"It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time"

Career.

Yikes. Heavy wordage when you think about it. What you "do" with your life. How do you make a living? How do you set your work/life balance? Can you really separate "work" from "life" or do the two intertwine too much?

For me "work" has often been a large part of "life". Pursuing theatre, music and teaching was a big part of my identity and remains part of it even though it is removed from "work" for the time being. I think one of the things many people struggle with is deciding if what they "do" defines "who they are". (Let me put more quotation marks in this post how bout it?)

Right now I'm caught in the middle of a somewhat amorphous phase of my life. I've stopped "working" in theatre and the arts and now my job is massage therapist and spa manager. I still believe that my passion for the arts helps define who I am and what my life is even though I'm not working in that world. Massage is something that has happened pretty organically for me. I've always been good at it so when the chance to take classes while keeping my full time job came up I thought why not. I've really connected with the work and I love the things I am now able to do. (Ref: older post about being called a healer.) So now, for the first time in my life, my job has not been a (mostly) complete representation who I am. I don't say the words "I'm a massage therapist" with quite as much conviction as I used to say "I'm a(n) actor/director/teacher."

This makes it sound like I'm not happy with being a massage therapist...that's not the case at all. I'm actually quite happy with it. I'm paying off all the debt I accrued saying "I'm a(n) actor/director/teacher". I'm learning new skills and how to think in different ways (which is extremely important to me). I have met lots of really amazing people. I am exploring lots of new ways of thinking and developing new and healthy habits. I'm learning about the human body and ways that it breaks and ways you can fix it. I'm engaging and training a completely new side of myself and I am constantly excited about it. I think the disconnect is coming from my life time dedicated to saying "I am __(insert job)__" and letting that take all the work out of defining who I am to someone else. I think there is such a strong idea of what a(n) actor/director/singer is that when you tell someone that one of those things is your job then they already "know" a lot about you. When you say "massage therapist" or "spa manager" it doesn't come with quite the same understanding.

Having a job that doesn't have an immediately defining manifesto leaves one in a place where you have to confront exactly what you want to portray to people as you. A hefty task.

Hmm, that was a significant ramble away from what this post was originally going to be about. Let's backtrack.

I saw a client of mine who I have been seeing for many months this weekend. I hadn't seen them in forever and our schedules finally clicked for them to come in. After catching up briefly we went into the spa and I asked what they wanted me to work on.

Lots of stuff came pouring out about how difficult things have been lately. No real specifics but just a clear picture of a rough patch from a client who isn't terribly talky about personal life. It was clear that this massage was going to be the first real break the client had had from this shitstorm in their life and it was super important to them. I have yet to do a massage that had quite as much meaning as this one did for me. This client was around from the very start of my massage career and we developed a great rapport. To see them so clearly frustrated and upset with something was tough because I'm a bit of an empathetic d-bag. It was clear that this massage was the first time they have had to really switch off and disconnect from all the shit going on in their life. I have never felt more motivated to do my best work than here. I felt like I was really making a difference in my client's life that was significant and meaningful.

All of a sudden the work that I've not been ascribing as my "I'm a __(blank)__" is actually pretty important and can be really powerful. I may not be curing cancer or saving starving kids but I am helping people feel better and I think there is a lot to be said for that. Helping someone recover from a sore muscle, a stressful day or even a month of shitty stuff going on is a pretty great job and I'm happy to take it on. To be an integral part of the health and wellbeing of others is necessary and worthwhile. I may have to explain who I am a bit more now than I'm used to but I think that's a good thing. I want to be more complex than a job title.