This blog is one that I wanted so much to do while working as a school psychologist, but as one could observe by skimming the list of posts...I was a bit, well...terrible at it. Not terrible at the writing, but terrible at keeping up with it. I had a goal to post at least once a month. I did not do this.
What is difficult about writing a blog while working as a school psych is that literally at the end of the day my brain just can't do it anymore. I put 100% of myself into my work when I am at work and 100% of myself into home & family when I am there. So to do the blog I would often have to sacrifice home/family time, and quite frankly I just didn't want to do that.
I had a lot of people tell me to keep up the writing and sharing once I decided to take a leave of absence to care for my son (that was also the moment of truth; when I finally learned how people really appreciated what I do). I had very much intended to keep writing. To keep learning and researching and keep up with the profession.
Now for the truth of it...keeping up with the profession while on the outside looking in was honestly enough work for me once I left. I'm sure I disappointed some people by "disappearing", and for that I am sorry. But once I had the opportunity to take off my 'career hat' I breathed such a sigh of relief that I wasn't ready to put it right back on immediately. It's not that I don't absolutely love what I did. I love being a school psych. I love helping everyone working with kids to enable them all to succeed (and sometimes that means just being a support for the teachers and staff). But as much as I absolutely love the profession...burn out is a real thing. Compassion fatigue is a very real thing. I worked for 5 years in a very challenging area and it wore me out. And honestly, I don't think it matters where you are. Every psych faces challenges. Reason being, we work with kids, we work with adults, we work in the field of education, we have a passion to help, and we have to work with limited resources. Being in a helping profession can be exhausting (physically, mentally, and emotionally)! So, yes, I took a LONG break from really engaging actively in the field once I left. I was spent. And I wanted to put myself into being a mom as much as I put myself into being a school psych.
Now my son is getting older and needing my attention less and less. He's growing up. It is bittersweet indeed. Next year he'll be a school age child (sniff). But I am so unbelievably grateful for this experience. I will never ever regret making this choice.
That said, it has been 1 and a half school years that I've been unemployed (I really hate that word as it implies that I could not get a job, but this is not the case. I actually had a lot of opportunity, but none in the area where we wanted to settle our family for our forever home) as a school psych. Once I am able to return to the field it will be 2 or more. If I thought selling myself was hard before, it will probably be even harder now. But I am prepared for that. On the bright side, having my child be more independent means I can now get back into doing things that relates to the field here and there as well as work in some volunteer work. So I'm going to work my way back first through my writing and research.
One of my favorite activities as a school psych was bringing easily digestible research-based information to teachers in a way that they could get as much information as needed in the shortest amount of time. I started writing a newsletter every two months that was never any longer than two pages. Teachers LOVED it. It was good information and they could read it in 5 minutes or less. It was my way of helping them when I was spread thin and couldn't always be there. So, this is how I want to structure my blog posts as well, although some of them might become lengthier than others. I hope there are some people out there who find the information useful. If not, well...at least I enjoyed doing the research!!
So I'm back...again...we will see how long I can stick with it this time before disappearing into another 'hat' again. Until then...happy reading!!
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