Walking a business, try not to trip

When we last left off in my epic saga of what's happened with my little baby company over the summer, I had two main focuses (focii?): connecting with a daycare facility for adults with severe disabilities, and putting together a social skills group. 

Contacting the facility ended up taking a few weeks of telephone tag before I was finally able to set an appointment to come in person. 

I was very anxious about said appointment-- aside from my typical issues with social anxiety (it's bad, guys, I have to psych myself up to call my insurance company to ask for a policy change. I don't do well with feeling like I'm inconveniencing someone), I'd never done anything like this before. And even ignoring financial reasons for wanting a new contract-- I just wanted to work here. One of my favorite classes to work with during my internship was the teenagers with severe disabilities, comparable to the clientele served at this facility. (In fact, it turned out that I ran into a girl I worked with at Hartvigsen while I was there). I really wanted to work with this group just because I knew it was something I would do well at, something I would love and people I would love, a chance to make a difference and have a ball doing it-- a lot of the things that make me want to be a music therapist. So I prepared the best I knew how: I read up on the research literature, I put together a fact sheet, I tried to come up with the answers I would give to any question I could imagine them asking. I was terrified of screwing things up, but I was encouraged by the interactions I had with the owner and general manager. They seemed friendly and open to hearing me out.

When I arrived, however, neither the owner or the general manager were actually on the site. There were two people in the front office, a man and a woman, neither of which bothered to give me their names. As I stepped in, the man told me that I needed to reschedule because he had forgotten to bring a keyboard. (Since this was a consultation, I hadn't intended to play any music at all, and I typically bring my own instruments, so this threw me for a bit of a loop) The woman took me on a whirlwind tour of the facility. In the first room, as I mentioned, I ran into a student I worked with at Hartvigsen-- I was delighted to see her, though it's hard to say if she recognized me. The woman told her, "Well, that's nice, that she was your music therapist before and she's going to work with you again." And I thought-- 'oh, I like that use of future tense.'

In the second room, however, the woman introduced me to some staff members as, "the music therapist who's going to volunteer some hours for us." And I thought-- 'I don't like that word volunteer nearly as much'.

So we sat back down in the little front office, and, well-- I panicked. Nothing had gone the way it had in my head, and all I could think of was that they needed to understand that I was here as a business owner, not as a volunteer. 

What followed was an uncomfortable conversation, where I tried to share what I could do and what I expected, and where she found ways to cut that down-- her idea was for me to run two fifteen minute groups a month. (Fifteen minutes? What on earth can you get done in only fifteen minutes of therapy? Especially in a group of eight people with slow response times! That's barely time to say 'hello' and 'goodbye'! She claimed the clients couldn't focus for longer than that but I know better, having worked with the same population for 45 minutes at a time during my internship) I... didn't really do very well at convincing her to let me come up with a few different pricing plans for them to look at instead of just going with the least effective possible solution. Whatever I managed to say or not say in my panicked fumbling, less than five minutes later I found myself ushered out the door. I did insist on going back long enough to give her the fact sheets I'd prepared, but that was the only chance I got to really share what I had to say. I was just told that "they'd get back to me" after they looked over their budget.

I've left a few telephone messages, but I haven't heard back since. I probably never will.

There's not really much to say except that I tanked it. I'm still trying to figure out exactly where things went so badly wrong.

It was a few weeks later that I received my next piece of bad news-- my one client, the sweetest old gentleman in the world who'd been sick with a bad cold for the past two weeks, had just been moved to hospice. He passed away the following week.

I can't exactly call it a 'tragedy'; he was 97 and it was his time. With my belief in God's Plan of Salvation, I have no doubts that he's in a good place now, with the loved ones he had lost. But it still hurts to lose someone you care about. 

And, more selfishly, it hurts to lose the only client your business has. But there really wasn't much I could do except get back to work on preparing my social skills group.

I figured the first thing I needed was a solid plan-- a location, dates and times, a basic plan of what the group would cover, age groups and such. So I did my best to put things together. I passed around a survey trying to find out more information about what people in the community might need-- but the survey only got three responses so I more or less put it all together blindly.

