One Step Closer...

I can TOTALLY relate to the picture of the runner above. Mentally and (somehow) physically exhausted. Stumbling, but falling across the finish line FACE FIRST. The third semester of my MSW is in the books, and it appears that I'll (miraculously) get to hold on to my 4.0 GPA! I would probably go as far to say that this has been my favorite semester, getting to experience my first practicum as well as going through a class in a subject matter that I had never really considered as possible career path... until now. I've been pretty focused on the idea of a career that, while giving myself other opportunities, mainly focuses on working with people struggling with substance abuse/addiction issues. The course I completed was "theory, practice and evaluation with families and groups." I wasn't too intrigued by the group portion, but I was surprisingly interested in the family portion and learned a lot. The professor was a total ball-buster, but she was absolutely amazing. I don't want to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I was her favorite. Toot toot.

OKC Metro Alliance and Firstep worked with me and they created an employment-based practicum where I was able to complete my practicum hours while staying on the job. It was SUPER nice because it made it possible where I wasn't having to "work" extra hours to get through practicum. It didn't seem like much at first, but I realized later how much I learned and accomplished through this semester's practicum work at Firstep. I was able to see a lot of different perspectives and angles on how a facility like this is run and how a facility like this COULD be run.

All in the meanwhile, the world continued to turn. I'd love to be able to say that our situation is exponentially better since I last posted in May... but it hasn't been. COVID still continues to rage. We had just turned a corner and started to maybe see the light at the end of the tunnel. Rather than pressing on and getting this pandemic behind us, people took that as a sign that we were all clear and should probably go ahead and open back up. In most areas of the country that numbers are just as bad, if not worse, as when this whole ordeal began. Dumb people around the world actually argue with scientists about the legitimacy of this pandemic, whether or not masks help (duh), and how we as a people should respond. So frustrating.

Shortly after my last post, there were a string of horrid incidents involving police brutality which ended in the needless murders of black people. When an unarmed George Floyd was handcuffed and basically suffocated, it seemed like that set off something that had been simmering under the surface for many years. "Black Lives Matter" became a household phrase. Protests erupted across the country, including several very uneasy protests here in Oklahoma City. People were angry. People demanded change. But this time seems different. Usually, when these things have happened in the past, there are protests and rallies... but eventually it kinda goes away. Here we are, three months later, and there are STILL protests across the country. People are still angry and they are still demanding change. Politicians and the people in power are slow to make that change it seems, and people are going to remember that come November. This topic deserves a post of its own, and I didn't make one, because I believe that I needed more to just sit back and learn. As a white male, I don't really need to jump the forefront and share my opinion. 

I continue to count my blessings as life at home throughout 2020 has been mostly positive. Lots of little bumps and what-not, but we've persevered. I've remained employed throughout this whole ordeal. Megan has too. We've continued to get settled into our new little house together and have a nice routine and way of life worked out. My parents have managed to stay healthy, albeit probably a little stir-crazy since they mainly quarantine to stay safe. Even though I already have everything turned in, my semester officially ends tomorrow. I'll have a nice two-week downtime in which Megan and I are planning on taking a MUCH needed vacation. We're going to take a road-trip up into Colorado. We'll spend SOME time in Denver, but a good portion of time will be spent up in the mountains, staying socially distant and enjoying the scenery. It'll hopefully be relaxing and a great time! I'll need it to fill up my emotional/spiritual/mental/physical "gas tank" before the next semester starts on August 24th! Maybe I can plop out a couple more post in between now and then!

'Twas the season...

Welp, the blur that was the 2019 holiday season is in the rearview mirror. It may have taken literal months to prepare for it all, but it was over in what seemed like a matter of hours. I mean, it was a great season, but we get all worked up for... that? I'd like to think "huzzah! 2020 is going to be DIFFERENT!" But, that's probably not going to happen. This is just how we do it. I'm going to stress way too much and SPEND way too much, just because I want to make sure that my people are happy. I'm pretty certain they are going to do the same for me, and I definitely have plenty to be happy about...

Retirement!

I've always known how hard of a worker my mom has been. She's worked her tail off to make sure that her family has had what it needed. There have been countless times that she has put her three boys ahead of her. So, all the puzzle pieces have finally fallen into place where she can FINALLY retire. Her countdown that she has been following for well over a year has finally hit ZERO days. On December 13, we were invited up to Children's to watch Janet and the rest of the PICU crew show their appreciation for Mom's hard work. It was awesome watching all of these doctors, big wigs, and other suits recognize Mom for basically building the PICU from nothing into the big moneymaking powerhouse that it is today. I'm so friggin proud of her! We packed all of her stuff up and brought it home. She left her office for the last time on December 20 and now (hopefully!) gets to enjoy a life of a little more leisure! She definitely deserves that R&R.

