I decided to move a day earlier than I'd initially been planning, because I figured a lot of things I hadn't anticipated would happen. They are happening. I'm feeling very overwhelmed and in the grumpiest mood I've been in for quite awhile.

That said, it *is* the grumpiest mood I've been in for a very long time, and it will go away soon. I'm *so* glad to be getting this over with. I hope I end up staying at the new place for a long time :P

In general, things have been awesome. I just got two new clients, and I've raised my rates to numbers I'm a lot happier with. I think I am likely to raise them more soon - IFS doesn't work for everyone, but I have a few clients that are getting amazing improvements in feeling less shame and depression. I've worked with a lot of therapists and coaches and personal help people personally, and the only one I've gotten as good of results with as I'm seeing with my clients is Susan, who charges about 3-4 times as much as I'm charging, even with my higher rates. Its really amazing to see how much and how rapidly many of my clients are changing. It feels so good to talk to my clients and hear how much better their lives are getting, and to see a really strong connection between that and our work. A lot of times both with myself and my coaching clients I'm not certain about where the changes that I see come from, but in these cases the connection seems quite strong. I'm looking forward to taking more data as I do this for longer.

My feeling for myself is that I'm going to have a big personal growth spurt once I start having someone practicing IFS on me again. I have a couple of friends who are interested in swapping, so I'm hoping that I can be doing it at least once or twice/week. I think the practice of feeling compassion for yourself is very powerful. I have an intuition that as I practice it more that I will internalize it even more than I already have - I find it a lot easier/deeper to work with a facilitator, because then I don't have to track as many things as when I'm trying to practice on myself. I've definitely gotten much better at switching on compassion and curiosity with people in general. I don't always do it, but its pretty easy to choose to, which I do fairly often.

I was talking about a friend about using a model v.s. intuition. I feel like I'm identifying less as intuitive now - using this model, I actually have a fairly decent idea of what I'm doing, so although a lot of the questions I'm asking are the same, I have a much better understanding of why I'm asking them now. I haven't given much thought to this for awhile though, so I'm not really sure how I'd identify it if I considered it more. A fun thought experiment for someday.

In addition to the clients, the other thing that is super validating right now is my new relationship with Peter. Things are so *good* and *healthy.* I notice pretty frequently things that I'm doing better now. I'm feeling amazingly not-fucked up. It is the NRE phase, so maybe once we've been dating for awhile my perspective will totally change. But as things look right now, things are awesome. At some point I will write a lot more about this. He's been living at Skullcrusher for about three months now, so I feel like I know him reasonably well even though we've only been romantically involved for a few weeks. Things are also great with my other poly partners, albeit much more casual. I'm really looking forward to living near Eliezer, Eliezer rocks, and I hope that Marcello and I are able to keep seeing each other after I move.

All three of them are super cool people. They're also all friends, which is pretty cool. Will threw a going away party for Skullcrusher on Friday, and all three of Eliezer's girlfriends including myself were there, plus Peter's other partner, plus other romantic interests of various people. After the party I marveled about how impressive that all of us were there and I didn't notice any jealousy or drama. The party was super fun, I can't wait to see Eliezer's photos ;)

Something else more important but more gradual going on is that I feel like I'm starting to get closer with the kids. The distance has helped a lot, and I feel like I'm building up a foundation. Hopefully its not overwhelming to take the big jump with moving to Berkeley and increasing the time I'm spending with them, but I don't think it will be.

I'm stressed with the move, but we're almost there. I bumped up the move date to Wed instead of Thurs, just in case something came up which I hadn't predicted. This happened pretty immediately, realizing that I'd need to drive back to Mt. View to drop off the truck and pick up my car, so really glad with the margin I've provided myself. I called and set up the electricity and phone today, and am getting close to ready... still haven't packed yet, but I've been whittling down on possessions and checking things off the to do list.