Location was rough. I considered just having it here in my parent's house, but there were a few good reasons not to-- the junk in the basement, two yappy dogs, concerns about what the kinds of kids who need a social skills group might do to the property (at Hartvigsen I became well acquainted with the fact that perfectly sweet but impulsive kids can be as destructive as tiny hurricanes), the challenge of maintaining a healthy work-life balance when you are working and living in the same space-- it just seemed like a bad idea.

Finding a location proved to be a challenge, however. Many of the places I tried wouldn't rent to a business unless it was a nonprofit (*technically* it's a nonprofit, since I sure haven't made a dime), or were only renting huge rooms for well out of my tiny budget. One place that seemed perfect wouldn't be available until October (and it had been a "summer" social skills group that I'd been promising, dangit). Finally I ended up settling on a Community Center in Daybreak.

The cost made me feel a little faint when I found out that I needed to pay the entire cost of rent (+ a deposit) in advance. But I could cover it. I've been putting a few dollars away into a savings account for two years now (not easy to do when you're unemployed) and if I emptied that savings account out, I'd have just enough to cover the cost of renting the room.

That was a risk. A scary risk. But if I could just find three clients (which seemed so very doable, especially with how many people had claimed they'd be interested when I talked about it at the Summerfest), I could almost break even. If I managed to fill out every slot, I could actually make a pretty significant profit. It seemed like a reasonable gamble to make, so with only a small impusle to hyperventilate I paid the fee.

Then, with everything ready, I opened up registration a month in advance. I put up ads on facebook and posted to parent support groups, I sent out newsletters, I put up fliers all over my community. And then I waited.

In the first week, one parent signed up her child.

And then nothing.

My posts and ads on facebook were picking up tons of likes and shares-- but no one was doing anything about them.

As the days hurried onward, and it became increasingly obvious that I had invested in a sinking ship, I did my best to keep things moving. My parents and others told me that it's normal for people to sign up last minute for things like this, that getting close to the deadline would help give a sense of urgency. So I paid for a new round of ads that emphasized the urgency-- one week left to register! As many capital letters as my over-considerate nature would allow. 

And... nothing. Well, not entirely nothing, there was a message from that solitary parent who signed up, expressing concerns about whether or not the group was actually going to happen. And a couple of college students who wanted someone to job shadow (and obviously picked the wrong therapist to ask). But no one registered. It reached the point where every time I checked my phone I felt like throwing up. 

I tried to stay positive, but it reached a point where I couldn't pretend otherwise anymore-- I was going to lose everything. All my savings, all the money I'd put into advertising and getting supplies and printing fliers-- just wasted. Because I made a stupid mistake of thinking "interest" was equal to "commitment", and putting everything on the line for people who didn't even open the newsletters they signed up for. 

In the last week, as I tried so desperately to salvage the mess I'd made, I asked for feedback on a Facebook group for music therapy business owners. The answers made it very clear where I'd gone wrong. I paid money for a program that no one had committed to yet. I didn't have the resources other therapists had when they pulled off something like this. One post got to me in a way that was hard to explain. After listing off amazing resources I don't know if I'll ever be able to access here, and strategies that never would have occurred to me in time to use them, as if they were the simplest things in the world-- she then followed up with, "But, you know, Failures for the Win! 😀 (But it's hard, some days I just want to hide in bed.)"

It was too much. That glimpse into what I'd been trying for, in the hands of someone who could actually pull it off-- and my "for the win failure" was my financial ruin. I didn't know if it would be possible to ever recover my business from this loss. I still don't know that-- in fact, if nothing changes then I will have to close my business by December, because I can't afford to renew all the things that need renewing when the year ends.

After reading that post, I collapsed on the couch and I didn't just cry--I howled. I cried harder than I've let myself cry in years, cried like every stress and hurt and heartache in a year of bitter disappointment and terrible doubt and fear was hitting me all at once, the dam of foolish optimism broken, the flood knocking me down and crystalizing into one terrible truth-- I was a failure. Not good enough to get a job as a music therapist. Not good enough to know how to run a business. Not good enough to do anything more worthwhile than hanging shirts at a thrift store for minimum wage while I dreamed stupid dreams of being something eternally out of reach, of changing a world that was better off without me screwing things up.

I don't know how long I sat there and cried. It feels like hours, but it was probably more like twenty minutes.

