General Housekeeping
Happy first day of December!
Firstly, welcome to the new subscribers that have come on in the last two weeks; however you’ve found yourself to be here, it is much appreciated.
Thanksgiving was a relatively relaxing event with my in-laws. Despite a little bit of gatekeeping around the topic of rearing children from them, it was a pretty decent afternoon spent together. The weekend, however, proved to be quite difficult, and presented a challenge in getting this post written; Friday through Monday I had a chronic health issue crop up, and my weekends are when I write the bulk of my post, before polishing on Monday to publish later in the week. Today was the first day I’ve had to be mentally clear, without work and clients, to write. As sometimes happens, I intend one kind of topic and essay, and end up in a completely different place.
That being said, I will break from my usual schedule and have a post for next week, to reset the two-week cycle since things were thrown off track pretty hard with my being sick. This is not the norm, I promise I’m not going to clog your inbox every week.
The Practical Therapist is a free enterprise. Please consider a paid subscription, or, you can donate through this nifty link/QR code through Buy Me a Coffee.
My writing process has changed as of late, with the addition of free weekends after wedding season, and continuing to tweak my weekly schedule. As soon as one post is finished, I begin hand-drafting my ideas for my next post in a cheap knockoff of a Leuchtterm1917 bullet journal. Michael’s had me covered for that one. Writing a draft by hand helps me to remember and formulate my thoughts much easier than typing it all out.
Technically speaking, the original draft has been written since Sunday November 19; I’d periodically work on it, writing, honing, and then polishing before publishing, though I do still have spelling and grammar errors that are corrected after the post goes live. My process isn’t complicated, which is why I focus on writing a quality piece approximately every two weeks (which generally works out to twice per month, except for November), rather than pushing out tons of content every week, multiple times.
Ultimately, I would like to earn from what I write. My husband and I do well, and we strive to be both prudent financially and literate on the subject. It’s a topic I’ve been chewing on for some time, as I generally concern myself more with views per page than I do subscribers. It is not because I don’t care about subscribers, but my goal is to reach a large audience with something helpful, while also creating something of value that you as patrons find useful.
I haven’t been the most interactive with my readers, in part, because it’s not my preferred style of communication and you guys are pretty quiet. In writing that, I realize I probably should include more calls to action to let you know it’s ok to email or write, comment, offer suggestions, and interact. Mostly I forget to do that because I’m just focused on writing a helpful topic and thinking about the next piece. John Wilson at First Things wrote a great piece of humor on the writing process that captures this struggle well:1
On any given day I am thinking about my next column for this publication (the column appears every other week), by which I mean that never does a day pass in which I don’t think at all about the “current” column or some possible subject down the road or both—and often, in the interval between columns, I change my mind two or three times about what the next subject will be.
I provide general examples of issues I see that come up in both my practice and private life, rather than a Zoom chat as some writers across the digital sphere do on Substack. That has its merits but dangers as well; ethical boundaries, and certainly the potential for people to solicit advice on personal issues. With these posts, my thinking goes, if I can address something that is presently a symptom of our current times with some good food for thought, it may be useful to all of you in some capacity.
But it doesn't generate income.
That is why I’m going to begin to structure some changes of the paying tier, something I hadn’t done before, and see how that goes. The first change will be that all posts, after a certain period of time, will go behind a paywall. I understand that this limits the ability to help others, but what is the incentive to become a paid subscriber? My time frame would be two months after the post goes live; this gives enough time for those who are free readers to read and digest what is current without the paywall; the desire to help people is still there. The second is that those who are paid subscribers will have exclusive access to the archive of posts to read from then on. I’m still working on it, and will announce a final decision with the New Year, and it may not look like what I have outlined here.
In addition, coming in the spring, my intention is to reopen a second substack that I launched earlier this year, called “Inking Out Loud”, but had to shelve due to personal stresses—leaving a dysfunctional private practice, finding a new job, planning a wedding with my husband, and moving my things into our home.
The demon and the dream
When I was a girl, I wanted very much to be a writer, specifically a novelist, and write books like Ella Enchanted, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit—novels that captured my imagination, and create stories that would inspire and capture others too. In a biography of the Inklings,2 the Oxford group that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien pioneered, Lewis described a deep, soul-filling, emotionally satisfying joy that swept him away when he encountered beautiful prose, music, or art. The feeling a great story gives you, where you are transported and ache after leaving such a marvelous world behind, was what I wanted to achieve when I wrote.
