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