This spring break I will be spending three luxurious days in Brookline, MA working at my field placement site.  But, before I do that, I actually got to have a little vacation.  I almost freaked out the first two days and constantly asked what day it was because it turns out that my mind I slowly shifted into assigning days to the week exclusively based on what my current activity is. (Monday - placement-->supervision-->therapy (yes we all need it); Tuesday - class-->class-->class-->class-->class; Wednesday - placement; Thursday - placement --> meetings; Friday - rest, entirely rest, and nothing but rest, so help me God...)  However, overall it has been very rewarding and much needed.  For example, it seems that my body is working through some of the more superficial but persistent aspects of being sick simply due to frequent naps and hearty home-cooked meals.  Truly, this has been five days of diligent resistance to anything professionally related.

Well, except that on Sunday in the high mountains of NW Connecticut (just south of the Berkshires on the Massachusetts/New York border) I happened to be in a small (perhaps 40 at full attendance) church for their morning worship.  Afterward I got to talking to a few parishioners.  Again, let me stress that is in a no cell-phone reception, high altitude, small town, smaller congregation, that I have never been to before in my life.  Turns out that one parishioner was a young woman just back from four years of work in Africa.  She graduated my year from college (the college that was my first choice but I declined at the last minute) and knows many of my friends from high school who attended there.  I also met a man who used to live in a small New York town where I attended camp for three years during high school.  He now writes the town's one quarterly paper.  His wife is a jewelry maker who was a practicing clinical psychologist in my home town (NYC so I know it is not as shocking as all the rest) for 20 years.  Turns out she is a close friend of the woman who is my step-father's godmother (loosely speaking) which is how I ended up in the mountains in the first place.

So now, I have developed a contact with an accomplished NY private practice therapist that will certainly be of help if and when I decide to move back to the city and establish a career.  I did not belabor the networking.  After all, I am on vacation from all things professional.  But, I did make the contact and plan to nurture it heavily as soon as I get back to Boston.  I have to admit, though, the awe I have in just how the small the world is.  I have to admit, also, the eeriness I feel in the recognition that I can run into a potential contact, employer, colleague, or client in even the most remote places.  I didn't let it phase me - much - but it reminds me the importance of the professional self in all aspects of my life.  I confess that sometimes I feel rebellious against the idea of committing myself fully to this idea.  But, with the number f clients who have shown up at my church, as acquaintances of acquaintances, or who just linger on the corner of friends' blocks, this is a lesson that the universe seems intent on hammering into me one way or the other!

Peace,
adwoa