The End Of An Era.

Okay, perhaps that's an overly-dramatic title 😅 but it does feel a bit like that. 

I'm finishing up my job at the museum. I've been working there for just over four years - I started just as things were opening back up after the lockdowns in 2020, and just as I was starting to figure out a lot of stuff to do with gender and sexuality and the whole shebang. 

I have a lot of memories from working there. Some good, some not so good. But I think that's true of most jobs. But I'm certainly grateful for the people that I met along the way - a bunch of queer folks and neurodivergent folks, and people from very different walks of life to my own; many that I now feel privileged to call friends. I'm also grateful for how the museum took me coming out, changing my name and gender identity, all well in it's stride. 

But, as many folks close to me will know, I've been struggling there for a while. The work has been burning me out mentally quite a bit, and that's been a struggle. But finding other work has also been a struggle! As it is for many. So knowing that I'm finishing up now - there's a lot of different emotions mixed up in there, but certainly high among them is a feeling of relief. Hopefully, wherever I'm at next, or whatever I'm doing next, won't burn me out as much. But that's hard to know before you start. 

People might be wandering what's next, and that's a great question! I don't really know either. I don't have other work that I know I'll be doing after this. Still applying to other jobs, so there are possibilities - but no certainties. 

I'll be okay for a while. Probably need to be a little careful with money for a bit, but I'll be okay. But yeah, I don't know what's next. I guess when I know, I'll tell you! But for now - I'm looking forward to some rest. It's much needed. 

Uni, Revisited

So, I'm back at uni! It's been a while...

For those who didn't know, this year I've started studying again. I'm doing a Masters of Creative Music Therapy (which is a bit of a mouthful), over at Western Sydney University. I started at the beginning of the year, so I'm about a semester and a half in now; it's a two year degree. So I'm...three-eighths of the way through? A scary thought.

I'm actually back on the Penrith/Kingswood campus, which is where I was over ten years ago doing a Bachelor of Music. That was quite a while back now....the campus feels quite familiar in some ways, but it's certainly changed in other ways as well. Though some of the same people are still there! Which is wild.

For those who are going, "Hey, what's music therapy?", well - it's therapy that uses music as the medium, basically. Not necessarily the only medium, but the main one. More standard (regular? I don't know what the right word might be here) therapy, or talk therapy, uses talking as the medium for therapy. There's plenty of different types of therapies these days - you might have heard of things like speech therapy, for instance, but then there's also art therapy, music therapy, dance therapy, and more. Each of them has different mediums or areas they're focussing on, or situations in which they're helpful or useful.

Music therapy has a pretty broad application; it can be used for people of any age, and can be used in both mental/emotional health settings as well as more physical health settings. A common application people may have heard of is with dementia, where people may remember songs or music quite well when they don't remember other things clearly. Compared to other therapies it's a relatively new field; while music has certainly been used in various healing techniques throughout history, its development as a more established field of research and practice started to flourish in the early 1900s, treating PTSD from war veterans. So there's still plenty that's being researched and developed in this area, and new discoveries and the like being made constantly. 

For myself, I was interested in this course for a couple of reasons. One was entirely practical; work has repeatedly burned me out, without exception - and it's often been a struggle financially as well. This would (hopefully) be a job that would lean in to my strengths, and so perhaps not burn me out as much; and also hopefully be paying reasonably well. The other practical part of it is that I've been doing music on the side for a number of years now (as well as various other passions/creative avenues/hobbies, depending on your perspective, but music usually being the main one), with fairly little return to show for it. Which is a bit disheartening (even though I know it's also partly because I don't really have the energy, focus or money to put into it to make it really work); and so the thought is that this is a way to still use music, but in a way that I can actually get paid! The other side of it is that I think it's a job that could really play into my strengths. Obviously I've been a musician for quite some time, but I'm also quite an empathetic person; and I have a bit of interest in psychology to boot. So it felt like all of that combined to make this worth at least giving a shot - and so far, I think it's been going pretty well.

Because usually, I'm not a fan of the idea of going to university to study for just one particular job. You're spending multiple years to learn about one job? But you could have so many different jobs in your lifetime, many that could be completely unrelated to that study. Many of my jobs I haven't had for more than a year or two. So it feels strange to put so much time into something that's no guarantee.
But for this one - it feels like it's something that I'd be happy to do for quite a long time, and that could have a fair bit of variety to it. And it certainly seems like there's demand for it 😅 most therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/etc seem to have a waiting list a mile long these days.

