Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Click the picture to see the big version.

After a VERY long month, the decorating/furnishing of my office is complete. The entire checklist has been checked. The last few things were the plants, the bottom-up blinds, the wood-specific office chair wheels, and last but of COURSE not least, the therapist chair (which arrived Sunday).

I used to always use Autostitch for panos, but they don’t make it for Mac. Instead, I used Calico. This was my first time using it, and so I just have the trial version. I cloned out some (but not all) of the little ads all over the picture. After I stitched all 18 pictures together, I used Transform/Warp in Photoshop to fill out the gaps in the corners. Lots of artifacts of the process all over the place… and of course the office looks WAY bigger than it actually is. But you get the idea. This is where I work. It’s mine. I don’t work for anyone anymore but myself.

It’s what I’ve wanted for years, and now I have it, and it seems like it’s going to work! Thanks so much to all of you who helped me this month. I could never have done it without you. (You know who you are, and I’ll thank you all personally again and again… I’ve got your back whenever you next need it.)

Soon, I will have an Open House, and I hope my friends stop in to say hello! Maybe August First Friday. I still have lots of businessy stuff to do, and I’d like to celebrate one more time when all that junk is done.

In 1975, a woman named Gloria participated in therapy with three giants in the field of Psychology: Carl Rogers (Person-centered psychotherapy), Albert Ellis (Rational emotive therapy), and my absolute favorite, Frederick Perls (Gestalt therapy). Here are the three videos Glroria made with Perls. Everyone who’s trained as a psychologist had to watch these in grad school. I was just thinking about them yesterday. It’s really fascinating stuff. Perls is the kind of guy who could drive anyone nuts, but in the end, you love him because you realize that his bizarro approach really helps.

Just a life update. I’ve been in professional practice with someone else. Last Tuesday, we decided to part ways, and I think it’s going to be a really great move for me. On Wednesday, I found a new office downtown. It’s an office with two professionals (not psychologists) who have been in the building for five years. One of them is a friend of mine. The office and the people are just lovely. I’ve spent this week furnishing the new office, setting up a merchant account, telling all my clients about the move, and generally organizing things. Next week is my first week with my very own shingle.

Written for an assignment 10 years ago, found while cleaning out files earlier tonight, and I have to say, I think I’m doing pretty well! Here’s a big version, for easier reading.

Starting a business is difficult. While there was a pre-existing business in place, it was just one woman doing her thing. While she does have an office that is set up and a billing person, neither the office nor the billing structures are set up for me. More importantly, there is not a large group of people sitting outside said office asking for my services. Nope, I have to go find those myself. The woman I work with has been AMAZING regarding marketing. She has new ideas every day. I get these cute emails all the time. She thinks she’s annoying me with them, but honestly, I couldn’t be happier about them. She’s thinking about the part of a business that, for whatever reason, my mind doesn’t think about on its own. So I’m happily (at least usually) entering back into the world of professionalism – reading the latest research/information about ADHD (since I presume to know something about it and am now a bit behind), making lists, and generally “Getting Things Done.”

I’d pulled out my old PDA again and was starting to use it for listmaking, but all the software for it is pretty outdated. Since it was upgrade time for me with Verizon, I opted for – drum roll, please – a Blackberry (aka Crackberry). I love that I can just throw tasks, ideas, and appointments in there with only a couple of clicks, and it’s all sync’d up with my online stuff. MAGIC!

Crack

There are now two phones in my purse at all times: one for work calls and the other which contains pretty much everything I need to do my job: calendar, address book, email, even MP3’s to listen to. I even went so far as to download some free online talks about ADHD to get my mind back in the right mode of thinking. It’s HARD when you’re out of the game for a while. I’m SO glad I did that, because what I learned from listening to it a few days really caught me up so much, so that today, when I met with a psychiatrist who will hopefully be sending referrals my way, I sounded as if I had been thinking about all of these things all the time for the last year, rather than about things like getting a job and the licensure exam.