This post started as a reply to a comment in the last post, and had the added benefit of helping me earn my self-anointed crown of The Procrastinatrix. But it kept growing and growing, so I decided to make a whole other post about it, since it's stuff I've been thinking about for a while and have been trying to tease apart its threads since I got here.
The comment that started it all stated that Boulder and Denver were totally saturated with LAc's and trying to start a practice in either place was only for the punishment gluttons. I think Denver is still pretty wide open if you know where to go and you have a decent referral network in place. This is especially so with CA style practices, if you are willing to set up shop in some the the scrubbier places like the southwest or northeast.
Likewise with Boulder, only there you need an EXCELLENT and large referral network, otherwise, it's beyond annoying. Also, they have two community clinics now that apparently Mary and Sammhita are running separate shops or at least two locations of the same shop. Jen sent me an article last week titled "10 Things About Colorado You Thought Were Cool Until You Got Here", and Boulder is one of them. It's not even the yuppiness and priceyness I don't like. There's this very self-conscious and self-congratulatory awareness and identity of being awesome by virtue of living in Boulder and driving a Subaru and shopping at Whole Foods and doing yoga and having an outdoor lifestyle, whatever that means. Blearrgh.
Earnestness, or performed earnestness that calls attention to its authentic earnestness is obnoxiousness of the first order, I think. And I resemble this description a bit, I admit: I couldn't stand Whole Foods even before their libertarian asshat of a CEO opened his literary piehole in the WSJ and if I could find a yoga teacher who would just teach us the movements without narrating to me what kind of enlightenment I should be getting or how awesomely balanced my chakras were supposed to be becoming I might actually go more than once every two years. But maybe not--running free outside and alone holds a hell of a lot more appeal for me. But, I do drive a Saabaru which I freely chose because I liked it and I play outside a great deal. I guess the difference for me is that what I do isn't my "lifestyle", emphasis on style. It is, quite simply, my life. It's my culture and my orientation and my values and my redemption and my community and the only thing I've found ever that consistently puts me back into phase with myself so I can deal with the rest of the world. There's nothing decorative or "styled" about it. I really can't emphasize that enough.
Which is why I have no interest in people who (earnestly or not) feel the need to "work on themselves" like they'd work on restoring a classic car or model train set. Back a couple of years ago when some Cristo-type artist "stuck" the city of Portland with giant acupuncture needles after mapping out "meridians", and it was all controversial and shit, Skip put up a post about it. I do recommend clicking through and scrolling down the comments, particularly to Lisafer's discussion of what she calls "Hipster Chinoiserie", or the interest in Chinese medicine that is really just interest in it as decoration for something. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Done? Ok then. I'm as irritated by it as she is, and largely for the same reasons. I'm not a goddamn lifestyle and my work sure as fuck isn't about being someone's hobby of spiritual enlightenment. Without realizing it when I began writing, I think I've fleshed out that long-ago promised post on why I can't stand luxury spas and other trappings that deliberately convey exclusionary status by virtue of their cost, rarity and general ostentatious displays of excess. Because at the end of the day it's all a big, elaborate conceit. Because by the time you've gotten to that level, all the other things that go into a zen spa acupuncture treatment are worlds away from the acupuncture and completely about something else. Which is not to say there is no value in such things, and that if places and treatments (giving or receiving) like that really make your heart go pitter-pat, well that's valid.
Just please don't tell me that's all there is to what I do, or all there should be to what I do. If that were true, I wouldn't be an acupuncturist any more. All this time I've been laboring under the delusion propagated by the Marilyn Allen types of our establishment that value is connected to cost, and high cost equals high value, and that if people see that I live a high-cost "lifestyle" (see?!) then they will accord me more respect and value more greatly my work, which will be proven by the amount they are willing to pay for it and I will be a rich (which defines successful) acupuncturist who brings honor and prestige to the profession. I have also been laboring under the delusion that my unwillingness to participate this way means my self-esteem is for crap and I need to "work" on that so I can be a rich successful acupuncturist who brings honor and wealth and prestige to myself and my profession.
Don't get me wrong--I'm all for prestige and respect for my work and my fellow LAc's. We are some pretty amazing people and we do beautiful work in the world, no matter what the setting or patient base. The thing is for me, that prestige and respect and success and value, to me, have nothing to do with how much money I make or charge. Which is not to say I intend to take a vow of poverty, or that I think money is evil and loathsome and too dirty for my noble spirit to brook any truck with. It's just that it's only money. It's functional for me, and enables me to do what I want to do. And except for a few choice pieces of gear and technical clothing, what I want is pretty simple. Also, so. I value community, connection, family, friends, love, simplicity, integrity and kitty cats a lot more. I can't pretend for the life of me I don't.
So yeah, personal growth takes consciousness and discipline and reflection, but it also takes integration and the willingness to live it as you're doing the work. And if you have to advertise what you're doing so people will give you the cookies you think you deserve for being such a speshul widdle snowflake, then enlightenment: ur doin it wrong. Avoid nothing, face everything. As you live it. It really doesn't get more simple than that. And you by no means have to execute it perfectly--fucking up royally is part of the process. Art and activism are inseparable from life. I also have a lot of contempt for dogma, stereotype and cliché.
That being said, that's no reason for Absolute. seriousness. at all. times. Back in my halcyon Women's Studies days, my favorite inspirational quote was a saying attributed to Emma Goldman: "If I can't dance it's not my revolution." My medicine and my work and my approach to both are joyous, fluent, flexible, often unruly, possibly irreverent, probably humorous and generally sacred by being not at all sacred. Hmm. Sacred is another word with I have trouble with, but that's still another post. For now, my work is me and my work is of the world. It is humble and borne of love. It is my offering to the multiverse. No fanfare, no fuss.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Mental Aether Update 2
I almost don't know what to say, so much has happened since the last post. And I'm actually sleepy at a somewhat reasonable hour, which is a minor miracle. So I'll just sum up for now.