On this blog, I talk a lot about that elusive concept of "adulting", of that mysterious transition from dependent to independent, from child to grown up. It's hard not to feel like I've completely failed at that-- I've never worked a full time job, I'm single and living in my parent's basement and I'm generally a walking disaster.

But I'm starting to think that truly being an adult has less to do with where you live and where you work, with whether you can bake a pie or fix a car engine, and more to do with what you decide when there is no one who can make things OK, who can pick you up and tell you it's going to be fine and they'll take care of everything. In the end, other people can support you, but you have to be the one who stands back up and makes things right.

And if I have one virtue in all this world, it's that I don't give up.

So I got back up, and I started putting the pieces back together.

I'm flat broke-- but it could be worse. Yes, I used up all my savings, but at least it was all my own money. I didn't go into debt. This mistake won't make me lose anything else.

I am a good music therapist. It's hard to feel that way now, but I've seen lives change. I've seen the data. There are things I am better at and things I am worse at, but I am capable of doing something amazing if I can just find the chance.

I haven't been finding the chance. So I need to learn how to make the chance instead.

Right now my focus is on saving up whatever money I can. I'm going to get some job coaching, to try to learn how to market myself better, especially to facilities. It's not going to be easy, but I'm not going down without a fight. Not now. Not ever.

Two good things came out of this mess, at least. The first-- that parent who did sign up? After we talked about it, I offered to let her pay the same rate as she would have for the group to do individual music therapy with her son for those ten weeks. She agreed. So I do have one client, a little boy who needs help with attention span and social skills. Those are things I've treated with music therapy before. That is someone that I can help, who I mightn't have had the chance to work with otherwise. Helping this little boy is well worth making some mistakes for. 

The other good thing is a little more indirect. While putting up fliers for the ill-fated social skills group, I found another flier. Riverton Music is recruiting music teachers for after school programs at Granite School District elementary schools.

The job interview was probably the easiest one in my life. 

So, starting in October, I'll be working a second part time job teaching elementary school Orchestra. Only four hours a week, but it'll make a huge improvement to my financial situation, and I think it will be a lot of fun. I have fond memories of being in elementary orchestra myself, squeaking out nails-on-a-chalkboard impressions of "Hot Cross Buns" and learning to love Mozart and hate the key of Ab.

I'm still a long way from where I want to be, and I still have plenty of wrestling to do with my own issues. Running a business is so much harder than I ever would have imagined-- and I went in imagining it would be pretty hard. I seem to be learning almost everything the hard way, and that's kind of a painful way to learn. It's hard not to compare myself to other music therapists, the ones I went to school with who all seem to be having amazing successful careers-- but probably they're having their own problems that just don't show up on Facebook.

Probably.

But, anyway, challenge aside-- I'm not finished yet. 

I don't know, maybe my optimism is naive-- there are certainly times I think so-- but there are also times I can believe that as I dig around in the dirt trying to get this thing off the ground, I'm on my way to building something beautiful. Maybe. We'll see. 

South Jordan Summerfest

The South Jordan Summerfest is a big event my town puts on every summer (you probably guessed a lot of that from the title). There's carnival rides, a vintage car show-- and, more relevant to my current situation, a vendor fair. One that only charges $59 to run a booth, cheaper than anywhere else I've ever heard of. So I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and market my business.

I needed something to get people to actually come over, though. I wasn't selling any kind of product or food, so I needed a way to get more attention.

I was actually prepared for this on my mission. We got to spend a day running a booth at the Borderfest. We were in kind of a terrible location, and no one really wanted to go talk to the missionaries when there was a parade and carnival rides and a food court and dancers and so many other interesting things going on. But we figured out a strategy: every time a family came by I'd dart forward and offer some candy to the kids. While the kids were choosing a piece of candy, that'd give the other sister missionaries a few seconds to say 'Hi' to the parents and at least give them a pass-along card-- and we even managed to get some referrals that way. (In fact, one of the people I taught who later got baptized we found because of this event)

I had what I thought was a pretty great idea to do something similar at the Summerfest: I came up with some DIY instrument projects that kids could come do for free. (A kazoo made out of a toilet paper roll, a popsicle stick harmonica, and some simple shakers made out of paper cups) That would draw over a few families, and I could talk to the parents about my business while they were waiting for their kids to make crafts.

