asking about availability and I mentioned a study circle I was taking--what on--the "Covenant"--what's that about--The Baha'i Faith--what's that, I never heard of it. I only reveal that I'm a Baha'i when there is no other alternative.
We had the usual discussion where I talked about the origins of the Faith, and the concept of the Founders of the major religions reflecting the qualities and revealing the message of the Unknowable Essence, and how the Faith recognizes the divine origins of the various other major Faiths, so she goes, "So, it's a hodgepodge then." And onward. No, it isn't a hodgepodge, it's an independent religion. And I received the usual testament about her having Jesus Christ as her personal savior and so forth. She was curious but completely unreceptive. Which is fine by me; this is not "wrong." Merely a lack of understanding.
Coming out as a Baha'i is like coming out as being on the Autism Spectrum. I meet with incredulity. How could I be so stupid as to believe this? So I usually walk around hiding this terrible secret, that I'm an insane idiot. Revealing it is like setting my hair on fire. It's as if I were walking around in a sort of burkha which conceals who I really am.
Circa 1850 in the early history of the Faith in Iran, a woman named Tahirih entered a tent full of men without her veil, with her face showing. It was a symbol of entering a new era, where the laws of the old dispensation were abrogated, where women are realized as equal with men. A trumpet blast.
Even though I feel nakedly exposed if people know who I am, even if they think I am a crazy idiot, even if explaining my beliefs is awkward and arduous, maybe it's time to step out of the veil.
Even though I am a seasoned, accomplished nurse, I have to be thoroughly oriented to a station to be able to perform well. Orientation lets you become familiar with an area, wiggle around in it and know where you are, turn around three times to settle in like a dog going to sleep. Jumping into a new area without orientation is terrible. You don't know who anyone is, how they take their medications, where the medications are on the cart, and inevitably medications are missing which ought to have been ordered to make sure they are in stock. It requires nerves of steel and impeccable organizational skills.
One time at "Mountain View" [well, it was like death for me to work there] I was forced to work a shift in a completely unfamiliar station, due to people calling off work. My first two hours were taken up with a resident whose narcotic medication had been allowed to run out and who needed a new prescription, and who was screaming at the top of her lungs until the situation was resolved. This put my med pass very late. There were three people on IV antibiotics, two of them twice during the shift, and representatives from a mortuary kept coming in the back door and setting off the alarm. It was a shift from hell, but the residents were all still alive when I finally left, two hours overtime. The next day I received a reprimand because someone had wanted juice with their medications, which I had no idea where to find, and didn't have time to run all over creation finding some, and I stated that I hadn't any juice. They didn't like how I put it: I haven't got any juice.
So that's what work at this agency would have entailed: jumping into unfamiliar facilities at unfamiliar stations for a shift from hell, every single time. Disaster. Even if I survived a few shifts, something would have gone wrong, and all the misery would have been in vain. It was too late when I realized this after I applied. I was enveloped in terror. I couldn't sleep without nightmares about working agency. So during the interview, as I am not allowed to turn down work, it was necessary to let the "Aphrodite", the interviewer, know the situation without actually saying, "don't offer me the job."
My approach was to fill out all the paperwork and sit through the interview, but let Aphrodite know that I was extremely terrified of taking assignments under the circumstances, and she eventually figured it out.
The great thing was that for the first time during a job interview I ended up revealing that I was a Baha'i, and teaching the person something about the Faith. It came up because she was asking about availability and I mentioned a study circle I was taking--what on--the "Covenant"--what's that about--The Baha'i Faith--what's that, I never heard of it. I only reveal that I'm a Baha'i when there is no other alternative.
We had the usual discussion where I talked about the origins of the Faith, and the concept of the Founders of the major religions reflecting the qualities and revealing the message of the Unknowable Essence, and how the Faith recognizes the divine origins of the various other major Faiths, so she goes, "So, it's a hodgepodge then." And onward. No, it isn't a hodgepodge, it's an independent religion. And I received the usual testament about her having Jesus Christ as her personal savior and so forth. She was curious but completely unreceptive. Which is fine by me; this is not "wrong." Merely a lack of understanding.
