imposing a direction

my i ching earlier this week instructed me to “impose a direction on things” in order to please the spirits – and at first i was not sure what exactly that meant in relation to my current direction – until i realized that at least educationally i have been drifting somewhat in the last two or three weeks. online university is like that – potentially you can get a lot done in a short period of time because they are self-directed – but equally, it is easy to end up with long fallow spells in which little gets done.

i am currently taking two 300-level psych courses in order to prepare for a master’s application in counselling psych next january – one course that i am very interested in (intro to counselling), and one that i am finding a bit of a grind (childhood development) – which is what i use my ferry commuting time on most days. i decided at the outset of this week (the i ching was an effective prompt) that it was time to finish the sections of each course i was on and get to the online testing part rather than drag my feet any longer.

so – last night was an evening for finishing things – a section and an exam in each of my psych courses, and on top of that derrick jensen’s latest book, welcome to the machine: surveillance, science and the culture of control on my bus ride home. take that guiding spirits!

as far as the multiple choice parts of the tests i scored a 90% and a 100% – but i have to wait for the long-answer questions to be marked before i really know how i did. as far as derrick’s book goes – i would highly recommend it, even if you think the content will be familiar to you – for his presentation and persuasive arguments are always original and inspiring. as i posted to an online message board – i always cry at the end of derrick’s books, such is the mixture of mainly hope and a little despair i feel. as i wrote to a discussion forum last night after finishing the book –

although the content in the factual sense was familiar, it was not familiar in presentation – which is what makes all the difference, makes the argument come home, makes the chills run up my spine and awakens my indignant self – my angry self – my self that desires liberation. this is what makes this work powerful – all derrick’s work powerful – is the way the words creep under the skin and remind us of what we already know.

i am always grateful for the gifts that writers and artists and radicals bestow upon us.