Tuesday 28 June 2011

'my dog could write a blog'


my dog could write a blog - not - pastel and water colour

This comment, 'my dog could write a blog', was made by a foodie journalist, complaining in a weekend magazine about the number of food blogs that have sprung up in the last few years. It reminds me of the comment that is sometimes made about contemporary art - 'a child of five could do that!' In the same vein, I have heard many negative comments about therapists recently. I guess there is a culture of complaint out there - bloggers, artists and therapists are not alone! However it did make me stop and think about how therapy is sometimes perceived by dissatisfied or even unwilling 'customers'.

One of the comments was made in Cairns recently, when I was participating in a conference breakfast responding to the Queensland floods earlier this year. The comment was about the influx of social workers and psychologists into the small town of Theodore, whilst it was still recovering from being flooded and evacuated. Clearly this occurred too early, and one slightly naive interaction with a psychologist was taken too seriously and provided as evidence of the ineptitude of the entire profession. I started wondering why...

Psychologists are in some ways often seen as fair game, as they are undoubtedly the dominant group of therapists and the rest of us may envy their 'special' qualities, such as being confident their favourite therapeutic approaches are evidence based (i.e. well-researched). Social workers usually occupy a lower strata and are mainly blamed for horrific child safety failures. I have heard many examples of poor therapeutic interventions, but does this mean that therapy per se is a bad thing? Of course not! There are good and bad therapists just as there are good and bad journalists. Writing about the bad ones is easy. To write about the good ones, we may just have to admit to consulting with one... 

The following were all done in Cairns:

Daintree - watercolour pastels

coast road north - w/c pastels

tree of life - water colours, pastels

If my dog wrote a blog, which is unlikely, it would only be of interest to other dogs.

And negative comments, such as this one, should not be taken too seriously.

more later.

Monday 27 June 2011

another half a year



Travelling: collage

Last night we watched Mike Leigh's Another Year on DVD. This made a change from the first interminable (because its taking me ages to view them and send them back) series of In Treatment, which I am almost at the end of.

Another Year was enjoyable in the usual Mike Leigh way, although the central character, Mary, was deeply irritating and annoying. However I guess it is a situation we can all relate to: the friend who is very needy, who starts to become unwelcome due to their neediness. Seems all the more poignant when this happens to a counsellor (Jerry, who is married to Tom!) and her internal struggle was clearly portrayed.  And again as a therapist, it is something I can relate to. Interestingly, we are just setting up a veggie garden in our backyard, which is an important feature of Tom and Jerry's relationship (theirs is an allotment). Nice metaphor for growth and sustainable living. As Voltaire said at the end of Candide: 'we must cultivate our garden'.



As it is almost half way through the year, its time for a review of this blog, which records and reflects on my attempt to 'do what matters'. This process will take a few posts I think. My initial thoughts are: firstly, I am amazed I have persisted, and secondly, I wish I managed to write a post more often! I often think about something I want to write about during the week, but don't make the time to do so. I need a more seamless process: its often the downloading of images that slows me down, as I realise it will involve more time and energy than I have at the end of the day. Also the past few weeks have been very stressful and busy with seemingly more marking than any previous year - not sure how this happened.

The next two weeks are still going to be busy, but with more variety and fun! I am driving to Dalby (out West this time) to do a training for another CYMHS team on Wednesday, and I am going to Melbourne for the weekend to see my sister and her mum who are visiting here from the UK. Hurrah! Next week we will be going whale watching and other seaside stuff at the Sunshine Coast. Another hurrah! I am looking forward to all this and may obviously still not have time to post much. But I'm going to try hard to do more than usual.

more later.

Saturday 18 June 2011

going north


Muddy's play area, Cairns waterfront

This time last week I was in Cairns in North Queensland. I had the internet connected for about 15 minutes, when I started to write this post, and then it crashed, due to a problem with my PayPal account. This annoyed me for an hour or two and then I realised it didn't matter - I could have used my I-Phone but I couldn't be bothered. It was more important to focus on being in an amazing place, with time to explore!

