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I want to finish my Environmental Studies degree. I do. Given that, though, I'm seriously thinking about getting another one afterwards, part-time, in Psychology, with an eye towards going into youth counselling. I don't even know if that'd be a B.A. or a B.Sc. Does a clinical psychologist need all the biology and chemistry beyond the relevant basics, or can they go with "yeah, I think this might be biological" and refer to a psychiatrist?

But yeah. I play a few online games with teenagers (and adults, too, but a lot of them are younger), and more and more they've been coming to me with problems ranging from "I think I have cancer and am scared to tell my mom" to "I am going to have to either run away or kill myself" to "I think my boyfriend may have missed the bus, talk me out of fretting."

And yes, the second example, I made sure he was seeing someone professional. No way did I try to handle that on my own.

But one of them told me that she was always glad to see me online, because she knew I could make her end-of-the-world problems not the end of the world after all, and help her see them as things she could do something about. Granted, this is someone who is perfectly healthy mentally, but it seems to me that that's a useful skill.

I've been told I'm easy to talk to - one person said I had a serene sort of stillness about me, calm in the storm.

I don't know. This is something I'm good at, something I find satisfaction in, something I could point to and say to myself, "Look, you're helping people. You're doing something that matters." I've been, if not there exactly, somewhere close enough that I can get where teenagers who are scared and lonely and worried are coming from. I'm told that I don't make them feel stupid, and that I can be trusted.

On the other hand, there's this empathy thing. On one side, it's a good thing. On another - I don't know if I could handle being around that much pain, and that worries me.

Either way, I've got a couple of years to think about it. I'd rather do a B.A. because that would be shorter - can one add a major to an already existing degree, or would one have to do a Master's? I don't even know! Time to do research, I think.

Holy cow.

Last year, you may have heard me rapturising about the man who taught my Creative Writing class - the one who waived my English requirements (the first student ever to have that happen in ten years) because he thought I had talent.

I just found out that last month he was appointed Canada's Poet Laureate. I'm stunned. That's wonderful. That's incredible. That is so far beyond cool that I'm running out of words to describe it. My heart is racing. It could not have happened to a cooler individual.

The Poet Laureate thought I was good. That's... wow. Oh, wow.

Wow.

Given that, here's my favourite of his poems - ( That Night We Were Ravenous. )

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( Somewhat gross, but engrossing. )

Last night, it crashed there.

I've been reading villanelles recently. I like them very much. This isn't one, but it does borrow the element of repetition from the form. I'm not sure if it works, but it was fun, and the style lends itself very well to that sort of round-in-circles thinking one does when one cannot sleep or really find anything to do but eat a bagel and do a crossword at three in the morning - at least, it does if I managed it.

( Last night, it crashed there. )