That Was The Year That Was (Part Two)

November saw me enrolled as an Assistant Cub Leader. I've been involved with the 1st Wyesham Shadows pack for about a year as an occasional helper, but I've taken a more active role since the summer, going on camps and trips, supporting the weekly pack meetings and finally helping pull together the Gang Show section for the Mayor of Monmouth's Showcase. So it made sense to go the whole hog and get me into uniform. It's been another really rewarding activity, watching the boys achieving things they thought weren't capable of, and its been good to give something back to an organisation that gave me a lot when I was growing up.


My MSc studies continued apace. The first half of the year went well, as I completed the taught phase and thereby gained my PGCert. Unfortunately the thesis has been very slow to get off the ground and its something I need to focus on a lot more in 2012. Who would have thought I would struggle to find the motivation to write 12000-20000 words on "Test and Evaluation of Systems of Systems"...

Talking of finding the words, I'm still active in two writing groups: Kate Dunn's in Bristol and Claire Hamilton's in the Forest. I find both very enjoyable, especially the lovely all-day sessions in the beautiful setting of Claire's place in the Wye Valley. Both groups are full of extremely talented people and hopefully one day I'll be able to match their talents. I certainly need to be more prolific in 2012 - I have a lot of good ideas but am not very good at following them through. Something else to work on in the New Year. I've also started blogging, which is both enjoyable and at times therapuetic, but it does make me tend towards non-fiction rather than creative writing which, again, is something to work on.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm still having issues with depression and have gone back into counselling to try and find some answers. The first time I tried counselling I was given a room (and a mostly silent counsellor) and told to "use the space as I saw fit", which was awful! I didn't know what to say or do and nearly didn't return after the first session. But it did get some issues out in the open, even if it just left them hanging there. The second course of counselling I did was a bit more interactive, and started to provide answers to some of the questions raised in the first course. However, it was really about addressing and managing the symptoms of my depression rather than its root causes. In the summer of this year I found myself slipping back into some previous bad behaviours and I thought I would try and nip it in the bud with some more sessions. My last counsellor recommended psychodynamic therapy, so that's what I started over the summer. It's
hard to explain how it works, but it seems to involve talking about childhood episodes but re-evaluating them from an adult perspective, thinking about how they made me feel at the time, how that has impacted on my adult life and how I could look at each episode differently to achieve a different adult outcome. It's been a difficult journey but the benefits are beginning to show as I've started changing my behaviours following a number of "light bulb" moments. But I also know there are a lot of issues still to be addressed and I'll be going back for more in 2012.