First, though, I had some preparations to do.

One thing I needed-- manpower. I needed people who could help out with the crafts while I talked to people. I was able to recruit my parents and my younger brother, but I didn't want to make any one person's burden too great so I decided to see if I could find anyone in my ward who would help in exchange for a free t-shirt and some baked goods. Sure enough, two wonderful ladies agreed to help in exchange for my best cranberry-orange-chocolate chip cookies. (Seriously, this recipe is amazing, all of you reading this should regret the fact that you weren't there just so that you could get some cookies, they are well worth spending a couple of hours messing around with small children and rubber bands).

I also needed the craft supplies. Mostly I was able to get what I needed at the Dollar Store and a couple of other craft stores. The only issue was toilet paper rolls-- I had thirty or so left over from a craft project that I never actually completed, and started actively collecting whatever my family used (and even what was used at the residence I did those graveyard shifts at, since I knew I'd be doing this before I even gave my two weeks notice). But it wasn't enough.

So I went to the Facebook page for my parent's ward to ask if people could save their toilet paper rolls for me. And boy howdy did they deliver.

In the end, we had roughly 200 toilet paper rolls and 8 paper towel rolls. Sometimes, people are just awesome.

Next problem: Shade. We'd be spending an awfully long time out in the sunshine, and I figured without some kind of shade we'd be miserable. My family has a big screen tent that we use when we go camping-- it's a nice place to sit down where you get more of a breeze than inside the regular tent but you're protected from bugs-- that I thought would suit. But when Dad and I measured it, we figured out it was too big for my allotted space of 10' by 10'. We also tried looking at a big shade umbrella, though it was in need of repairs.

What we ended up using was a shade tent that technically belongs to the Cub Scouts in my parents' ward-- but that has some broken bars so nobody actually wants it, they just are having my parents store it instead of throwing it away. My dad managed to macguyver some repairs using twine and a piece of rebar so that we could use it. I put together some signs, and with some camping tables we had what seemed like a pretty reasonable set-up.

Mignon, my Mom's dog, being much less helpful than she thinks she's being

The final piece-- t-shirts. I wanted everyone who was helping me to have a t-shirt with my company name and logo on it, and I wanted some as an incentive for people to sign up for my company newsletter. (That is, incidentally, why I recently went several months without updating this blog-- I've been too busy writing my company blog. That blog is more information about disabilities and less amusing anecdotes, but if you're interested you can check it out here, and that is as much company promotion as I will ever do on this blog. This blog is me taking a break from that blog.) I could have had a company print them for me, but I figured it would be cheaper to get some plain white t-shirts and some iron on transfer paper and do them myself.

The t-shirts (which I got cheap by ordering them 20 of them from a bulk clothing store online) arrived three days before the event, so I checked that they were all in order then got ready to fire up the printer to print my transfer sheets.

My parents have a laser printer.

Let me say that again. My parents have a laser printer.

Do you know what happens if you run inkjet transfer paper through a laser printer? Basically the result is a broken, sticky mess of a printer and definitely no t-shirts.

I hadn't realized that we had a laser printer so I'd gotten the wrong type of transfer paper at the store. No big, I'd just get them exchanged. Except, when I called the store, they said they didn't have that product. Neither did any of three other stores I called. I called a print shop to ask if they could just print the things on their inkjet printer-- except, they only had laser printers too. "These days, any commercial place you go will only have laser printers," the kind woman on the phone explained, "Because inkjets are going by the wayside."

As a matter of fact, the only transfer paper I could find that for sure even existed that would work on a laser printer was from this pokey little company in Illinois that would sell me fifty sheets for $70 (plus shipping) which would arrive roughly two weeks after the event was over.

In the end, I just bought a new printer.

Seriously, that was the most cost effective option I could find.

So, having survived all of that, the next day I started printing. Everything printed just fine, looked lovely.

Until I started ironing the sheets onto the shirts.

It turns out the instructions were not entirely accurate, and I ended up ironing for much longer than was actually necessary. The result? My logos were yellow-brown and faded and looked terrible. I didn't realize what I was doing until I'd made twelve of my twenty shirts completely unusable.

