Thunder, Dosas, Fullness

 I am working hard at all the things. You know, I actually enjoy working on things, getting them done. The issue is just when there are more things than there is time to do them... which I guess is always? 

Anyhoo, I'm not sure I can do it all in the alloted time. I'm wondering if I will need to get an extension on my internship, do an extra semester of it, to make sure I get all my hours in. Kind of like I decided to go down from three to two classes a semester, and it made life way better. If so, better to know sooner rather than later, so I'm not killing myself will all the super full days and long evenings of writing progress notes. Note sure yet.

So much going on. Getting interest in a second therapy group I might be running, doing inake/screener sessions with the people who are interested, about to start the psychoeducational group that is definitly happening. About to start working with a couple, and so wanting to study up on the Gottman method. Doing a paperwork audit and treatment plan updates. Oh, and I've got a dentist appointment. That's all just today and tomorrow.

As I said, too much. Even if I'm working hard at it. I could be working even harder, but at some point of working all the time, you start burning out, and I'm trying to avoid that very carefully.

Lots of cucumbers from the garden! A cooking lesson from an amazing Indian cook! Cat cuddles! Wife cuddles! Life is full and good, and I am behind on paperwork. I guess that's the one-sentence summary. A beautiful full moon, and partial eclipse recently. And an owl sighting, last night. A few end of season fireflies, lots of cricket song (and other bugs as well, I assume, I love the summer symphony of bugs.) And some nice stormy weather, with trees blowing about like a storm was coming, and some thunder today, but very little rain.

With love, and wishes for your happiness

I Out

Vacation! Over.

 Well, it was nice and I didn't spend time doing things I normally do, like update my blog or check work emails (much) or such. Spent time at the beach, spent time playing with extended family. Ate some good food, did some puzzles, went to bed late. Tomorrow is back to work, and I'm currently in transit. It was nice. I can tell because I'm not ready for it to end. That might also be a bit of reluctance to go back to the long hours and hard work and worrying about getting all my hours in. You can see just how much time I'm spending on notes, above and beyond what I should be spending, by the ratio of hours I've got (I'm tracking it, because I need to make sure I get enough hours by the end of the year).

Direct hours this semester: 90

Amount I should have gotten: 120

Indirect hours last semester: 223

Amount I should have gotten: 180

As you can see, I'm waaay over my direct hours, and significantly under my indirect. I estimate I need about 10 hours per week minimum, every week from now on, to graduate, which means usually a full case lode of 5 clients per day, since about a third of them can end up canceling. In fact, of the 10 or so clients I've just added (remember intake paperwork is the worst) Two have left, one hasn't showed up lately and so is probably leaving, another hasn't showed up at all and so is probably not even starting, and another one of my longer term clients has basically met all their goals, and so we're terminating treatment. I need to figure out the churn, of how many clients I need to be continually adding in, to make sure I stay at the numbers I need.

It will be a relief to be off the clock after December and not have to worry about hitting an arbitrary number by an arbitrary date.

I got some cool beach rocks, a squishy stress ball, and some good memories. I was able to have some nice conversations with my relatives. I had fun.

The end!

I out.

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.