End of Summer Check in

I have been writing various blogs in my head the past two months, this time I will try to actually get one down on “paper”. It starts with my end of summer wish list:
1) Everyone who can reads Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. It connected the dots for me between nearly every major political upheaval since the 1970’s and a bunch of neocon economists funded by multinational corporations. I didn’t find it depressing – it is much less depressing for me to understand exactly what is going on than not to understand. If you need a hope antidote, follow it with “Blessed Unrest” or “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, both recommended elsewhere on CAN.
2) All the clinics that have been up and running a year or more blog in about how it’s all going. Details are great, not just numbers, but how you feel about your job.
I’ll start:
Community Acupuncture on Cape Cod is 2 yrs and 9 months old. We are in a small to medium size town/semi suburban setting. (in other words, non urban). We had a huge bolus of growth from some incredibly good newspaper coverage in January --- it kept us at 12 or more new patients a week for months, got our numbers as high as 125 treatments per week. Things fell off quite a bit over the transition to summer (May and June), they are climbing again now (almost back to 100/wk). We are going to try the Labor Day Promotion that has worked so well for WCA (a happy Labor Day card and a free first treatment coupon for every current patient). We hope this will head off the transition to fall slowdown that is common in our community.
The mood of the clinic is happy. Our patients are happy, our staff is happy. We have one full time acupuncturist (me) and one part time (Daphne). We are starting to transition our front desk from volunteers to paid help, and we have a 14 hrs per week office manager/admin person who is doing an amazing job (deer).
We’re currently open (as in scheduling) Monday through Friday, 23 hours per week. Income is adequate to pay me a modest but sustainable living and cover other expenses, but there isn’t really any margin left over yet, so nothing better break down or need replacing.
I find that we seem to be at least partly over the start up phase where I lived breathed and dreamed about the clinic every minute. I’ve begun to pick up my guitar again and write songs, a sure sign that I now have a little more work/life balance.
On days when I feel good physically and emotionally, I am having a great time at work, happy to treat 20 people in four hours and basically delighted with what we’ve built here. Because I feel good 90% of the time, things are going very well indeed.
The best antidote to the depression brought on by corporatist control of the world and its economies is your own little social justice producing health care clinic that you get to work in every day.