A lot of my clients are doing well. There are two in particular that I am super impressed with. My experience with IFS myself has been very different than with these clients. When Divia has done IFS on me, its usually on a stand-alone issue, or whatever is currently up. I'm currently working with clients with larger themes that we're chipping away at, and I'm really impressed with the mountains I'm seeing moved. Depression and shame are the things I'm having clients make the most progress on. I wouldn't have thought to target these areas, but because of the HPMOR bringing in a wider range of interest, I'm working with clients with a fairly wide range of issues they're looking to address.

Given the amazing progress I've been seeing, I've been much more confident in my efforts to attract clients. Although I haven't been putting a whole lot of energy into attracting more clients lately, since I've been really focused on various aspects of moving. I cannot wait until I'm in Berkeley and settled.

I signed up for a business workshop for learning how to get clients as a coach/holistic practitioner. The first workshop I went to was great, so I actually went ahead and signed up for the paid ones. I hate paying for things right now, but this really seems worthwhile - I could be struggling to get clients not knowing a lot, or invest in learning and hopefully learn some good leverage techniques so that I can end up with a thriving practice and not need to work so hard just to make ends meet. I didn't think I cared much about money before, but I have revised that opinion - I really do want to live comfortably. I'm feeling much more inspired that this is possible.

My love life is *awesome.* I've been seeing Peter for a couple of weeks now, and its really great. We're mutually crazy about each other, and so much is coming together beautifully in this relationship. More on that soon.

I was climbing a 5.10c. It was overhung and the holds were kind of small and hard to grab back onto when I fell off, so at about halfway I decided to come back down. When I glanced back at the tag once back on the ground, I realized that I'd actually made it halfway up a a 5.11c!

For reference, I thought it was going to be a really big feat if I climbed a 5.10a, so that I just got halfway up something six levels harder is really rad. When I climbed a 5.10b today, I went up it like it was a ladder. I'm floored by how easy something is that was once so difficult! Yay skill building :)

Also, maybe climbing is more serious exercise than I'd given it credit for - the guys setting the holds are all *ripped.* Where do they get these guys?!? Counter evidence for the theory that climbing at the gym like I have been doing is all it takes for someone to get ripped, is that I have lost a very noticeable amount of muscle tone since switching over from crossfit to climbing. But its totally worth it for now, and I'll be back doing crossfit again soon enough.

Looks like I spoke too soon... pretty sure I've got a UTI :/ On the bright side, I also think I've got a good idea of why I got it now as opposed to earlier times, so if this theory is true, I might be able to get away with taking the antibiotic less frequently than I was if its only this sort of situation that triggers the UTIs.

I just applied for cheap health insurance and was rejected based on the following conditions:

- Bipolar disorder treated with Lamictal
- Sleep apnea
- Urinary tract infections treated with Nitrofurantion
- High cholesterol, levels unknown
- Allergies treated with Fluticasone

When I apply again, I will be able to majorly update this! I've been off of the UTI antibiotic for about a month and a half now and seem to be fine. Its still a little early to be certain, but it *seems* like cranberry extract has fixed the problem. Last time I tried to get off the antibiotics I got an infection within a week or two, whereas this time it has been about 1.5 months and I've been fine. Yay for getting off antibiotics!

As discussed, I will be off of Lamictal shortly.

I don't have problems with sleep apnea - I was diagnosed with mild sleep apnea a few years ago, but it hasn't been a big deal, and my sleep problems were fixed by something very different than a cpap machine. So I'll have to update that and say that I'm over it.

Allergies... it seems unlikely that they would weight that very highly by itself... but I guess its possible I could get rejected based on that...

The cholesterol I can't do much about. Will checked out my levels and thinks that I'm fine, even though I'm high according to the standards the medical establishments currently use.

