Katrina asks me why I no blog no more, and I have no good answer. In the absence of a good answer I will just go ahead and blog, and then I can say "Katrina, what the hell are you talking about?" Because, you see, I'm blogging all the time.

For instance, I'm doing it right now, at work.

Remember when I thought my non-standard work schedule would be calming and centering? It has been; I am now cooking all the time, and doing yoga. I'm also deeply infatuated with a married co-worker and it is frustrating and great. Due to the sad-pants direction in which I'm heading, I'm trying to get my date on, in person and in Internet. In person, I try to talk to nice guys with beards and spend less time with charming and shallow alcoholics. On the computer, I chose chemistry.com because it involves my favorite of the soft sciences--personality tests! They are choosing men for me based on colorful pie charts, just like the village elders would have, had my people stayed in Ireland and Ireland developed pseudo-scientific Power Point-style mating rituals.

It's nearly my year anniversary here at Kid Jail, and since I love a good retrospective, I have been comparing my year at the last job with my work here. In a sweet convergence, I will be leading a Trauma-Sensitive Care training with the line staff this month. Of course this was the training I desperately wanted to lead at the residential center, but seeing as I was the Training Coordinator, it was more important to sort resumes and discuss the finer points of dental coverage. Man, that job sucked!

Following a big conference I attended in November on "Trauma and its Aftermath" I suddenly knew what I wanted to research for my PhD and applied to Jane Addams. I was watching a panel with the great Bessel van de Kelk and His Eminence John Briere and it just hit me, and continued to pinch and shock me until I was forced to speak out on the last day at the last paper presentation. I was on holy fire!

Since the application, however, I have had the time to deeply question my choice of research and of schools. In developing the handouts for this training, however, and thinking endlessly, endlessly, constantly about these kids and cultural conceptions of these kids and communities and crime, it's pretty obvious that I am supposed to pull at this thread until it no longer keeps me up at night or causes me to cry on the bus. This equation has worked well in the past: what is it that makes you cry, St. Renegade, what is keeping you awake at night with empathy and rage? You should probably make that thing your job. In fact, you should blog about it.

The plan, then, is for increased blogging on the following topics: 1. Dating and 2. Various inchoate weepy thoughts about children in Chicago and the meaning of life. I can also write about vegetarian recipes, urban teen language, and missing my friends that have moved away. Coming soon.