So I trekked back to the store and got another pack of transfer sheets, a new ink cartridge (printing those twenty shirts was enough to wear out the little one that came installed), and six new t-shirts. This time around, I was able to make a clean job of it and the t-shirts came out beautifully. But all in all, it actually would have been cheaper if I'd just had the t-shirts printed by somebody else in the first place.

But, finally, the big day arrived.

We had a pretty decent location-- in between an Italian pastry shop, a book/craft booth, and across the way from a woman selling crystal healing for pets. (That poor lady with the crystals got maybe three people total visiting her booth the entire day, and her face just got sadder and sadder.)

We might have been the busiest of the lot.

Tons of kids came through our tent. I did the math after and we made something like 250 instruments. I ended up keeping all of my helpers for much longer than I had initially asked them to stay, because often we needed as many as three people helping out with the instruments.

Many of the parents I spoke to were completely uninterested, or liked what I was doing but didn't have any further interest than that. Certainly no one was signing up for the newsletter, chance for a free t-shirt shirt notwithstanding. (As a matter of fact, every person who signed up "won" a free shirt, but it one person actually came back to get it. I've still got a box of the t shirts I worked so hard to get ready in time) But there were a few people who said they would give my pamphlet to a friend or co-worker, or that their child could perhaps benefit.

One woman asked if I was offering any summer camp programs. I wasn't, but after she left my Mom told me that maybe something like that might be a good idea. I thought about it, and started bringing up a summer social skills group with the parents I talked to--and I got a fantastic response. Six or seven parents said they'd be interested in something like that for their kids, and signed up for the newsletter so they could get more information. So, I decided. I was going to offer a social skills group in August-- I figured that was the soonest I could possibly do something like that.

Over the course of the day I also met the owner of a daycare for adults with severe disabilities, who expressed some enthusiastic about what I was doing and asked me to call and set up an appointment to chat with him. So that was incredibly exciting.

Mostly I spent the day glued to my booth, but I did take a short break to look at the vintage car show. (You know how much I love getting a chance to look at vintage cars)

At the end of the day, I was pretty exhausted. We all were, though for the last two hours it was just my Dad and I. (My Dad was invaluable for this entire event: I couldn't have pulled it off without him. He did most of the set up and a lot of the take down, he helped out with instruments for most of the day, he even brought back dinner) I hadn't thought anyone would come by any later than 8pm but it was closer to 9:30 that things had wound down enough to consider closing up. We packed everything up into the minivan, then I took off toward home on my bike-- I'd ridden my bike there in the morning because I'd had work at the thrift store first. 

I turned on my color changing wheel lights be I headed out into the dark. With my colorful glow, biking past the fireworks and the brightly lit carnival rides, I couldn't help but feel like I was part of the celebration.

Sadly, none of the people who had expressed interest in private therapy ever got back to me. Some of the people who claimed they were in in the social security groups never bothered to open the newsletter I sent out. Still, I was hopeful that the daycare facility Is called with would be a great opportunity. And I was still determined to move forward with that social skills group--clearly there was a need for one in my community, to be receiving so much interested, and it's something that I thought would bring in people who weren't sure they could afford the more expensive rate of individual therapy. So, although I wasn't getting any obvious return for my investment in the Summerfest, I hoped to long term the event would get my name out there and start some new programs that I could run.

On an unrelated note, who wants a free t-shirt?

If you pay to work, you might be a business owner

This is a monster of a story, so I'll probably break it up into a few posts.

People who have previously been reading my blog and/or who know me well know that I lost my previous job as a music therapist up in Idaho, and then spent a few unsuccessful months of job hunting while unemployed in my parent's basement.

It was a rough time for a few reasons, not the least of which being that I felt like the worst stereotype of millennials.

Job hunting was... frustrating, to say the least. To start out there was an amazing opening at an elementary school for special education students here in the Salt Lake Valley-- the timing couldn't have been more perfect, they opened up for applications just a few weeks after I left Boise-- but another applicant got the job. Another place I applied to-- this one much farther afield, out in California, called me back to tell me that while they were hiring music therapists (and had posted the job on the American Music Therapy Association website), it wasn't actually a music therapy position at all-- it was some completely different kind of therapy that the owner had come up with. One or two places got back to me that they wanted someone with a Masters' Degree. 