Some of us STILL have to work...
Since I will probably never get to retire (maybe? maybe not? lol), I still wake up and go to work on a near-daily basis. I'm fortunate that I have a job where I actually enjoy what I do. Well, for the most part. :-) I think I've made that transition of "new guy" to just one of the guys. There are rough points, but what job doesn't have those? For the most part, those points are when I feel like I'm failing to reach the guys. But I've had plenty of good moments that remind me that you're not going to reach EVERYONE... but that I am making a difference. I look forward to continuing my education and then hopefully applying what I learn and my degree towards growing my career within this agency. That's the goal, anyway!

Winter BREAK!

December 6 was the final day of my FIRST semester of graduate school. I'm super proud of myself that I wrapped up the semester with STRAIGHT friggin A's! That's how we do this! I'm already enrolled in my classes for next semester, and it sounds like it'll be a doozy of a semester! Nine more hours of classes that involve stuff like POLICY and RESEARCH. God grant me the strength to get through the Spring and put three MORE A's on my transcript!

The Post Christmas Holi-daze

I think I started plotting out my Christmas plans, at least when it comes to presents, mid-October. I purchased my first gift around the beginning of November. We've been planning a day or so worth of "stuff" for over two months... and it's just over in the snap of a finger. BUT I'd say it was worth it. The presents that I gave out brought smiles to people's faces. People got me some pretty awesome presents this year, too. The thought, not necessarily the stuff, definitely reminds me: "hey! You're loved!" I was off from work Christmas Eve (a Tuesday) and Christmas Day (a Wednesday)... only to have to go back to work Thursday and Friday. THEN, this week, I'm off tomorrow (a Wednesday) for New Year's Day. I'm not quite sure what days are holidays, what days are weekends and what days are supposed to be work?! It all just kinda blurs together. I actually look forward to next Monday (the 6th) when life goes back to somewhat normal. THEN school starts back the following Monday (the 13th) and it's back to not having a life. I keep telling myself it'll be worth it. :-)

An Attitude of Gratitude...

TWO years. 24 Months. 104 Weeks. 730 Days. Over 17,000 Hours! Happy "Birthday" to meeeeeee!!!!!!

At any given time, in the Oklahoma City metro area, you can walk into one of the local Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouses and find a meeting being held on the topic of "gratitude." I think the number of gratitude meetings increases tenfold during the month of November, probably to coincide with Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday season. Some in recovery absolutely love gratitude meetings, while others absolutely despise them. While I don't see the point in loathing the meetings, I guess I could understand their being a point in time where I would be like "meh. Don't tell me what to do. If I'm cranky, let me be cranky! I have nothing to be grateful for!" Fortunately, I'm not in one of those moods right now, nor have I been in quite some time! Life has been just one big steaming pile of change here lately, but it's all good. It's not easy, but it's good. Plus, by the time November comes around, I have PLENTY to be grateful for...

Work, work work!
Shortly after Labor Day, it started to become pretty impossible to ignore the fact that I needed to start looking elsewhere for work. I needed a bump in pay, since I'll be moving out in March. I also needed to find a job that had a little more flexibility with the hours, since I'll start working on practicum hours this summer. For those reasons, and a few others, I started the job hunt once again. It didn't take too long before some potentials popped up. Within a few weeks, I had a job offer from DHS... AND a job offer from Men's Firstep as their new program coordinator. Although the position with DHS definitely paid more, my heart told me to take the position with Firstep. I turned in my resignation and started working full time for OKC Metro Alliance (Firstep) on October 21, 2019.

We're three weeks in and I absolutely love it. I get to work directly with the guys and help them maneuver through the program and they help me on a daily basis by reminding me what it was like to be a client/resident of Firstep. You're either one of those clients that is HUNGRY for sobriety, willing to do anything you can to get it or you're not. The only difference between where I was and where I am now is that I need to work with those "not" clients and meet them where they are. I can't make them WANT sobriety, but I can show them that it is achievable and it has some pretty kick-ass results.

