Inclusive Music Therapy.

As always, obligatory "sorry it's been so long since the last post" at the top. I just really don't use this blog much any more 😅 but I had something that I wanted to ramble for a bit on that's going to go longer than a social media post can take, so here we are!

For those who aren't aware, to provide some backstory before we get into the meat of it - for the past two years (that is, 2024/25) I've been studying music therapy. It's something that I decided to study for a few reasons - partly because I'd been looking for work for quite some time already without success, and so I looked into what options there were for training up in various areas, and ended up settling on music therapy. I already have the music skills and experience, plus a couple of units of psychology; and listening, caring and empathy are all pretty second nature to me. It seemed like there was certainly demand for this sort of thing, if the trend of psychiatrists, psychologists and the like having massive waiting lists was anything to go by.

But now it's done, and five months post-study and......no job. During the course, there were multiple suggestions that this was indeed a growing field, with people having long waitlists of clients. Unfortunately, it seems like many RMTs (registered music therapists) are working solo, either setting up their own thing or working by themselves in a multi-disciplinary team. Centres with multiple RMTs do exist, but they're few and far between - and not many hiring opportunities have popped up (unless I wanted to have a commute down to Wollongong, or a move up to Newcastle or interstate; there's also been some jobs that are just kids, but I'm not really wanting to do that).

As part of the course, we were encouraged to think about the sort of practice that we'd like to do. I had a pretty solid idea from the start, and it only solidified further over the course of learning and developing more. You see, there's lots of neurodivergent RMTs out there, and plenty that are working with autistic and ADHD clients. A large percentage of those are working more with kids than adults, so there is still some room and demand there for a more adult-focussed neurodivergent RMT I think - but that's not as much what I was interested in. Because you see, there's almost no trans RMTs in Australia. I can name a couple off the top of my head? But to the best of my knowledge there aren't any operating in NSW or the Greater Sydney area that are focussed on trans and queer clients. And so I decided that's what I wanted to do - as a queer and trans RMT, work with queer and trans clients. Not, like, exclusively? Like I could still see people that didn't fall into those buckets. But I wanted that to be my focus, my main target audience as such.

Because I really wanted songwriting to be a key part of the work that I do, and I wanted to be able to have conversation and discussion with my clients, work through issues, that sort of thing - I wasn't as interested in working with kids. I really wanted to be working with teens and young adults for the most part, from a more mental/emotional health standpoint. Like, still trying to work from a holistic standpoint and thinking about how other aspects of health are affected, because that's something that's really important. Towards the end of the course, I also did a project looking at using music therapy for religious trauma, and I would be interested in incorporating that as well.

The dream would be that this would eventually be a centre itself, employing multiple RMTs, each with their own area of inclusivity that they're passionate about - perhaps particular forms of disability, or working with migrants or First Nations people - this is what I would love to see happen. And I came up with a simple name for it: Inclusive Music Therapy.

But I didn't want to start here. Partly because I wanted to get some more experience; for various reasons the placements that I ended up doing meant that I didn't really work with many teen or young adult clients, and if that's what I wanted to be the core of who I was working with, I wanted more experience there. And partly because that would mean both starting in a new industry, and starting a new business, both at the same time. When I'm someone who has zero business sense. So I was hoping to start off in a centre, get some experience, some mentoring, before starting up my own thing.

While I started looking for that, I was on JobSeeker, and started a Self-Employment Assistance course to satisfy the mutual obligation requirements. It was just a couple of days a week online, but it walked you through setting up your own business. And of course, I was using Inclusive Music Therapy as the idea for it; so it meant that the idea got developed a fair bit more. The course involved doing things like putting a budget together, a website, social media page, a business plan - it was fairly comprehensive. To be fair, I had already been working on a website, so much of that part was already done! But putting together the other bits and pieces helped me to get an idea of how doable it might be. The answer - sort of.

Money is always the tricky bit. The rough budget I drafted up (using a fair bit of guesswork, but it gives me a ballpark) suggested that if I started off doing 16 sessions a month, and most months was able to increase the number of sessions I was doing by two, and had about $1000 there saved as an initial investment into the business, I'd be breaking even about a year or so after I started. I'm going by number of sessions, by the way, rather than number of clients, because clients won't necessarily have the same regularity of sessions. Some might do weekly, others fortnightly, or monthly, or even every three weeks. So I'm measuring off number of sessions per month. The figure that I'm using for cost is based off the current NDIA price measure for music therapy - the maximum that an RMT can charge for a one-hour session for an NDIS participant is $156.16, so I did some rounding to make things simpler and put it at $155.

And now the course is finished - and I still don't have work. I've been applying to things (both music therapy and otherwise), but nothing that's gotten me an interview. It's hard to know if being autistic, ADHD, queer, non-binary and trans are part of that (I always include that in my cover letter), because most of the time you hear nothing back at all, and never really any specific feedback. But it's starting to feel that way at points. That I'm getting lumped into the too-hard basket. But I want to be working somewhere where they see these things as a plus, not a liability. But yeah. Not having work kinda sucks sometimes.

So now, I'm more seriously considering the possibility of starting up my own music therapy business. I've gotten more of the tools to be able to do it from a business perspective, so it feels somewhat less daunting in that sense. And encouragement from others has led me to be less worried about not having as much experience as I would like with teens/young adults specifically in this area, since I can apply it across from other areas. But the thing that's going to make it doable is having enough clients to start.

I think that the demand is there. There just aren't a lot of mental health services for queer and trans people available, and many of them are already struggling with the amount of people trying to access them. And there isn't an RMT in the Greater Sydney area working in this space currently; so theoretically at least, there's quite a large number of potential clients. It's just a question of whether I can actually reach them. I don't really have a lot of money that I can put into advertising and marketing before I even get things started; but perhaps I have enough to start getting the word out, and seeing if I garner enough interest.

One thing I can do is make the website that I've been working on public. It still definitely needs a bit of fine-tuning, but perhaps it will help me to get some potential clients and be able to see if this is something that could actually work. Also just like, feel free to comment if you know people (or are people!) who would be interested, or share this with those who might be.

Before I finish up, if you hadn't figured out, that's the logo at the top! Yes, I designed a logo for it. It's pretty simple - it's a piano that's using the colours from the progress pride flag for the different keys. It just works out with how the different keys and letters and colours line up, and I'm quite happy with it, for a logo done by someone who is not a graphic designer 😅 I'm sure someone else could make it a bit neater or cleaner or crisper, but it's fit for purpose at this point.

But yes! Inclusive Music Therapy. If there's enough interest - maybe I could actually make this happen. It will be a lot of work to get off the ground, and there's probably still a bunch of business stuff that I'll need to wrap my head around; but I'd love to have the opportunity to try.

