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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Careful. the community style practice is a whole another beast. I'm sure you have done the research but do it again and then be very careful when picking the spot.
Which is exactly why I'm interested in it. Even if someone handed me a successful boutique-style practice tomorrow I'm not sure I'd feel all that passionate about it. Pleasant, sure, but I'm not sure that's enough for me to make it over the long haul. Acupuncture (like my previous career in education) isn't merely about service to my fellows--it's about creating social and economic justice. I know the ideal is supposed to be creating a practice in the image of Tao of Wellness, but that couldn't be more wrong for me--I suspected it as I was graduating, and now I know beyond a doubt.
Working class people need and deserve care too, but there are a derth of practitioners who are willing to serve THEM. And in a community like Bellingham which has a strong and progressive sense of community coupled with an economic distribution skewed toward the lower end of the scale, it makes MORE sense to me than to have a more traditional boutique practice.
I am doing my due diligence sure, but honestly I can't believe I've been wanking around for almost a year doing what I don't really want to be doing but have been telling myself to do because "it might be a good opportunity". So wish me luck!
One thing that can't be said about you is that you don't consider these things carefully. WRT the Boulder/Denver metro area, I know that my friend Jeff said to me once that trying to start a TCM practice there is a lost cause due to the saturation of practitioners, and what you're saying backs that up.
I was chatting with Jaime this afternoon, and he's really excited about the possibility of collaborating with you!
My response to you, Martian, became so long I decided to make it a post. And for all my ragging on Boulder, it still is a great place--if you're willing to suffer the annoying to get the great out of it. Which is exactly how I feel about LA. I love it, but I hate it too--and even though I miss it like crazy sometimes I'm just not willing to do the work to live there any more. Not when there are so many other equally (or more) magical places in the world just begging me to plunk myself down and make a life there!
Post a Comment