Vacation! Almost.

I am on vacation. Technically. Doesn't quite feel like it yet. Just spent 4+ hours catching up on paperwork because my supervisor wants me to practice getting it done in 48 hours as is apparently expected for medicare/medicaid progress notes. (I think this might be a bit more stringent than many people, but it's nice I'm learning best practices. Even if I can't quite achieve them yet because my notes take too long)

Also spent any time I could while traveling yesterday, doing notes.

Spend a little time I couldn't, reading up on Gottman's training, since I might be seeing a couple soon. Or maybe I won't. There is a high attrition rate with clients. Quite a few leave after the first session or two. Once could blame that on the client, but I do wonder what I could do to reduce those early terminations. I think it's lazy to blame that on the client and not look at what I could potentially be doing differently. Even if some of the time, the answer is nothing. Some of the time, the answer will be something.

I do love being able to study exactly what I think is most useful for me as a therapist, rather than what CACREP says are the baseline standards that I need to have looked at to be certified as a therapist. Not to say having that baseline knowledge is bad, I do think its a good basic fluency step, but it's neither sufficient, or, I think, properly proportioned. Looking at the research, there are specific areas of focus that are going to make a bigger difference to my clients, and they lean more towards the practical and the applied, it seems, and to universal principals, rather than specific systems. Though I likely do need a bit more of a theory to hold and help my conceptualizations and frame my approach in a way that makes sense to people and has a good structure and sequence to start from. But at least for me that's definitely going to be an integrated approach.

OK, time to go. I am doing some fun vacation things, such as: sleeping in, eating good food, and soon: an escape room! Yay! Probably! (it will definitely be fun. but we are only probably going to do it.)

I -Out

A busy week.

Today is a busy week.

I am busy doing it.

So, no time for a long blog post. Next week I will be on vacation, so, more time for blog posts. Though, also catch-up on stuff, and I'm always off my schedule on vacations, so I forget the things that I normally have a regular cadence with.

In any case, that's all for now. Be seeing some of you soon ^_^

Crunchy

 So much going on. Just...so much. going from like 5 clients a week to like 12-14. including the 3 hour + paperwork for intakes. and the 45 minutes of notes for each client... I have today, to try and figure out how to do notes faster, and catch up on paperwork backlog, before I go into next week and get buried further behind.

I still love working with clients.

I don't hate paperwork (don't' love it, but pretty neutral on it in general) but if I can't seriously change how I do it, I'm going to burn out and start getting behind. Also, my wife's IVF appointment is happening this week, so it's been numerous trips up to Iowa City (about 3 hours round trip, plus an hour or so at the appointment) and a full day procedure this week. All good things, considering what they are hopefully building towards, but doing paperwork while in the back seat of the car is a lot harder than it sounds, when just trying to type or see what I'm writing is hard with the vibrations and the awkward position, and that's only when I'm not having to drive or navigate. It is most assuredly crunch time, and I feel like the one being crunched rather than crunching. Trying to keep my head above water AND figure out a whole new way of approaching things and adjusting my systems, so it doesn't get way worse as my workload more than triples temporarily, and doubles permanently. And be there to support my partner through these last few intense weeks.

It's a lot. We'll get through it fine, but there is no way I can see to avoid the crunch in the immediate future, so I'm just bracing for it and trying to prepare as best I can.

Hope you are well out there on the other side of the screen,

-isaac

Escalators quicksand and overwhelm

Feeling overwhelmed. I need a bunch more clients, which means a bunch more paperwork, and I don't know how I'm going to manage to get it all done. Next week is ok but probably still to much, the week after that is crazy, way too much, and then I have a week of vacation, which I'm worried will turn into a week of catching up on paperwork instead of actually having a vacation. And I don't know if it's ever going to have a breather, until I (hopefully, still am not getting enough hours) graduate. Feeling the stress.

Even my weekly review, to try and get a handle on things, took like 3x as long as normal, and I can't figure out why. Do I have that much more stuff going on? Am I somehow way more distractible than normal? It's like when things start to go off the rails, my flailing to get them back on the rails makes them go even further off. My classic issue of trying to organize myself so I can get more done, but the organization ends up taking up more of my time than it gives back, so it makes things even worse. Now all the other stuff I wanted to get done didn't get done, and it's 10pm. I wanted to catch-up over the weekend and instead just barely didn't get further behind. 

Things are bad, so I try and make them better, and it makes them even worse. That my friend, is very disheartening.

