Phil_F_NM
Camera hacker
The title of the thread sums it up, I suppose.
This began on March 17th of this year. I was at my clinical internship at a local physical rehabilitation hospital; this being the last few months of my graduate studies to become a mental health professional, I was looking forward to completing my thesis as well as a culminating project.
That day, I was working with patients who were just beginning to feel the isolation that the pandemic was about to bring to the whole world. Patients who suffered some of the worst traumas a person could survive, and were now working to adapt their ability to move forward in life. The hospital had placed a temporary hold on visitors in order to prevent COVID-19 infection, so these patients were utterly alone, save for us clinical staff. Some of my patients that day were dealing with very fresh trauma, they were crying, holding my hand, saying they hadn't seen their relatives in over a week. I had no idea the world was in for such a long haul of isolation.
I was given about half an hour to say goodbye to all on my caseload, actually running around the hospital, desperate to give each patient a few minutes for a counseling process that I usually worked with each over the course of several weeks. That was difficult, but I didn't know how difficult it was until weeks later, when speaking to a professor and classmates in an online session. Every one of my colleagues had a similar experience, simply cut off, lacking any closure.
The rest of my graduate education felt the exact same way.
I feel like I "phoned in" my thesis, like the feeling of a decent television show that has had a mid-season cancellation. I think I have maybe thirty more pages of content I should add, but my program director said it was "good enough." I've always hated "good enough," and my work throughout life has always had me believing that "good enough" was just another phrase for personal failure and below average. My culminating project, which was a demonstration of a process in my thesis was a little better but having to be done completely remotely, with no participation from any of my former patients, I still feel like I don't deserve my Masters Degree.
Which brings me to the title of this thread.
I could probably sell or give away all of my photography and art related gear and not even care at this point. I know I'm depressed; I'm isolated, I have no creative outlet and I have no desire to do anything other than eat occasionally and sleep too much. Meanwhile, I have a caseload of nearly forty clients at my current job, many experiencing the same problems that I am, and I give them support, coping skills and occasionally advice which I simply don't adhere to myself.
My graduate thesis and culminating project were exciting, bringing photographic techniques in to rehabilitation of survivors of stroke, TBI, and spinal cord injury. I felt as if I was really adding something valuable to the world and to a field that I believe or believed in. Nowadays, I don't care at all about photography. I look at old photos of mine and have good memories. I look at beautiful photos I see here on RFF as well as other places in the media and I am wistful that a life I've lived in creativity is gone and I don't know how to get some semblance of it back.
I feel like I'm just treading water right now, drifting with a slow current a couple thousand miles northeast of New Zeeland. Nothing but the sea and gentle waves moving me a few feet here and there in the near-equatorial doldrums.
Phil Forrest
This began on March 17th of this year. I was at my clinical internship at a local physical rehabilitation hospital; this being the last few months of my graduate studies to become a mental health professional, I was looking forward to completing my thesis as well as a culminating project.
That day, I was working with patients who were just beginning to feel the isolation that the pandemic was about to bring to the whole world. Patients who suffered some of the worst traumas a person could survive, and were now working to adapt their ability to move forward in life. The hospital had placed a temporary hold on visitors in order to prevent COVID-19 infection, so these patients were utterly alone, save for us clinical staff. Some of my patients that day were dealing with very fresh trauma, they were crying, holding my hand, saying they hadn't seen their relatives in over a week. I had no idea the world was in for such a long haul of isolation.
I was given about half an hour to say goodbye to all on my caseload, actually running around the hospital, desperate to give each patient a few minutes for a counseling process that I usually worked with each over the course of several weeks. That was difficult, but I didn't know how difficult it was until weeks later, when speaking to a professor and classmates in an online session. Every one of my colleagues had a similar experience, simply cut off, lacking any closure.
The rest of my graduate education felt the exact same way.
I feel like I "phoned in" my thesis, like the feeling of a decent television show that has had a mid-season cancellation. I think I have maybe thirty more pages of content I should add, but my program director said it was "good enough." I've always hated "good enough," and my work throughout life has always had me believing that "good enough" was just another phrase for personal failure and below average. My culminating project, which was a demonstration of a process in my thesis was a little better but having to be done completely remotely, with no participation from any of my former patients, I still feel like I don't deserve my Masters Degree.
Which brings me to the title of this thread.
I could probably sell or give away all of my photography and art related gear and not even care at this point. I know I'm depressed; I'm isolated, I have no creative outlet and I have no desire to do anything other than eat occasionally and sleep too much. Meanwhile, I have a caseload of nearly forty clients at my current job, many experiencing the same problems that I am, and I give them support, coping skills and occasionally advice which I simply don't adhere to myself.
My graduate thesis and culminating project were exciting, bringing photographic techniques in to rehabilitation of survivors of stroke, TBI, and spinal cord injury. I felt as if I was really adding something valuable to the world and to a field that I believe or believed in. Nowadays, I don't care at all about photography. I look at old photos of mine and have good memories. I look at beautiful photos I see here on RFF as well as other places in the media and I am wistful that a life I've lived in creativity is gone and I don't know how to get some semblance of it back.
I feel like I'm just treading water right now, drifting with a slow current a couple thousand miles northeast of New Zeeland. Nothing but the sea and gentle waves moving me a few feet here and there in the near-equatorial doldrums.
Phil Forrest