Coming out as a Baha'i is like coming out as being on the Autism Spectrum. I meet with incredulity. How could I be so stupid as to believe this? So I usually walk around hiding this terrible secret, that I'm an insane idiot. Revealing it is like setting my hair on fire. It's as if I were walking around in a sort of burkha which conceals who I really am.
Circa 1850 in the early history of the Faith in Iran, a woman named Tahirih entered a tent full of men without her veil, with her face showing. It was a symbol of entering a new era, where the laws of the old dispensation were abrogated, where women are realized as equal with men. A trumpet blast.
Even though I feel nakedly exposed if people know who I am, even if they think I am a crazy idiot, even if explaining my beliefs is awkward and arduous, maybe it's time to step out of the veil.
A Hodgepodge
I woke up from a dream where I was telling a joke: the old wheeze about the farmer in the back country who shoots a crow, sees a band on its leg and phones the eight hundred number to complain. "I followed your directions: 'Wash. biol. surv.' It was turrible."
Back by the popular demand of one person [you know who you are] is my blog. I haven't blogged in three or four months for the same reason I almost never write letters. I am always waiting to find out how things turn out in the end before I report. So far, turrible. If my life were a book I would burn it, and I don't burn books.
At the moment I am more or less lost in a fog, but at least I have decided to live. Usually when I see no viable alternatives in my life I become devoted to the notion that my life needs to end, but I have realized that even if I don't know what my next step is or how to get there, even when I'm turning away from my only known means of support [i.e. the nursing profession], I may as well live life anyway. And contrary to opinion, buying and eating bacon does not count as a suicide attempt.
My current theory of life is the recognition that I am on the Autism Spectum, relatively high-functioning, AKA Aspergers Syndrome. I am on a quest to verify that with the Powers That Be; to me, the more I study it and recognize how things have gone, particularly in my early life, the more obvious it is. Currently reading Tony Attwood's book, something like The Complete Guide to Aspergers, and one of the statements he makes is that older people with high intellectual functioning, particularly women, are often very hard to diagnose because they have learned to "camouflage" symptoms. Many of us are great mimics.
I rarely have credibility with people. I was in a social situation the other day when I mentioned the Aspergers. Usually a mistake. His response was that "it must be very mild, since you just looked me in the eye." My unspoken response: thank you very much for just invalidating everything I said. [The DSM-IV does not mention eye contact, by the way.] One symptom for me is continually being misunderstood. Another symptom is the peril of people making small talk. Invariably my talk is never sufficiently small, and I am just warming up to a subject by the time the victim turns their glazed vision to someone else to escape into conversation with anyone who can rescue them.
I am boning up for my interview with DVR. Don't jump to the conclusion I am looking for a handout. Just wanting a diagnosis and a way out of what has become completely unworkable as an occupation. I cannot work nor contemplate working without burning in an invisible hell of anxiety, fear, and mortal terror. If I am not working, I am terrified of homelessness and starvation on the streets. If I am working, I am terrified of messing up social interactions, losing my job, and dying of starvation on the streets.
My last job was beautiful, fascinating, wonderful. It was very easy to get: an interview with the administrator [for an acute psychiatric facility] and forty-five minutes later I am floating around Lake Waughop in an ecstasy of joy that after seven months or more, I am employed. No idiotic behavioral interview questions or anything. I did dimly suspect that there was a reason they hire people on-call initially, which turns out to be so they can sniff you out and decide whether they like you.
I did everything I was asked at this facility, meticulously, scrupulously, for two and a half months, enduring conferences with a new RN serving as the temporary DNS and very condescending to me, confronting me with episodes reported by her staff which were warped beyond all recognition, and continually warning me that "not everyone is suited to work here." Yes, I might be, if I weren't being hounded and being unable to control my anxiety. I did everything I could do, except for changing my personality.