Wake Up, Dead People - the Knives are Out

 I'm back! First post of the year. Took me a while. Everyone and their dog has probably seen Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery by now, but if you haven't, this post is going to be at least in part a review of that movie. While I won't be going into spoilers as such as part of this post (or that's the intent, anyway), if you'd prefer to go in blind, I guess find something else to read? Ths short version is: it's very good, and you should watch it. Anyway. I do say in part only, though, because part of why I wanted to write this is actually more of a reflection than a review. So we'll see how that goes.

Wake Up, Dead Man is now the third instalment in the Knives Out - what do we call it? Series? Franchise? Universe? - that feature our now-familiar detective friend, Benoit Blanc. After the success of both the original movie as well as Glass Onion, expectations were high with this third movie. As before, it's loaded with an absolutely star-studded cast, and people playing in some roles that it feels like they can really ham it up in, and have a lot of fun with it. It feels very much in the vein of an old Hercule Poirot vibe, though Benoit Blanc has a bit of a different feel to him than Poirot does. But still, plenty of drama!

This time, the setting is a small little Catholic church in upstate New York, currently led by Monsignor Wicks. However, our viewpoint is mostly from a fresh face to the church - Father Jud, recently assigned after an altercation with another priest who had spoken out of line. And the difference between these two could not be more stark: in Father Jud we see a gentleness and grace, whereas in Wicks we see brashness and retribution; in Jud we have a man who is humble and listens, but in Wicks we see ego talking at people. Joining them are the regulars at the church - the alcoholic doctor, recently separated; the author living in isolation; the groundskeeper, just doing his job; the lawyer and adoptive mother; the adopted son, recently returned from a stint in politics and now trying to make it big online; and Martha, the one who keeps it all together and does just about everything.

Somehow, in the middle of the Good Friday service, Wicks is killed - seemingly without anyone laying a hand on him. The police are grasping at straws, and so in strolls Benoit Blanc, who immediately enlists the help of Father Jud to get a more intimate knowledge of the case. And what a case it is, with twists and turns a plenty; but I'll let you watch the movie to discover those for yourself. If you can't tell by now, I think it was done very well once again, and I've already watched it twice over. It's a great film.

But I think part of what makes it such a great film, interestingly enough, is the focus on religion. Because I think it feels very timely; as did much of the rhetoric in Glass Onion. In the character of Monsignor Wicks, we see a lot of the worst of what religion can be (though there has been worse, I would argue) these days - a religion that fights against the world, builds big stone walls to keep everyone out, and judges harshly. A religion that is - hopefully obviously - rather antithetical to all that Jesus taught. But, to counteract this, we have the character of Father Jud, representing much of what the best of what religion can be - accepting, loving, listening, welcoming, caring, being there for people, wanting the best for people.

Unfortunately, there are all too many churches run by people not that far off from the character of Wicks. Perhaps not as egotistical or pointed as he was (though there are certainly examples of that as well); but many who see their role as being a fighter against the world, a protector of the true believers against the dark world that they see out there today. And part of the difficulty is that the world does feel very dark these days, and often feels like it keeps getting darker - and I think that can very well be true regardless of where you're looking from, or what you think that darkness is. But, as Jesus demonstrated, you do not hide away when the world is dark; you go out into it, and be light. You put the lamp on a lampstand, you be the city on a hill, the salt of the earth.

These days, I don't know where I'm at with religion any more. I haven't been to church in a long time, and I don't know if there really are any around that I would feel at home with. At one point I attempted to get a bit of a community going around this idea of those at the fringes of faith, but it sputtered out fairly quickly. But I do think we need more that take that example from Father Jud - and from Jesus. To be open and welcoming, rather than condemning and hostile. To be love, and light. Not an ivory tower.

Tips for Loving Your Trans Friend.

I've realised I haven't been writing lately nearly as much as I'd like, or as much as I used to - I used to play a much more active role in trying to represent neurospicy (and in the last few years, queer) folks online, and I'd like to start doing more of that again. 

As such, in that vein, here is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts - Tips for Loving Your [insert term here] Friend. The idea is that these posts will be aimed at folks who are adjacent to various communities, but not part of them themselves. For instance with this first one, that have trans friends, but aren't themselves trans. (Or aren't they? 👀 🥚) It's about trying to educate people who care about their friends and are well-intentioned, but perhaps need some education about a few things. They don't get it right now - so let's help them a bit. And if they already know some of these, awesome! 

Like I said, this first one will be about showing love for your trans friends. So trans folks, send this to your cis friends - cis folks, listen up! For the most part, these will be in no particular order, we'll just see how we go. 

Don't talk about H@rry P0tter. 

Yes, I know, chances are you grew up with it and loved it. What's the issue?

Well, in case you missed the memo, the author's a dick. A massive, massive, dick. So what? You think. Just because they're terrible doesn't mean I can't enjoy what they've written and such, right? Separate the author from the work and all? 

Unfortunately, this particular author is still very much alive, but very much trying to actively make trans people not be. Like, putting all her fucking money into it. And she's actively said she sees any support of HP as support of her own ideas and values. 

So just - don't. Don't buy anything HP-related, however much you've been wanting to try Hogwarts Legacy (it's kinda shitty anyway). Don't wear that Gryffindor shirt out and about when you're meeting up with your trans friend (or better yet, at all). And just don't talk about HP, unless it's specifically to dunk on the author (an allowed and encouraged exception).

But wait, you think. Why is just talking about it an issue? Well, if you talk about HP willy-nilly, chances are you either don't know this stuff about the author (which means you've been living under an absolute rock), or you don't care - you don't think it's a big deal. If it's the latter, that sends a big message to your trans friends that you don't really care about them, either. So just don't. Want to pirate it or something, or read your books that you already bought ages ago? Sure, go ahead. But don't put more dollars in her pocket; and don't let people think that you agree with her and her views.

Practice Pronouns and Names. 

One of the bigger changes for trans folks is often changing their name and/or pronouns. It can be quite a process to go through - both in terms of figuring out what works for them, but then also all the rigmarole of the paperwork to make it official. People will often go through different iterations of names, pronouns, or both; I used a non-gendered version of my original first name for a while, then used Raven for a bit before figuring out my new full name. And I used they/them for a while before trying they/she. 

The point is - trans people have put a lot of time and thought into this. You should put some time into it too. Practice getting their name right, practice getting their pronouns right - particularly if your friend is using they/them and you aren't familiar with that, or if your friend is using neopronouns. And if you do get their name or pronouns wrong, don't make a massive deal of it; just correct yourself, apologise briefly, move on. It doesn't need to be a saga.

