week in review {1.}...

I honestly do not think I have EVER been so excited to see it be Friday! This week was bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s. So, I am not sure if I have shared on my blog that I have a new job. Yep...another one. Let me break it down for y'all. In July I nabbed a super great job working for the county as a Substance Abuse Counselor. I loved that job. I mean I loved it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. It was a field I never really considered entering, especially working in a treatment court program, but it was an amazing opportunity and I learned so much during the six months I worked for Drug & Alcohol Services. However, in December I was encouraged *cough* forced *cough* to apply for a position that was open in Mental Health Services. How it works with the county is we have the entire Health Services Agency, many departments fall under that category. Mental Health Services and Drug & Alcohol Services are combined under the umbrella of Behavioral Health (even though we share a building it is two totally different departments). Anywho, I was basically stolen from my happy D&A home and moved over to Mental Health. I was NOT happy about that little situation.

Basically because I have OCD organization skills and I work super hard at my job, they wanted me in Mental Health in order to be on the ground floor of developing a pilot project for how smaller counties in California will be handling health care reform when it comes into play in 2014. Hi. I am SO not qualified to be in charge of something this HUGE. I mean...I don't think I can stress how big of a deal this project, and the grant that is paying for it, is. I don't think I want to even try because just thinking about it makes me get gray hairs and frown lines. Yikes. Am I overwhelmed? Yuuup. Is is a stellar opportunity? Hells-to-the-yeah.

Okay, so moving on from complaining. It is a great job. I am going to learn so much. It is going to look killer on an all future resumes. I am trying really hard to be positive about the situation. I miss my old job, and coworkers, but I still see them when I am in the other office building and my new coworkers are pretty alright people. Plus, I really went to school to be in the mental health field anyhow.

So last week my new supervisor set me up with a shadow schedule. She wants me to see EVERYTHING that Mental Health does, so that I can have a full grasp of what the services are, how they are administered, how/if they need to be changed, and what else needs to be added.

Since I have already written a freaking novel (sorry guys, I understand if you don't read all of this) I will just give you the highlights of my first week as a employee at Mental Health Services.

{Monday}: I was bitter this entire day. My main beef was that I was moved to a different office building. We have two main buildings for Behavioral Health, the O-town building (my former home base) and the W-town building (which is so stressful and uptight and where the BIG time bosses work). Guess which is my new home base? Yep...the uptight one. Awesome. I spent the entire eight hours of my day talking to our department head, and reading a 168 page grant. Kill me now folks...

{Tuesday}: Tuesday was SUCH an improvement from Monday. I got to shadow one of our clinicians, who is amazing. She is about 28 and shares my love of all things designer...we were basically pals from the moment we started talking purses. I got to shadow Steph throughout her day. We went out in the field, and I went on some client home visits with her, I met some very interesting people. We had super delish turkey burgers for lunch, took some crisis calls, chilled at the hospital with a guy who was in crisis, then met with a 6 year old little boy whose mother called that he was in crisis. His mom brought him in and it was...whoa. I honestly don't think I have the words. He was a scary little kid. I am not going to go into too much detail, because of confidentiality laws, but holy crap I was scared this boy was going to hurt one of us in that room with him. It was very alarming.

{Wednesday}: Wednesday I had my appointment to sign up for health benefits, life insurance, union stuff, oh my! Then I scurried out of that appointment with the quickness so I could run off to the O-town office, and catch the end of our staff meeting. This meant I was in my old home base! I got to see my mentor Susan, and chat with her, she put my complaining ass in check, and then I was back to shadowing Steph again. We went to our drop in center, and I sat in on a 'Hope and Healing' group , it was a great group.

{Thursday}: Thursday was chill. I chatted with my boss, then headed to the O-town office to have group supervision with all the clinicians, case managers, and whatnot. It was great. Then I had one on one supervision with my direct supervisor...I love her so bad. She is awesome. I of course snuck over to see Susan and the DH Girls in my spare time. Susan and I grabbed lunch. Then I went to Juvenile Drug Court because I was shadowing Tania...it was great. I really enjoyed seeing the juvenile treatment court program, because it is so different than what I did with adults in treatment court.

{Friday}: Basically I spent my morning doing more shadowing, and that's it. Then I left the W-town office to go to O-town because my supervisor is LEGIT! She allowed me to take 3 1/2 hours in order to be at the DH Girls graduation. I was SO happy she said yes. I know I don't work on that side of things anymore, but I love those women and their children. I wanted to be there to honor them, and they told me that if I wasn't there they would hate me forever. It was an amazing, tear filled ceremony, Susan gave a great speech to them, and both graduates gave speeches that warmed my heart. I made a teeny tiny speech, just to let them know that I respect them and that I honor them for all their hard work. Then Susan goes and busts out a certificate to me for my dedication to the women of Discovery House. It was a total surprise, and so very sweet. Yes. I did cry if you were wondering.

Holy crap. I am so sorry I wrote so freaking much. I guess I just needed to vent/share a bit of what week one was like. I am thinking I may do this on Friday's if exciting things happen during my work days. I promise they will be WAY shorter than this one.

Here is to everyone having a very happy weekend! My plans? Sleep...and a ton of it.

xoxo