#anyone who says AA don’t have ‘culture’ is 1) wrong and 2) really fucking stupid

[brattyfics]

Soul food, AAVE, black fraternities and sororities, HBCUs, soul line dances, hip-hop/r&b/funk/folk/blues/basically all genres of music, and so much more wouldn’t exist without the enslaved Africans (and their descendants) who made the most out of what they had. It’s a total slap in the face for anyone to pretend otherwise.

[rhythmic-idealist]

A short while ago, when I was loudly narrating a barrage of “everything that’s making me upset right now,” @commanderfraya​ posed the question (paraphrased, here, from something like three separate questions in a set of about six) “what is the path I can set myself on that is going to be the thing that clears my Soul Gem, instead of just hypothetically caring about so much that I put out and work for an abstract idea of good and shrivel up into a Grief Seed?”

(@commanderfraya, I do not expect you to read this through. I do not expect ANYONE to read this through. It’s tagged to you as a thank-you, and a very, very heartfelt one.)

With that in mind, I’m thinking out loud about the life plan, and because I’m really, really excited about what I’m coming up with you all can come along with me.

(The place where this started, when I wrote that sentence, is not where it ended up. I want to reread this, connect all the little dots I’m missing or refusing to, and get that excited again.)

Cons of studying music therapy:

have to contend with potentially ableist professors and readings

with certainty, have to contend with some ableist professional relationships

the culture around studying music therapy (at least in my school, which was very “we’ll know if you’re one of us,” and there were other things too) is what burned me out so hard last time

I don’t want to be a classical music performer, and I have to study classical music performance

Pros of studying music therapy:

get to be a music therapist. The fact that this makes me as absolutely giddy as it does is conclusive proof imo that this is actually what I want to do, but wait, if that’s not proof enough that I love and feed off of music therapy as a passion, there’s more:

get the credibility to run a music therapy student podcast. I would be SO EXCITED about this guys, you cannot believe, I started sitting here and planning it out and then went “wait. shit. I have ZERO credibility.” (that’s why this post is happening.) and if I do the podcast NOW, the inevitable question of my involvement with music therapy will come up, and then the inevitable question of why I left after a semester, and I’m not prepared to answer that publicly yet. but listen. discussions with various disability advocates, or just friends, or professors, about recent papers published. interviews with local music therapists. interviews with musicians, too, and psychologists, and social workers, child development professionals, people who manage NICUs, and so on and so on. but I’m REALLY excited about 1) interviews with music therapists and 2) chances to broadcast, to the music therapy community at large, my take on current research.

I will have accommodations and a diagnosis on file. saying “I know I have some trouble with communication, and won’t know it’s an assignment unless you tell me ‘this is an assignment, and this is the due date,’ and that’s why I don’t have the thing you expected me to have this week” should really be enough, but I’ve learned from experience that if you say “I’m diagnosed with autism and-” people will IMMEDIATELY go “oh, so you need-” and repeat back what I just said.

The big, looming spectre over all of this:

things I can’t publish on Tumblr. There’s a possibility I will tangle very scarily with the administration of the school I studied at. There’s a possibility that doing this will impact my future career, at other schools.

So the pros win, genuinely, because I think all of the cons can be solved. The answer to the first two is “I love advocating for myself and others, and will be damn loud about it” and “I will have accommodations and a diagnosis on file.” 

The answer to the third is I will just have to pull through and make it my own education and my own take on everything anyway and that’ll be enough, and because I will have accommodations and I will be good at what I do, I will have the grades to get through and the quality of work for a letter of rec and that is all that matters, 

The answer to the fourth is that I’m growing more disciplined in classical practice, and this summer is my test run for that. It’s proving doable and rewarding. I love how my bass sounds on Bach chorales.

THE PLAN, then, and this is the part that’s just really good:

Finish my AA in music. I’m going into my second semester of that, and will, after it, have two more before I have a degree in music (with a focus on classical performance) and will transfer.

