New Year, New Career

I know, I know...hey strangers! It's been a busy few months and a lot of changes are in the works for me, which I can finally talk about on this blog. A few years ago, I took this weekend massage course through continuing ed at UNM and just fell in love with massage therapy. Ever since then, I've kept it at the back of my mind as a potential career option. The only thing holding me back was my mortgage and my luxurious, shopping at Target twice a month, lifestyle. Since I took that course, I left one job and started another. After only a year at Leadership New Mexico, I have begun to feel burnt out on the job and know it's not for me in the long term. So...I have officially decided to go to massage school!

I am really, really excited about this new, and sure to be fun and interesting, venture. I put in my notice here at Leadership and my boss offered to keep me on part time while I am in school so I'll be the newly titled Marketing and Community Relations Director and my boss will be hiring a new Program Director to take my place in the planning and attending of all the sessions. My final session will be with our 25-40 year old class next week in Roswell.

It's a little bittersweet as I really do enjoy all the people I've been able to meet and all the things I've gotten to do at the program sessions, but I definitely will not miss all of the planning and work that goes into them. No more watching the clock and waiting for a speaker to show up 5 minutes before they're supposed to go on. No more last minute cancellations and replacements. No more dealing with caterers and other vendors who just don't bother to return my calls until a week before an event. In my new position at LNM, there won't be as many issues that are out of my control to deal with. I'm realizing more and more, that that's what I've hated most about my past few jobs, just not having control over a lot of my work and the things that come up last minute. I know every job has a little of this but I hope that pursuing a career where I can eventually be my own boss, will help me control the outcome of things a bit better. What can I say? I'm a control freak. 

I also love that my job will be about helping people relax and easing pain and stress instead of feeling stressed all the time. It's one of the healthiest professions too, because of all the physical requirements involved. I'm excited to finally get some strength in these arms of mine. In fact, I may need to start doing some exercises ahead of time to get ready. Physical exhaustion is so much better than mental exhaustion that keeps you up at night.

So, I've narrowed it down to a couple schools, but the one I am leaning towards, the NM School of Natural Therapeutics, doesn't start until May so I'm going to take the time to re-visit a couple of the schools, audit a class, and get a student and graduate massage. The runner up doesn't start until April I believe. I wasn't sure if I would be doing day or evening classes until my boss offered me to stay part time so I will be doing evening classes. I go part time at the end of February so I'm hoping to get a few short trips planned while I have some extra time on my hands. Though money is going to be a huge issue for me so we'll see.

That's pretty much the update for now. I'm definitely looking forward to future posts giving the inside scoop on massage therapy stuff. "Ranting" doesn't really go along with this new endeavor so I may need to change up the ol' blog title and give it a more serene look and feel. I'll stick to the 70's retro vibe for now though : ).