I got SPSS at work and now I’m ruined! I have to learn how to use this stupid program and relearn stats quicklike. I tried using it to enter the data from my current survey project but I kept getting caught up on little things. I got frustrated and decided to just enter my numbers in the Excel workbook from last year. Then I noticed that the numbers didn’t make sense in there. On a scale, if 4 =very much, 3 =somewhat, 1 cannot =don’t know/does not apply, and 0 cannot = “missing answer”. So the Excel workbook they used last year and possibly the year before that is inaccurate. I stopped entering data, debated on going back to SPSS and doing things the right way and then said fuck it and decided to be lazy. These numbers are barely referenced and will be mentioned briefly in one report. As far as I can tell, they’re not even used beyond saying “Look, we did a survey!”

I also have a brief proposal due soon. I figured it would be easy because it’s so short but I have no idea where to start. I have a vague topic and little guidance. I’m supposed to be able to work this way, to like working this way but I’m just panicking.

I keep falling back to “I’m just a social worker”, keep telling myself that I am not equipped to handle this job. The whole idea of spending the rest of my career in admin land kind of scares me. I could always go back to direct service but it would probably mean a pay cut since I have little experience. Not that I want to leave my job but I’m always thinking into the future, planning and what-if’ing.

I haven’t been feeling quite myself lately. My friend group is changing, partially due to changes I am actively making, people I am no longer seeking out. I feel very busy but I’m not sure with what. I haven’t been eating very well, I keep snacking on left over birthday things and even my body knows that chips taste so good but I cannot eat them without getting sick. My sleep still sucks, maybe I need to start acupuncture again. I feel like I have so much energy but at the wrong times or directed toward the wrong things. It’s a nice change from feeling tired all of the time but kind of unfocused and useless right now.

Also, Halloween! Going to a haunted house this weekend!

So the work I took home with me last week that made me feel so grown up? It got cut down to one page of meaningless, random, untitled stats because the CEO thinks that is what our target audience wants. I knew this wouldn’t be anything like the full report that comes out later but a little communication would have been nice before I did the work.

So tomorrow when I go over my goals for the year with my boss, I think I will include something about improving communication in the department.

I decorated my office for Halloween today and talked with the intern. He’s from Nigeria, moved here in 2001. He told me about Nigerian superstitions and that he dressed as a banana last year for Halloween because he eats a lot of bananas. I hope he comes to work dressed up this year.

My first semi-research related task! Make numbers pretty. It seems like it would be an easy task, my boss showed me nice program outcome grids with goals, benchmarks, results all clearly labeled.

Then I started to get the actual data. I got one that was done exactly how it was supposed to be. This is now my favorite department. There are 4 departments and you know what you have to do when you have more than one of something. (Make them fight!)

The next department could not grasp the concept of “this is what I did last year” vs “this is what I will do next year” and put everything on one grid marked 2008 and gave me narratives. Now there is reading involved? Hate this. It took me a while to figure out but eventually confirmed that the grid they gave me was referring to last year even though it said 2008. I know, numbers r hrd.

The data just went down from there. The last thing i was given was handwritten and given to me at 4:00 the day my numbers were due. I suppose I should be happy I didn’t get anything in crayon. Since I got everything so late and half-assed, I had to take work home with me which made me feel very adult but mad that the people I’m working with are so unorganized.

My boss looks to me to magically make coworkers respond to deadlines when they never have before. My first few weeks I panicked when people did not return my calls and things were not handed in on time. Then I learned that coworkers do that because there are never any consequences. One night when there was lots of drama going on, I suggested consequences rather than hounding people for answers. My boss agreed but I think she just explained to the person dodging questions how their inefficiency was making other people’s jobs difficult or impossible to do. And these aren’t low level staff I’m talking about, these are clinical supervisors, directors of departments.

So I’m not sure how I am supposed to magically change the culture of an organization. Especially in my position. I’m a gatekeeper because my boss is one of the top people at the agency but I’m not in a position of power. The majority of what I do is very independent from the rest of the agency.

I had orientation today, 3 weeks after I started and learned nothing except the medical insurance choices suck and I don’t get to take my birthday off as a paid holiday because I haven’t been there for 90 days. Not that I was planning on it until I saw that birthdays are included in the paid holidays list. The medical insurance thing bothers me, they only have HMOs and neither of them include the hospital I go to.

The excessively long meetings are making me more tolerant of things like a detailed explanation of how to fill out insurance forms. Maybe it’s because I’m new but I still like listening to the big bosses talk. When the CEO came in and started talking evidence based practices, I was all about it.