School Daze
So there obviously has been something keeping me pretty occupied for the last two months (since I haven't written anything in that time) and you would be a PRETTY good guesser if you said that the prime culprit of what gobbles up my time is SCHOOL. I was enrolled in nine hours (three classes) this first semester. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but... damn. Between work, school and "other (everything else in life), it takes some pretty creative juggling to make it all jive. Overall, I'd say I'm moderately successful. I have work down and I can definitely fit school in there, but it is satisfying that "other" category that is proving to be a bitch. I just don't have enough time in the day! There's "me" time, relationship time, sobriety time, family time... all of that. Ugh. I'm workin' on it.

ANYWAYS... school is going great. I absolutely love my classes and I feel like I'm learning a LOT. They aren't wasting your time with any filler classes, they are just going straight for the juicy stuff. They are teaching us EXACTLY what we need to do to get our license and get out there and WORK! The subject matter, while challenging, is exactly what I love. The work is difficult and time-consuming, but it makes me think "man, I KNOW that I'm going into the right field" on a daily basis. This first semester is nearing the end, and it looks QUITE possible that I'll make straight A's. I just have to keep up the work until December 6!

If all of those puzzle pieces fall perfectly into place over the next two years, I'm really hoping that the "school" part of life and the "work" part of life just kind of meld together. I really hope that I can take my degree and I apply it to working with Metro Alliance and I can just kind of continue to "grow up" within this organization and stay here after graduation. That's the ideal situation anyway...

It's the Holiday Season (hoop-de-do and dickery dock...)
...and don't forget to hang up your sock! Sorry, I didn't mean to spontaneously start typing Christmas lyrics, but I JUST CAN'T HELP IT!!! Despite the mindless rigmarole of daily life, I absolutely love the holiday season. Especially now that I'm in somewhat of a position to be able to afford SOME sort of presents for my family. Even with the frustration/confusion of the who's, what's, when's and where's, it usually has a tendency to work itself out. Thanksgiving will be new this year, I'll be going up to Tulsa with Megan and having turkey day with her fam. I'll be off on Black Friday, but I doubt I do a whole bunch of anything special. Christmas Eve will consist of the "normal" holiday get-together with my fam. I think we're having it at Denise's... which was fun last year. Meg and I might have a little surprise up our sleeves. Christmas Day is also the usual, presents and breakfast in the morning and then I'll go see a movie with Ma and Nicky. What will we see? Who knows. I'm going to try and push for "1917." I haven't even gotten far enough to think about what in the world new year's includes... But I know everything will work out! I know I'm not super wealthy and life isn't PERFECT, but this is definitely where that "gratitude" month starts playing into everything. We (or I) have it pretty damn awesome, especially compared to the rest of the world. It's DEFINITELY amazing compared to how I was or where I was this time two years ago. This brings me to the next topic...

It's my Birthday (and I'll cry if I want to?)
By this time on November 13, 2017, the proverbial shit had already hit the fan and I was (probably?) laying on a cot at the Public Inebriate Alternative (aka the Drunk Tank) in Oklahoma City. My emotions spanned the entire spectrum from indifference to anger to giving up and finally to complete surrender. I'm fortunate that I had a family that was still willing to come and pick me up, even after the endless amounts of shit that I had pulled. We had a brief and stern, yet compassionate conversation when we got home. Then we went to bed, not knowing what the future would bring.

I was fortunate to have a girlfriend that didn't run for the hills when she found out that I had been keeping a not-so-little secret from her for about six months. These people stood by my side and helped me take the next steps from TRC and then on to long-term treatment at Firstep. Six months of ups and downs and struggles and victories. "Graduating" from Firstep and going back out into the "real world." Rebuilding my life. Working. Going back to school. GRADUATING school. Going BACK to school. Making the return to Firstep as staff instead of a client. All of it was possible because of brutal honesty with a police officer who decided to show me a little bit of mercy and turn right down one street instead of turning left onto another. Then I decided to keep my promise to Officer Loggins and I didn't pick up a drink on the 14th. I kept fighting and started to string days together.

Honestly, day 730 doesn't really feel a whole lot different than day 700. I'm excited and I'm proud, but this is life now. This is the new "normal." Parts of that old life still pop up every once in a while, but I have the tools to know how to handle them appropriately. Those tools help me get through day 730. I might even get a day 731...

A MASTERful Week...

Week one is complete, my first grades are hitting the books and I'm starting to think to myself, "hey!  Maybe I can do this!" I had my fair share of doubts and insecurities, but it didn't take long for me to put those to rest. As I watched the introductory video to the program and to my class "Introduction to Professional Social Work," I immediately felt that sense of belonging... that this was the perfect program for me. Professor Franklin mentioned a "love for helping people, being passionate about issues that effect social economic justice, oppressing others or causing others to suffer." Being the suit-and-tie kinda guy that makes a lot of money and plays golf didn't really suit me (no pun intended), I feel much more comfortable down in the trenches with those who are having a rougher go at life.

