Introduction

Each year, I approach this final blog of the year to reflect upon the past 12 months, project some ideas into the future, and summarize my thoughts about things professional and personal. As I reflect back on the year, retirement mode, my private practice, and changes in the counseling field stand out. As I think about the future, readings in neuroscience, supervision methods, and building my clientele surface to the forefront of my mind. In terms of things professional and personal, I have a sense of being in a good place as a counselor but I need to pour more work into making my practice what I hope it to be. Writing still pulls at me, so I have set a goal over the next year to accomplish some projects upon which I’ve been reflecting for some time.

Retirement and Private Practice

I reached semi-retirement as a professor over five years ago. I have written on this blog about my thoughts on retirement, knowing that I was in the midst of that transition. Now retirement mode has come full force, and I’m completely retired from being a university professor, with that income no longer flowing into my bank account. Of course, that raises some anxiety, but presently I haven’t fallen into impoverishment. Although I may at times do some adjunct work for the university, for the most part, the identity of being a university professor has come to an end. Having lived in that identity for nearly thirty years (counting time spent teaching at the community college level), its finish brings on a strange sense of existence to say the least. But overall it’s a good sense.

Transitioning from university prof to professional counselor has its challenges although I’ve maintained a part-time private practice over the many years I’ve taught at the university. Building my practice is not something I have to start from scratch, which is a good thing. Because well-seasoned thought is difficult to accomplish, what will be more difficult for me is to conceptualize how I want to shape my practice going forward. What do I want my private practice to be about? The lingo used by some to reflect upon this question revolves around the notion of branding. When people see my practice, what is it exactly that I want them to see? Answers to these questions must be worked out over the next year because the time to truly solidify my thoughts on these questions is now. No doubt, supervision will remain part of the make up of what I do. Where I really need to put in the work is discerning what kind of clientele I hope to attract. I have written about that topic on this blog before, but now I need to put some shoe leather on making that come alive in my practice.

Of course, the above thoughts assume that I don’t want to fully retire from work all together. I don’t see not working as a part of my life. Even if I did fold the practice, I would want to see what I could accomplish with writing, which is another goal I’ve set for myself.

So I Want to Be a Writer

When my goals are put in a statement such as that, it sounds silly. A writer writes. He doesn’t sit around thinking about being a writer. Although at this point I’m not ready to make public my ideas about writing, I most definitely have some thoughts I want to pursue. Presently, I have over a hundred poems I’ve written over the past four or five years that I hope to self publish. I have some other ideas as well that I’m not ready to state publicly. Suffice it to say that I’m having some thoughts while reading Richard Foster’s Sanctuary of the Soul: Journey into Meditative Prayer. Projecting into the next year, I’ll have more to say about this reading and what it means as well. For now, it’s important to say nothing until I’m more certain about things. Too often I talk, but do nothing. Now is the time for silence and to get things solidified. My personal faith will have a lot to say regarding how my future will be shaped. At least, I hope it does.

I’m not sure how much my ideas about writing will involve counseling. Obviously, at least to some small degree, this field in which I work will influence my ideas, thoughts, and conclusions in ways that will work into some of the things I might write. The major way in which counseling will play out in my writing is its contribution to my understanding of human nature. Presently, researchers and practitioners in the counseling field are experiencing the impact that neuroscience places upon the field. Given this pressure, I hope to do some reading and study in the arena of neuroscience. I’m not sure that counselors recognize what the full impact of findings in neuroscience mean for our field. I have already written on this subject to some degree. I believe more work is needed in this area because so many claims are being made on which we need solid and concrete clarification.

Conclusion: Things Professional and Personal

The name of this blog is Contemplations: Exploring the Life of the Mind: The Arts, Sciences, and Critical Inquiry. I want to fill out what that title means for this blog. I have written before about core areas in which I’m interested, one of which involves mind, exploring the core elements of human nature. I still strongly believe that we are meaning-making creatures seeking a life of fulfillment whereby we search out ways to live in alignment with our values, lining up how we act with what we believe. We are creatures with a worldview that we hope will guide us through the living out of our lives.

Presently, we live in a postmodern age where the idea of truth has been made so relative that it’s difficult for people to take a stand on what they believe to be true. Given the impact of postmodernism, a backlash in thought has occurred where the age of Enlightenment is seen as a remedy to the assault on science as a way of guiding us in thought and action. Although I agree with many thinkers who have come to be heavily critical of the postmodern age, there are also dangers in store from the new gurus touting a return to the Enlightenment. I value what the Enlightenment brought to human thinking and knowledge, but there are many questions regarding spirituality and the sacred for which neither postmodernism nor the Enlightenment offer a foundation. All of these ideas, thoughts, and inquiry I hope to explore and write about moving forward into the future, which begins with the New Year of 2019.

Highways and crossroads wait for us all. Hope to see you there.

John V. Jones, Jr., Ph.D, LPC-S/December 14th, 2018

GENERAL ESSAY