Don't talk about "who they used to be".

This is a bit of a broader one, and perhaps harder to pin down. But generally speaking, just don't talk about them like they're someone who's not here any more, and you miss them, and isn't it sad - no. They're right here, now. They're more themselves than they've ever been. And they'd like you to see that too. Enjoy the person that is, rather than mourning the memory that was.

Also - don't use their old name (or deadname, as we often call it, though I don't use that for mine) with other people. That's not the sort of thing they generally want new folks knowing. Talk about who they are now and in the context of now, not in the context of before, even if you're talking about events that happened a while ago. (e.g. "Oh, have you heard of Elliott Page? He's in The Umbrella Academy, and he starred in Inception a while back. Yeah, in Juno as well, that's right!")

Give them old clothes that fit their new gender and style that you don't use/need. 

I can't quite express how grateful I am to the number of friends that have given me clothes over the last few years. Most have also been trans folks - but at the moment, most of my wardrobe (save my typical nerdy shirts and one or two things I found myself) have been given to me by others. 

Clothes shopping is hard! Particularly when you're still figuring out your body, and you're still figuring out what your style looks like now - it's difficult. Having help from other people, particularly in the form of donated clothes, can really ease a lot of stress for folks.

Listen and learn.

Listen to what your trans friend about what's going to be best for them - we're not all the same. Binary trans folks will often have quite different experiences to non-binary trans folks; people that are transmasc and transfemme are each on their own journeys and often have different communities. Language that is comfortable and affirming for one person is going to be hurtful for another; unfortunately, that's just how language works. Learn what works for the people near you, and remember it. Your trans friends will appreciate it.

--------

I started writing this a few weeks back, so it's a little disjointed; but hopefully people can still learn from this. Let me know what you think, and if there's a particular one that might be helpful next!

Caring For Yourself.

I'm very good at caring for other people. People have often felt safe talking to me about things, even when they didn't know me that well. I'm good at making people feel safe, and cared for, and listened to. 

I'm not so good when it comes to finding time for doing that for myself - at least in some ways. 

Self-care I'm fairly good at. Things like making sure I rest well, eat well, don't work too much - I do that pretty consistently. But I'm less good when it comes to actually talking to other people about stuff that's happening for me, and cluing people in to what's going on in my brain.

At one point I was seeing a therapist fairly regularly, and that helped. But that's unfortunately expensive, and so when work stopped, so did that. More recently I've found another therapist I can see - for free! - but only for a little bit while I'm still a student. So I'll need to find another option for next year.

But this is a fairly consistent pattern for me with other people - so much of the time, I'm giving a lot more than taking. I'm putting more energy and time into a connection, into the time that I have with someone, than I'll receive. 

Unfortunately, though, I perpetuate this problem myself. I'll be the first to defer to other people's choices, ask other people to choose things, because I want to be considerate of them. I'm the type to say that I kinda like everything, or that anything's fine. I'm not good at actually voicing my own desires or wants or needs - and often, because of that, I'm also not great at actually knowing them myself.

There's a line from the game Life Is Strange: True Colours that hits me like a truck every time. It's in one of the later episodes, from Steph Gingrich to the main character, Alex Chen. 

"I've seen you give so much of yourself to make sure other people get what they need. And I guess I wonder if you've thought about what you need."

I've spent a lot of my time and energy caring for people. Hell, I've spent the last two years of my life studying for a job that's specifically about that. And, like, I don't want to stop caring for people 😂 that's not the point. The point is to care for myself better. Try and prioritise myself a bit more, voice my own desires and needs more - and find people that are able to give me time and energy more consistently as well.

It's a hard change to make. And chances are, some of you reading this might struggle with this too. I know this is something that I've dealt with for a while. Hopefully, it's something I can start making some headway in. Maybe you can too. 

Some Of My Story.

It's been...a while. I really haven't been good at writing anything on here for some time now. But over the past little bit I've realised that I've got a fair few new people in my life now who don't really know my story. So I thought I might have a go at summing it up here. 

Obviously, this won't cover everything. I'm not really talking about most of my life really before COVID except as background. Also a lot of this I did as a Fringe show, with my own songs! So if you'd prefer that format (though it will be a bit different, it's a few years old now) here's the link.

I grew up in a Christian family. Both parents Christian and from Christian families as well. Went to church every week, went to a Christian high school, had some jobs in prominent Australian Christian organisations. Even went to Bible college for a year (it was this sort of young adults leadership/spiritual growth/Bible college course with just a small group), and ended up working leading the music at a church (as it happened, just down the road from the high school I'd been at). I was down the rabbit hole pretty deep, in many respects. 

At the same time, though, I was still quite left-leaning. I'd grown up in a church that had women leading up the front, I was pro-choice, rather anti-capitalist, thought that guns and war were terrible ideas, and tended to follow science and history a fair bit. But also - I still thought that I was straight, monogamous, and a cisgender man. Though I didn't know the word cisgender at the time 😂 That was all about to change, though. 

Perhaps strangely, the way that it changed was getting married. Yes, for those of you that didn't know, once upon a time I was married. You see, I knew I wanted romantic relationship, I was very much a romantic. And the system and context that I grew up in said that the only okay way to do that was with heterosexual monogamous marriage; so that's what I pursued. With a fair few bumps and wrong turns along the way (thanks autism), but we eventually got there in the end. I ended up getting married early in the year of 2020. 

Something else happened that year! 😅 We managed to get our honeymoon in before lockdown happened, but then all of a sudden we had a lot of time to ourselves. I don't know about you, but for me, that led to a lot of introspection. And I'm already a fairly introspective person by nature.

You see, at some point a while before this, I'd had this thought of, "if I'd grown up in a different family that wasn't Christian, I'd probably be a trans woman at this point." And this was quite a common thought I had, that I didn't really think much about - I kinda just accepted it as a fact, thought there's nothing much I can do with that, and put it on the shelf for another time. (To provide a little context, part of the reason that was a thought I was having was because I really didn't associate with a lot of things considered traditionally masculine, and often tried to actively move away from those.) But then, come lockdown, and all that introspective time - my brain thought it was a great time to bring that thought off the shelf again and have a closer look at it. And that was the start of rather a lot happening. 

Because you see, that was kinda like opening the lid to Pandora's box. As soon as I started looking at my sexuality and gender more closely, all my preconceived notions basically fell apart. And after a bit of Googling, I relatively quickly figured out that I was non-binary, pansexual, and polyamorous. ....as you can imagine, that was a lot for me to take in all at once. It also wasn't as surprising as perhaps it should have been. (Of course there were signs. I was just blinkered.)