My first class, like I previously mentioned is Introduction to Professional Social Work and is taught by Dr. Lori Franklin, who just also happens to be the director of the program. The course will span the entire 16-weeks of this first semester and is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It covers the history of social work, the different types of licensure, dealing with ethics issues, etc. Although the course itself doesn't seem to have a whole lot of "heart," Dr. Franklin seems to be the type that approaches social work from the emotional/heart/"this is why we do it" perspective. I like that, because that is the main reason that draws me to this field.

The second class is Human Diversity and Societal Oppression and is taught by Dr. Anthony Natale. It's an eight week course, but with 16 weeks worth of stuff crammed into it. Even with the pretty serious and potentially negative/downer subject matter, I'm super excited about this course. Dr. Natale seems to be pretty intimidating (at least to me), he seems to be the type that is VERY collegiate and uses a very educated vocabulary... that challenges even a word-nerd like myself. I'm up to the challenge, though. I've already made a 100% on my first paper for his class. He even said that I "rose to the challenge of the assignment." Yeah! Bring it!

I know it's only the beginning and there are PLENTY of weeks left, but I'm already excited and ready for what's next!

A Slight Change of Plans...

When I was a wee lad, I knew that I wanted to be a writer "when I grow up." Some kids wanted all the coolest toys for Christmas (heck, I did too), but I was tickled pink just getting a big box of (dot matrix printer) paper. The pages were perfectly lined, so my chubby little hands could write out all my thoughts and dreams out on paper. My imagination frequently ran wild and I thought it would be so cool to get to share my stories with the world. Not only would I get to share those stories, I'd get paid for it. I'd be like Oklahoma's own Dr. Seuss, minus all the weird rhyme-y shit. People would be buying up boxes of John Cloud's novels left and right, and I'd be making bazillions of dollars. I'd probably even have enough money for my very own Kraft Mac & Cheese fountain.

As I began to mature (at least a little) and I realized that the best way for my world to get used to my writing would be through journalism. In the ninth grade, I decided to join the school newspaper staff. As an up-and-coming writer for "The Paw Print," I was responsible for covering such hot topics as "cool locker decorating trends" and "the dangers of walking down Penn to the McDonald's after school." Ya know, the important stuff. I was absolutely hooked from the start. It was a great outlet for my writing, the teacher was super supportive and helped me grow in my writing and it was a great outlet for me to get out there and meet people. My newfound career continued into High School, when I joined the "Jag Wire" staff at Westmoore High School. I won over the notoriously strict teacher and convinced her to love me. Of course, by the time I was a senior, I became the editor-in-chief. I'm still not quite sure how that happened...

When I started thinking about colleges, I set my sights on the big time... I wanted to go to Columbia University, which was VERY well known for it's college of journalism. I'd settle on Oklahoma, which also had a pretty good journalism program. I started out tiny, though, and started with Oklahoma City Community College. I had a few professors who were actual journalists on local news outlets. My first impression of "real" journalism was less than flattering. For whatever reason, the work became ten times as hard and I was given some not-so-positive advice on how to "make it" in the field. While my love for writing still existed, my deep love for journalism quickly faded. With stuff like "you have to work twice as hard if you're doing an honest job" or "if it bleeds it leads," it just wasn't my thing. I finished that semester at OCCC and decided I would make the job to OU.

It didn't seem so devastating back then, but when I look back on it now, I really felt like a ship without a rudder. I didn't know what I was going to do or who I was. I was very fortunate that I found the Liberal Studies program at OU, which was pretty much a "general education" degree. It was something I could build off of when I decided what I wanted to be "when I grow up."

My time as an undergraduate at OU was definitely rocky. The alcoholism, of course, played a huge part in that. But I've been thinking here lately, that not having any clear goals or big dreams to work towards probably played some part in the lack of drive to keep going. It is REALLY difficult to put that one foot in front of the other, when you have no idea what you're walking towards or what the end game is supposed to be. There was some sort of blind faith at work there, because I had to keep telling myself to keep at it, that SOMETHING would happen. I'd see that light bulb or have that burning bush moment at some point. I was REALLY starting to doubt it at the end, but luckily it happened just in time.

So, while my exact dreams of being THAT type of writer might not be exactly what's happened, I still have plenty of opportunities to write in my future. Maybe I'll write some sort of groundbreaking book on social work or something like that. Until then, this little bloggy blog... my own little corner of the world will have to do.