Radical Second Things

I'm about two weeks away from the anniversary of an event that changed me in ways I'm yet to understand - my fiance Jennifer Lauren Reimer's death. It feels like it has drawn me to more people than I was ever drawn to before while also creating more conflict, things that may actually work in tandem. Perhaps I am now just way more empathetic than I was before and see the conflict I was previously clueless toward. She died April 14, 2014.

I only knew Jen a couple of years - I can't memorialize her like her father could. I started a memorial project for her on Facebook. I've decided to post some pictures here in anniversary that she took in the weeks up to her leaving us. I hope it's appropriate. If I've posted them before, guess what? Here they are again. It seems to be my burden to be the one who carry her lantern - I'm not sure how to do it but I still will try.



My favorite:

Unemployment is a blessing and a curse, for two reasons. As an unemployed person I am not restricted by schedules and demands of an employer like a regular employee is, however my bills stack up, rent is due and I cannot afford to feed myself. If I am lucky enough to get my claim approved by the State I will get eight months of payments at 30% of my former wages. So even then, I am eating the proverbial cake.

If you think we're living the high life, I respectfully ask to put yourself into my position. It creates strains on familial relationships and with your significant other. I tell you, it's a hoot not knowing when I'll be making my car payment. I guess I shouldn't have gotten that lease, so I can go to work and pay taxes so Boeing can kill people indiscriminately in the Middle-East via the United States Air Force.

I have appealed to people for donations to which I've seen a guy asking to fund his bowl of mashed potatoes make more than I have.

I implore you to …

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Attraction is a natural emotion of the human species. Most almost everyone on our planet has been, will be, or currently is attracted to someone else. There are a lot of factors in attraction, some weighing more heavily on certain people than others. However, it can often be hard to quell your attraction urges. This can be an especially compromising position for psychologists who happen to become attracted to their patients.
For psychologists, this can be an incredibly detrimental position to be placed in. For example, a client may ask if you as the psychologist find them attractive. How do you respond to this? Irvin Yalom discussed this situation during his keynote in which he placed in this very predicament. Honesty, albeit an alternate world honesty, is the best policy.

So why do psychologists become attracted to their clients?

Psychologists Are Human

The first explanation is quite simple. Psychologists are human beings and …

Michael Maiello and I interview each other once a month, on the dot, in order to get our own thoughts across on geopolitics, religion, economics, love, hate and Star Wars. Did I mention Star Wars? This edition comes in the aftermath of the finale of the show Star Wars: Rebels' finale, where both Ahsoka Tano and Darth Vader made appearances.

Questions for Michael Maiello

** I remember you doubting that Ahsoka Tano would return. Here she was - visibly ten years older. I heard in an interview that she's going to be using a white lightsaber, a neutral color since the jedi are no more. Her return also came with the first animated Darth Vader we've seen since the 1980s. Do you think we'll see a confrontation between the two? It seems unavoidable given what clone wars was like. What do you think that will be like? **
Happy to have been wrong about Ahsoka.  I was too cynical and guessed that Disney would erase the prequel era from history.  They are not so short-sighted.  If Dis…

Myself and my friend, Sharon Cretsinger, a fan of her writing, have decided to write our own respective memorials for Jennifer Reimer. Jennifer will have died a year ago on April 14. I helped contribute to her website, Practice of Madness, but was informed by Sharon that she actually has a fan base among literary circles that is much stronger than just the 3000 who liked her website on Facebook. I'm posting my remembrance a little early so that Sharon can have her work published closer to the actual anniversary of her passing.

Allowing Jennifer in to my life like I did was a new thing for me. I dated without a great deal of effort growing up. I grew up surrounded by estrogen - my mom, my sisters, their friends and mostly female roommates that my mom rented her home out to. My sisters are psychologically abusive and my mom treated me like a space alien for quite a long time.

I dated but my various experiences with the women in my life overpowered them. I kept thinking of my sister…