How fitting that the first post on berrywinters.com will be a “Berry Business” post. “Berry Business” posts are general posts about what I am doing in life. It may be something major that is occurring in my day to day life, but it may also include information about what I am currently reading or watching that doesn’t fit into a normal review post. These will be largely posted regularly on a Monday. The format of these may not always be consistent with the last “Berry Business” post because I will have different things that have occurred or that I want to talk about that have been occurring in my life each week, thus the main topics may differ from week to week. Let’s delve into the first “BERRY BUSINESS” post EVER!
I started reviewing for a major exam that I am hoping to take either early next year or hopefully before the end of this year. This is the book that I am reading:
I started this on Sunday, 09/14/2025. The reason I am doing this is because I would like to be licensed in the state of California. I have held a clinical social work license for several years in Indiana, which one of the requirements in California for getting a LCSW by license for a current out-of-state LCSW is that you have held your clinical license in whatever jurisdiction you have for over 2 years and not had any active board related issues attached to it. I have this.
I have considered moving back to California for some time, so this feels like a step towards that particular goal in my life. I want to admit that there are times that I love and adore my current job (every job has its bad days), working as a social worker in a library, but I miss the life out in California. I feel like even though some of my worst days (homelessness for example) were there, that I thrived more out there. I was more social. I was more open to the world around me. I am still considering what direction I will take in terms of this, but one of the things that I know has to occur is having the license that would help in moving should that be the decision. Luckily, I can use the license even if I were to stay in Indiana. I could be licensed in any state, but they all come with their own hoops to jump through (price tag differs as well), so I have only looked at ones that make logistical sense for me life. That has only been Indiana and now California based on my own potential life goals. I feel like I am trying to move towards happiness.
Speaking about happiness, I held off on starting this website because I was going through a name change. This will be my second name change in this life. The first time, I thought I was going to transition to female. I went to therapy and recognized that my truth was that I was trying to avoid some trauma issues by changing. This is NOT true for most transgender identified individuals, but it was MY truth. I had already changed my name to a female name at that time though. It took years for me to pull the trigger and change my name again. That went into effect technically at the end of last month, but I wanted to wait until I felt I had some official documents in alignment. I now have my social security card and drivers license in the new name. The new name is officially Shaun Berry Winters. Shaun is a name that I fell in love with during my watching “The Good Doctor”. I felt seen by the character, but also I could see being called this the rest of my professional life, so it was a good fit. I also wanted something that was a bit more playful for my middle name, so I could be called it in these streets. Berry fits. “The Good Doctor” helped with that decision as well, as the first child that Leia gets pregnant with they start by calling the child Berry. It felt like it was saying “hey it is okay to be who you want to be” when this came up around the time that I was making that decision. Now I feel like I have arrived. I look in the mirror and I do think “I am not Shaun Berry Winters yet.” But this has more to do with feeling like I need to do work on my own internal self. I am Shaun now and I embrace it, but to be the best version of myself that I want to be has some more work to do.
I want to leave this post on a lighter note than the self work that I need to do, that I am sure I will discuss more here. I have been watching a lot of TV shows, but the one that really sticks out is the show “Big Brother”. I used to watch this during the first like 4 seasons of the show. It is currently on season 27. I’ve missed a lot. I had no clue who Rachel was for example. I have co-workers that have mentioned it to me since I started at my current job. I didn’t want last season, but this season I decided it would be fun to be able to talk about it with co-workers. It has been. I have watched some of the live feeds as well. This season has been crazy. It feels like no one new how to play the game and now that we are approaching near the end they are starting to go “Oh wait a second, there is money attached to all of this”. I am rooting for Keanu and Kelley the most, but they very well could go with this double eviction that is happening on Thursday of this week. We will see, but I am glad I am watching and rediscovering an old love that I had. I enjoy these reality competition shows. They are fun to watch when they are not being taken too seriously. The season ends in just a few short weeks. I can’t wait to see who ends up being in the F2 and ultimately who wins season 27 of BIG BROTHER!
