I need another personal post – helps me clear out my brain and focus. Life is very intense right now. The septic tank at my office decided to die and since the owners of the building are planning to sell, they opted not to fix it. This meant that the 8 of us who have called the place home (me, for over 20 years) are suddenly in the position of having to scurry around and find a new place to practice. Moving to commercial office space is a lengthy process. Once you find a space you like, you give the owner the specs you want and it typically takes around 2 months for them to get the necessary permits and build the place out. Two months in the old office with the possibility of no water or plumbing isn’t a viable option; two months of not seeing clients isn’t a viable option. So, Anne and I decided to move our offices to our home temporarily.

As a result, this week has been a week of rapidly changing hats. We go look at commercial office space to try to find a new permanent home. Then we swap that hat for our Home Depot hat as we go into fix-it mode to try to convert our home into temporary office space. Then we don our therapist hats as we go see clients. And the interior designer/architect hats as we make tentative drawings of how we want our new space to look. In a few hours, we’re going to go hire a couple of guys off the street to come help us move furniture. I’m not even sure WHAT that hat is. And of course, there’s my student hat that I just pulled down over my ears as I began to write this post. And the beat goes on . . .

A couple of times this week, I thought of writing Aarron a whine email telling him all of this and asking him not to expect great things from me this quarter. I still pretty much just want to whine about it all. However, in my nobler moments (which are few and far between right now), I’m trying to see this as an opportunity to learn something I’ve never been good at: how to work smarter, faster, with less “fat”. Get more (and perhaps better) work done in a smaller amount of time. I’ve never, ever worked quickly. I meander around a lot to get from A to B. For example . . . well, ok, writing this personal post. It doesn’t have to be done. It’s not part of any assignment. I’ll still write my two non-personal posts for this week. But it helps me. Gets me in the right track. So . . . is that fat or something essential? Hmm. Maybe I need to remember that fat – for all the bad press it gets – is an essential nutrient. At least it seems to be for me.