Trust, Hormones, Letting Go(d)

 Let's see. We've started IVF, which involves a lot of injections. Hopefully it will result in a new life, which goes along with the spring celebration theme. I finally had a chance to finish my renewal of creative path project, something like creating a vision or north-star ideal scene for direction.

We celebrated Passover for the last three days. Suzannah is a bit overwhelmed I think. Taking hormones is rough, it messes with how you're feeling. And there was a lot of cooking and a bunch of other stuff going on all at once. I think she's doing a good job dealing with all the stressors, but that doesn't make it easy.

I'm thinking about time in a different way. Rather than trying to push and squeeze, I'm working on releasing. Trying to release expectations and things that are causing me unnecessary pressure, as well as trying to release self-expectations and standards and completionism that takes of my time than some tasks are actually worth. As well as release some of the pressure and "should"s that I put on myself that make time feel more squished and tight. As well as the distractions I give myself that tend to shrink the felt sense of how much time I have.

It's a more gentle and kind approach to myself than I've done in the past, and it feels good, but is yet to bear much fruit. We'll see how it goes.

OK, time to write a paper and do a weekly review today. Which seem like excellent opportunities to practice this letting go of perfection and completeness and leaning into Self trust.

You know I'll keep you updated,

With love,

Isaac

Spring celebrations and rules lawyering

I just gathered up all the blog post recurring 'todos' that I haven't yet done. it looks like a lot. Not sure If I've continued to get behind, or just haven't had time to catch up from a while ago. So, a brief update, and maybe a second short blog post, to catch up. We'll see. Finally caught up with paperwork, but it's still taking me well over an hour to do the paperwork for each hour long session. That's not sustainable. I'm continuing to try and shorten the process, but so far, I've only made incremental progress. However, it's the same approach I take to any problem in my like that I decide to fix, I just keep at it, trying different approaches, or refining my current approach, until I get to a point that's good enough. However, I'm more time bound than normal, because my internship is coming up shortly, and I need to go from 5 clients a week to more like 12. And I should start adding clients sooner, rather than later, because the initial paperwork takes even longer, so it's important not to have more than one of those a day. best not to have too many in a week either, lest I get too far behind or have too much to do in the evenings, leading to me staying up late.

There's also the end of the semester coming up, and thus a bunch of papers. So... maybe not catching up that much on my blog posts. This is enough for one though, so I'll end it here and start a second. Rules lawyering for the wind! A venerable Jewish and gamer tradition. Oh, happy Passover, if your Jewish, and happy Easter, if your Christian. And I guess I already missed happy equinox, if your...what would you call that? I'm thinking 'Pagan'? But that seems like a catch-all. Nature-based?

Anyhoo, happiness to you, every day of the year.

-I Out

Filtering Fish, Motivation, and letting go

 OK! I am caught up on paperwork for work. Now I can focus again on the other stuff I put on the back-burner to get that done, such as taxes...

On a positive note: for  several months (a year?) I've been keeping a "curiosity/motivation" journal. I wanted to improve my motivation, feed my curiosity, so I had the engine I needed to put in the hard work required for mastery. And you know what? I feel like I got there. I'm highly motivated currently. I think the main thing that did it was actually starting to practice as a therapist. I love my work, and it lights me up, and it kind of feels like that being lit up bleeds over into my whole life. That is fantastic, and deserves a celebration.

I am now onto a new thing (because there's always a next thing) and that is what I've been calling my FILTERING project. After a cute CBT style short story for kids about "filtering fish." My message is different than the one in the story, which is about not thinking only about the negative in a situation and assuming the worst. My filtering is about prioritization, mainly. I call it filtering, because to prioritize feels like a task by task thing, while my issue often happens within tasks. I'm doing the right task, but I get sidetracked in the middle, or spend to long on a specific portion of it, and that part shouldn't get done, or shouldn't have that much time spent on it.

Some of that relies on my ability to focus, and stay focused, not getting pulled off by distractions.

But another part of it is my ability to let go. We all have the desire to complete things we start, and I have a desire to do things well, if I'm doing them at all. The ability to let go of something, even if I've already started it, is important, and the ability to realize something does not require my full maximum effort/time input, and let it get done just to the level necessary, is connected to this ability to let go. I can get focus locked on something I'm working on, partially this is my mind fooling me into staying focused on it for  long periods, without coming up for air, because 'it's gonna take a long time so I need to get it done as quickly as possible' which means not taking breaks. BUT, I think there's also a part of me that realizes, in these situations, that if I do take a break to clear my mind and get some perspective, I'll realize it's not a good idea to keep working on it, and I'll stop, and Isaac in the moment wants to finish it, so in order to sneakily get myself to not stop myself, I just don't let myself have that space to think, and keep working on it till it's done. Then I come up for air and realize 'what the heck did I just spend 3 hours on?' but by then it's too lake.

So again, a part of that is letting go. Being willing to let go of what I'm focusing on, being willing to be wrong, and stop working on it. Being willing to at least pause and check in if it's really what I feel like I should be doing.

I've always been slow. Slow and careful and thoughtful. Though paradoxically, some of my most enjoyable moments and days have been when I've been quick and spontaneous and creative and not at all careful. Doing improv, writing and creating quickly, without editing or worrying about quality. I have kind of taken that type of activity away from myself, over the last many years, and I'd really, really like to give it back to myself. That's a bit of a digression, though an important and related one.

The point I was making was I'm slow, and careful, and get things done slowly, which means I can't do as great a quantity of things as other people, and thus it behooves me even more than the average person, to be very thoughtful and careful with my time and attention. Prioritizing well is even more important.