It has been a bit of getting used to, getting back into full-time study on campus after so long. It is only one day on campus (plus one day of placement and a one-hour Zoom check-in), but there's still plenty of work to keep us busy. I've dropped down to one day a week of work (still at the museum), and am mainly relying on Austudy payments from Centrelink. It's been enough to get through each week well enough, thankfully. The uni work has felt like a lot at points - I'm not great at being able to spread the work out over the semester, I tend to do things the week they're due. It's difficult for me to get motivated otherwise. But I've been pulling through fairly well for the most part. And I'm very much enjoying being part of a community again, and having people that I'm seeing regularly who I have a bunch in common with. I was a little nervous going in at the start, not really knowing if there'd be many/any other queer folk in the course - and I'm probably the most visibly queer, but there are others as well! Which is nice. And it's been a really lovely community to be a part of, really supportive and understanding.

There's still a lot to learn, and I feel like I've got a long ways to go yet. But I think that's probably how I'll feel even when I finish, in some ways; you never feel quite ready. It always feels like there's more to know, things you don't understand, and the like. But we'll get there. And it'll be okay.

Religion and operant conditioning.

(This is a post I started writing back in March, then never quite finished and have only just come back to. But we get there eventually!)

The other day at uni (yes, I’m back at uni! I might blog more about that another time) I was reminded of operant conditioning. For those that aren’t familiar with it, operant conditioning is a part of behavioural theory, notably worked on by Skinner. (You might have heard of his box.) The basic idea is that you can influence and change the behaviour of someone through positive or negative reinforcement and punishment (positive and negative here meaning giving or removing something, not good or bad). A classic example, for instance, is potty training - you want a child (or a pet) to learn how to toilet in a particular way, and so you train for that and reward that.

And we see this sort of thing all over the place, particularly with kids, whether it be in teaching or parenting. And the note was specifically, you know, we need to be careful about how we use this, because this isn’t considering any underlying reasons for a behaviour. And my mind immediately jumped to another example - religion.

Religion does this so much. Don’t do this, it’s a sin. Don’t do that, you’ll make God sad, or angry. Stop doing that or you’ll go to hell. Do this to be saved, do this to go to heaven.

As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t great 😅 the stakes are basically the biggest they can be. And so it kinda removes people’s free will, in a sense - which is a rather big thing! Religion creates this environment where there’s these very clear sets of behaviours that are accepted and encouraged, and others that are very much not. It’s creating - and enforcing - conformity.

That’s not healthy for people. And obviously religions don’t all do this in as strong a sense as others, and it will vary from community to community. But by and large - there’s a strong amount of shaping people into specific behaviours. And particularly when people grow up in this framework - it shapes your brain. In a very real way. Obviously I'm talking from a Christian background and upbringing, so that's the context I know and am more familiar with. But I wonder if it's possible for religion to be free of this way of doing things, or if it's ingrained to how religion functions.

Of course, it's not just religion that does this. Society at large, and communities in various places, do it as well, whether consciously or unconsciously. Fads and crazes often play into this psychology - do this thing, get rewarded for it, it will make you feel good, be accepted by other people, etc. And it's a tricky thing to watch out for, even when it's something that you might have heard of before. Because we like the reward! And we don't like getting punished. And that's okay. Just because there's a reward/punishment system in place for something doesn't mean that it's inherently untrustworthy, malicious, or bad. It's more about how it's used, the messaging around it, and what it's trying to get you to do.

I guess the important point to get out of this is to question things. Am I doing this because I actually want to do it myself, or am I just doing it to get a reward, or avoid a punishment? Being more aware of that happening, questioning that, being okay with stepping outside of that when we don't want to engage with those systems; even if that can make life harder at times.

Loneliness. Again.

Apologies that I haven't written for quite some time. I've been studying music therapy this year - hopefully at some point I'll write a post about what some of that has been like.

But that's not this post.

No, this post is talking about loneliness. Again.

I feel like I'm back here fairly often. But then again, it's a common challenge; folks saying that it's a national emergency, all that sort of thing. It kinda makes sense to me, but then, I can't really talk for other people. I can only really talk for myself.