I'm officially going to finish getting off meds, with full discloser to my psychiatrist. He agreed while warning me repeatedly that its dangerous. I think the big one was Saphris, which I'm already off - I don't think Lamictal has actually been doing anything. I stopped the taper because of the life changes, and am still hesitant because of all the chaos right now, but I think it'll be alright. He suggested a much faster taper than what I'd been doing - 100mg at a time instead of 25 like I had been doing. It'll probably be pretty brutal on the anxiety front if I do that, but it would be really nice to just get it over with, so I think I'll do that. If I do the first cut starting tonight, then I will be through the first taper several days before the move, which seems like decent timing. I'll do the other two tapers after the move.

Actually, the other reason why I didn't want to start the taper down from 200mg yet was because I wanted to take an anxiety baseline first - which I've actually done now :) It seemed like there was an improvement in my anxiety levels when I first started Lamictal several years ago, so having a baseline seems important since I might not want to get off of it if it proves to actually be improving my anxiety levels. I think most likely that the effect was placebo - Lamictal isn't an anti-anxiety med.

Regarding riskiness, I personally don't see it. I have a back-up medication, Risperdal, which works, so if I do have an attack, all I need to do is take Risperdal and then get back on meds. Its the same thing that would happen if I stayed on meds. He also warned me about depression, but again, same thing - if it happens I can deal with it then, and there really isn't a logical reason that I can see to be taking heavy medication in the meantime.

So anyway, everything is good for now, and if you seem some angsty journal posts from me over the next couple of weeks, you'll know why - withdrawals are a bitch.

I loved this chair, but I don't think the three guys I'm going to be living with would appreciate a red velvet shoe chair in the living room, so I decided it was time to find it a new home. When I went to sell it on craigslist someone in San Francisco offered to buy it on the condition that I'd drive it to SF, and that he would treat me and a friend to dinner at his restaurant for his troubles. I had a lot of fun, and the restaurant was awesome - Rockstar Sushi.

From Rockstar Sushi

More Pictures

Nisan, Alex, Peter and I have officially signed the lease on a place in Berkeley.

I'm quite pleased about this - I went from "I really want to move but have no idea where to go and am scared" to "I have gotten a group together and we signed a lease on our own group house" in about a month. We had a lot of help - Louie advised us on paperwork to bring, Kevin advised us to be checking the market constantly, Eliezer let me stay at his place so that I could be on location to look at properties as they came up for rent, and introduced me to padmapper.com - which emails you listings you are interested in on the hour when they come up on craigslist, and Will informed me of a site you can go to, to get free credit reports. The guys I'm moving with were great about getting paperwork to me quickly. The place is about 1.5 miles from downtown, very close to the bay, and about $200-300 cheaper/room than most of the rest of what has been on the market around the area.

Now that I'm through the initial stress of finding a place (its really hard to find a place for a reasonable price in Berkeley!), I'm relaxing for a bit before its time to get ready to move on the 24th.

Its going to be great to be by the kids, Eliezer, and several other local friends. Also fun to be part of the larger network of Singinst houses and community.

Yay Berkeley!

At this point, I'm pretty sure that my issues over the past few days are just stress. I hadn't realized how hard it is to find a place in Berkeley until Eliezer told me, so that, among other things, has me revving a big more high than usual. In addition to the bad morning anxiety, and other things like that, I'm having after period bleeding, which almost never happens to me and is a typical sign of stress.

On the whole, things aren't going too badly. Eliezer offered to let me stay at his place for a few days while I'm searching for a place, which I am definitely going to take him up on after today - I drove the hour from Mt. View to Berkeley to go look at a place, to find that the property manager had left before I got there. At least I can visit Tovar while I'm up here. And I stopped by a coffee shop, and they had a beautiful place to post one of my fliers - I keep a stockpile of my fliers in my car for just such occasions.

Also reminding myself again that my business is fine - I get really stressed periodically about how I am going to fill my practice and start breaking even, but then I recall that have a long time to get things working before I really have to worry financially, and that I am *okay.* I literally have years to figure it out at my current run rate. Things are going great for just getting established.

I'm going to go stop by the fancy market now to post a flier on the way to go visit Tovar at his after school care. He told Daddy that he wished he was old enough to have a car so he could drive back to see me, I'm touched.