maybe you should talk to someone - lori gottlieb (2019)

fascinating and compelling and eye-opening and gorgeous.

read this to get a digestibly sweeping overview of what psychotherapy is entails encompasses utilizes and is underpinned by. that's the fascinating part.

read this to follow five story threads as they weave their differently complicated patterns to satisfyingly rich cadences, mixed metaphors be damned. and as Gottlieb explores themes as a practitioner that practitioners do not often mention in public. what do you do when you are just so irritated by the patient? are you ever attracted to a patient? what happens after you google your patient? that's the compelling bit.

read this for eye-opening pearls:

• between stimulus and response there is a space. in that space is our power to choose our response... as she quotes Frankl 
• being liked, and loved, for my neshama, which is my spirit or my soul 
• what not to do say to a dying person: be strong, you can beat this! have you asked for a second opinion? what to say: i'm so sorry 
• there is no hierarchy to pain. suffering is not a competition

this is absolutely gorgeous.

3 books to begin the year with (sort of)

leaders eat last - the soloist - gratitude

in chronological order of consumption and in increasing degree of enjoyment. gratitude is Oliver Sacks' swan song, and an ode to the value of living richly and busily. ...my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. i have loved and been loved; i have been given much and i have given something in return;... i have had an intercourse with the world... if i live to be eighty-two, i would like that to be my predominant feeling too.

new syndrome

vGBS, vocabular Guillain-Barré Syndrome

a syndrome characterized by progressive cognitive paralysis with each incorrect guess on wordle, culminating in complete shut-down and a choking sensation at line 6.

in contrast to GBS, which is a rare condition, vGBS is relatively common.

2022

 crept up and sneaked in, that's what the year has done. the year-to-date tally:

• circulars and circulars. delta omicron and now BA.2. isolation deisolation non-isolation. protocols 1-2-2PC-3. PPM MMP SSM SSS. i hope one day i will look back and it will still make a modicum of sense
• cybersecurity and internet separation. very good for governance and rather non-intuitive and punitive to the rest of us who now have to read our excel tables on a cellphone. halp
• wordle! the box of yellow-and-green squares that binds work-mates family old friends and more. may the day come when i hit the green bar on my first line!
• and gently easing back to going to church on sundays. to clarify, i mean the actual building, as opposed to the couch. which means getting dressed and leaving the home and venturing to travel to-and-fro. no longer the brainless task it was

you might want to marry my husband - yap swi neo (2021)

shamelessly nostalgic enlightening and tender. the writing is not perfect but it'll do in a pinch. a few of the stories are really rather superb - deceptively straightforward lovingly detailed and satisfyingly twisted. 

damn good read.

to have and to hold

through the seasons, with joy upon joy

and through sorrows unimagined unthought

from swirling storm to almond blossom

we rejoice, and rejoice yet again

and so we are thirty-one

quickie trippie

we do an in-and-out as the quarantine-free travel lanes open, HOM and i. it is smooth and unexpectedly pleasant if you discount the disproportionate number of tests we are subject to. for posterity, and for what it is worth, we have:

• a pre-travel PCR
• an on-arrival PCR at destination which we forget to pre-book and hence scramble to pay for
• an on-arrival PCR at home the next day (because quickie, remember?)
• and we have ARTs due on tuesday and saturday
• plus i have my work-mandated ARTs monday and thursday

the quickie will never be the same again.

but it is good, and a precious thing, to see the folks again, if only for a day.