I need to learn a new skill.  I need to learn how to endure frustrations without becoming frustrated.  Frankly, my frustrator is on the brink of burnout and I have a suspicion that when it goes, I’ll default to violence.  Options are required because I don’t think I’d do well in jail.

I just spent another brain-bending day in the company of the Chi Woman, also known to me privately as The Sow, and That Idiot Creature.  (Others call her a professor.)  Guess what we did?  First we spent about five hours discussing Hollywood movies about addiction.  Because that’s a really good way to learn how to counsel addicts.  Then we spent another two hours talking about chi energy. Turns out that we really can’t examine chi in terms of things like outcomes or evidence because it belongs to a different paradigm than western medicine, though of course Chi Woman knows many people who have had full recoveries at the hands of chi practitioners.  (Notice: Evidence requirements don’t apply, but anyway we have evidence.  I never borrowed your kettle, but even if I did, I returned it last week.)  (Also, if outcomes measures belong exclusively to the western paradigm, how do we know anyone got better?)

Besides, chi treatments are thousands of years old and doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?  Everything old is good!  Like putting butter on a burn!  Or slavery!  And sexism!

And can I just add a little aside here: Why are we so ready to embrace wacky “spiritual” theories so long as they come from somewhere else?  We scoff at American Evangelicals who speak in tongues and claim to faith heal - and we scoff because it’s so obviously charlatanry.  Why then do we accept, for example, Reiki?  There is no difference - invisible holy spirit, invisible energy bolts: po-tayto, po-tahto.  As long as white Europeans didn’t think it up, we eat it for breakfast.

But back to the ranting: at the end of the day Chi Woman asked the class what we thought of spending the day talking about movies.  I stayed quiet because I learned long ago that it’s a waste of time to tell people they are wasting your time.  No one will accept it and even if they did they certainly wouldn’t admit it - and even if they would admit it, they wouldn’t admit it in front of an entire class of people they are supposed to be educating.  Instead I began mentally formulating my scathing letter to the dean about this utter fucking waste of time class.  Of course a couple of sycophants in class spoke up and said they loved it - what a useful exercise, to look at addiction through the educated and enlightening perspective of the profit driven blockbuster industry! (Okay, I paraphrased that last bit.)  And then Chi Woman says this:

“Glad to hear you all liked it.  Isn’t it so much better to do fun things like this, rather than a bunch of boring research?”

Yes… if you don’t want to LEARN ANYTHING.

I am so exhausted from being angry I could weep.  Please, if anyone knows how to sit through this shit without utterly freaking out on the inside I would love to know your secret.