What Do I Really Want??

If you have been reading for some time now, you know several things about me. 

You know that I am a well-established music therapist who has done this job now for over two and a half decades. I have finally come to a place where I feel financially stable, and I love many of the aspects of my job while still wanting more for the profession of music therapy. I despair when fellow therapists have to leave the profession because they can't survive, and I wonder what they thought being a professional would mean. I have figured out ways to do this job that make it easier on me, and I like to share that information to other therapists in any way possible. I love teaching but will NEVER be a professor because I don't like the higher education environment as a whole. I am stubborn, unrelenting, and pretty sensitive to the opinions of others. I try to please people, often at the expense of my own self-identity or care, and I often bite off more than I can chew. I enjoy figuring out difficult concepts, and I am both a detail-oriented person and a big picture person! I like figuring out big, audacious, life and profession-changing problems and presenting them to others in a way that allows them to be part of the change rather than just someone that change happens to. I am opinionated, go on rants about things that bother me, and I strive to be the best version of myself as a music therapist in all of my environments. 

This year has been a year of evaluation for me.

At the start of the calendar year, I selected the word, "Courage," as my word for my personal year. I have been challenging myself to do things that make me nervous, using this one word as my guide. At the start of this school year, I decided to select another word for my professional development. I selected "Renewal." To celebrate this particular word, I am looking at how I am doing things at work, and I am challenging myself to do things that I have neglected or just haven't done lately. I've set up some monthly expectations for myself - my "NTM" TME challenge comes up here; I also have monthly expectations to use piano and Orff instruments in sessions with clients. 

Both of my words have led me into some continuing education (both music therapy and not music therapy) courses and work, and the common theme is building. I'm drawn to business challenges lately, looking beyond my 8-hour a day job to offering more of the things that I have developed to others. These courses and challenges are making me think more deeply about what I want to be doing as a music therapist and as a human being.

Almost every single one of these challenges and courses starts the same way - asking me to identify my strengths, areas of focus, and one way forward. There are lots of plans (which I like), and lots of talking to others (which I find difficult to do on my best days - especially when it comes to talking about me). I waver between feeling like I know where I am going towards what I want and feeling like I am lost with a dead flashlight battery and no way of knowing how to keep moving on. 

My sister has decided that she will be retiring in seven more years - something to do with the California teacher's pension. She has decided that I will retire as well. I'm not sure that's what I want to do - she didn't consult me on all of her plans - that's one of her characteristics. I know that I am ready for a career change, but I am not as interested in working the way I am working now as I was. As I am looking forward, I am feeling more and more called into music therapy consulting, but not for clients, for therapists. I'm not sure if there is a way to do this, but I am trying. 

For the moment, I am thinking about what I want to do and where I want to do it. I am focusing on being courageous and finding renewal through examination, evaluation, planning, attempting things, and reevaluation. I am moving forward in ways that I can understand, but I'm not sure where I am going to end up. For someone like me who likes to plan things in detail, that is very scary and requires lots of courage!!

I'm going to retreat to my journal and thinking prompts in order to map this journey out in a bit more detail. I'm not sure that I'm ever going to know what I really want, but I do want to make some progress on my plans for my future.

What do I really want?

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