One major, major complaint was “in the meantime people are still being deported and homeless and suicidal and every other fucking thing I care about and I’m really going to be, with all that going on, with the time I could spend dedicated to fixing these problems, with the knowledge I could have been a social worker by next year if I started down that path already - I’m going to turn away from at least some opportunities to volunteer and to take to the streets to be a musician?”

So when I turn 21, I’m going to become a CASA volunteer.

This requires me to be really, really reliable and take a child’s life and future into my hands. The fortunate thing is that I know for a fact I can do this. I am putting in pointed and concerted effort to become a reliable person. It is hard work, and I am going to be able to keep doing it.

I have a job offer, part-time, for the preschool social-emotional-development-through-music program with which I’m currently interning.

Everything, literally everything, takes a backseat to:

the CASA job.

the college work - AA-central coursework first, and optionally ASL, because my mother is hard of hearing and losing her hearing progressively and it is that important.

the part-time job.

This is going to be fulfilling because protesting, other volunteerism, and political work is still going to be happening but in the backseat position it has been in, but the difference is that I will be doing a world of concrete good in my work and as a CASA volunteer. (The rest is what I’ve scrolled back up to add, because yeah, I cut this short.)

So then what? Then I study music therapy, which means I’ve moved away from home. What happens then?

The music therapy podcast. I organize it by myself, because I want to, though I frequently invite other students to collaborate on episodes.

Or I organize it with a friend, if I find a friend like Amy again. Not saying "Amy who” here for anonymity, but she has been my best friend for a long, long time.

Work. How am I working? Is music freelancing enough? Do I want to take a break before my transfer, and if so, how to I spend it meaningfully? Do I want to take a different route after all, study social work, spend TEN years doing that before I come back to music therapy? That could be good. I could love that. I would miss the music therapy podcast, and have to not think of social work as a transitional phase, to be committed to it, but there’s a balance between understanding that life can involve multiple careers and being committed to the current one.

It’s a job I would love, and a way I would love myself for the next ten years.

Every, every single thing I say is pointing me toward social work. It really, really is, and I could do it. The only thing I would regret is change. That’s - the feeling that I’m giving something up now, that I’ll never know what would have happened if I kept following the path I’m on.

Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe I need not to, that’s why people change paths, ever, that’s why I’m not doing a million other paths that I’ll also never know because I’m not considering them. I just need to decide if the next ten years of music therapy are a loss.

The next fourteen years - four years for college. It’s a lot of college! I’m going to be doing that much anyway.

I’m.... not sure they are. I think that sticking to music therapy just because I’m here - that feels like a loss. I don’t think it gets me anything.

I think all roads lead to social work.

I think I could love the person I am as a social worker, be a good one, and I love kids, and I love human beings in general, I would be so, so happy, I swear to God.

It’s maybe the first time I’ve made a choice my mom will vehemently disagree with as the right one for me, in a way I will care about, and will feel as almost a strict mandate that it has to be another way, in my life.

I’m 20. That has to happen eventually.

I want to be a social worker. My throat is tight and my stomach is sick but it’s what I want to do, and those feelings are the anxiety I get and need to address eventually about being wrong about anything, about having been wrong and changing it, about the idea that I just need to act like I knew things already, all the time, or that I did, and I’m stupid for not doing them, and I’m conforming to expectations, and then I get sad about it instead of fixing it.

It’s an anxiety about having been wrong. I can’t twist this to assuage it.

So I just gotta not. And do it anyway.

Good thing I have therapy tomorrow.

There’s an unplanned digression from the plan. I’ve separated it out.

If I evaluate my position as a student once I turn 21, and I genuinely know I cannot commit the time to be a CASA volunteer responsibly, will my life still be fulfilling without it?

Yes. Working on it, but I think that the preschool program is that important.

Then again, I’m doing the preschool program right now (albeit unpaid), and right now is when I had the crisis of feeling like I’m not giving enough to the things that I actually care about, that I am shirking good I could and genuinely want to be doing, and would feel better for doing. 