Being new to Substack a few years ago, I was far too nervous to publish any fiction or poetry I had written. Between 2017 and the present, there has been a slew of cancellations of YA fiction, and probably other works, in part detailed by The Free Press earlier this week.3 You can also read about some high-profile instances that robbed several new young authors of having their books published, from The Guardian’s reporting here in 2019. There was also the looming shadow of a toxic and dysfunctional work situation that left me believing I was incompetent and a bad writer. Obviously this is not true, as most of the people who’ve signed on in the last year are still here.
I haven’t talked extensively about my experiences at the job that brought me out to Northern Virginia, but for the first three years, I worked at a non-profit as an editorial assistant (though frankly it should have been labeled assistant editor based on the amount of work I did and what it constituted) that had a large subscription base of close to 500,000 people. Where I worked is controversial, and I was informed in no uncertain terms that if other people in the media industry knew where I had worked had I voluntarily chosen to leave, I would never get another job again. At the time, I worked for a very conservative lobby on a very specific topic. And I was fired and made to sign an NDA if I wanted my severance package. This left me in a difficult predicament: experience political blackballing and discrimination as a writer if I revealed my experience, or hide it so that I could be paid and earn a steady paycheck. Fear and paranoia of being discovered and discriminated against plagued me for years. Most people I have found, are fairly moderate, find my work experience interesting, and understand and don’t discriminate, even if we disagree on the value the organization stands for. Publicly I would disavow the organization, both for genuine structural and internal political issues, and for what was a clearcut case of workplace abuse, twice in a damn row. Which speaks to the lack of either good judgment, or hiring practice, or both, on the part of the department I belonged to. Welcome to the culture of the American workplace.
After three years of intense workplace abuse from two different supervisors, one who very clearly had C-PTSD from God knows what, and the other had enough of the hallmarks to make an initial diagnosis for a personality disorder, I was burned out, and emotionally and mentally broken. I did not believe I was intelligent or capable enough to be a writer. In addition to that, I had been undergoing once-a-week therapy for my own C-PTSD, from September of 2017 to October of 2019. The year of 2019 saw me scrambling to find a job, which came in the form of working for a company that needed a proofreader and editor for its online content, which I did happily and steadily before the pandemic and up through the end of 2020, when the funding for the project was cut and I was let go.
I started this Substack as a way to test the waters, to give myself an outlet and hope that I wasn’t as incompetent and stupid as my two bosses lead me to believe. From this whole process, I’ve learned a few things.
I’m not a stupid person. I do think differently, and somewhat more analytically than others I meet, but by no means am I a stupid or unintelligent person.
I struggle with consistency. Some of this may be residual to the C-PTSD, and a larger share due to several years of turmoil as my school and work schedule constantly shifted. I’ve struggled to find a consistent rhythm, though there are some hangups, like sick days this week.
We’re all human and our human struggles frequently get in the way. I struggle with two posts per month, as well as having the emotional energy after a week of seeing anywhere from 14 to 16 clients4. And also paperwork. Therapists, early on in their careers as they learn to manage caseload, seem to consistently struggle with paperwork (many of my fellow pre-licensed coworkers have regularly lamented this). The documentation is a mountain, especially when you let it get away from you, as has happened.
With all of this being said, I have made the decision to self-publish a novel I wrote at 18 in a serialized format. Part of my drafting process on Tuesday included sitting down to figure out how that model would be structured. It will also be a test to determine how feasible it is to self-publish a book, with the idea to use the subscriber fees to fund the print costs. There isn’t a hard number yet, as I have to research print costs, and what an exclusive first run would look like, but it would be the first 100 to 150 people who support the book would receive a signed, printed edition of the work they paid for.
The interesting thing is, the book already exists. What it needs is editing and rewrite. The cost of the subscription will pay directly for what it costs for the editing and rewriting process. During the approximate year-and-a-quarter publication schedule, I would be working on soliciting reader feedback, incorporating that into the chapters, and eventually publishing it.
I’m planning on launching it in March, tentatively.
How will this impact The Practical Therapist?
To be honest, I don’t know. It probably will. It may make things harder. Or it may not. Fourth months from now is not terribly long, but I also have finally adjusted to my own work schedule and think I can handle it. Part of my thought is that since the novel is already written and needs editing and rewrites (which may or may not be extensive, who knows 🤷🏻♀️), editing is not as taxing for me as writing is.