It's more clear to me than ever that nursing is a detour for me, a dead end, even if I can perform a job for four years or two and a half years or two and a half months, and end up having spent my great riches, and my good health, and my psychological wellbeing, no better off than before. The profession, for me, is like being in one of those housing developments where every street is named Onyx, which you can drive around in for hours, every turn taking you back into the labyrinth before you catch some slight current of luck, locate the exit and escape.
So my fog is that if I turn away from nursing I seem to find myself in a big nothing. Except possibly to go back to college and pursue mental health counseling. To be continued.
Back by the popular demand of one person [you know who you are] is my blog. I haven't blogged in three or four months for the same reason I almost never write letters. I am always waiting to find out how things turn out in the end before I report. So far, turrible. If my life were a book I would burn it, and I don't burn books.
At the moment I am more or less lost in a fog, but at least I have decided to live. Usually when I see no viable alternatives in my life I become devoted to the notion that my life needs to end, but I have realized that even if I don't know what my next step is or how to get there, even when I'm turning away from my only known means of support [i.e. the nursing profession], I may as well live life anyway. And contrary to opinion, buying and eating bacon does not count as a suicide attempt.
My current theory of life is the recognition that I am on the Autism Spectum, relatively high-functioning, AKA Aspergers Syndrome. I am on a quest to verify that with the Powers That Be; to me, the more I study it and recognize how things have gone, particularly in my early life, the more obvious it is. Currently reading Tony Attwood's book, something like The Complete Guide to Aspergers, and one of the statements he makes is that older people with high intellectual functioning, particularly women, are often very hard to diagnose because they have learned to "camouflage" symptoms. Many of us are great mimics.
I rarely have credibility with people. I was in a social situation the other day when I mentioned the Aspergers. Usually a mistake. His response was that "it must be very mild, since you just looked me in the eye." My unspoken response: thank you very much for just invalidating everything I said. [The DSM-IV does not mention eye contact, by the way.] One symptom for me is continually being misunderstood. Another symptom is the peril of people making small talk. Invariably my talk is never sufficiently small, and I am just warming up to a subject by the time the victim turns their glazed vision to someone else to escape into conversation with anyone who can rescue them.
I am boning up for my interview with DVR. Don't jump to the conclusion I am looking for a handout. Just wanting a diagnosis and a way out of what has become completely unworkable as an occupation. I cannot work nor contemplate working without burning in an invisible hell of anxiety, fear, and mortal terror. If I am not working, I am terrified of homelessness and starvation on the streets. If I am working, I am terrified of messing up social interactions, losing my job, and dying of starvation on the streets.
My last job was beautiful, fascinating, wonderful. It was very easy to get: an interview with the administrator [for an acute psychiatric facility] and forty-five minutes later I am floating around Lake Waughop in an ecstasy of joy that after seven months or more, I am employed. No idiotic behavioral interview questions or anything. I did dimly suspect that there was a reason they hire people on-call initially, which turns out to be so they can sniff you out and decide whether they like you.
I did everything I was asked at this facility, meticulously, scrupulously, for two and a half months, enduring conferences with a new RN serving as the temporary DNS and very condescending to me, confronting me with episodes reported by her staff which were warped beyond all recognition, and continually warning me that "not everyone is suited to work here." Yes, I might be, if I weren't being hounded and being unable to control my anxiety. I did everything I could do, except for changing my personality.
It's more clear to me than ever that nursing is a detour for me, a dead end, even if I can perform a job for four years or two and a half years or two and a half months, and end up having spent my great riches, and my good health, and my psychological wellbeing, no better off than before. The profession, for me, is like being in one of those housing developments where every street is named Onyx, which you can drive around in for hours, every turn taking you back into the labyrinth before you catch some slight current of luck, locate the exit and escape.
So my fog is that if I turn away from nursing I seem to find myself in a big nothing. Except possibly to go back to college and pursue mental health counseling. To be continued.
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