But this then posed rather a few problems. The first one was just theological - everything I'd believed up to this point said that this wasn't really okay. And so I did some more digging, and some more research. After a bit of time, I'd basically resolved those qualms - though also more of my preconceived notions around religion and spirituality were being rocked, and deconstruction was kinda happening all at once now. 

The next problems were, I was still married. And working at a church. So this is where I had a choice. I could try to ignore what I'd learned, and just keep living life how I was. I was in a good relationship, I had a job I enjoyed - and even though the church I was at had a lot of people with different views to me, there were still a lot of people there that I cared about and enjoyed spending time with. And I tried to make that work for a little while. I told my wife at the time about the things that I'd learned about myself, talked through it all. She accepted me for who I was, but also affirmed that we'd committed to a monogamous relationship, and that's not something she was comfortable with sacrificing (which was understandable).

So I tried to accept that, for a time, and live mostly how I had been. I'd started connecting with some queer communities online and talking with people there, but I wasn't talking about it with other people I knew personally. After a couple of months like this - I knew I couldn't keep going this way. It felt like living a lie. It felt like I wasn't able to be truly myself. But I also knew that if I did take that step, it would mean losing a lot - my marriage, my job at the church (thankfully I did have another job, but still), many friends, and possibly family as well. Was that worth it?

To me, it was. And so started a rollercoaster of my life for the next few months.

First, was another conversation with my wife at the time. Understandably, she was rather upset, and didn't want to separate. But also wasn't willing to compromise on her own beliefs (and I wasn't asking her to). So I gave her some time. It ended up being a few more months before we separated. Before it happened, I started slowly talking to each of my immediate family about what was happening, and then to my pastor at the time. The conversations were difficult, though not all as hard as they might have been. And then I moved out, and away.

It wasn't too long after that when I came out online, publicly. While there were certainly plenty that were shocked or concerned, there were also many that were encouraging, or that were really happy that I'd come out. I started to have people come out of the weeds that I hadn't talked to in ages, and it turned out they were queer as well! I just hadn't known. And in the years since it's been wild how many friends I've seen come out or transition, often people that I'd been very close to before. What do they say about birds of a feather? 

I started living more authentically as myself, but a lot of things took me some time to figure out. I found an affirming church fairly quickly, and then another one not too long after that which felt more at home to me. I started wearing more skirts and dresses, and after a time growing out my hair. I started trying they/them pronouns, and more recently both they/them and she/her. I tried using a gender-neutral version of my old name for a while, before finding my first name, and then the full name I use now. I found a lot more queer friends and communities to connect with, both online and in person. I felt more....me.

That doesn't mean there hasn't been issues. The road with my family has been bumpy, but they're learning, and trying to be better. I ended up finishing up with that church I was at, partly because of my own deconstruction journey, but partly because of how the church changed as well. I've dealt with more depression and burnout over the past few years than I think I have in the rest of my life. And being a transfemme person that still has a flat chest and stubble a lot of the time, I get misgendered a lot. But has it been worth it? Hell yes. And I will take living authentically every time, even when the cost is high. 

This isn't the end of my story, and neither is it all of my story. But hopefully, having this part of it here like this can be helpful for people to understand me better. And also just as a reminder to myself now and then, of how far I've come. It's been quite the journey. And if you've been a part of helping me get here - thank you. You're part of the reason that I stick around.

On Just Surviving.

Apologies for the long hiatus here, folks. This blog just keeps slipping lower down on my list of priorities, and that list just keeps getting added to...I also feel like I just don't write as much as I used to. I often feel like I don't have anything to write about. I tried to actually write a post about that, a month or so back, but didn't get very far.

But what I want to wrte about today is something that's been true for a bit longer. For a while now - I'm really not sure how long, to be honest - I've been more surviving than anything else. Just getting through each day. Not really feeling like I'm thriving, or living fully, or getting that much joy out of life most of the time. I'll snatch little moments of that - and I'll treasure them when they arrive - but they do seem to be more moments than anything else.

And I'm not actually sure why that is, honestly. Because there's so many different things that it could be.

Maybe it's because I'm burnt out from about two years of working in my last job when I wanted to leave, because most of the joy in the job was gone for me, and it was just draining me like nothing else - but I couldn't find any other work. (And still haven't.) So I had to stay.

Maybe it's because I'm living in a world where we need to work to survive, despite the abundant resources and technology that we have. Where having a home is a privilege, not a right. Where being able to eat a balanced diet costs an arm and a leg. Where you need a car to work most jobs, but can't buy one unless you've got a job. And if you have a disability that needs specialist attention or equipment - you'd better hope that disability services will give you the money that you need for things, because everything costs a mint. Where, even though I'm studying a course that I love, to move towards a job that I think I'm going to love too - I'd really much prefer to be working on my own projects. I have so many. Probably too many. And chances are, none of them would earn me a cent - in fact, most of them would probably cost me a fair few. And I also just need to rest, and recover. But capitalism doesn't like that.

Maybe it's because I'm living in a post-lockdown world. Not a post-pandemic world, mind - Covid is still everywhere, and probably will be for a long time to come. But living in lockdown for weeks on end, months on end; it changes you. And I think it changed us, in many ways, as a world. And I don't know if we've really ever recovered. I don't know if we can.

Maybe it's because constantly, year after year, there are things happening on an international level that chill me to the bone. The war in Ukraine. The Trump presidency. The war and genocide in Gaza. Somehow, Trump presidency 2, the white right boogaloo that apparently enough people wanted. And so many smaller things that we just never really get to hear about, because its not "primetime" enough for our screens.

Maybe it's because depression is a bitch. That fucking sucks. And that medication isn't helping with. (Mental health medication has a great history of having almost no effect on me, positive or negative. It's wonderful. Thankfully that doesn't extend to other sorts of medication.)

Maybe it's because all of these things, in their own ways, take up my time, my energy, my space - and leave me with less to actually do things that would bring me joy. Like spending time with people. Like doing board games with folks. Like doing theatre. Like doing music with people. Like getting out into nature. And...other things that I'm not going to say on a publicly available internet post. And instead means I'm spending more time attempting to rest and recover, or doing things so that I actually have enough money to survive, rather than things I'm actually looking forward to.

Too many of my days, and too much of my time, I'm just....existing. Surviving. Doing what I can to get by. Trying to find the next thing to look forward to, to keep me going a little longer. And I hate that. I really do. It makes life feel....empty. Hollow.

Despite all this, I'm not actively suicidal. Which is something. But I've always been very pain-avoidant; I don't deal with pain very well. Most thing that kill you will hurt. A lot. Particularly if they don't actully kill you. There's exceptions, of course, but they're usually a lot harder to just come by casually.

