deconstruction

I am having one of those days when I think coming back to grad school is ruining me, making me unfit for human interaction. Learning all of this stuff about counseling is stamping out any feeling of ease or genuineness, now that I'm some twisted combination of hyper-observant, armed with new knowledge, and being a bit of a psychological hypochondriac, thinking that I suffer from every new dysfuntion I discover the name for.

It's probably the experience of a baseball player who, after a long stretch of feeling like a "natural," has a batting coach come in and deconstruct every minute detail, from his grip on the bat to the rise of his knee to the placement of his feet. While the intended result is that he become an athlete whose natural inclinations are refined to near perfection, the interim effect is that he can't find the sweet spot to save his life, and bats .050 for a while.

So the unintended consequence for me these days is that the combination of awkwardness and self-consciousness about my competence is making it a little hard both to make friends and to relate to old ones, and now that the novelty of living in LA is wearing off, I'm pretty lonely this week and I feel like I'm pretty far away from the figurative sweet spot in a number of ways. So for those of you who are getting strange bits and pieces of me now, thanks for your grace, and your encouragement to cut myself some slack, while I get my swing back.