Interestingly enough, a friend recently commented that they thought my job was part of my PhD. That the clients I see are part of my supervision for a PhD in Clinical psychology. I completed my supervision hours over 25 years ago. The clients I see now are a part of my independent therapy practice. I make my living as a therapist. This means that I see clients and talk with them about their problems and use various therapeutic and psychological techniques. I work with kids, families, and adult individuals. I was trained in working with people across the life span, meaning I was trained to work with children as young as 3 months through elderly adults. It is a unique field and choice because I wanted to be a generalist. I believe that the world has too many specialists. I believe this so passionately that I wrote my master’s capstone on this topic. It is difficult for some people to understand my degree and training because of the culture of specialization. For me, specialization is primarily, but not always, about being able to make a living. I have been fortunate enough not to need to specialize to earn a living. I do not know if I would be making more money if I did, but I do know I would be a lot less happy.

Another big part of earning a living is that I am a business owner. What is interesting to me is how that has changed over the last 20 years and how much it has stayed the same. When I first became a business owner over 20 years ago, it was all via word of mouth and I did zero advertising. I did not advertise because I could not afford to do so. I went to people’s homes until I could afford my own offices. I did the same thing here in Japan. I went to people’s homes until I could afford my own offices, and most of my business is word of mouth. A major difference is social media and the Internet in general. A lot of my business comes from Google, Bing, and other search engines referring people to my website. I also have two Facebook pages and several websites who link to my webpage and vice versa. I create content for my social media and my website and focus on search engine optimization. I am fortunate enough to have help doing all of this. While I do create the content, I do not post it.

The reason for writing all of this is to share parts of me that y’all have asked about and to keep our conversation going. I am an open book and if you have a topic you would like me to write about, reach out and let me know.