St. Brigid’s Eve Again

Entry for 31 January 2008:

Looking back on my entry for the beginning of Celtic Spring a year ago, I am aware of how much I have in the meantime settled into life here with all its complications, and in particular its politics: The beginning dialogue with CBT and all of that; the project to reform research training in counselling throughout the UK; and the local politics of the Jordanhill campus of the University of Strathclyde in a process of radical transformation in the direction of research. Two different faculty members contacted me (and Mick) today to see if one of us would run for the newly created position of deputy head of department for research. There is a lot of change in the air, and it feels like I am right in the middle of it, like the gales of wind and rain (and occasional snow, sleet & hail) that have been buffeting us in Scotland for the past week or more. Quoting T.S.Eliot, my favorite poet, “Winter kept us warm” but “April is the cruellest month”; and here in the UK right now it feels like April (which is barely Spring in the American Midwest) has come early this year, and I am being blown around quite a bit.

What I’d like most right now is to see clients and write. When I see the two clients I am currently able to fit into my crazy schedule, I find it exciting and energizing, and I come away with more than I arrived with, deepened and refreshed. Similarly, when I get to do what little writing I am able to squeeze in right now, I find that I also enjoy that as a source of creativity and accomplishment. Being deputy head of department leads in the wrong direction for me, away from all that brings me joy.

I actually did get a wee paper written this week (on the train to and from London on Tuesday, a short piece of reforming counselling training for Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal) and the paper on the student field test of the Leuven Systematic Case Study Protocol (with Nele Stinkens and Mia Leijssen from KU Leuven in Belgium) was finally accepted by Person-centred and Experiential Psychotherapies after many revisions. So there are signs of hope. That’s the kind of Celtic Spring that I want to celebrate!