Smith 2020

Happy New Year! Anyone else not make it to midnight?

That’s actually not a COVID issue this year, for the past several years, we have been finding a countdown on Netflix to play for the kids at 8 or 9pm, dance some, and then send the kids to bed early with us soon to follow. Pretty sure I didn’t make it to 11pm this year.

This year has carried an obvious amount of heartache, worry, stress, and unknown. But I’d rather focus on the positives and how we can keep moving forward. Especially when we cannot do anything to change the past and need to keep working towards our future.

• My work
  This was an interesting time to start a whole new program. In October 2019, Appleseed Community Mental Health Center and I started the Co-Occurring program of serving clients who have both a mental health and substance use diagnosis. This included arranging drug testing, groups, writing grants, coming up with the policies, finding-hiring-managing staff, and interacting with existing agencies while trying to find new agencies we need to partner with. Then we had to figure out how to do that with clients over the phone or video chat.
• Ashley’s work
  School has been interesting with the need to switch to online at the end of last year and now during the holidays this year. My wife who teaches as an Intervention Specialist for third grade has had to keep teaching in-person as well as online teaching, assisting children and parents, and helping classroom teachers. I think she has done an amazing job, though I’m sure it’s been stressful to need to quickly make the switch.
• Our children
  Our children are now in third grade, kindergarten, and preschool. Each of them has done really well with online school overall. Our oldest is learning the responsibility of sitting and doing his work, our middle is making lots of friends, and our youngest is doing great with sitting patiently on Zoom until it is her turn to talk. It’s a process, but I feel we are managing it well. (We meaning my wife is doing 95% of the work. Again, she’s a super star.) Thankfully we have been very healthy and while we may get cabin fever from time to time, we have been making the best of our situation for them.
• ChurchAndMentalHealth.com
  I’m enjoying my writing for the site, but in 2020, I was planning to create some items for churches and counseling agencies to use to better serve congregations and clients. I was also on track to do three new speaking engagements. Neither of those worked out with COVID, but 2021, I may be picking up where I left off.