So this is where things stand. As I get closer to making an official launch and the backend work of preparing that other Substack-turned-serialized novel, I will include links for anyone who is interested in reading the other work, and I ask that you please consider it as time goes on.
There will also be, for the first real time ever — again, not the most organized when it comes to this specific endeavor — a year-end review of growth from December 2022 to December 2023. You trust me with your eyeballs and time, I figure it is fair to provide you your yearly review and report for how things are going.
As always, please share The Practical Therapist. This publication grows because of you and your interest.
For all my peeps freezing their butts off, stay warm. If you’re in a warm place, stay cool and in the shade.
Happy Thanksgiving (a week late), and if you celebrate Advent, have a good 1st day of Advent on Sunday, December 3.
Pax Christi 🕊️
It’s an interesting piece of satire, from the perspective of Harry Potter had he come of age when smartphones and apps were all the rage. Satire is a genre I admire but have never really excelled at. Read the bit, because it’s a rather telling piece how blind we are to the canary sounding the alarm that the device in our pocket is more toxic than we realize.
On display this week as well is an episode of “The Way I Heard it with Mike Rowe”. I’ve loved Rowe and his work, and what he has generally stood for since “Dirty Jobs” first appeared in my wee years as a teeny bopper. He strives to be balanced, and utilizes the concept of storytelling well, in addition to trying to be honest, fair, and level-headed.
In this episode, he interviews Washington Post writer Salena Zito, who seems to write the stories of the unsung people, among other topics, all over this country. At least that’s how Rowe presents her. The conversation meanders, but I found it heartwarming and a pleasant change of pace from the doom and gloom of the news cycle. It may challenge you, and it may upset you. But I think it has merit for being willing to talk about the hard, frustrating elements of our modern life.
John Wilson, First Things, “A day in the life of a columnist”, 11/17/2023
Phillip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
Alex Perez, The Free Press, “The Fight for the Future of Publishing”
My workplace requires 30 people per week to be considered full-time. I do not understand how my fellow therapists are not burned out if they see this many people, and need time to recharge and do paperwork.
Hello Rachael, this seems to be a post about your process, dreams and plans. I too am publishing serial books (many that I edit on other sites), and I too have written one (12 years ago), and never did anything with it. I am sure it needs editing, but just re-reading as I publish the chapters (slowly), I still think it is right-on. It is also about well-being. (I shouldn't be saying this because I am not going to give it to you, since I do not connect my sites.) They each have their own life.
And I am not out to monetize anything. Well, that is the definition of "retired".
✓ I’m not a stupid person. I do think differently, and somewhat more analytically than others I meet, but by no means am I a stupid or unintelligent person.
At a certain point I self-define my own being, not by outside standards, especially not in distorted environments.
✓ I struggle with consistency. Some of this may be residual to the C-PTSD, and a larger share due to several years of turmoil as my school and work schedule constantly shifted. I’ve struggled to find a consistent rhythm, though there are some hang-ups, like sick days this week.
Consistency certainly can be a focus or a discipline, but without monetizing, there are no deadlines. So my consistency is based purely on enjoyment and satisfaction. I thoroughly enjoy thinking and writing about what I think. So I am here on your site with no regrets. And it goes both ways, without writing I wouldn't be "Thinking" but only recycling. This I know for a fact. Writing is the key to advancing as a human being. (For me.) That's why I honor most all writers. I also try not to make self-characterizations, "I act like this because I have these symptoms". They never seem to add to life.
✓ We’re all human and our human struggles frequently get in the way. I struggle with two posts per month, as well as having the emotional energy after a week of seeing anywhere from 14 to 16 clients4. And also paperwork. Therapists, early on in their careers as they learn to manage caseload, seem to consistently struggle with paperwork (many of my fellow pre-licensed coworkers have regularly lamented this). The documentation is a mountain, especially when you let it get away from you, as has happened.
Struggle is an interpretation and a definition that you can make. But why do it? Well, my goals were frustrated, so I have to "rinse and repeat". So that means you don't like to rinse and repeat?? Why not enjoy that too?
It is a whole different lifestyle to enjoy every last thing.
thanks for your input Rachael
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Congratulations on your upcoming book! I relate to this post. Writing anything, be it a newsletter or a novel is hard work, especially in the face of a terrible and stressful full time work situation. I've seen a few posts this week on burnout and I've experienced it, too. I also relate to having the feeling that you can't do the writing, or are not good enough. I've struggled with issues like that my whole life. Good luck with everything!