Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

I’ve been a been avoidant of discussing my job situation, because I had a job, then I didn’t, then I got a few offers, and I had to wait on many things to be able to say which ones were a go and which ones weren’t. But I’m back in business. It’s so hard to discuss work on a blog. I don’t want to share details, but I want to write enough that people I know can be “caught up” so I’m not having to repeat the same things over and over.

So here’s the (vague) deal. A wonderful psychologist who is an utter delight, and who I get along with swimmingly, offered me an office to use one day a week. She offered it without a fee because she likes me and is generous. I took it because I adore her and am very into the idea of being affiliated with her and spending time with her. She’s the kind of person I want to learn from.

I also had an interview for another position, which I was offered, and (this morning) officially accepted. I am going to be an independent contractor. She provides the office and referrals, and I do my thing. In neither case am I an employee. I am considered independent. This other woman is also very cool. I don’t know her as well yet, but I really, really like her. I can just tell. She also seems very organized and more business-minded than me, which is good. I could use some mentoring in this area!

These two offices are about a mile from each other and both are really close to where I live. I started seeing clients at the first office yesterday. I will start seeing clients in the other office in June. I’ll start with a few, then a few more, then a few more. If I get to where I’m really, really busy, there are other offices in the building I can rent, but for now, I’m using the other woman’s office on the days she isn’t there. This is a situation that can grow and grow and grow. Eventually, I’m aiming to fill up to 25-30 client hours (or more if I end up doing a lot of therapy… therapy doesn’t have the hours and hours of “homework” that assessment does!).

So that’s a total nutshelling of a lot of things that have happened professionally. I thought it was worth the typing time. Typing doesn’t in itself hurt. It’s what I have to do with my shoulder to get my fingers in the right place. I’m getting this cast off in two days, and then I will be able to bend my wrist with reckless abandon!

OMG. I shouldn’t have hunted around on Flickr. I was actually looking for one of my own pictures and came across this:

There’s a whole slideshow of this person’s experience, too.

It’s a person’s wrist AFTER the cyst surgery and the cast was taken off. OMG. Yikes! I hope people don’t think I tried to off myself. That can’t be good for business!

Here’s mine on the MRI:

Suddenly, I don’t feel so good!

Image from Time Magazine’s “The Last Days of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Last night just after midnight, I remembered on my own that it was April 4th, the day Dr. King was shot. I always remember it because of the line in the U2 song “Pride (In the Name of Love)” off their Unforgettable Fire album. It came out when I was in high school, and I remember U2 coming to town to see Coretta Scott King when it was released. The line is:

Early morning, April 4. A shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last. They took your life. They could not take your pride.

My senior recital at Oberlin was April 4th, 1992. It was easy to remember that date because it coincided with King’s death. Growing up in Atlanta and attending Atlanta Public, Dr. King was always in the curriculum. The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change is in Atlanta, and I spent a winter term during college working in the media department there. I got to meet Coretta Scott King in person in her office. I was pretty star struck, actually. I couldn’t believe I was in a meeting with her. It was surreal.

I was born in Memphis in November 1969. I always thought it strange that the man who had such an effect on my life and the society in which I grew up was never alive at the same time as me. There was this story my dad used to tell about how he was chief resident on call at the emergency room in Memphis when King was shot. I was sitting here trying to remember all the details when I had the genius thought: I bet Dad blogged about it today. I was right. Here it is: His telling of that day in Memphis, April 4th, 1968.

I was an Intern at the City of Memphis Hospitals on this day forty years ago. We had a shortage of Residents, and I’d been temporarily promoted to “admitting resident” for the day. I was proud to be asked, but had spent the day terrified I was going to make some fatal mistake, send someone home who died or create some indelible medical catastrophe. That evening, I was sitting alone pondering the day, glad that both I and the patients had survived, when I got a call from my wife that Dr. King had been shot downtown.

It wasn’t an easy time to be in Memphis…

Read the rest of Dad’s story: Link

I lived in Memphis from August 2004 – August 2005. I’m not sure why or how it happened, but it seems that the fruits of the Civil Rights Movement never really “took” in Memphis. It’s like there’s a black cloud over the city. I’ve heard other people describe it in similar ways. While there are many wonderful things there, the color line and the poverty line seem to be identical. The gap between rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots. It feels huge. Maybe it’s because I was working with victims of domestic violence and abuse and in the Memphis Public Schools, but I certainly felt while living there that Memphis was a city that was still in need of healing. What a burden to bear. If you ever get there, go to the Civil Rights Museum. It it housed in the Lorraine Hotel, where Dr. King was staying when he was shot, that fateful April day.