When I got back to my office, I saw an invoice for SPSS, statistical software that I really don’t know how to use but said I did in my interview. Looks like I better start whoring myself to math geeks on Craigslist.

I’ve been trying to make the internet find me dates, it’s doing an OK job so far. I keep making up all these rules for the dates/potential dates to follow, some I’m not sure I can follow myself. Maybe most people think “Oh I barely know this person, I can just disappear and it’s cool.” Most likely due to my history with disappearing boy, that’s Not Acceptable. The way I see it is: “I barely know this person, I can say whatever I want with no repercussions! I’m going to tell them I hate them right now!”

I’m so going to write my own dating rules book. And Mystery will not be in it. Know why? Because he’s fucking Canadian.

Still sick but getting better. I had to leave a meeting on Friday because I was coughing so much but that ended up being a good thing since the meeting was really long and boring. Yes, I want to know about the new client tracking program. No, I do not want to watch the IT guy help a coworker who barely knows how to copy and paste how to update this program so it’s ready by a rapidly approaching launch date.

Did you know that Maggie Gyllenhaal is the new Agent Provocateur model? (NSFW) Fucking hot. And did you know AP sells a$300 crop? They call it a whip but it’s clearly a crop.

I will be representing the agency at an internship/job fair on Monday. I’m happy to do it because the fair doesn’t start until noon (sleeping in, yay!) and it means my boss trusts me not to fuck this up. Which means I can’t fuck this up. I was given little prep on this fair other than a few emails forwarded to me and some vague internship descriptions. I stayed late making copies of all the things I’m going to be handing out and bought a new shirt so I will look extra cute. I still have to staple some handouts since I was too impatient to let the copier staple them and actually read the handouts. This is the first time in a long time that I will be bringing work home with me but I really don’t mind. At least not yet. I guess that’s what happens when you like or care about your job.

Everytime I post, I am reminded that I have a draft pending, an entry that I have no posted yet. It’s called “In defense of the slut” and I wrote it a while back but felt like it wasn’t finished. I should work on it some more, it could definitely be basis to more writing and a personal research project. Like cupcake research.

Also, omg what am I going to be for Halloween?

First full week of work down! I file good! People are pretty tolerant of my stupid mistakes especially after I explain I’m not an admin assistant. My boss didn’t notice all those envelopes I fucked up in the trash. It’s been a really long time since I had to use a typewriter but she’s right, it is better to type the addresses than subject people to my serial killer printing. And the fiscal year begins in July not June? Ya, totally knew that. Now give me that FY 07 binder back. I need to uh..look at something.

There are no social work interns at the agency so I’m going to look into doing clinical supervision outside of the agency rather than do one on one supervision and actually have to put effort into obtaining my clinical license. I won’t even be using it once I get it. I would just rather get it before I forget everything I slept through in grad school.

I fell asleep at my first big meeting at the agency. A nice AA kicked me and woke me up before (I hope) anyone noticed. I haven’t been sleeping much at night. The new piercing and new job are partially to blame for that. And I think my body knows that I have drugs in the cabinet that I refuse to take. Maybe when my new health insurance kicks in which is in 3 months. Ugh, please don’t die in that time, body. COBRA is expensive.

I’m going to try more dirty hippie sleep remedies within the next couples months. I’ve stopped going to acupuncture and now I’m thinking of something a bit more interactive like a yoga class.

I was talking about dancing last night and I think I need to do that more often. I miss going out, drinking cosmos like juice, dancing until I’m a sweaty mess, forgetting how to read, eating pancakes and waking up with bruises.

What everyone doesn’t dance like that?

My first day at the new job was awesome. I was there for 2 hours. My boss got stuck out of town so I filled out some paperwork, was shown around my new office and left.

Today we did a little more. I figured out where stuff was in my office and on the mess of an agency wide share drive. I share my office with an intern a couple days a week until December. I haven’t met intern yet.

I did random office tasks, argued with the postage machine and felt generally overwhelmed by the new position. My previous job had very set tasks, goals and was monitored closely. New job is very autonomous, the position is new, the boss is busy and I’m a little lost. The administrative part of my job has been filled by temps for the past year so the other staff members are used to dealing with the new kid.

The storm forced everyone into the basement for the last part of the day. There are lots of fallen tree limbs around my house but surprisingly I saw no car or house damage. We win nature!

Last day! I’m a shark! Suck my cock!

