Joe Casadonte

I'm ... approaching done with coursework? I just turned in the practicum report and timesheet. Left to do: finish and polish a groupwork report (due tomorrow); record a five-minute presentation that someone else will stitch together with the rest of the group's presentations (gonna try to get that done by end of Monday); final exam for final class (before end of day next Thursday). Oh, and submit my Application For Credential, I should do that tonight or tomorrow.

It feels a bit of a relief, and a bit of "what next?" and a lot of frustration at the state of the world / economy for having gotten worse since April 2023 when I decided to hide out for two years. It feels more like an Accomplishment than I expected it to, but not much like one. But then very little ever feels like an Accomplishment, except in deliberate retrospect.

Counseling last week and this has been a lot of deep diving into my inability/reluctance to be proud of things I've done. This is gonna require some retraining of my brain. I grew up inculcated with a firm belief that the standards were different for me. Doing something 'normal' is not worth mentioning (though failing to do it is deeply shameful), and doing something extraordinary is worth at most "i knew i could do that, i am Living Up To My Potential." The agon of the Gifted Child: you must do Great Things because you are Gifted; but because you are Gifted, anything you do is no more than what's Expected Of You and thus insufficiently Great.

A couple months back, on the death of Val Kilmer, a friend wrote "The most important moral lesson of Real Genius is that failing to live up to your gifted-kid potential is praxis." I appreciate this a great deal.