Tuesday, January 5, 2021

 Tuesday, January 5, 2021

            No sleeping in this morning. I had yoga at 7. I hauled myself out of bed. I troubled myself with Judy's comments about my walk. She was pushing for me to get hip replacement surgery. "Everyone is so happy when they get it." She said everyone can see that I 'shuffle' as I walk. I do not shuffle. I walk slowly, and I limp, but I do not shuffle. I pick my feet up as I walk; I don't drag them. I wind up modeling shuffling versus my walk as I go along, preparing my rebuttal. As I did, I made another change in my walk. It all gets better if I put more weight on the outside of my left foot as I make that step. My leg actually feels good when I do that. I have no idea why people are so invested in my hip.  

            I think people think that I'm suffering and just being stubborn. I have had two surgical appointments already. In both cases, the doctor's nurses told me not to do it when they heard that I was not in constant pain. I think people see my walk and assume I must be. I can see their point. My walk must look studied; it is. But it is not that way to avoid pain;  I'm figuring out how to correct my spinal curvature. I am conscious of each step. I'm not opposed to surgery, just unnecessary ones. I'm concerned that I'll put myself through all that and wind up no better than I am now. The bottom line is it just doesn't feel right.

            I worked on the PowerPoint presentation of my decoding method for the Step-Up Program. I'm not expecting many tutors to participate. I want to get this presentation in shape and post it on YouTube; that's my goal. 

            I also called Spectrum, my Internet provider, to have them make the necessary electric change, guaranteeing my router's stability. It took a few minutes, but no big deal.

            After doing some work on that, I showered and headed for town. My first stop was UPS. I had accidentally ordered two computer lamps for meetings. The line was huge. Problem: one guy had six boxes to return, and only one clerk was servicing the customers. There was another one on-site, but she was working in the back. It took forever, but I was there and determined to get the deed done. While it was an Amazon Prime purchase, I had to pay for the return. It was pretty expensive, but not as much as the item cost. I would get some money back. 

            Then I went to the Post Office. I flagged down a woman in her late forties or early fifties for help with my packages. It just amazes me how people pick up two heavy boxes of books and carry them into the post office without strain. Was I ever that strong? I was athletic in my youth; I must have been. I certainly don't remember. The line in the post office was pretty long.    

            One of the boxes was wrapped in paper to cover the printing on the outside of the box. I prefer Amazon boxes. I just have to block out the bar codes; then, there is space to write the address information. I asked the clerk if my wrap job was safe. He said it looked pretty good. Most of the loose edges were taped down. He said it's essential to reinforce the corners. They are particularly vulnerable. If they get ripped, the whole covering comes off, all the address information with it.

            I discovered that I had a call from Kaiser on the house phone the other day. I never even bother answering that phone anymore. It's there for cold calls. I thought it might be KP trying to contact me to arrange an appointment for the hip X-ray I requested for the stem cell doctor. No, that was a call from the financial division. I owed $45 for lab work. 

            Why hadn't I received a call to arrange for the X-ray? I called Kaiser this morning to find out what was going on. I was told the X-ray was ordered; it was a walk-in service. I stopped by on my way home. I arrived at 12:30. At check-in, I was told they would be at lunch until 1:30. I could wait. I don't think so. I went home to nap.

            I had an appointment with J at 2:30. I slept for over an hour before the session. I set my alarm for 2:20, giving me a few minutes to prepare for the class. At 2:25, I got a text from J. asking me to send him the link for the Zoom meeting.

            First, I asked him what improvements he has experienced since we started working. His grades seem to be the same. I asked him if his work seemed to go faster. He said a little.

            This is a kid who will work until he has it done, whatever it takes. His problem is that he works too hard. Is there such a thing? You'd better believe it. A good student must know when to take a break so his brain can process what he has been absorbing. It isn't that different from the eating process. You can' just keep shoveling in food. You have to take a break and allow the brain to digest.  

            I have noticed that when J reads aloud, there is a deliberateness and stiffness to his reading. I hear him thinking of all the phonics rules his second-grade teacher taught him. I described what I was seeing. He agreed that he did that. I drew my 'famous' picture, which I use to show kids how the reading process works. The eye perceives the word; the word is 'printed' in visual working memory; the brain asks, "What is this word?"; the reader waits until he hears the word in his auditory working memory. As one student once said when she experienced this process for the first time," I feel like I'm psychic." Yep. It is weird. It is as if there is a spirit in our heads, giving us the information. Where does this come from? 

