Designing Your Practice: An Artistic Approach

All film, audio, and photograph were created by Imei Hsu, sole proprietor, with the exception of the LED hoop picture. Photo credit to Scott Blankensteen. Film clips shot in Pioneer Square. Photographs: Seattle and Santa Fe, NM using an iPhone 4 and 4S.    

Update: Well folks, we're at the end of 30 days, and it looks like this project won't be funded by Kickstarter. I'll be creating a donation site, as some of you have notified me that you'd like to donate anyways. Thank you so much! I'll be throwing a fundraiser on April 14, 2012 6-9 pm at the Old Rainier Brewery Artwalk towards my book writing project. See you there, or on Ustream.tv/channel/hips-for-hire-with-imei, where we'll be streaming it live, including musicians of Hejira World Band, attamc DJ, and yours truly hosting my creation, "Facial Karaoke". 

Cheers!

Imei

What's the book about?

In the midst of attending university classes to become a nurse, I listened to the keynote address delivered by Dr. David Kessler to my brother's class of graduating medical students at Albert Einstein. Dr. Kessler was my first medical hero.  He admonished the next generation of students to carry what they learned about practicing compassionate and ethical medicine such as the Hippocratic Oath in one hand, and a compass in the other hand, in case they lost their way. 

After seeing it for myself by working in the health care industry as a nurse and a mental health practitioner, I share this observation: we need to use our compass to find our way again. Even in this age of GPS in our cars and on our iDevices, we're still acting like lost sheep because we've forgotten to answer the right questions. What good are the technologies if we forget to connect with the real needs of our clients? What if we have no clue what the destination is anymore, and worse, what pathways will get us there? 

Designing Your Practice is the culmination of over twenty years of work in the health care and education field. In this book, I explore what goes wrong in education, healthcare, and business, and how we must take response-ability for these wrongs if we are to serve our populations with compassionate, ethical, and financially reasonable care. 

Who Is This Book For?

This book is for educators, small business owners and medium-sized entrepreneurial practices providing service-oriented and educational products, helping professionals (such as coaches, therapists, medical personnel, clergy), and education specialists. Whether you consider yourself an Artist or not, you'll want to read this. 

What do you mean by 'practice'? 

When I first conceived of the title, I immediately referenced my own private practice in psychotherapy. Really, what I mean by practice is any business, endeavor, pathway, application or routine you select to excel at what you want to do most. As a verb, practice means to "perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly or regularly in order to improve or maintain one's proficiency" (Dictionary.com). It is this general definition that I refer to in the title, and not necessarily a restrictive description of a medical practice. 

Listen to an audio recording from a draft of "First Things: What Is A Practice", recorded at Seattle Direct Counseling: http://soundcloud.com/gotimei/what-is-a-practice-audio

Why is this book provocative and innovative?

The book has no choice to become anything less than provocative, controversial at times, and innovative because its author embodies these characteristics. I made a choice in 2005 to not hide, obscure, or separate my identities as an Artist, a health care professional, a writer/blogger, and an active participant in the very public Social Media sphere. With over 273 videos, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of tweets, status updates, stories, and photographs taken from my iPhone and shared with my community, I have been fearless to create a pathway other practitioners of multi-disciplinary fields and businesses can follow. 

The stories contained in Designing Your Practice will inspire love, courage, anger, frustration, anguish, hope, and creativity as readers work towards freeing themselves from binding their most valued skills and talents to answering the wrong question, and disappointing themselves as well as the people they are trying to help in the process. The latter half of the book highlights the arts as a means of creating meaningful connections and listening avenues with clients, patients, students, and colleagues.  

Why do you need to use Kickstarter.com to raise money to publish your book? Isn't an eBook on the subject enough? 

I've hired Patrick Snow, author of Creating Your Own Destiny, as my coach. An experienced author and publishing coach, Patrick agrees and supports my premise that I cannot continue to deliver professional presentations at medical and non-medical conferences without writing a book and giving or selling it to all the people who have asked me for a copy of my work. 

The first action I must take to be responsible to this dream is to publish a professional book that I can physically place in the hands of real readers and make a connection.

What is the plan?

My plan is to finish writing my book in the next couple of months, aiming for a publish date in late Fall 2012. Once we complete a short-run of the first copy, I'll be presenting around the country (and hopefully internationally) on the subjects found in my book. The book will be published on all eReader formats at approximately the same time as the physical books.  Potential donors should be aware that I am working to have the book in all major markets in time for the holiday season 2012. 

What happens if I give to the Designing Your Practice Kickstarter campaign?

1. Both kittehs C-M and Lumi will get their mama back. 

2. There will be an amazing book in the hands of those who want to know more about the process of integrating the Artist back into the helping professions. 

3. Don't worry: there will be no puppies dying or other silly events that self-promoting people say if you don't support my campaign. 

4. I will  keep bellydancing and hooping, snapping pictures everywhere I travel, interview interesting people and film them. 

5. I will still be working in my private practice, because every dollar given to this Kickstarter campaign (minus 5% admin fee they receive) will go to the publication of this book. 

6. I will keep writing, even after the book is published. I can't not. Maybe you'll be one of my guest bloggers. Who knows? Anything can happen, because I'm a little fish with dolphin -- no, strike that -- orca dreams.

Thank you for reading about the Designing Your Practice Kickstarter campaign, and thank you ahead of time for all the ways you are helping it become a real book in your hands!