There's got to be some way to simplify things so I am actually keeping the worthwhile stuff, while discarding or streamlining the majority, so I have more time for the important, but when I try to do that, I fail, and somehow end up with even more stuff. As I said, quite disheartening. Feels like I'm trying to walk up some stairs but I'm on an escalator going down. Except the harder and faster I try and go, the faster the escalator goes the other direction. Maybe it's like quicksand? The more I struggle the more I get sucked down?

In any case, these are all first world problems, as they say. Ultimately, nobody's going to die or even be seriously hurt if I don't get all the things done. It will all work out one way or the other, and the worst that's likely to happen is just being stressed out for several months. Not enjoyable, but doable. I did it for years while being a teacher. Maybe I'll even figure things out and get good enough at the paperwork that it's not so ridiculously time-consuming.

Shots! Administrative Paperwork! More Peaches!

The blackberries are really coming in now! Also, massive massive numbers of peaches. It's finally reaching the end, but it must have been like 50 pounds of them. Picking and processing them during harvest time seems like a full time job.

I think I already mentioned, that I passed the test? Yes, looks like I did. And, I'm getting ready to start my group sessions, which is happening, Yay for that. And, my clinical director put the word out that there was a free intern taking patients, so I've started to get more clients very quickly. So: woohoo! Looks like all my worries are over. Except for paperwork. And the actual process of counselor development. Which is way more fun and interesting and seemingly important than paperwork. And with all the new intakes, it's going to be A LOT of paperwork. I'm sure I will eventually get fast at it, but until then, it's really a lot of time. Working on it. Also trying to work on the actual counseling, but sadly that gets second place because the paperwork HAS to get done and the development does not. Seems backwards. And I often can't resist study to improve myself and learn more about the mechanics and science and theory, when it seems useful in helping my clients improve.

Also: injections. One of my cousins who has a young child was at a bat-mitzvah with me and the dj played a song that one of the teens demanded that was probably inappropriate and part of the song was chanting "shots shots shots shots" and my cousin turned to his little daughter and said something like "he must really like going to the doctor to get shots, huh?" So now that's our theme song when we have to do the hormone injections. Adds a little lightness to something she's really not looking forward to.

Blackberries, Peaches, Star Trek

The blackberry bushes are exploding. The peach tree is giving us boxes and buckets and bowls of peaches. 50 pounds? 60? A lot. Just picking them all is a lot of work especially in the summer heat, but then they have to be processed (they can't all get eaten). It's a lot of work. Just to be clear, I'm not doing much of this work, this is Suzannah, who has a passion for peaches currently and gardening always. What a wonderful thing to be passionate about. But I'm at max capacity already, with work and school and learning how to do my job well. I'll help keep our house plants alive and the need-to-do chores done. I think I've said this before in grad school, it sounds like the star trek thing where their engines have been shot at: energy systems at critical levels, transferring all remaining energy to basic life support systems. I've already gone down in classes as much as I reasonably can. It's time to just push through now. It's only for a little bit, so I can do it, and most of the time, it's not quite this intense. It's just when several sometimes-things overlap.

It's very sweet having the nephews over though, so I say worth it.

OK, that's all for these two weeks, I out

Passing, Pouring, Progesterone-ing

 I have completed my NCMHCE, the counselor licensing exam for Iowa, and... I passed! by a bunch! Woo! Now, we've got family (Suzannah's sister's family) visiting and staying with us for a week, and I need to finish writing the curriculum for the group I'm going to lead to get my group hours. Also a bazjillion other things, so it seems and feels like. I still love the work I'm doing, but it feels like a "when it rains it pours" situation, with lots of paperwork, some of which is kind of backlogged from me focusing on studying for my test, plus the additional inputs required from visiting family, plus Suzannah starting her next round of IVF and all the additional medical stuff to keep in mind. It's a lot.

It kind of seems like me getting behind on my blogs is a good thermometer for how busy I am. I am looking forward to the possibility of being able to slow down for a bit, after I graduate. At that point, I can kind of set my own pace, to a larger degree. Until then, (December) it's a race to the end. Now that my test is done, and it looks like I'm going to get my group hours, the one remaining hurdle that still needs jumping is getting all my direct client hours. I don't have enough clients currently, and though I'm open to getting more, there just aren't many new clients for me currently. I'll figure it out, but it's not yet figured. I'm working on it well in advance though, so that gives me a lot of time to course correct.

OK, gonna end here for this post. Maybe another short one to stay current after this.