But also, there's a lot that I still hope to do in my life, that I haven't gotten to do yet. I don't know when those things might happen, or how they might happen, or if they will. But I want them to, one day. Dreams like travelling to different countries; playing my music with an orchestra; seeing a musical I've written performed on stage; and so much more. But these aren't really things you can try and work towards, when you have no job, no money. But there's always that hope that there will be a change; that this too shall pass, and you will see the sun rise again. It's difficult to actually feel that, properly; but I know it, at some level. And that helps.

All this to say - the world's a lot shit right now. And there's not a lot I've felt I can do about that for some time. But I'm keeping on keeping on - in the hope that one day, things will be less shit. Or at least, a bit less shit for me. That would be a start, selfish though it may be.

Looking Back, Looking Forward...24/25

Well, we've come to the end of another year, and the start of a new one. This year has been rather eventful for me, with a number of new things starting up. 

The biggest of these was probably uni. It's been strange being back again after about ten years, but I've also really enjoyed it. I'm doing this music therapy course with a lot of rather wonderful people, and it's a community that I'm grateful to now be a part of. It's certainly been a lot of work - and I know that's only going to be more so the case for this coming year - but it's felt worthwhile.

I think the other big thing this year has been relationships. I don't talk that much about my relationships publicly, for various reasons; but as I've mentioned previously on here, I'm polyamorous. One relationship that I'm in we recently celebrated our second anniversary, which to me feels quite significant. (I know for a lot of other folks that feels quite small - but for me that hasn't had that many relationships, it's a fair bit.) I've also had two new relationships start up this year, meaning that I now have three partners! It's been a bit of work juggling that, particularly when people to tend to be rather busy. But it's been very rewarding, and I love each of them rather a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing how those relationships develop over the coming year. 

Another thing has been board games. I've always been pretty big on board games, but this year I got the chance to show a prototype of one of my games, Corners, off at a convention in Sydney. Which went really well! I was really happy with the reception that I got, and I implemented much of the feedback from people into the design of the game. I think it's really close now to being done, and I'm pretty happy with it. There's also plenty of other games I've been doing bits of work on, and I've been having somewhat regular board game nights at my place as well, which has been great. 

Another thing that's more recent has been acting in another musical. I haven't been on stage for a few years now, and I've really missed it - so I'm very grateful to be back in it again, with a crowd that's close to home, and a show that's queer as they come! I get to be in a femme role on stage which I really love. I'm having a lot of fun, singing and dancing and acting again after quite some time. I don't know if I'll be able to do another show next year while uni is happening, so I'm enjoying this one while it's here. 

One more thing that happened was the Sydney Fringe show that I did, Faces of Love. I think I was worried going into it that it wouldn't do as well as Rainbow Religion; the idea didn't feel as clear, and it all felt somewhat cobbled together in a way. But I still had a decent number of people showing up, and a lot of folks that really loved the shows and that were impacted by the songs. I think it's just a reminder for me that that really is the thing that I do well; even if it's one I feel like I haven't put as much energy into, there's still a lot in there, a lot of depth and emotion that people are able to connect to and feel. Hopefully I'll get more opportunities to do that, but it's hard to know. 

I was also able to finally finish up my work at the museum. While I miss the people there, I don't miss the work. And it's nice being able to have a rest for a little while. I've needed it. 

Looking forward to next year - I'm not really sure what to expect. There's a few things that are locked in, like uni, the musical, that sort of thing. But there's plenty that I don't know yet, and I'll just have to figure out as I go. But that's how it tends to happen!

So, to all of you - happy new year. I wish you all the best for the year to come 💜

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.)

Looking Forward, Looking Back - 23/24

Another year is coming to an end, and another one is about to start. So let’s take a moment to look back at the year that was, and look ahead to the year that might be.

For me, 2023 had a lot that was new; but also a lot that was the same. I’m still working in the same job, despite having applied for other jobs on and off for over a year. I’m still no further ahead on the musical about queer faith that I started writing nearly two years ago now. I’m still in the middle of reading many of the same books that I was at the start of the year. I’m still not seeing many of my creative projects and ideas really go anywhere. But I’m also still surviving. Still fairly physically healthy. Still getting through each day. Which is a start.

What was different, then? Well, I moved house early this year. And then quite quickly was managing the lease, and needing to find two other housemates! But that meant being able to offer accommodation to some people that needed it, for probably cheaper than they’d be able to find otherwise. I’ve been in a consistent relationship through all this year, which has been kinda crazy. I haven’t had that in a while, and it’s been rather lovely. I visited Melbourne - a couple of times, actually! - which was a lot of fun. I marched in the Sydney Mardi Gras early this year with my church, which was amazing. I was on the board for the church for most of this year as well, and that was a new experience. I did sound for a musical, for a profit-share! That was a first. Also operated both sound and lighting for another show, when I haven’t really done lights before. I had my partner move in to my place - it wasn’t really planned, but rent increases be shit. And it’s worked out pretty well. I started a few new campaign games with friends. I finished up with the trivia host job. I kinda finished up at the church that I was at - not really something I’ve talked about online publicly, but that happened recently. Not through any ill will, just moving in different directions. I started playing public gigs again every now and then. Also started having board game nights at my place semi-regularly. And I got accepted into a music therapy course that will start next year - which brings us into 2024.

Really, that course - and the work I have - are the only concrete things I know about next year. Everything else is pretty up in the air. But, I suppose, here are some hopes. Some are probably a little optimistic and not likely going to happen, but hey, it’s still good to hope.

I hope that I can read a bit more. I have a To-Be-Read list as long as my arm, including multiple books I’ve bought relatively recently. I’d like to actually get to them. But so often I just don’t read, I spend my time watching videos and the like. So I want to put more time aside for reading.

I hope that I can play to people a bit more. I’ve loved getting back into doing gigs; actually getting to hear people’s reactions to my songs, what I’ve written, what I’m doing. It’s incredibly encouraging. I want to do more of that, and have more people hearing my music.

I hope that I can finish some projects; or at least, keep working on them. I’m very good at starting projects; coming up with a million different ideas and thoughts. But bringing them through to their completion, particularly when they require a lot of work, is something I really struggle with. I have so many projects that haven’t really moved in months. I’d like to see that change.

I hope that I can make some new connections. I love my partner dearly; but I also love a lot of other people! I am polyamorous. But, for one reason or another, nothing else has really eventuated. Which, though I’m used to, would also be nice to see change.

One that’s a bit more out of my hands - I hope that life will be less shit. It’s feeling more and more capitalist hellscape these days in multiple ways, which makes life more difficult for most people. I’m sitting pretty squarely within that. It would be nice for things to get a little better. Well. A lot better. Seems fairly impossible, but we can hope, right? But yeah. When a lot of things in the world are falling apart, it gives you less reasons to want to keep going.

