All is not lost

 This week was supposed to be my last week at my job.  I have been sad and hurt at leaving.  Sad because I built this program and have been the guiding force for it for 9 years.  Also sad because I'm leaving a great team, and clients.  Because of the work I do, once I leave a job, I am not able to hear anything more about the clients, they are "dead to me," and that makes me incredibly sad.  I am hurt because I've had very little, to no acknowledgement from the higher ups that I'm leaving.  Like I said, I built my program and my direct supervisor has had no interest or desire to figure out what I do.  My replacement was scheduled to start on Monday (after I leave) until I pushed the issue and said if possible it would be good to have her here on Friday, so they did move her start date, but it's still just too little.

I have not been excited about leaving, or my new job, even though my new job is counseling kids.  Kids has been where my heart lays since I was a teenager, so it really is exciting to go back to that.  But I do love the program I created.  I hate that someone else will be in charge of it, and I don't want to see it become unrecognizable, but I suppose that is the consequence of moving on.

My first sentence says "supposed to," my supervisor asked me this week if I was willing to come back next week to train the new person.  I have plans to be gone Wed-Fri but agreed to come back Monday and Tuesday, and even the second week of April to help if needed.  I'm not excited about that, I did offer, but I offered 4 weeks ago and was ignored.  I was going to say "until the reality of me being gone hit" but I don't think that's happened.  No one really knows my programs as well as I do, and no one has bothered to try to learn.  Yes, I have staff that know (mostly) what they're doing, but I don't think they really know.  

Last week I sang to myself (a lot) "let it go, let it go," and repeated "not my monkeys not my circus." It's helped, a little. 

Anyway, if anyone notices, my weigh-ins have been terrible.  All of March I was at 169.  I think I sat there for 4 weeks.  It wasn't until last week when I cracked down again that I saw some improvement.  I even saw my lowest number this year at 164.8, sadly it was not on a weigh in day, and over the weekend I gained a little. BUT, I have been lower on my weigh-in days last week and this week, and I am trending down.  I haven't seen 169 in 2 weeks or so, which is fantastic.  If I can make my "high" number 167 for the next week or so, I'll be happy(ish).  

I have been really awful at running, which means not at all in the last several weeks.  I've done a few walks here and there, but not even really very many.  I do walk on my treadmill at work, but don't count them in my exercise because I feel it's so slow (it has to be slow because otherwise I would not be able to type.)  

What I've really been focusing on the last couple weeks is wine, drinking less.  And less snacking, or less food.  It's been working.  My sister and her husband (well, mainly her husband) is always looking for the "next best thing" in weight management.  They started drinking metamucil because it has all the same ingredients as a weight loss drink he was drinking, but is much cheaper.  They also found a sugar substitute called Allulose.  My brother-in-law is overweight, and diabetic, so they have used sugar substitutes for a long time.  The difference with the allulose is that it acts in your body similar to semaglutides or GLP-1 (like Ozempic or Wegovy) and is not as sweet as sugar, and your body doesn't respond to it like sugar.  I've looked allulose up several times and it seems legit, so I started using it in my tea and metamucil (which makes the metamucil taste better).  I just started it this week, and I have noticed a decrease in my appetite, and I decided to record how it goes.  I guess I'll see.  It does not, however reduce the desire to have a glass of wine.  😂

I have been weighing myself every day since January 2nd.  I've also been writing down what I eat every day.  I sort have been using Myfitnesspal again, but mostly I've been writing it in a notebook by hand.  I have been also occasionally writing down thoughts about what's going on.  This has been extremely helpful.  I can look at trends and see that I have about 1 week a month where I'm higher in weight than I am other weeks.  I have also discovered that Wednesday is my best weight, although, last week my lowest was on Friday.  I've realized having this daily weighin is actually encouraging to me, I can see that just because my weekly numbers are higher on my weigh in day, I am still losing . . . although not for most of March, I sat at 169 for most of March.

I know this is a process, I know this doesn't happen overnight, and actually is slower now than it was 8 years ago because I'm not running like I was, and I am older.  I'm just trying to learn a new way to do it this time around.  The way I did it last time isn't an option anymore.

New beginnings

 Well, I was able to squeak a loss in last week.  My last post talked about how I haven't been able to get under 169 for awhile, but I needed to last week according to my calculations to stay on track.  On Tuesday (my current weigh-in day) I was exactly 168.  And that's really where I've been all week.  On Wednesday I made it down to 167.4, but I've been back up to 168 . . . well, only the last 2 days.  

It's funny what you tell yourself, and then you look at what you recorded, and you were wrong.  3 of 7 days I was 167.4 and 167.2, I guess it's still a majority of days that I've landed on 168.  I'm really glad I'm writing down my weight daily, it really has helped me mentally to not get discouraged and to continue to try. I also measured myself today and those haven't changed, well my waist *may* be down an inch, but I think it's easy to not get the same spot from month to month, and may be wrong, especially since everything else was the same.

I did not run at all, nor did I walk at all, last week.  Not once. I don't know why, I just didn't feel like it, so I didn't do it.  Which is weird because I was excited to be running more.  I did force myself to go out today in the cold and windy (really windy) weather.

Holy cow all this talk of weight and numbers is boring.  But really it has been overwhelmingly on my mind. ~New topic~

I have decided to leave my job.  I've been working at the same agency for 9 years and 3 months.  I created the program that I work in, which is a therapeutic court program, it was expanded to 2 different courts while I was there, and also started a substance use court (so at one time I had 5 different court programs I helped to create and managed, however two of those courts were discontinued in 2023).  For 7 years I worked alone and had no one else who knew anything about what I did (not even my supervisor), in the last 2 years I became a manager and at one time had 3 people under me (not a lot, but I was happy with it).  The recidivism rate for my first court hovers around 7%, which means only 7% of people who have graduated in the last 9 years committed another crime, and that is a 93% success rate.  I have both loved my job and hated the agency I worked with (I actually like the agency now though). 

I cannot count how many coworkers I've had because my agency has such a ridiculously high turnover rate, but I have had 5 supervisors while there (see, high turnover rate) and actually am the most senior person at the agency on the clinical and admin side (there is also a manufacturing side, but there are several people on that side that's been there longer than me).  In 9 years there has been 9 total admin assistants (many stayed more than a year, but obviously not all).  

The reason I am leaving is because when I finished school in 2021, I was promised counseling hours so that I can get my full license to be a counselor.  I am a Licensed Mental Health Counselor Associate (LMHCA) and I have to have 1200 face to face hours with clients to be able to take the test and become a LMHC.  After 2 years and 4 months I have about 400 face to face hours, in a normal counseling job, it would typically take about 2 years to get enough hours, and I am not even half way there at over 2 years.  I understand that my "official" job is not a counselor at this agency, but the only reason I stayed was because I was promised I could do counseling.  

In the last few weeks I have just become tired of trying to eek out hours where ever I can, to never get enough, so I decided to apply for another job.  I applied to where I did my internship in 2021, got an interview, and was offered the job on the spot.  It took me two weeks to decide if I really wanted to leave or not, and last week I decided I needed to.  My new job will be a therapist for kids, and it's exactly why I went back to school.  

I'm nervous, and really sad to be leaving my job, the program that I built, and my clients, but I think it's the best decision for me right now.  I start my new job on April 15th (as a manager, I have to put in 4 weeks notice, then the first week of April is spring break, and I'm going to take it off with Maddox, but my new agency only does onboarding certain days, and their next day after spring break isn't until the 15th.)