Spoke to my ex-husband earlier today. It’s his 39th birthday. He asked me when I started my new job and how it was going. I said I’d sort of started last week. I sort of start this week, and I am DEFINITELY started next week. Only a few meetings this week, but lots of things to work on. Cases will start to come my way, and there will be hopefully a slow and steady buildup. I need to get the office in order, organize everything to work there and and home. While I’m messy at home, I’m usually pretty organized in my work space. I’m starting to realize that I really have done a lot of helpful pre-marketing and pre-networking for this job all year long. Next time you see me, I will hopefully be traveling with my new business cards. OK, off to bed. I’m trying to get on a slightly better schedule. Slightly. I’ll get there as I need to.

In other news, I’m definitely having wrist surgery to remove the Ganglion Cyst. Apparently, it’s in pretty deep. I hadn’t noticed it for all the time that it’s been hurting because I naturally have kind of bony wrists. It really doesn’t look like there’s anything there if you just look at one wrist. It’s only when you compare it to the other bony one that you can see the difference. Leaving the cyst there won’t hurt anything, but since it’s been there so long, we’re assuming it’s not going away on its own. And since it’s caused problems for so long, I’ve decided to go through with the surgery. It’s done in the doc’s office. I just get the whole arm numbed. I’ll wear a small cast from knuckles to a few inches above the wrist for four weeks. Little to no physical therapy expected.

If you haven’t seen it yet:

I’m answering this multiple times a day right now, so I thought I’d put it all in one place. It’s hard to answer basic questions like “When do you start?” and “What will you be doing?” because the position is kind of not a position. It’s not a nice round peg to fit into a round hole. For the average worker, there are things like start dates and job duties and salaries. As a member of a small group practice, things are very square peggish.

So this is a brand new group practice. I am the third of three therapists. The other two are co-owners. The office has three therapist offices, a playroom, and a waiting room. In the hallway, there is a small fridge and microwave, and there is a printer in the closet. My office has a door AND a window (my dream). It’s furnished, which isn’t always the case in small group practices. Both of the other women work with children. I meet with them for the first time next week to discuss more of the nitty gritty stuff like getting me on insurance panels so that people’s insurance can cover their sessions with me.

I am not walking into a situation where things are happening already. As I begin, I will receive cases, but I can’t start 40 hours all at once. I will receive cases from them (aka “referrals” – they have done a lot of marketing already) as they are available. It will probably take a little time to build up to full time. They both said they consider 30 hours of appointments full-time. This is because there is a lot of paperwork and report writing that I will be doing that will take up the extra time in the week. The greater the percentage of time I spend doing assessments, the more writing time I need. Luckily, assessments pay very well, so I should have the time I need to write them.

Salary is hard to explain, too. One of the reasons I didn’t “hang out my own shingle” is that in order to do that, you have to have all the money you would have to rent an apartment: rent, utilities, etc. I can’t afford the initial output that would be required to go into business for myself, nor would I have (I feel) enough local connections for me to feel competent doing that. While I have excellent professional skills, they are somewhat generic, since I have done all my training in Indiana, Memphis, and Boston. I don’t know much about local resources, and that knowledge is important. Being in an office with people who can answer my questions is a real bonus. I’m lucky that I will still be receiving regular supervision for a while. For them, it is a way of getting to know how I work, quality control, and for me, I get the support I need since I’m still “new” to the area in a professional sense. There is a fee for each client coming in. I pay a certain percentage of what I bring in to the practice to cover all the expenses of working there. This arrangement was crucial for me because (like I said) I am not in a financial position to be able to cover that on my own.

What will I do? I will do what I do! What do I do? Individual, family, and group therapy; parent training; neuropsychological and psychoeducational assessment; consultation with parents and teachers. I do whatever I need to do to help the adults in a child’s life learn about how their child learns and how to advocate for them and support them. I do whatever I need to do for kids to succeed and work through issues they are having: emotionally, behaviorally, educationally, whatever “-ly” is relevant.

So in short, the whole ride starts next week, but it’s a gradual buildup, with lots of details to iron out. The business is new, and I’m even newer. There is a lot they need to do, and there is a lot I need to do, for the clients to start showing up. But the wheels have begun to turn, and that’s the most I can ask for right now.

This really is exactly what I was looking for all along. It’s a dream situation, and I’m feeling really grateful these days. Thanks, Universe! I know you’d come through!