Loveland is out. Also, the practice purchase in Longmont is a no go. True, it has its problems, but I could have dealt with that if I knew I were totally in love with being her and committed to staying indefinitely. Or at least for the next 5 years. Which I'm not. Necessarily.
Practice is slow, for a number of reasons. The economy blows goats. No one here knows me. People who have heard of me are freaked out about losing their jobs, and even if they are not, $75 per tx is a tough sell when your patient base is what/where it is. Every time it seems to pick up it slows back down again.
I feel exactly like I felt on the JMT last year. Sitting on a rock at the base of Donahue Pass, miserable and hating myself for wanting to quit and knowing I was going to, even thought it was what I wanted and I knew it would make me happier. I really just want company.
So for some reason I picked up Lisa's book about Acupuncture is Like Noodles, and was instantly made happy and inspired again. A lot of it resonates with me, and themes I've been rassling with lately. Namely, privilege. Throughout my acupuncture education, there was absolutely no examination of privilege or intersectionality. There was no attempt to locate any of what we were learning in any kind of historical or cultural location that MIGHT just not be universal. There was not much attempt of any kind to be critical of anything at all. And it really gave me buttrash sometimes, especially when concepts like yin and yang got conflated with gender performance and what a woman or man was SUPPOSED to be or supposed to act like. It really made me want to yell at things.
The stuff about class was just as awesome as the stuff about gender and sexuality (and I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's line about how heterosexuality isn't normal, just common). To wit, that if we really valued ourselves and our work we would charge expensive prices for it and if people couldn't pay then it meant they just didn't value their health or they weren't ready to get better. Because everyone can tell stories about poor black single mothers with elaborately braided hair and painted nails who buy groceries with food stamps. It boils down to the whole "Why you haz cell phone?" argument. But of course not all working class people are like that. Most of them aren't. And whether they are or are not, is not the point. As Lisa cogently notes, a person earning $25k a year pays about 7% of their monthly income for a $100 treatment. For a person earning $150k, $600 represents about 7% of their take home pay. No one morally scolds the professional earning $150k for balking at paying $600 for acupuncture, even though doing so would likely not jeopardize that person's ability to keep their utilities on.
I've been in tight spots too, and I have to say--that's just not accurate about people not valuing their health. It sounds a lot like blaming victims to me, like the concurrent obsession with mendacious fuckwittery like The Secret wherein if anything bad happens to you its your own damn fault for not thinking more positively. Ugh. These are people supposedly in the vocation of helping people with compassion. To me the class bigotry is unmistakable. Privileged people never tire of hearing the ways in which their own privilege is justified and makes the world as they experience it a just so story.
So I'm going back to my original passion of having a community style practice. It squares with just about everything I want to do, with all that drives me and gets me up in the morning. The only question is... where? Stay tuned.
Loveland is out. Also, the practice purchase in Longmont is a no go. True, it has its problems, but I could have dealt with that if I knew I were totally in love with being her and committed to staying indefinitely. Or at least for the next 5 years. Which I'm not. Necessarily.
Practice is slow, for a number of reasons. The economy blows goats. No one here knows me. People who have heard of me are freaked out about losing their jobs, and even if they are not, $75 per tx is a tough sell when your patient base is what/where it is. Every time it seems to pick up it slows back down again.
I feel exactly like I felt on the JMT last year. Sitting on a rock at the base of Donahue Pass, miserable and hating myself for wanting to quit and knowing I was going to, even thought it was what I wanted and I knew it would make me happier. I really just want company.
So for some reason I picked up Lisa's book about Acupuncture is Like Noodles, and was instantly made happy and inspired again. A lot of it resonates with me, and themes I've been rassling with lately. Namely, privilege. Throughout my acupuncture education, there was absolutely no examination of privilege or intersectionality. There was no attempt to locate any of what we were learning in any kind of historical or cultural location that MIGHT just not be universal. There was not much attempt of any kind to be critical of anything at all. And it really gave me buttrash sometimes, especially when concepts like yin and yang got conflated with gender performance and what a woman or man was SUPPOSED to be or supposed to act like. It really made me want to yell at things.
The stuff about class was just as awesome as the stuff about gender and sexuality (and I'm reminded of Dorothy Parker's line about how heterosexuality isn't normal, just common). To wit, that if we really valued ourselves and our work we would charge expensive prices for it and if people couldn't pay then it meant they just didn't value their health or they weren't ready to get better. Because everyone can tell stories about poor black single mothers with elaborately braided hair and painted nails who buy groceries with food stamps. It boils down to the whole "Why you haz cell phone?" argument. But of course not all working class people are like that. Most of them aren't. And whether they are or are not, is not the point. As Lisa cogently notes, a person earning $25k a year pays about 7% of their monthly income for a $100 treatment. For a person earning $150k, $600 represents about 7% of their take home pay. No one morally scolds the professional earning $150k for balking at paying $600 for acupuncture, even though doing so would likely not jeopardize that person's ability to keep their utilities on.
I've been in tight spots too, and I have to say--that's just not accurate about people not valuing their health. It sounds a lot like blaming victims to me, like the concurrent obsession with mendacious fuckwittery like The Secret wherein if anything bad happens to you its your own damn fault for not thinking more positively. Ugh. These are people supposedly in the vocation of helping people with compassion. To me the class bigotry is unmistakable. Privileged people never tire of hearing the ways in which their own privilege is justified and makes the world as they experience it a just so story.
So I'm going back to my original passion of having a community style practice. It squares with just about everything I want to do, with all that drives me and gets me up in the morning. The only question is... where? Stay tuned.
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