Checking the Compass

Tending Notes · Issue 02 · July 21, 2026

The Field Note

I keep thinking about summer the way I used to think about it in school, less as a break, more as a season for exploration, reflection, and planning before fall and winter arrive, and eventually the new year.

In private practice, the things we plant now, marketing, new partnerships, the slow work of networking, tend to take about six months to actually bear fruit. Which means much of what shapes next January is being decided right now, even quietly.

And in those six months, we're still in it. Billing. Documentation. The ordinary upkeep of running a practice. All the systems of accountability that, however necessary, can pull our attention away from checking our own compass.

With clients, we often start with values, and from there, almost alongside it, we move into goals. I think it's worth asking whether we extend ourselves the same process. Vision, I think, is values given shape over time, often with some hope folded in too, hope for what the work could become, for who we're becoming inside it.

Sometimes that shows up as confirmation if we stop to notice it. Balance has been a value I've worked toward throughout my career, as a program director and as a business owner. It was a few years before the pandemic when I actually stopped and felt grateful that the balance I wanted was already there, built into the shape of my week, the same rhythm that's followed me since my days in community-based case management.

That moment of noticing did something. It let me feel the ease that comes with effort that's actually aligned, and it gave me a clearer sense of exactly where my boundaries were. So when something came along that didn't match my values, I could recognize it and actually pivot.

Maybe that's what checking the compass actually is. Not an audit. Just pausing long enough to notice what's already true. If you're on the path, let yourself feel that. If you're not, that's information too, the kind that only means something once you actually stop, be with it, and let yourself see where that wave of experience takes you. My hope is that something in that noticing can be transformative, simply because we finally let ourselves be present for it.

I don't know that I have it fully figured out for myself either. I'm just sitting with it this summer, and wondering if you might be too.

One thing worth tending to

Checking the compass offers real opportunities in both directions. If you confirm you're on the right track, how might you celebrate that, or simply let yourself feel the recognition? And if you notice you've drifted further from your values than you realized, how do you honor yourself for taking the time to notice at all?

Anyone who knows compasses well knows that even the slightest shift, left uncorrected, can lead you far astray over time. That's exactly why checking in regularly matters. Both directions are opportunities.

If checking the compass surfaces something, it might look like a fee that hasn't moved in years, even though you no longer feel undervalued the way you did when you set it. It might look like spending hours each month untangling your own bookkeeping, when what you actually value is protecting your time for clinical work, and the misalignment isn't the bookkeeping itself; it's that you've been doing it alone instead of bringing in a CPA who actually understands therapy practices. Or it might be marketing yourself broadly because a wide net used to feel safer, even after you've learned which clients you actually do your best work with.

If you notice these subtle shifts, positions that aren't quite pointing toward your values, or in some cases pointing in the complete opposite direction, you don't have to do anything about it yet. Just let yourself know it's there. That alone is a form of honesty most of us don't get much credit for.

A question (or two) worth sitting with

Where do you feel that you're on the path right now? And where, if anywhere, do you feel something quieter, not wrong exactly, just worth noticing?

Something worth knowing

In September, I'm opening something I've been building for a while, The Tending Circle, a small community for therapists in solo practice. More on that as it gets closer.

In the meantime, I started a small Slack space a few weeks ago. It's quiet, in the best way, a place where a handful of us drop in with whatever we're noticing, sometimes a sentence, sometimes nothing at all. No pressure to post, no pressure to perform insight. Just a door that's open if you want it. Come knock.