I hope that the relationship I’m in will keep going. Like I said, it’s been really nice. I’d like that to continue, ideally. Would be nice if this could still be good for a while yet.

I hope I can get a different job. I really do. It’s one of the things that’s draining me the most, and just contributing to burnout. It would be nice to be able to change that for the better.

I hope that the course I’m doing next year will go well. I’m excited for it - and I think it should be good - but I haven’t done study like this for nearly ten years. So it will take some getting used to.

And I’m hoping I can spend more time with people. That’s what really brings me life. It’s a bit harder without a car to be doing those catch ups and the like, but hopefully I can still make it work.

There’s a lot I that don’t really know about next year. But hopefully, it can bring some changes for the better. 

What God Isn't.

One of the common difficulties of deconstruction, I feel, is that as old ideas start to fall apart, what you do believe becomes less clear. It becomes harder and harder to define what it is you think is true; what is God? What are they like? Things get a bit foggy sometimes. And so it can be easier, instead of trying to think about what you do think is true, to think about what you don't think is true. To look at the negative space. So, today, I'm going to look at a few things that I think God isn't.

God isn’t trying to trap us. 

I think this is a fairly common one that people think. People feel like God is lying in wait until we sin, do something wrong, to then jump out and yell “Gotcha!”. God doesn't take joy in our mistakes, unlike siblings or people on the internet can at times. God hurts with us; feels our pain, and doesn't want us to be doing things wrong just so they can catch us at it. That's not the point. God isn't trying to keep to a quota of how many people they can catch sinning every hour. I think this idea can make a lot of people walk on eggshells around a lot of things; but it's not how God works.

God isn’t weighing up our “good deeds” against our “bad deeds” to see which is bigger.

This is an old Ancient Egyptian idea, actually! Or close to. They would weigh your soul against the feather of Ma'at, and if it was lighter you would continue on into the afterlife, otherwise your soul would get eaten up and destroyed. It's also a similar idea to some parts of Catholicism - needing to counter out all of your sins through penitence, or indulgences, or purgatory, before you could get to heaven. But that's not really what God cares about; they're the sort to wipe the slate clean, give people a new start, and not really care about what's happened so far. It doesn't matter. That's the point of being made new, after all.

God isn’t distant. 

God is many things, but distant isn’t one of them. They are everywhere, always present. But not just as a silent witness or watcher - as an active communicator and engager with the world and those within it. A lot of people, I think, look around and go, "well, if God was here then all this crap wouldn't be happening!" And that's fair. I ask that question too at times, what God is doing about all of the pain and suffering in the world. But I believe that God feels it, acutely, with us. That God is among us.

The story doesn’t go, “kind and forgiving Jesus came to save us from the angry wrathful God”.

This is actually in the Bible, for a brief moment, in a sense. But it's when Job is in the midst of his pain, and suffering, and anguish - and he wishes that he had someone who would act as a mediator between him and God, so that God would stop punishing him. Because that's what he believes is happening. (Job 9:32-35, for reference.) But if that's what we believe - then Jesus and God cannot be the same. Jesus cannot be God. And - at least for most Christians - Jesus being God, being divine, is a rather fundamental part of faith.
When people do a quick glance through the Old Testament, compared to the New Testament, this is the sense that they can often get; angry God of the OT, kind Jesus of the NT. But that view and idea misses a lot of both. It misses the God who saves Hagar and Ishmael; misses the Jesus who turns over tables; misses the God who was sending birds to give this one guy bread for a number of days; misses the Jesus who was literally sitting there making a whip and then cracking it at people (John 2:15). God and Jesus are much more complex than we often make them out to be.

Humans weren’t a mistake of creation. Neither is diversity. 

We've had Ancient Egypt - I think this one is Ancient Greece, though it might be in a few creation stories. In a few creation myths, humanity is basically a mistake. An afterthought. In one in particular, there's the idea that people are made out of clay; and with some people, the gods were drunk at the potter's wheel. Accidents. But that's not the picture that the Bible paints. Rather, humanity is a focal point of creation, a joyous crescendo in this glorious symphony (okay, I may have waxed somewhat lyrical there). In the same way, diversity is not a mistake. Time and time again throughout the Bible, we see people on the margins, people on the outside, being brought to the inside. People from different cultures, people that were sick, people that were poor, people that were disabled, women, eunuchs, tax collectors, soldiers, children, and more. Now, you might say, "well, we don't see gay people or trans people in there!" Sure. Neither do we see phones or porn, but I've heard Biblical sermons around both. The point is the pattern - and the pattern is one of inclusion, of diversity. God didn't do that by accident. God set out to make a diverse world; you can see that by just looking around you.

God isn’t a puppeteer. 

It feels like this one doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway. God isn't interested in puppets. If God is just making people worship and do what they want, it's not worth anything. The power - and proof - comes from choice. And that's what we do, every day; choose what we want to do with our lives. There's some choices that aren't great, and some that are probably pretty terrible. But there's some good ones in there as well.

God isn’t a wish fairy. Or Santa. 

This seems to be how some people interact with God. "If God doesn't just give me what I want, what good are they?" That's the point of prayer, right? Asking for stuff you want? Well....not exactly. But God's purpose isn't to make all of your dreams come true, and give you everything you want, and make you happy all the time. Besides, most of the time we have a rubbish idea of what's good for us. But the prosperity gospel still has a lot of followers, unfortunately. It's a nice idea; but it falls rather flat in practice.

God isn’t doing secret tests to see if you’re a true follower. 

This one seems to come from people looking at Job and going, "that happens all the time, right? God is definitely testing me!" Which rather misses the point of the book of Job. (Besides the point that it's quite possibly just a parable, rather than a recording of actual events.) It also somewhat contradicts the idea that God is all-knowing. If God knows you completely - they wouldn't need to do any sort of "tests" to see if you were a "true believer" (whatever that means). But again, that's not how God works anyway. It's not what God's interested in.

God isn’t punishing you for your sin. 

This one was still around a fair bit in Jesus' time. You can see it in the passage of John 9:1-3, where Jesus and his disciples chance across a man born blind, and they're asking him if it's because of his own sins, or the sins of his parents. And Jesus is like - actually, no. This was another idea from other religions of the time, of course; being punished for what you've done wrong. But once more, God isn't interested in punishing us, hurting us more. Often, our mistakes have enough punishment in themselves. We don't need more to add on to it. 

God isn’t talking about a far-flung future. 