            I had him work on reading material two years below his grade level. I wanted it to be easy. When I asked him to allow it to happen, there wasn't much difference. I realized he had the automatic processing in place; his problem was that he slowed it down. It's a little like someone riding their bike with the brakes on. He agreed that he did do that. He didn't want it to get out of control. However, he was willing to accept my advice and allow this process to happen. 

            I told him he was not to think of understanding what he was reading at this moment. His focus should be on waiting to 'hear' the word in his auditory center to put all his concentration there. He had to stop monitoring his reading through the lens of the conscious mind and phonics his second-grade teacher taught him, so it proceeded smoothly.

            This led to another topic, the overarching problem. I asked J if he was someone who needed to feel in control. I wondered if one of his parents was that way. Yes, his mom. I told him that was a good quality, but nothing is good if it is overdone. 

            I suspected that he had been raised to believe that everything that comes from the unconscious mind is always bad. Neuroscience refutes this. It shows that our every action starts there before our conscious mind becomes involved. I teach that the conscious mind has its own functions. The first is to teach the unconscious mind and then to get out of the way let it do its job.   It takes conscious thought to learn to tie a shoelace, but it should be automatic once it's learned. You should be able to chew gum, yell at three kids, and tie the shoelaces for a fourth without thought. That's what it means to have muscle memory do its thing. 

            The second function of the conscious mind is censorship. You're about to say something. It's there on your lips- and you stop it. Our conscious mind has veto power. Who we are is comprised of the thousands of small decisions we make every day. Then like dogs, we have trained ourselves to be a certain kind of person.  

            Can the unconscious overwhelm our conscious mind? You bet your knickers it can. Trauma does that all the time. Fear, ah, our friend fear. When that baby gets out of hand, good luck to our conscious minds. We have to use our conscious minds to 'repress'' or 'suppress' a la Freud. I prefer to use my conscious mind to find a healing path. Yes, I believe everything can be healed.

            At some point, I asked J if he found my lecture on the roles of the conscious versus the unconscious mind comforting or distressing. He said, comforting. That is what I perceived. My psychic perception is pretty good, but it's not 100% accurate, unlike Trump's.  

            We went back to practicing automatic processing uninhibited by the conscious mind. I could feel it was speeding up, and J was somewhat uncomfortable. I thought it was time to stop this part of the lesson. I told him that he had made a huge change already. While it looked small, the switch from controlled reading to automatic processing is huge. Did he want to work on something else or rest? He chose to rest. I thought that was appropriate. Let's see how it goes from here. As I wrote this, I could see that his mom may think I am corrupting her son. That would mean the end of my relationship with him. Some people believe that iron self-control and control of the world around them is the only way to be safe. I believe that his need for control was interfering with his learning. 

            When I called Spectrum in the morning, I asked them to contact me with the company's business section. Yvette and I wanted to explore getting a business account. I was told that I would get a call back in fifteen minutes. I did, but it was just for me to evaluate the service I got from the customer service agent. I called Spectrum back. It may be cheaper for Yvette and me to get a business account. We live in the same house, so we could get one account for the two of us, and she could claim the expense as a business expense on her taxes since she is using Zoom to teach yoga online to adults and four-year-olds in Montessori schools.

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Musings:

            In reading Ten Theories of Human Nature, I learned that Sartre believes that the primary burden of our humanness is our freedom. Not political freedom, but our freedom to be whoever we choose to be. For him, the full responsibility for being what we are falls on us individually. Environment, even genetics, has no role. Choice is infinite. Wow! Talk about laying it on. His version of us is the ultimate meritocracy. 

            He does argue that most people refuse to acknowledge that they are at fault for what they have become. According to this book's authors, Sartre believed we could become anything, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.  

            I hear we are responsible for our own thoughts and reactions to situations. Hmm! I'm somewhat on Sartre's page, but not to the extent he is. I believe we create ourselves, but we are limited by the material we have to work with, much as an artist is. To create our best selves, we have to have an in-depth knowledge of the material we have to work with, much as an artist knows his materials and tools. Most people don't accept responsibility for what they are, attributing all their failures to genetics or life circumstances. I don't minimize those two factors. We can only become what the material will allow. We have to learn to work within the imposed limits. Some people prefer to say they have no choice, no control. That's the other extreme.