I finished up all my cases like a nice employee, my coworkers fed me chocolate twice and my supervisor did not even say goodbye to me. Employees usually send out goodbye emails to the department when they leave. Being a snotty bitch, I had to send out a sarcastic one. The trick is to send out something that isn’t so offensive that a supervisor will retract the email and send it out late enough that a supervisor won’t come by to talk to me about it. So 10 minutes before 5, I send out a goodbye letter template and don’t fill in the fields. So it says “dear (name), I leaving (company)…”

As soon as it comes out, I walk to a coworkers desk and I can here the cube dwellers talking about it. It went right over some of their heads but most people understood where I was going with it. We get about 1 goodbye email a week at this place, turnover is high and morale among the easily replaceable cogs is low.

Today my friend forwarded me an email that my former supervisor sent out in response to my email. She said that my email was open to interpretation but she wanted to her team to know that they were valued. Valued how I wonder? With the low pay or with the job that is marketed as clinical but isn’t?

After work I got drunk at Roscoe’s, convinced coworkers I would not abandon them just because I’m changing jobs and watched karaoke.

My new job contacted me, I won’t be starting until Wednesday now. More time to be laaazy! Tomorrow I get my hair chopped all super cute Victoria Beckham-like.

Today I went for my sleep study consult. Minor respiratory issues, not enough to say I have sleep apnea. And the neurologist made it sound like he couldn’t diagnose night terrors because no one has ever seen me have one. I didn’t have them as a kid, just was a sleep walker/talker. I don’t have them when I am sleeping with someone and my roommate has never heard me screaming. He pointed out since no one has heard me scream, I may not actually be screaming. I just think I am. So he gave me the vague “parasomnias” label, gave me a script and the psychologist at the clinic suggested counseling. Pretty much what I was expecting but as I’ve said before, it’s nice to be able to rule out medical problems.

Transitioning to new job land is kind of fun. I made a sock puppet for my coworker and today she gave a clinical presentation on PTSD with the puppet. It was fun and educational!

I’m going to have a big gay happy hour in Boystown on my last day and my coworkers are taking me out for chocolate fondue! I don’t get anymore cases since I’m leaving so next week will be a lot of me calling people and saying “Hi, I’m leaving. Talk to my boss from now on.”

Roommate has been gone for a few days. It’s kind of peaceful being alone except at night when the anxiety kicks in. For some reason, my head believes that my skinny little roommate can ward off bad guys. Maybe she’s more a good luck charm than a bodyguard.

I moved my sleep study meeting to next week. For the next week, my homework is to try to go to bed earlier. I hope I didn’t do a sleep study just to get stellar advice like that. I would rather them offer me drugs than tell me “try to get 8 hours and everything will be OK!”

I’m trying to figure out the online dating protocol. Every site now has a feature where you can see who views you. If they look OK you, of course, view their profile, too. Then there are “hot lists” people can add you to which pretty much does nothing except saves your profile on a separate page for them and notifies the other person that they have been “hot listed.” Personals sites really like to make verbs out of nouns. So do I “hot list” the person back if I’m interested? Or just go ahead and send them a message? Is this the equivalent of making eye contact vs making the first move if I weren’t a geek and met people in real life? Because I will make eye contact in bars but I rarely go up and start conversations with strangers. Which maybe is why I’m single…hmmm.

I will have to give this more thought.

Time for bed. 8 hours!

From a fake problem to a real one.

I work mostly with substance abuse cases in my new position. Since I have substance abuse treatment experience, my supervisor lets me make treatment decisions and offers help only when I ask. I kind of like it that way. So in our last meetings I mention a difficult case I have. The client should really at a minimum, complete an intensive outpatient program. She has many years of polysubstance abuse and no treatment history. She’s a single mother in a rural area, works far from home at a low paying job and has little family support. She has medical insurance through her job and pays for her own apartment. Those in social service know that things that seem good, like private medical insurance, often disqualify low income clients from services.

The client will lose her job if she does not follow the recommended treatment. The client is not particularly dedicated to her job and may quit her job if treatment expectations are too intensive. She’s not dedicated to sobriety either and has continued to use drugs even after testing positive at work.

So what to recommend? I think an introduction to treatment, some education is better than none. Recommend a combination of self pay group counseling, some individual counseling sessions paid for by the employer and self support groups like NA.  Sounds similar to an IOP but offers more flexibility and lower cost.

My supervisor says no. If she needs IOP, recommend IOP.  A hospital about a half hour from the client offers IOP services. I understand where my supervisor is coming from. The environmental circumstances don’t change the fact that she needs intensive services.  I explained the “some is better than none” theory and my supervisor disagrees. She says it is not our problem if she cannot complete services, we are bound to make a recommendation strictly based on her presenting symptoms/use.

I have to make a recommendation this week. I’ve been “given my orders” but like I said, unless I bring up an issue in a case, my supervisor doesn’t notice what I do.