Expanding Into Something Different

Inside cover of a new project

I am in a season of introspection. This has quite a bit to do with being socially distanced and also with an upcoming birthday, and it also has to do with being middle aged and not liking it one whit. I am feeling lots of stuff - mostly negative emotions at the moment. I don't like these feelings, but I am striving to learn as much about myself as I can during this down time.

Since I am bored with all this stuff happening but have no control over it all, I am trying to find some things to do that are outside of my comfort zone. I examined my social media feeds, and do you know what I found? I only really use those feeds for music therapy things. That is not a surprise but rather just an observation that I had never really paid attention to before.

Outside cover in progress

I have started to fix this by joining two paper crafting groups. They are groups that encourage folks to make things out of paper. I am simultaneously cowed and challenged by the posts that happen on Facebook right now, and that seems to be something important - getting outside of my comfort zone into something new.



There are other people out there who like to make small notebooks and things out of cardboard boxes. There really are!! So, I am taking my first steps into a social media world that goes beyond my profession. I hadn't realized how one-dimensional my life had become until all of this happened - so, an area of growth and evolution (word of the year!) for me to focus on!

I want to be multi-faceted again and somewhere in the recent past, I have tried to focus on my music therapy life rather than realizing that there is so much more to life than being a music therapist. I know that there are many of you out there thinking, "Well, duh, MJ, of course there is," but my life is pretty simple - there is work and there is home. Home tends to be pretty much the recovery zone for work these days, and that is not what I want my home life to be. There is more to life than just recovering from work all the time.

Somehow, I seem to forget that fact.

I have made a couple of new mini notebook covers in the past several days. I don't know what I want to do inside the covers, but that will come. I also don't know what I will do with these once they are finished because my social circles are almost exclusively work or professional, and I don't know if there are other music therapists out there in the world who do these types of things as well, so my options are kinda limited when it comes to passing things on. For now, I guess I will revel in the opportunity to make things and try some new techniques.

Does anyone want some amateurish mini notebooks or decorative paper things? I have a feeling that I will have lots more of them in the near future and no place to set them up or sell them. (Darn this virus - I was supposed to see what would sell at the MWR conference this year!) I already have a small stash of stuff that I made for things that were cancelled this year, but it will be growing - evidence in the pictures above.

Thanks for reading...