In the New Testament, Jesus talks a lot about the "Kingdom of God". Many people seem to equate this to heaven; as in, the place they'd go after death. But if you actually read what Jesus was saying, most of it isn't talking about some time that's far away in the future; it's talking about now. What's happening here, on Earth, among us. The new life has already started, in many ways. But the trick is, we're part of making that real. What we do here, in this life, matters; but not because God is going to punish us if we'll do the wrong thing, or because of going to Purgatory, or going to Hell. But because we create heaven or hell, here on earth, through what we do. That in itself I could do a whole post on, but some other time.

God isn’t getting the world ready for “the Rapture”. 

This is a popular one over in America. If you're not American, you probably know the idea still through things like the "Left Behind" books/movie, or some songs of the time. If you are American, you'd probably be surprised to hear that the rapture is a very modern idea; it first came about in the early 1800s, with Edward Irving doing a fair bit of work there; and then later, further popularised by John Darby. And all of it basically comes back to one Bible passage, that was interpreted in a particular way. Which is kinda both hilarious and sad at once in a way? But that seems to be the way of things, all too often. It also seems to misconstrue the book of Revelations as being solely concerned with the future, and the end of the world, rather than in many instances being a veiled description of the actual time it was written. 

God isn't small. 

God isn’t small. And this kinda means a lot of different things at once. Yes, it means that God is big and powerful enough to have created the universe and everything in it. But it also means that they’re greater and better and more than what we think; we can’t put them in a box. Though, oh goodness, we try…

God isn't exclusively male. 

A lot of folks have grown up with the idea of God as male; not helped by the fact that the Bible tends to use he/him pronouns for God most of the time, and the name Father is often used for God. But if God is exclusively male, and humanity is made in God’s image - well, then, we have a rather large problem. Because we’re not all male. Which means - logically - that God can’t be either. (I did a whole post on this at one point if you want to read more on it.) Arguably, in fact, God is beyond gender; but within then we can find all that is in both femininity and masculinity. So I tend to use they/them pronouns for God, or sometimes she/her if I’m feeling spicy. 

-------

I could probably try and come up with some more. Maybe I will in another post, or maybe I'll add to this later. But this has already been sitting in my drafts for most of this year, and goodness, it feels high time to actually get it out there. Things are still pretty foggy for me a lot of the time, honestly. It gets tricky to define where I'm at; I have some ideas, but not many. This, though, is a start. And it will do for now.

Getting Angry.

During the first couple of years of Covid, it felt like there was a running joke about the prevalent use of the word "unprecedented". Things that had never happened before, that the whole world was suddenly having to deal with, in a world population much bigger than it had been for any previous pandemic.

But it feels like perhaps we need to break that word out again. For so many different reasons. (Some of these comments will be more about Australia specifically, but others are more broad)

Places are literally on fire. The Greek islands have been burning recently, with crazy high temperatures, evacuations needing to happen all over the place. But, you know, why would we try to cut our emissions? Why would we try to invest in renewable energy? Why would we stop investing in coal? Crazy ideas....

The property market is - kinda crazy? I don't have as good a sense of that, but it feels like more and more folks are finding it difficult to buy, or even rent, a place. (Speaking personally as someone who has zero plans to ever buy a place)

The price of living is climbing higher, and higher, and higher. More and more people are needing access to government support, reaching out to charities like FoodBank, and struggling to make ends meet.

Yet, at the same time, wages are not keeping up. Multiple groups of workers have campaigned for better wages and working conditions (nurses, teachers, and rail workers coming to mind), with it seems like fairly little progress. 

Likewise, the government payments to people without work, like JobSeeker, fall seriously short. Recent increases feel like a drop in the bucket, and almost laughable.

But the big companies (like, say, banks) are still making record profits. Because of course they are.

Yet it feels like we mostly just sit and take it? Like, we complain about it online. But that's about it, for the most part.

Honestly? All of this makes my blood boil. Seeing the potential, and ability, for support and help to happen, and it not happening, because apparently it's "not a priority" or it will "hurt the economy" - how about lives? There are people that are starving, people that are homeless, people that don't know how they'll make it through the week, people that are dying, because the government doesn't feel like helping. Let's put more money into the military, into nuclear submarines, into coal, into putting on fancy dinners for people and flying folks in expensive planes everywhere, rather than actually caring about human lives.

People should be marching and shouting in the streets. People should be striking, and rioting, and making those in charge listen. Making it clear that this is unacceptable. That lives are not negotiable. That they need to be called to account for what they have refused to do.

Having said that - I'm the biggest hypocrite here. I don't do any of this. I've never been in a protest march. (They're too big and noisy for me.) I don't know how to actually make change happen. I tend to stick to writing about it, singing about it, talking about it. But most of the time, I'm preaching to the choir. I'm just educating people a bit, rather than helping to make change happen.

I don't know what the path forward is. I'm tired. Life does a good job of exhausting me, draining me. It doesn't feel like I can do much sometimes. But it feels like more of us need to get angry - to do something about what's happening. To stop it. To change it.

Control Part Two

A while back, I wrote a post on control. That one was about the common belief among Christians that God is in complete control over everything, and how perhaps that belief actually isn’t true or helpful. This time, I want to talk about another belief connected to control - this time, our own.

This belief is, again, fairly simple. It is that one of the best things you can do (after, you know, being saved and all) is giving complete control of your life over to God. How different people describe this is a little different - but there are enough that have come eerily close to describing it as being a puppet (or absolutely literally saying that, thanks dcTalk), that I’ve started to think of it as the puppet belief. The desire to just be a puppet in God’s hands, not making any of your own choices, not following any of your own dreams or desires or anything, not doing anything without God telling you. This is basically how it’s represented.

Hopefully, you can already see the glaring issues with this sort of theology. But if not, then let’s dive into it a bit.

Firstly, let’s look at what the effect of this belief has. It devalues and delegitimises any dreams, desires, opinions, or strengths a person may have; and can render them either rather inactive, or to be somewhat of a pawn or puppet for a controlling religious leader. Alternatively, it can completely shift blame in someone’s mind for their own actions - because this isn’t me wanting to do these things, it’s God! This can be extremely damaging and problematic for both the individual, and those around them.

Secondly, this belief doesn’t really have any biblical basis. The Bible does talk about us following Jesus, or trusting in God, or God having a plan for us, or not trusting entirely in ourselves; but each of those ideas are a far cry from the idea of needing to give God complete control of all we do, and it abandons the ideas of free choice and free will.

And this really feels like the clincher. We are each unique and different, with our own skills, experience, opportunities, ideas; yet this belief would throw much, or all, of that away. And this feels completely counter to how we see both God and Jesus working in the Bible; empowering individuals in their own unique ways, working with who a person is rather than against them. Are we called to follow? Yes - but with who we are, with our own ideas and passions and desires, not abandoning them. After all, these have arguably also been given to us by God; a result of the Spirit within us.

