A fresh start

If you're reading this, it's likely you found your way here from the old Friendster blog (where the increasingly obtrusive advertising finally overcame my resistance to setting up a new webpage) or from Facebook. Either way, thanks for following along. The fact that you made multiple clicks to read this post makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

It's been a few months since I've posted anything, I know. That's partially due to the amount of time I'm spending in front of the computer typing up reading reflections or research papers, but it's also been a challenge to get my thoughts together. At home, I'd sit down to type a post late at night when I couldn't fall asleep, or with a cup of tea on a weekend morning. Here, I don't find those same soft pockets of time. The rhythm of my days is more irregular--an hour free here or there, a short break before dinner, fifteen minutes to wind down at the end of the day before collapsing into bed. And when I get the hour or so that it really takes me to compose my thoughts, sit down, and write something, I feel like I ought to use it instead to get a chapter of reading out of the way, or visit the gym, or return a phone call or email that I've let go for too long.

In any case, here I am with a free evening, a snazzy new blog layout, and a cup of decaf. In an ideal world, I would probably also have some insight or clarity or something along those lines, but I think we'll forge ahead anyway.

So here I am at the beginning of second semester, still girlishly enamored of graduate level academia. I've got two classes--Theory and Research--which require me to choose specific conflicts to focus on for semester-long projects. I've put in a proposal to investigate the current controversy in the WV State Legislature over water quality standards for the former, and one to study the affects of Mountaintop Removal Mining on nearby communities for the latter. I've been increasingly drawn to examine environmental justice issues in Appalachia. I'm hoping a semester spent focusing a good deal of energy on those issues will help me evaluate whether I might be able to (and want to) focus on them in the future, either as a volunteer or doing some kind of career in advocacy, policy or sustainable development in that vein.

I'm also taking a class in Strategic Advocacy and Activism, which studies successful nonviolent social change movements. That class met for the first time today and it is going to be great, I think. Sort of a different slant than most of the other classes offered in my program--more political, more concerned with studying history--it's all about waging conflict, rather than resolving it. It's inspiring to remember what has been done and think about what could be.

Rounding out the menu are a couple of one credit offerings--a seminar in "Integrated Peacebuilding" and a course on "Contemplative Photography." There are several courses offered in the spring that are considered "specialized practice courses"--workshops, basically, on negotiation, mediation, circle processes, and other skills. I'll need a few credits of those eventually for degree requirements, but after taking the introductory "Practice" class this fall and a semester of mediating, facilitating and negotiating in my role as a dorm director, I have to admit I'm kind of burned out on the interpersonal, touchy-feely, relationship building side of conflict transformation. Neuroscience, social constructivism, and fighting the evil coal companies...bring it on :) .

This is getting so long that I'm feeling like I ought to insert some subheadings. And I still haven't gotten around to what I was originally thinking about when I sat down to type. Namely, I've been thinking lately about how so many of us become different versions of ourselves at night. When I worked at a camp, we would go around to each shelter every night to "do tuck-ins," and we always advised new camp staff to try to avoid getting into heavy or difficult conversations right before bed (which is, of course, when all of the issues came up and people started crying and everyone _wanted_ to talk about hard things). Now, working in the dorm, I see many girls who struggle emotionally at night time. And it's not only that things sometimes seem more difficult at night...there's also equally often moments of amazing intimacy that transpire in moonlit conversations, or over a late night cup of tea.

What is it about the simple absence of light that opens up deep and different parts of us? Is it simply that we get tired, or is there some shift in our melatonin levels or something about our circadian rhythms that is connected with our psychological and emotional state? Or is it something more mystical, something spiritual? I suppose I'm assuming it happens to everyone. I don't think it's an experience particular to women, is it? Or something exclusive to generally overly emotional people? :)

Whatever the explanation, I find myself sometimes wondering who people become when they go home at night. What goes through their head in the moment right after they get into bed and turn off the light. Sometimes I like to think that all through the day, maybe our minds are edging closer to whatever that place is that we go when we are dreaming...maybe when the sun goes down, something in us begins to crawl into ourselves, or toward our souls. I remember a friend once remarked to me how strange it is when we fall asleep beside someone--how we are closest to someone else just in the moment before they are totally lost to us, retreating into themselves in dreams. But perhaps if that's true, there is also the possibility that we can choose to awake wide open--ready to meet the day and each other fresh, outside of ourselves. And that everyday we walk back in, wiser and different than we were.