And ultimately, one of the best ways to do that is very simple: just take a break frequently, a real break, let my mind relax and expand, preferably in nature, and then ask myself from that wiser place, what the best next thing to do is (and how to go about doing it, sometimes what to do is obvious, but how to do it is often more nuanced and hard to get right. I'm thinking about the Bhagavad-Gita advice about renunciation of the fruits of action and Karma Yoga in general.)

OK! That's this weeks post.

With love, and wishing you all good, dear friend or family <3

-IO

Dr. Crunch

10:30 pm before my work week starts up again. Tried unsuccessfully to get caught up with paperwork. Caught up somewhat? but not fully, and now the next week comes, to bury me further. This seems unsustainable. Not sure what to do about it yet, but writing a long blog post is not it. At least I'm not falling behind on this, though I'm sure it's not as interesting as usual. Suzannah is away for the week on a buisness trip. My schedule is off. In the same way that having someone watch you work tends to make you more focused, having someone else at homes tends to make me stick to a better routine. (unless we're staying up late playing games together :D)

Hello again my old friend time crunch.

Busy doing paperwork catch-up

Hi! I'm extremely busy. Doing paperwork, and papers, all weekend. Still working on it. Still love what I'm doing, but it's really a lot, and I'm catching up on stuff that is backlogged, so unfortunately, that's all I've got time for, this post. Behind on a lot of stuff, and it feels like more keeps getting shoveled on, faster than I can shovel it off. Even as I deprioritize non-essential stuff for some unknown future time. I feel like I should give some concrete details... It might blizzard here in Iowa. There are some fruit tree branches that our neighbor suggested we put in a vase, and they are indeed blooming now, which is very pretty. I'm worried the warm weather and now hard freeze, is going to kill all the fruit tree buds, but hopefully they haven't opened enough to be vulnerable. We will see. OK, that's something, now I'm back out and back to work.

Hope things are less hectic on your end. All good to you,

-Isaac

Excessive Paperwork. Filtering Fish. Learning to Drive.

 It is Monday night, which is basically the end of my long weekend. The first two days of my weekend were straight up writing documentation or other time sensitive stuff. I did that right into the night, not moving very much, till my wife came into the living room which was pitch black because I hadn't gotten up from my seat on the couch from when it was light out. I'm doing a lot of work. There is a lot of work to do. It's feeling a bit excessive. I'm super into my work as a counselor, and so I at least for now have the energy for it via my enthusiasm, but I think it's a bit much to be sustainable.

and here I am, almost 9, and there are just so so many more things on my list I wanted to get done this weekend. As always, I wish for more time.

I'm thinking about filtering. I think I often do more than is necessary, because I don't have a good filter that lets me discard unimportant things. I just take whatever is in front of me, and do it as though it's important, trying to do a good job on it. There are many times when it would be better to go "eh, I think that's good enough." And leave it at that, or even "you know what, this is taking too long, it's not worth the time." Or even, "I think this isn't worth doing at all, for now."

Deciding, or figuring out, which things are the ones that should get filtered out, quickly and without a lot of energy expended, is a weak point for me, and so I'm putting some attention on it, because I would like to get better at it. Spending 4 hours per set of intake paperwork is excessive. Even one hour per normal paperwork per client, seems excessive, and absolutely unsustainable, when I have a normal client load.

Some of this is made more difficult though, because there is so much that I am still learning. I remember reading somewhere, one of the things experienced therapists do better than newbies, is filter out the important stuff that gets said in session, from the unimportant. The new therapists think everything is equally important, and so are overwhelmed and often the important stuff gets missed, because they can't pick it out from the rest. I certainly feel that way about what I'm writing in the after-session paperwork. But also with all the little things I have to keep track of. It's like learning to drive: at first, there is way too much to keep track of at once. Eventually, most of it becomes automatic. Until then, it feels pretty nerve wracking and you're always cutting people off in traffic because you didn't check your mirror or put on your turn signal because you were just trying to stay in your lane.

It seems like a skill wholly or mostly separate from doing counseling. I would still want to take notes even if nothing was required for insurance, but they would be a lot different, and take a lot less time. Perhaps there is some use in the structured format they are in. But the amount of time I'm putting in, is more than the use I'm getting out of it. Still working to find the balance of that.

Gotta go now. still need to do dishes before I go to bed. Still very enthusiastic and positive about my internship, but also feeling a bit overwhelmed. Probably a normal feeling.

OK, that's all for this week. Hooray for not falling behind on this.

Oh, P.S. the filtering fish reference in the intro is just a CBT story for kids I heard. That filter was about only seeing negative stuff (or not, and seeing the positive as well) but just the idea of filtering stuck with me, though my filtering is of a totally different nature.

Two Rabbits, One Client, Many Sneezes

I have seen my first client solo! It is wonderful. One client last week, four (planned) this week. Have a head cold and sneezing like crazy. Thankful for soft cloth handkerchiefs, for my nose, and the environment. Feeling very busy, but also excited and grateful. Doing this work continues to feel very good. Such a different experience to teaching.

OK, that's it for this week. Short I know but better than nothing.

There are so many things I want to do, and like doing. That's a good thing, in many ways. I'm engaged in life. But I think it does require me getting better and focusing, because otherwise my energy is going in too many directions and it is non-ideal. What's the phrase? Chase two rabbits catch none? Or something like that.

Anyhoo, good-bye for now and good luck in your own endeavours.

Love, Isaac