Loneliness seems like a constant companion; the irony of which is not lost on me. I feel it quite deeply at times. Quite acutely in moments like I have right now (at time of writing), when I'm at home alone with not much to do. I can distract myself, sure. But it's only ever distraction.

I think there's a couple of challenges that make this problem more difficult for me. Well, two main ones.

The first is that I have such a need for interaction with people. Like, one-on-one interaction, not just being around people. I need that, like, daily - ideally, for a good stretch of each day. Most of the time, though, that's not the case. I interact with my partner here at home, for sure, but that's a bit of a different dynamic? And it would be nice to connect to other people too. But yeah, basically, that's a need that's not really being met, most days. I'll get moments of good connection, but most of the time not really. I feel disconnected.

The second, unfortunately, is that I'm not good at initiating those connections. I'll think that it will feel weird for the other person if I'm just randomly reaching out, or people will seem too busy (or actually be too busy), or I'll feel like I don't know someone well enough really, or maybe one of a bunch of other things. When I get like this and it's quite bad, I'll sometimes think about putting up a post on Facebook or some such just asking to catch up with folks - but at the same time, I don't want to catch up with everyone. There is quite a long list of people I'd be happy to catch up with, but it's not quite everybody. It's hard to do a group invitation and then have an addendum of "oh, but not these people, sorry". Just feels a bit weird and mean, honestly. A bit of this one probably links back into being autistic, which is fun. But yeah - I've got that need to fill which isn't being filled, and then I'm not good at being able to solve that problem. Which is great, yeah. Really ace.

It's worse when I don't have much to do, which is the case at the moment - I'm in between semesters at uni, so I've got oodles of time and not much to do with it. There's always things I could be doing with it, of course. Working at one of the million projects I've had on the shelf, you know, or doing some songwriting, or doing something crazy and going out for a walk. But most of the time I don't. Partly I think because I don't have much energy to be able to do things - the main way I get energy is from these connections, these interactions. Without that, I tend towards depression and/or disassociation. And when I'm already dealing with some level of burn out - autistic or otherwise - there's not much creative energy there, most of the time.

Part of this probably also links back into romance, or rather, the lack of it. I'd like to have a partner I can be romantic with. My current partner is aromantic - which is completely okay, and we care about each other a bunch, but it's quite different. When there's capacity to be loving multiple people - and there's certainly feelings for multiple people - it's difficult when that's very much not happening. (Partly for above reasons, but also I wrote a song about it.) 

Anyway. As usual, I can wax lyrical about the problem, but I don't really have solutions. Maybe I'll start getting better at reaching out to people. Maybe people will start being less busy. Who knows.

Finding Joy Together.

One of the things that I’ve been finding difficulty with lately is connected to where I find joy. Let me list some of them for you, and see if you can pick up a common thread.

Performing. In various ways, but just in general performing captures it fairly well.

Spending intentional time with someone, perhaps in conversation or doing something we enjoy.

Playing board games with people.

Have you figured it out? They all involve - and, indeed, require - other people. And that’s a problem. Because, for various reasons, there won’t always be other people available. And, in fact, often they aren’t. Perhaps because of work, or disability, or other complicating factors - besides which performing often implying a larger audience, which has its own challenges.

And then the one that I haven’t listed - music, particularly playing music, and especially playing music without a care for how loud I am, and on the piano - rather directly impacts other people within earshot. So I often need to turn to other things, which, though enjoyable, don’t often bring joy in the same way as these.

I’m not sure where the answer to this lies, or if there even is one. Perhaps in finding a new joy I can do by myself? For instance, when I was younger, reading was a common one that I would use. But then the challenge of that is that I’m very still for that - and I often have too much energy, that I need to use, I’m somewhat restless (yay, ADHD). Audiobooks are handy there, and fill some of a gap. Perhaps in terms of physical energy, I could look into doing dance lessons, or some form of exercise or sport. But often these cost money (which is always in short supply, working two days an week), and take time to get to - which, when I don’t have a car, makes things a little trickier.

Is this a problem that other people have faced? I’m interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this. Because unfortunately, the upshot of all of this is - I’m often not spending that much time doing things that bring me joy. And when work is a source of burnout, I need something else to balance that out - rest is part of that, and I’m good at that part. But part of it needs to be finding joy, too. And I think I need to get better at that, somehow. Because I don’t think there’s enough joy in my life. (Particularly when it is part of my name.)