My 2022 Annual Review
2022 has been a very full year for me: full of new creative projects, relationships, challenges, and opportunities. It’s also been an exciting year, as I’ve made new friends, learned new things, and stepped out of the comfort zone of my past into the wild unknown of my future.
In truth, there are simply too many stories, highlights, and developments to share in one essay. I’ll do my best to share the parts that I think will be the most interesting to you, my readers, by breaking my year down into five sections: private practice, relationships, reading, writing, and gratitude.
Private Practice
My hand was shaking as I picked up my phone and dialed my boss’s number. As she answered and I began speaking, my voice cracked. The moment of truth had arrived: I didn’t want to do this job anymore.
In September of 2021, I quit my job as the Clinical Director of a mental health treatment center and started my private practice. It was a difficult decision, but one that was a long time coming.
My old job had a six figure salary and benefits, colleagues I liked and respected, and the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of our patients, who were women with complex trauma and other serious mental health problems. On the other hand, it came with long hours, on-call weeks, tons of paperwork, and constant, brutal battles with insurance companies that left me feeling like I’d gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.
I had helped run this treatment center since February 2020–essentially, all the way through Covid–and by September of last year, I was forced to admit it was getting to me. For the first time in my life, I started suffering from acid reflux, to the point where I would have to ask our staff nurses for Tums in the middle of the day. My doctor offered me meds. My therapist thought it was stress-related. I meditated, changed my diet, and started going to acupuncture, but nothing really helped. As a clinician, I could see the writing on the wall: stress was taking a toll on my body as well as my mind, and I was headed for burnout.
Leaving my job was a leap of faith. I started my practice with only two clients, and made all of $500 my first month. It wasn’t exactly a blockbuster debut.
As such, most of my 2022 was focused on building my practice from almost nothing into a successful one-person business. Fortunately, I had 10 years of experience in my field, and colleagues who trusted me enough to refer clients to me. By April, my practice filled up, and I was making almost as much each month as I did at my old job.
In the fall, I realized I’d have to start referring clients out. I hired my first employee, Chanae, as an Associate therapist in my practice. Chanae was one of the best Associates I’d supervised at my old job, and she’s now focused on helping women and couples via telehealth under my banner.
I found running my own shop surprisingly satisfying. Although there were months where I worried about money, I was building great relationships with clients I enjoyed working with. And I could do things my own way. I found an office that was walking distance from my home. I made my own policies and procedures. I made sure there was tea in the waiting room. I set everything up to be as frictionless as possible for myself. Don’t get me wrong–stress still showed up at times. But it was nothing compared to the constant crises I dealt with in running a treatment center.
Relationships
Though building my private practice was one of my greatest accomplishments this year, my personal relationships are even more important to me than my business. This year, I continued to have great relationships with my family, including my daughter, Tara, and my close friends.
The biggest change in my relationships this year was meeting a wonderful woman who became my girlfriend.
Out of respect for her, and my professional boundaries as a therapist, I won’t go into too much detail. But I will say that I’m very happy and that our relationship has taught me something important, best encapsulated by this quote from Naval Ravikant: “Find a relationship where you, naturally being you, makes the other person happy. And the other person, naturally being the other person, makes you happy.”
That doesn’t mean that if you find the right person, your relationship will be effortless. As a Marriage & Family Therapist, I know better than that. If you want a good relationship, you have to put in the work–both on yourself, and together, with your partner. But having a partner who is a good match for you makes that process both easier and more rewarding.
With such a busy year, I feel that I didn’t get to talk to or spend as much time with certain friends as I would have liked. And with so many friends in different parts of the country or the world, I often find it challenging to keep in touch. Reconnecting with these friends is going to be a focus for me as we move into 2023.
Reading
This was a busy year for me, and I didn’t get to read as many books as I would have liked–only finishing 12. On the positive side, though, I got back into reading sci-fi and fantasy in a big way this year. I discovered Reddit’s r/fantasy community and their annual Book Bingo challenge, which is a wonderful source of reading inspiration and recommendations for any SFF nerd.
The speculative fiction genre is a vast space, and much more diverse than it was ten or twenty years ago. This year I read a number of novels by women, people of color, and queer authors. A few of my favorites so far have been The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu, This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, and Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.
I didn’t read as much nonfiction this year, and unfortunately that includes psychology books. One book I did read in my field truly stands out: Brain Energy by Chris Palmer, MD of Harvard Medical School. This book proposes a whole new theory of mental illness, one based on metabolism, and contains some incredible case studies in which patients recovered from severe, debilitating mental illness after undertaking a ketogenic diet or other lifestyle changes. I will be watching Dr. Palmer and the developing science in this area closely over the next few years. (Check out his interview on the Tim Ferriss Show here).
Writing
If you know me, you know I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve written a fair amount in past years, publishing a few poems, a short story, and writing a travel blog while I backpacked through India and Nepal in 2018. But this fall, with my practice humming along and enough free time to take on a new project, I decided to get back into writing in a new way. I took an online course called Write of Passage, which focuses on teaching professionals how to write articles online in order to meet interesting people, test out new ideas, and boost personal impact.
I started writing and publishing essays on my website and Medium, launched my weekly newsletter, Mindful Mondays, and even started Tweeting in order to network and find new readers. In other words, I took the Write pill and fell deep down the rabbit hole of online publishing.
I’ve only been at it for about 3 months, but the results so far have been exciting. An article I published on Medium led to my being invited to appear on my first podcast, People of America with Nik Atanackovic. Then, the one and only Tim Ferriss recommended another of my articles in his newsletter, 5 Bullet Friday, which goes out to an audience of over 1.5 million people. Virtually overnight, my article was viewed 20,000 times, and over 300 new readers signed up for Mindful Mondays.
As we head into 2023, I’m excited to keep writing and see where it takes me. One of my main reasons for writing online is that in my private practice, I can only help about 20 people at any given time before I start feeling like I need a two-week nap. But through writing and sharing ideas about mindfulness, mental health, and personal growth online, I can reach a virtually unlimited number of readers.
Gratitude
In closing, I’m grateful for the many people who made this year successful and special: My parents and grandfather, my daughter, my girlfriend, my friends, my therapist, my clients, the colleagues who referred clients to me and helped consult on complex cases, my classmates in Write of Passage and other online courses I took, my Twitter friends, and my readers at Mindful Mondays. If you’re reading this, thank you.
I’m looking forward to another exciting year in 2023. In a world that often feels increasingly chaotic, I’m focusing on the opportunities present within the crises. And I firmly believe that mindfulness, a growth mindset, and a clear distinction between what I can control and what I can’t will put me in the best possible position to face whatever challenges lie ahead.
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