On Pikachu, Charmander, and Self-Care

So...it's going to have to be a short post again tonight.  I had a full day of drawing Pokemon characters, hospitalizing kids, and managing tantrums.  On the plus side, according to my client, I can draw a pretty good Pikachu and an awesome Charmander.  At least, I think that's what her smile indicated.  On the other side of things, it could have been a "wow you really suck at drawing Pokemons" smile.  The good part about working with kids is that I can be really silly and goofy and quirky, and that generally works in my favor.  I've been seeing one client for about a month now, and I had never seen her smile until this week.  How did I do it?  Well...I messed up at CandyLand.  I pretended to be in love with the "Duke of Swirl" guy on the CandyLand board.  I played a "game" in which we jumped up and changed seats 6 times in a row.  I ran down the hallway at full speed.  I played with a foam butterfly glider that came back and hit me in the forehead.  I made cars kiss the fish on the mural in the hallway.  The bad part about this is that sometimes, you act really silly, goofy, and quirky, and it makes you look like a fool in front of your colleagues.  That happened this week, too.  I'm okay with it.


I also gave a 3 hour presentation this week on Applied Behavior Analysis to a class of Masters level students.  I didn't look like a fool there, which was a good thing.  I am always surprised when I do presentations and don't get nervous.  Doing presentations and speaking in front of people used to be torture.  In college in particular, I HATED it with a passion.  Now?  The actual speaking piece is no big deal.  I still always question if I actually know what I'm talking about (and generally conclude that I don't), but then I talk, and I answer questions, and words come out of my mouth, and I walk away thinking "damn, I can really pretend like I know this stuff!"


As I said yesterday, I also did something this week that shouldn't have been a big deal, but it was.  My body hates me for it today.  I keep vacillating between thinking "you did something that was hard for you to do.  Celebrate the fact that you did it, and that you are stronger for having done it.  Take time to acknowledge that your body took a hit with this one, and that it needs time to recover" and thinking "yeah, it was hard, but it shouldn't have been.  Pull yourself together, ignore the fact that your body is yelling at you, just move on."  I know which one is the "correct" way to go about this, of course, and I know what I "should" do.  I'm also frustrated and not good at listening sometimes, and even though I tell myself "growing hurts sometimes.  These steps are moving forward," it feels like moving backwards.  It feels like failure, even if it's not, and I just don't handle that well.  Self-care is such a struggle, even when my body is yelling "NOW" with every firing of every neuron.

Now, my dog is snoring beside me.  I think it's time that I let myself off the hook and try to join him.