I am interested to find that both concepts from the course and my points of interest have been researched, clarified and digested by the activities of the last ten months. It is reassuring to feel a sense of progress in this area of research that arose simply by me having completed the first essay and the awareness this brought being used in reflection on my ongoing practise in dance and in my day to day life. Reassuring that the gap was profitable and not a failure.
I am more explicitly interested in my own mental health and in acknowledging and understanding my limitations and challenges. I have had cause to stake my position more purposefully, deliberately and publicly in relation to choices about lifestyle, social groups, health, modes of communications, tolerance levels and belief systems in order to answer to situations that have been critical because of the inherent flaws and contradictions that have arisen from personal 'culture' that undermines my ability to be healthy and productive. Being 'unwell' is not new, but approaching solving this as a collaborative effort is. As such there is potentially ideas in TU812 such as communities of practice, that will now have taken on a particularly charged and decisive quality.
I am uncomfortable and uncertain about documenting this personal journey as part of my Systems Thinking learning and reflection precisely because in order to do so I will have to embrace a label of dysfunction that undermines my own and others trust as to the relevance, rationality, coherency of my propositions. It is much more conducive for your own stature and dignity to privately struggle with something and latterly present that answer or insight that arose from that struggle as with confidence and security. I feel stature and dignity are necessities after a chaotic and unstable period I am also aware I can have rushed of inspiration that leave seeming disparate thoughts hanging unconstructed or connected and although every students goes through incoherency, I am obstructed by a sense of failure and shame or seeming, in short 'mad'. This illustration of a FB users status by Pedro Fins sums up how inadvertent sometimes poetic substitions in thinking can lead to delightfully left field expressions. O.k for FB, it feels less O.K on a forum full of professional business people who can manage themselves competently.
The work that I do as a performer and improvisor enacting and revealing "real time struggle" on stage and in collaboration with other performers and audience members adds another personal charge to TU812 concepts such as uncertain situations and vulnerability with valuable embodied experiences in social situations to draw from. Even more so I feel I have an invested interest in analysing and practising control or awareness of the forces that create change and transformation as desirable and sustainable change is of critical importance. I feel therefore very motivated. The word "Managing" title of the course is also compelling. What would it feel like to have the skills to manage?.
I am particularly compelled to shout " look!, look! look!" at my husband pointing at the key words list for Part Two and seeing; emotions-metaphor-embodied person-mess words that figure highly for me with both positive and negative connotations.......that I didn't think I would see featuring in a text book.
Now we are really getting to it!!!!
Is it necessary to assert I am considered to have a type of mood/personality disorder? I would consider that to be accurate but not the full picture. Maybe there is truth in data that says I experience emotion more intensely and longer than another? It seems problematic to suggest you can speak to anyones inner experience other than your own. I am nervous of falling into traps in the discourse around mental illness that bias or colour my ability to reference my experience when it is asked for assignments in ways that are useful, inclusive and accessible.
This course is really bloody interesting and sticking with it to the end with a regulated, progressive, consistent and imperfect approach is part of my new learning contract.
