Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Absenteeism and a Shift in Perspective

So it has been a very long time since my last post. I know that I have at least one message to reply to and I have been very poor at doing so.

What has been going on since my last post? A lot of things. I won't go into painstaking detail. I had to adjust to being a single parent.  I had to finish out last school year which I managed to do fairly well. It was the first times that I actually didn't have IEPs to bring home with me during the summer. I did some per diem work during the summer and then started the school year.

I have been extremely fortunate to have so many wonderful people in my life. In addition to the wonderful support that I have gotten from my friends and family, my coworkers were also incredible.

At first, keeping up with this blog did not seem important anymore since I had so much else to do. My heart was just not in it. Then as my life began to settle down, a wondrous thing happened.  I found happiness again.  I could go through a whole thing on the grieving process but I won't. But I'll say it again, I found happiness.

Even after I was happy again, I still didn't feel the need to come back here and write.  A few months ago, I began to examine the reason for this.  I started examining this because a very special person in my life asked me why I stopped writing it.

So the conclusion I came to had to do with a shift in perspective.  When I seriously started the blog, things weren't going well in other areas of my life.  Work was the only area where I felt competent.  Work was a refuge...not that I tried to disappear into my work and remove myself from the rest of my life...but my hours at work were a distraction from the other areas that weren't so good.

Now that my personal life is better, I don't need work as a refuge.  While I still want to be good at what I do, being a school psychologist isn't as much of a defining attribute.

I don't know if that sounds lame or not but that was my conclusion.  I could provide other examples as proof of this but I think I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Where do I go from here?

I'm planning on posting again on the site. I know that I'm not even going to try to keep up the rigorous pace I foolishly attempted to do before.  One post a day was just too much and, now, I don't think my professional life is that interesting (Do I know how to promote myself or what?).

To the person that sent me a personal message, I will get back to you soon, which is kinda relative considering how long ago that message was sent.

I think my next post or two will have to do with changing tests and the use of technology in the workplace.