Thoughts on destiny buried in the last paragraph

Today was an interesting day, both at the Home for the Criminally Insane (H4TCI will be its new shorthand) and within the insane home that I call my own mind.

First, work:

There was a backed up toilet that I didn't have to do anything about at all. But it was gross.

There was a "staff meeting" which was not attended by much staff: Me (an on-call person) and the guy on the graveyard shift at the house next door were the only ones who made it, aside from the administrator who called it. And the only reason I attended was because it was in my living room.

Hell, when you're trying to stay awake at 10 a.m. and there's coffee and bagels from the Starbucks across the street -- and even though everyone does it, you get the feeling it would be bad form to be seen by the administrator playing Free Cell on the computer -- you go to the staff meeting no one else wants to attend, either.

(Why, oh why, does this scenario sound EXACTLY like my old corporate job -- for which I had a more comfortable chair and got paid nearly three times as much?)

I was treated to a brief overview of gambling addiction in the State of Oregon and handed three brochures -- one showing men, one showing women and one showing persons of unspecified ethnicity -- that all contained the warning signs of gambling addiction and had a phone number for how to treat it. This is how your gambling-addiction lotto funds are spent, my friends!

The bagels and coffee, however, were strictly an H4TCI budget item.

Later, one of my residents showed up with two weeks worth of Effexor samples in her hands and no med orders for taking them or what to do about her Wellbutrin prescription. Nice. Nothing like the Bureaucracy of Mental Illness.

So to my own mental matters:

I watched video online of Linda Ellerbee's recent speech at the American Counseling Association's annual conference. It was MARVELOUS. She is, without question, one of my earliest and favorite role models for journalism and the value of being outspoken. And she's a colorful speaker, which I admire like nobody's business.

At this juncture in my life, I'm really appreciating what this iconic journalist has to say to a bunch of counselors about the nature and value of our work.

At one point she quotes Anwar Sadat, one of my other teen-year role models (seriously): "He who cannot change the very fabric of his thoughts can never expect to change anything else."

And at another point, while talking about how overwhelming and unfair change can seem -- and yet how we have to embrace it anyway -- she said, "Only the very, *very* young can afford hoplessness. They're the only ones who have time for it."

I'm too lazy to launch Firefox -- me being a Safari user -- so I can load the link right into this article at this moment, so here it is for your copy-and-edit pleasure. ... http://www.counseling.org/PressRoom/NewsReleases.aspx?AGuid=faa52dd9-0230-470d-86c3-a5a545d40505

Check it out.

And lastly, I found myself feeling a bit -- ok, WAY -- ahead of myself earlier today. I've spent some time working to reel myself back in, and I think I have it down.

Let's say there is destiny. Just for argument's sake. The fact is, even if destiny feels like it's calling, we still have to wait for it to arrive. No sense in rushing around. Or leaping to conclusions. Let each moment unfold and each situation bloom into its own. You'll know what's going to happen when it happens.