Where I am starting from, more or less

Hello!

Everybody is in different circumstances when they decide to take on a big project. I figure it my be helpful, as I start out, to lay out my own particular situation, and how it has let met to start a private practice. There are a few big reasons I came to this decision at this point in my life:

1. I recently moved to a new state, leaving a stable clinical social work job, after two years, to find that I can't find a job at an agency in my new town (trust me, I have tried for the last four months). But I still need to accumulate hours to get my clinical license here! 
2. Even if I were to find a job, I don't really want one! The idea of working at an agency again (except maybe an imaginary perfect agency) - working for a boss; going to staff meetings; huge caseload; low pay - does not sound very appealing (this is, of course, why so many social workers, and psychologists go into private practice)
3. Meanwhile, I need money!

One event finally pushed me over the brink and led me to decide that 2012 would be my first year of practicing privately. Having spend a few months applying to many jobs and interviewing at fewer, in November, I applied for a position that I really wanted; I interviewed for it twice, it seemed hopeful, and I waited patiently through the Thanksgiving lull to get news. Weeks passed. I remained optimistic. Then, after a month of hoping, the job fell through: They cancelled the whole damn position due to funding (which was, somehow, more frustrating than outright rejection).

It was at that point that I decided to take matters into my own hands.

It is true that pride is involved. I didn't go into social work to get rich, or even to start a private practice. I just wanted to work for an agency that I like, doing work that I felt was valuable to others and earning a decent living. Being rejected for positions that I feel I am qualified for is disheartening. Worse is when you don't get a job for a position you don't really even want: that's just demoralizing - no, I'm just going to call it soul-killing.

I feel some guilt for what feels like cashing in and abandoning the essence of social work by starting a private practice (throughout the field of social work, in school and beyond, there is a very weird attitude towards private practice and money in general. Social work has a foundation in social justice and service, and, if we are being honest, private practice is to a large extent about money and comfort of the therapist; yet tons of social worker go into the field with private practice as their goal - even if they don't admit it).

Despite the pride, after a while I just felt like saying to the whole world of mental health agencies, the following:

"Well, if you don't want me, then fuck off!"

It felt like the whole job hunt was demeaning, like I was begging agencies to give me a job I didn't really want, and I was being rejected (I think a lot of people feel this way about "going into the office" - it just doesn't seem like the right thing to do, it's not natural, but we are conditioned from early on that that's what we do when we grow up).

So (setting the guilt and the pride aside for another day), I am also kind of glad to be pushed to this next step, because, in a lot of ways, agencies are not nice places to work in. More generally, work is not a nice place to work in. I want a life I feel good about - where I can have a flexible schedule, take my own initiative, make my own decisions about my life. I want to be free, but also to survive. That's not too much to ask, is it?