We are not made to be puppets. We are made to be people. Your choices are yours to make. God trusts you with them. Even if you don’t. 

Dearest Evan Hansen.

I know I'm rather late to the party, but today I finally watched Dear Evan Hansen. I'd heard of it before many times, and Owl City's cover of "Waving Through A Window" is fantastic, but I didn't have an opportunity to see it in person - and I avoid listening to a musical's score before actually watching the show. Now, the show still isn't here in Sydney - but the movie is finally out on Netflix. Of course, it's a bit different to the musical, in multiple ways. But it certainly resonated with me, so I wanted to write down some of my thoughts.

While it's never specifically mentioned (though depression and anxiety are), it feels obvious that Evan (and I'd say also Connor, most likely) is autistic. Though I didn't have the same experience as Evan in high school exactly - I did have a group of friends - my group was the "out" group, as such. I certainly felt that loneliness, that feeling of never being noticed, or feeling like I wouldn't make an impact. And feeling like I could definitely never ever have a conversation with that girl I liked? Yep, that was a thing. Again, not to the level that we see with Evan - but much of how Evan's story started resonated with me.

Interestingly, much of the end of the story resonates with me as well - learning the value of honesty and openness, even though it's challenging. Evan posting his confession online, and then just putting his phone away, reminds me of when I came out online. That day I just turned my phone off, and I went bushwalking with some friends. I knew that there were people that were going to have very strong opinions, and very negative opinions, about that. Or perhaps it was more separating from my (at the time) wife that was the issue. I remember feeling a similar gut-wrench around when I was first starting to talk to people about looking at porn. I have a very different view on it now, but at the time, I very much held the traditional Christian view of it being quite sinful etc, and so was very much hiding it and feeling great shame and such around it. But I've talked about that at length in other places and at other times.

And that freedom and new confidence that he seems to be able to find then as well - I think that's something that I've been able to experience myself too, as I've lived more openly as myself, and been less tied down to lies or to acts or to being something I'm not. I still have challenges, fuck yes I do. But I'm able to face them much better than I used to. And some things that used to be challenges, just aren't challenges in that way any more.

On a more serious note - I've also been to that place of depression. While it doesn't plague me now as it has previously (in thanks partly to medication, and partly to a great support network), and I've never tried to take my life, I've gotten to the point of figuring out how I would do it. (Generalities, not specifics.) Sometimes you can point to this or that as the reason behind something, the cause of mood or energy being low; but sometimes, your brain just isn't working right. It's not your fault, it's not anything that's necessarily happened, it just goes weird sometimes. So figuring out how to work through that, or finding ways to not get to that really low state, are really important for people that do struggle with this.

On a less heavy note, I did quite enjoy the music. And, as usual, the romantic part of my brain got swept up in the romantic subplot pretty strongly. sighs Even when I do have someone/people that I'm in relationship with, there's still a longing and yearning there when I'm alone, which is difficult to know if it will ever feel filled. My heart - or my brain - has a difficult tendency of developing rather strong feelings for many more people than I have the time or energy for. (And also seems to have a tendency of developing feelings for people who don't have much time or energy in the first place. But that's its own thing.) 

Stories do a good job at making me feel pretty emotional. I think that's why I fell in love with them growing up - first in books, but these days more often in movies, or theatre, or shows. I think it's also why telling stories is something I often try to do in a lot of what I create. But it's also something that I need to be aware of, so that that emotion doesn't carry me away too far into making rash decisions and the like. It can be quite good, though, for just that catharsis. That's something I get from stories quite a bit.

I rather liked this movie/musical. This post wasn't really meant to be a review as such, and isn't really formatted like my typical reviews. But hey, I'll chuck in that thought there for free.

On Disability, Diversity, and Creation

This post is going to be a thorny one. Quite the can of worms, most probably. And I don't think I'll really reach a clear answer at the end; but perhaps the journey is the point.

I'm going to be talking about disability, the idea of how we are created, whether God makes mistakes, the diversity in creation, how sin may or may not affect creation, and all of that. It's a lot. So let's start, just so everyone has the backstory, with what is the common Christian stance.

That is, that people are created, or born, sinful. That we are inherently affected by sin from birth (or, for many Christians, conception). And many Christians would also claim that this is why we have disability, why there are gay and trans and queer people, why various birth defects exist, and so on. (Understand that I'm presenting a very broad and generalised view here, and there's probably more nuance here than I can effectively communicate in a succinct manner.) Interestingly, this isn't too far from the beliefs of some ancient theologies or mythologies; at least, in terms of the end conclusion, that this disability and the like is a mistake or accident or unintended. The way they put it, though, is that the gods were drunk. The belief was that humans were formed, in some manner, from clay, or earth; and that effectively, sometimes the gods were drunk, and slipped a bit when they were making some people. So in some ways, those ideas have permeated down to today.

Running counter to that, particularly from queer Christians, is the idea of intentional diversity in design. That God has created humans with diversity of gender, of sexuality, as a display of the diversity within God themselves - and this same diversity is also present in the world and universe that God created. There's the affirmation that "God doesn't make mistakes," and "we are not mistakes." And many people have found peace and healing in that idea.

But then we come to the problem. Where do people who are disabled fit into this mix? Because while there are some disabilities that might be able to find space within this previous idea (say, parts of neurodiversity), there are many that really don't. Where there is nothing good about the disability; it only takes away from someone's experience of life. That doesn't mean to say that people with these disabilities can't have good lives, far from it; just that they often have to fight an awful lot more than the rest to get it. And even then, it can feel like a shadow of what other people experience.

So how do we attempt to rationalise disability, when it occurs from birth? When it is through no fault of any person, to the best of our knowledge. Do we say that this is part of God's diverse creation? Do we say that this is caused by how sin has twisted or changed the world? Do we say that God has made mistakes? Or is there another answer here, that eludes us?

To me, none of these answers feel satisfying, or right. But I don't know. I don't have an answer to this question. When the Bible talks about heaven, it talks about there being no more suffering, no more pain; there is healing for all. I want to believe that in the next life - whatever it looks like - we won't have to face the same struggle that we do in this one. Healing the pain, restoring back to whole, but keeping the diversity. I don't really know what that looks like. But I want to believe that it will be true.

To be clear, though; I don't want to be "healed" of autism, or ADHD. I'd love to not have to deal with the challenges that they present me with in living life; but they also form part of who I am, my identity and personality. It feels like in the next life there should be a way to have one without the other, but I guess we'll see.