◉ Newsletter | Ramble Fest
Greetings & salutations,
This edition of ◉ Newsletter is coming to you late. I started writing it early on Sunday morning and have been chipping away at it since. The content is a ramble fest, so if you don't enjoy that kind of thing, you probably want to skip it.
Construction:
I don't know how much I've mentioned this in previous newsletters, but I'm sure I have mentioned it several times: My family and I are having a lot of work done to the house that we live in. This started by interviewing and then selecting a general contractor. The general contractor acts primarily as a middleman between the property, owner, and subcontractors. The subcontractors are the people who actually do the work. (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and so on).
I've learned many things that I wish I had known at this project's start.
- Don't assume that the subcontractors are communicating with one another directly or through the general contract. I cannot tell you how many times subcontractor (A) showed up to do some work but could not do the work because some other subcontractor (B )was in the middle of doing some other work or had not yet completed something that needed to be completed before subcontractor (A) could do the work that they needed to do.
- When something looks off, do not think to yourself., "Well, that looks odd to me… Maybe I should say something… No, I don't want to tell them how to do their jobs. They are professionals; I'm sure if someone is wrong, they will catch it." This is a mistake. I made it several times before learning the lesson I needed to learn. Now, when something looks off, I point it out as soon as I notice it. Without fail, when I point these things out to the subcontractors, they say something like., "Oh yeah, sure, I'll fix that." another way of describing this lesson is, don't assume that the subcontractors care about your house the way you do. They don't. To them, it's just a job, and, unfortunately, it's often just a job they will try to get done as quickly as possible. When you're living in the space, you will care about it more, and you will notice things the subcontractors overlook.
- In addition to what I just said above, it is vital to point things out as soon as you notice them! I say this because if you point it out soon, the amount of undoing that needs to be done will be less than if you wait to point it out.
- Perhaps the best way to sum up what I'm trying to get out here is to say that if you're doing a project like this, you must become somebody who project manages. It is very tempting to think, "I'm paying the general contractor to be a project manager, so I don't have to do it!" This is wrong, wrong, wrong! It is also annoying, but it is true: you must manage the project manager.
Here are some pictures that capture the state of some of the areas still under construction in and around the house.
Clinical Work:
This time of year poses a series of situational problems for clinical work.
- As the weather breaks, patients doing psychotherapy tend to want to take a break from the work.
- Spring break weeks are slow because so many people travel.
- The end of the university school year is in sight and coming up fast
- The end of the K-12 school year is in sight a little beyond that.
Generally speaking, the result is a few slow weeks and the start of a scheduling migration.
Podcasts:
I have been thinking a lot about podcasts and the strengths and weaknesses of the medium.
I re-listened to this and this as I was doing this thinking.
I'm also listening to my backlog of Robcast episodes.
Doing these things together makes me think that Rob Bell is a master of the medium of podcasting! I say this because his stories, which are about somewhat normal, mundane, everyday kinds of things, are so well-paced. They hit beats, which leads to a point. They are struck well. In addition to that, the way he tells stories gets me emotionally invested.
Reading:
As mentioned in the Friday recommendations, I've been reading the Emily Wilson translation of The Iliad. It is amazingly good.
I'm reading this to see if it provides any interesting or useful metaphors for psychoanalysis in the clinic today. My hypothesis is that it does.
I'll say more about this on [S][J][P] and in these
Fin:
That is it for this one.
Till next time, please make some glorious mistakes.