I ran two very different art therapy workshops whilst I was there. One was for the Qld. Rural Doctors' Network Families Program, and had a Flood Recovery focus, and the other one was a training workshop for the Child and Youth Mental Health Remote Team. 

In between, over the long weekend (Queen's birthday)  I had 2 1/2 days off on my own, which was a rare experience, and which I planned to make the most of. I went to the Regional gallery, which had an excellent exhibition, now finished in Cairns but going on tour...called Twelve Degrees of Latitude. It has artworks by many well known Australian artists and is curated from the Qld. regional gallery collections.
Mossman Gorge and Barron Falls

I hired a car and drove to Mossman Gorge, Daintree Village, and (the following day) to Kuranda and Barron Falls, up in the mountains west of Cairns. 


I did lots of rainforest walks, visited the Botanic Gardens (exotic tropical flowers) and even ran along the waterfront (I rarely run outside, but Cairns waterfront boardwalk is a wonderful place to run).

I also ate lots of barramundi. It was a good experience and a time to reflect on being grateful for staying in such a beautiful place, and for being paid to go there.

 

I'm back home now, back to marking and back to the cold. In fact its freezing here at the moment, almost. 

More later.

Wednesday 8 June 2011

Do you have your zombie apocalypse plan?

soft 'emoticons'

I am feeling generally a bit underwhelmed at the moment, (although today has been a really good day, so far). I am looking for new things to do, and my boredom threshold seems to have dropped recently. This could just be an end of term thing. 

Even the graduate art show opening on Monday evening felt a bit routine, perhaps because we have got used to them. We have now been teaching our program (Masters of Mental Health, Art Therapy at UQ) for seven years!! This was our seventh graduation. (Perhaps there is something to the seven year itch?)

Our girls' ACT group is going really well (the emoticons I made worked a treat as a check-in), we have just graduated 3 great students, I am feeling really healthy and sleeping well, and I am about to go to Cairns for two workshops (feels like the travelling art therapy road show), I have some exciting holidays coming up with my extended family, so why am I feeling lacklustre? Possibly what I am noticing right now is a reduced anxiety level, which I am not used to.

an anxiety inducing image...


And the title of this post? It comes from a message spray-painted onto a white van I was driving behind on the way to work yesterday. It made me smile. Enough said.

Thursday 2 June 2011

evolution


Barbie world - found object

This is something I would have loved to own as a child. I only had tasteful toys though. It is still quite appealing in a guilty, embarrassing way. To give you some idea, I had to read Enid Blyton books secretly, as they were banned from our house (not a big enough vocabulary, apparently).

Today will be a random collection of thoughts. I have been thinking about these things.

1. Gil Scott Heron, who died this weekend. This video link is to his classic The revolution will not be televised. Thanks Chris for the link.


2. Marking encourages black and white thinking, which is unhelpful. This is good, this is better, each piece of work reduced to a number, regardless of the effort involved to produce it. As with many things, we judge on the final product, not the process. 

Anyway, I finished another lot of marking. Only three more batches to go! Sorry to harp on about it. It tends to dominate my life for a few weeks at a time, twice a year.

a light bulb moment - pencil drawing

Its not all black and white...

3. Of course, since I wrote last week that my sleeping had improved, it has got worse again. But I know this is just a phase. I can wait for it to improve again, and it will. Its hard to be awake at 4.30am in the dark and cold predawn, though.

4. Yesterday, I did some things I needed to do to feel more organised. I printed out and filed all my travel documents, as I am taking 4 trips in the next 2 months. The first one is to Cairns, in Far North Queensland, next week. I also vacuumed the floor: the dog (who else?) had left another small installation on the rug, mainly and weirdly consisting of leaves (and some 'moisture').

30 second squares: 'rules' for valued living - collage
Windows of opportunity, or pages of possibility...

5. Our group, that we started at work last week, is going well. It combines art therapy and ACT and is for young women. However, as with most groups, attendance could be an issue.

More later.