The rest of the places I applied to? Never got a response at all.

I reached the point where I'd applied to every job opening in the Western United States, which left me in something of a dilemma. If I wanted to keep trying to be a music therapist, I'd need to start looking farther afield-- to the mid-west, the east coast, etc-- which would mean being far away from my family. And would also mean some complicated apartment hunting, not to mention the job interviews-- so many places insist on an in-person interview, and I've never heard of a music therapy practice successful enough to be able to reimburse applicants for the flight. I was already three steps away from completely broke after my time in Idaho so that was a huge risk. But my only other option was to just give up on being a music therapist and try to find some other kind of job. 

Well, not quite my only other option. 

After a lot of prayer, and a lot of thought, I decided to do something much riskier than flying across the country for a job that I may or may not get. I decided to open up a private practice. 

Now, this was a truly terrifying prospect. I'd just lost my job at a private practice, so I was well aware of the fact that they are not necessarily stable employment. And while I'd put years of study and practice into learning how to be a music therapist, I had never really learned anything about running a business. (Heck, at the rate things are going, it's more like I'm 'walking a business'. And I'm walking very, very slowly)

But there was no way I was going to just give up on being a music therapist. I don't give up easy, not when it really matters. I've given a lot to get to where I am, and I wasn't going to walk away.

I was, however, going to sign up for an online class on running a music therapy business (which helped a lot in making sure I knew all the right forms to fill out and other important steps). I was also going to need a side job.  I needed some kind of income, in part because even while living in my parent's basement is the cheapest of housing I still needed to pay for gas and health insurance and other essentials, and partly because-- opening up a business is really expensive. Like, I had no idea. Licenses and declarations and website hosting fees and domain names and I can't even remember all what, I was just paying for everything. 

Let's put it this way-- if running a business has taught me anything, it's this: If you're paid to work, you're an employee. If you work for free, you're a volunteer. If you pay to work, you're an entrepreneur. 

I told myself that I never ever ever wanted to work retail again after my time spent working at Walmart, so I tried to find a part-time job that was at least in a related field. And it actually wasn't too difficult-- in less than a week of searching, I had an interview at a vocational training facility for adults with developmental disabilities.

Except when I got there I found out they wanted me for a management position-- which made sense, I suppose, because I already had a degree in a related field, even though I've never been any kind of manager. I had to turn them down (there was no way I could take that job load and still run a business of my own), but they were willing to let me apply to an entry-level position (ie the only real requirement was a high school degree).

The job I ended up getting was working graveyard shifts as a "residential trainer". Basically, this meant that I would spent three nights a week at a duplex rented by four women with various developmental disabilities. I'd clean, change the cat's litter-box, do laundry-- and try to stay awake so that if someone had a seizure or needed help getting up and going to the bathroom I'd be right there to help out. In the mornings I'd help everyone get dressed, take their meds, get breakfast, and get onto the bus on time to get to work. Then I'd go home and get some sleep myself.

I figured it was a good opportunity, since Idaho taught me that "prime-time" for private practice was weekends and late afternoons (when parents and kids would be most available for therapy sessions), which this job left open. And I genuinely liked the women I was working with, even though some of them could be a bit crotchety. But, heavens, I had no idea just how awful graveyard shift was. Even though I only worked three days a week, I spent the rest of the week trying to recover from working eleven hour shifts. I got awful insomnia, trying to sleep when the sun was up. Still, it was a decent job and I needed the money, so I hung in there. 

Then one evening I got up to find an answering machine message from the morning before-- on the phone number I'd set up for my business. A woman was looking for a music therapist to work with her 97-year-old father, who had dementia, and when she'd googled "South Jordan Music Therapist" I'd been the first name to pop up. (Thank you, SEO Wizard!)

So I picked up my first client, a sweet as sugar old gentleman who had sung in church choirs his entire life and thought the world of my coming to do music with him even if he couldn't remember who I was or whether or not he'd ever seen me before. Twice a week we worked on maintaining his memories and dealing with his anxiety and depression, and I couldn't help walking out of there every time with a huge smile on my face. He was a delight to work with-- and it just felt so good to be doing music therapy again. Even writing up my data and session notes, usually a chore, just felt so right, felt like coming home. 

