It has been a while and that’s due to a combination of factors, from getting distracted away from my focus on professional development to spending time celebrating getting married. But those are really just excuses. A lot of my lack of communication is due to feeling stagnant and not wanting to admit any responsibility for it.

It has been very difficult is coming to the realization that I must move towards new clients because they won’t move towards me (at least not at this stage of my practice and in a recession). The result has been a steady, yet very small practice of long term clients. Although rewarding doing this work, it has been quite difficult for me to not have the professional lifestyle I hoped for at this stage. I’ve found myself fearful of failure and preferring half-hearted attempts at success, rather than facing the possibility of nothing coming out of a full fledged attempt on a successful business.

So, how have I spending my time? It hasn’t been fruitless, but it has been dancing around living passionately and towards my professional life goals.

Since getting downsized at the beginning of the year, I began exploring possibilities and diversifying my skills working with new types of client populations and decided to focus on geriatric psychology, something that has been an interest of mine since working with addicts and the HIV+ population. The desire stemmed from enjoying previous work helping these previous clients explore the deep grief and loss they have experienced in their lifetime. This desire brought me to volunteer (while I had ample amounts of free time) with a local hospice organization while simultaneously doing contract based psychotherapy for a medical professional staffing agency that focuses on placements in nursing homes.

The strategy has been multi-fold, not only to diversify and develop my skills working with these clients, but also to keep my resume from developing holes in it and also to try and do some subtle marketing from inside these positions, getting my name out there more, and making connections to patient’s families as potential new clients.

Of course, well meaning and probably fruitful, this “strategy” and the other distractions in my life, plus my wedding didn’t help in moving strongly towards self sufficiency and entrepreneurship. So now that life is back in focus, we’ll see if these seeds I’ve planted over the past few months, plus a new cultivation strategy yield anything if I add a touch of well deserved TLC.