(I feel- trapped, genuinely, when I am choosing or feel like I am choosing not to help something that I should care, and do care, enough to help- like why have I trapped myself in this position, there are lots of people who care more about being musicians than about being activists and I am not one of them, so why am I pretending to be, why when I both genuinely, viscerally hate the feeling of not helping and also other people hurt for the lack of me helping, there’s no good coming from this choice for even me emotionally and I am making it only because- what, it might do good for someone else, it’s a narrative I want to fill? that’s the conflict, and I’m getting off track/backtracking us a lot, but I should have filled you in on that earlier)

To the less Madoka-literate of you, and only those who don’t mind spoilers: this is where I take a brief digression to talk about the Soul Gem and Grief Seed metaphor. Soul Gems give you your power, and allow you to do good in the world, but you are required to do some things that are arguably selfish - the good you are doing has to be motivated by healing yourself, in that way that Phoebe Buffay hates, and we learn (in watching my favorite character try to refuse this) that this does NOT negate a good deed, and no amount of martyrdom or pushing yourself aside makes the deed itself any better - to keep your Soul Gem cleansed. 

If it goes for too long without being cleansed - if you try to do a lot of good, and refuse to take the rewards of it, or you expend too much energy doing the kind of good that comes without things that are rewarding for you - you turn into a Grief Seed. This is bad.

So that’s what I need to work out. Is this going to be good enough, if all I am doing is music and the part-time job.

When I am paid for the part-time job, I think it will feel better, and I will feel more comfortable making some of the grander, more permanent contributions to the curriculum that I’ve danced around for right now because I didn’t want to give away everything I want to do and then have my boss own it. She and I talked about rights today; I retain rights to activities and lesson plans that I create, even if she keeps using them when we part ways, and it won’t be interpreted as me stealing her program.

The PLAN, again.

My time is prioritized to school, teaching/work, and CASA.

I finish my AA in music performance.

I transfer to study music therapy.

I keep working part time, hopefully, while studying music therapy.

Fuck. That means I need to study at the college I left. I don’t know yet if that will be an option, once the thing I can’t publish here has gone down.

I should tell my boss I don’t know if I can make more than a one-and-a-half year commitment as a paid employee, because I might be leaving. Music therapy is an extremely uncommon major, and if I do not take it at exactly the school at which I took it, I will need to travel very far away.

Fuck.

Fuck indeed.

Okay. [Long, heavy sigh]. Okay.

I don’t want to get an undergraduate in music performance.

I don’t. I don’t it would burn me out that would be a thing that would turn me into a Grief Seed. I would hate it so much and I would feel useless and I do not enjoy putting myself on a stage for classical performance because I do not feel good about it, or like I am good enough at it, and I’m not interested in fixing that enough for another two years of school.

If I’m going to switch majors I need to do that now. I am not prepared to switch majors for a semester, change my mind, and come back to music. I don’t want to walk myself into a hole where it feels like the major I switch to is one I’m trapped to. I’ve done that to myself almost already.

If I switch majors, the likely candidates are:

Social Work.

_

Really social work’s the one. But, for argument’s sake:

Child Development.

Jazz. More on that below.

“More on that below:”

Or I could just stop. I could just stop, and study jazz, and work for the preschool program, and bring in money as a freelance musician for a while. I could just fucking stop and live for several years while doing this, and see if the finances are good enough that I can pour my soul into politics and activism and all the work I want to be doing. I’m okay with studying jazz without being in school. I’m good enough to be a freelance musician now, and with that and a part time job at the preschool I can sustain myself. Musician jobs, when you look in the right places, pay well. I would have time.

I don’t like that I know I’m ignoring something.

Thoughts right now, that aren’t as nice as they seemed when I started this post. I’ve worked some things out, so I refuse to say we’re back at square one. In fact, we’re not. I’m scrolling back up, editing, and making more lists.