When you have a new business, every day seems like a really big one. Or, at least, at our stage of development it seems like that. We've been doing so many things - setting up our accounting, getting fixed up to take insurance, buying a new computer, getting money for our business in reasonable amounts, working on promotion schedules, seeing patients and actually helping them. It's amazing, it's crazy.
The thing is that it's all a little slow. I get frustrated by the end of my days, sometimes, because it just feels so... slow... I wake up at 5:30, 6am and I'm pretty much working until 7pm, sometimes later. I don't take breaks. Yet, at the end of the day, I've not done a huge number of things.
Today is a good example. My day looked something like this:
1. Wake up, do my morning stuff (which is the normal waking up stuff + checking all of my stats, Google Reader, reading some of the paper/National Geographic/whatever looks shiny at the time, checking on bank accounts, etc)
2. NCNM Faculty meeting for a couple of hours, with requisite post-meeting hallway discussion
3. To the clinic, do some cleaning up and randomness of a necessary nature
4. Work on getting Acubase (our client/appointment/billing management software) set up in one of many necessary ways
5. Spend time getting some information together to send to our insurance biller (who is completely awesome), send it via fax-by-email
6. Print out many copies of important office forms
7. See two patients
8. Work on lining up big herb purchases (finally finishing the medicinary - yay!)
9. Work on other purchases - getting invoices, checking prices, emailing and calling people
10. Try to eat lunch, take a walk (exercise!) and talk to my dear friend Michael Givens on the phone... all at the same time
Some of those things, especially 4 and 5 just took way longer than I wanted them to - why? Because they're new. This is new stuff. It's important stuff, big stuff, and stuff that will be pretty easy at some point. But not today. Today it's two steps forward, one step back. It's reading manuals and getting frustrated, and walking around in circles for a little while.
Somewhere along there, seeing patients became my down time. Where before that was the most stressful part of my existence (internship was rocky at first) now it's blissful, like a soothing dream. Not EASY, per se, definitely not. But immensely satisfying, full of all-important human contact, and juicy like I've always known it would be. It gives my brain and heart something to do that doesn't involve spreadsheets, fax machines...
So, that's how things are right now. It's fine by me.
I'm Eric. I live in Portland, OR. I have a pretty huge need to write. So, that's why I'm here.