(I was, incidentally, collecting data at my other job. In fact, I might have been one of only three or four employees who actually read the instructions on how to correctly write-up client notes. Sometimes when I was bored late at night I'd read over the notes other employees had left. There were the employees who had less to say about what the clients had done and more to say about what they fed the clients for dinner. Then there were the clients who mostly just complained about how much cleaning the other employees didn't get done. The most amusing were the employees who wrote, in painful detail, about arguments they had with the client's families.)

But having an honest-to-goodness client exacerbated the graveyard shift problem-- not getting enough sleep.

I'd already been having issues. I had to attend regular trainings for my part time job on things like first aid and working with individuals who had disabilities-- and these trainings were scheduled more for daytime employees than graveyard shift employees. Imagine working an eleven hour shift, then doing a six hour training, then going home and trying to sleep five hours before working another eleven hour shift-- and that's not even an exaggeration, I actually had to do that once.

Then there was the problem that most of the things I wanted to do to build my business (making phone calls, going to networking and marketing events, etc) involved being awake in the daytime, at least for a few hours.

Adding a client with an early afternoon appointment into the mix, and I found myself regularly trying to stay awake 24 hours at a time in order to get everything done that I needed to for both of my jobs.

I was turning into a nervous wreck. I was having mood swings, I was gaining a lot of weight, I started showing symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (repetitive, invasive thoughts about making my clients sick if I didn't wash my hands every few minutes), my depression was spiraling out of control, I had trouble forming coherent sentences when I talked... it was a mess. I was not managing to keep up with both jobs. I was doing even worse at managing to keep my own head above water.

So I quietly began turning in job applications to other places. And, soon enough, I managed to get a job at a thrift store near my home. I'd be making less than half as much money-- a huge hit to my finances. But the hours were perfect-- four hours in the morning, five days a week, leaving me the rest of the day to work on my business. So, I accepted, and dove (willingly!) back into the world of retail.

Which didn't necessarily mean a clean break from my residential trainer job. I was more or less wracked with guilt to be leaving-- honestly, I still feel guilty. The facility I was working for has a huge turnover rate, which makes it harder for them to get all of their employees properly trained. This facility has some wonderful qualities and does some great work-- but there are also a lot of problems in how certain things are run, and maybe if I'd stayed I could have been part of the solution to those problems. I hated leaving the women I worked with in the lurch-- the residential trainer program was already understaffed, so I'd be forcing everyone else to work more hours with my departure, and not all of the clients I was serving seemed to understand when I told them that I'd be leaving in two weeks to possibly never see them again. I felt like a rat. 

It didn't help that, despite my turning in my two weeks' notice, management never bothered to take my name off the schedule, so the night before my first shift at the thrift store I got some panicked phone calls from the girl with the shift before "mine" wondering where I was and why wasn't I coming in to work? This prompted several phone calls with management while they tried to figure out what the heck was going on-- I still don't know who took care of the clients that night. I felt like the worst, most selfish person in the world to be walking away with such a mess behind me.

But-- but I physically could not be a music therapist and do that job at the same time. I was being stretched to the breaking point. I had to make a choice. And however much I hated myself for leaving, what I wanted, what I'd given so much for, what I'd put years of work and training and sweat and sacrifice into, was to be a music therapist. Not the person trying to fix the organizational and methodological issues at this facility. Not a residential trainer. However much those two would be honorable and important tasks. A music therapist, someone with a unique skill set who could help people in a way that no one else could. 

And little by little, as I settled into my new job at the thrift store, I started to feel better. Part of it was the less demanding hours. Part of it was having a more active job that kept me moving. Part of it was being able to bike to and from work, getting more exercise in my day and cutting out a long unpleasant commute. Part of it was being able to spend more time around other people, instead of long nights alone while other people slept. A huge part was just being able to sleep at night-- I felt like I could actually think straight again. 

And part of it was just being awake in the daytime. Somehow, nothing is ever quite as bad in the world when I can spend time outside under blue skies and sunshine. So I was able to step out of the shadows and into the light, as I kept going on the journey of trying to make my dreams into reality.