Energies of the universe flow in many directions. It’s like currents and eddies that sometimes take you where you should be. That may be happening in my case.
As mentioned some postings ago, we are having problems at the moment. My wife as laid off from her job a couple weeks ago, putting our future here in doubt. Since my company has not been making a profit, that eliminates our income. A reading a few weeks ago told me that I will have to move out of my comfort zone and do things that I really hadn’t wanted to do, and I have been resisting it. We get comfortable, define how we want to do things, and then get uncomfortable when we have to work outside of that.
Working in my shop has been enjoyable. It makes things easier. I have control over the environment and atmosphere. I don’t have it too hot or too cold. I don’t have a neighbor’s dog barking next door. The lighting is perfect. This is what I have strived for in setting up the shop.
I was told that I would need to work outside of my comfort area and do some things like corporate chair massage. This means calling companies and talking to someone in their Human Resources (HR) departments to try to interest them in having someone there one day a week. Since I am a lousy sales person, I have been resisting this because I really don’t know where to start talking to them, or how to approach it.
Well, I got a call last week from a large corporation not too far from here. They have a wellness center there and are looking for someone to take part in a ‘wellness fair’ that they will be putting on in the middle of May. Cool. Of course I’d be interested in doing that. They also seemed to think that it was neat because I also do Reiki. Doubly cool.
Well, while I was talking with the lady, I mentioned that I had been told I should be doing corporate massage one day a week. She told me that they are actually looking for someone for that purpose. She sent me contact information for the person in charge, and I talked with him last Friday. He told me that he needed to work some stuff out and should know something early this week. I haven’t heard from him, and put in another call to prod this along, but it does look promising. It’s like the universe is telling me that I really do need to be going in this direction, and it is going to make sure I get there whether I want to go looking for it or not. That actually, is pretty neat.
This could be a good thing as it would be income, probably more than I usually make in a day. The other good thing is that this could lure some of these people to come back to the shop to have a real massage. (Chair massage is not my favorite thing, but I can do it. If it brings them to the shop to see what they are truly missing, then they might continue to come. Someone told me that a relative of theirs in another state actually did this, for the same reasons, and it worked.)
The other thing going on is that during an online job search, my wife came across a posting for massage instructors at a local corporate college. I looked up the posting, and applied, making a resume online off the top of my head.
A couple weeks after I had done this, I got two calls. One was from a branch of this school on the other side of town, and the other was from a branch of the same school 10 miles closer. I interviewed at the one farther away, and got the impression that they had taken one look at me and decided I wasn‘t for them. Most of this came from the interviewer not letting me talk much. (This person also made lots of interviewing mistakes, like using phrases like “you will do this and that.” I learned a long time ago that if you tell an applicant that they will do something, you’ve effectively promised them the position. This came from a lawsuit several years ago where an interviewer did this, and the applicant actually showed up for work. When they told him that they had not hired him, he sued and won. When interviewing someone, I am real careful how I phrase things, and say things like, “the person hired will...”) They also told me that admissions tends to steer people that they feel can’t get through some of the other business programs into massage. This means that they have many students that really don’t want to be there. The lady giving the interview made it sound like I would be teaching 5-year olds.
The closer school did let me talk. He told me that he had already talked with two or three other people, but based on my diversity of knowledge and experience, I jumped to the top of the list. Where they further school was very adamant about not using my experiences and stuff in my teaching, this one was all for that as long as I got the material covered.
They also told me that I would be a full time employee even though I was only doing 20 hours per week (Monday through Friday 6pm to 10pm). This would give me benefits like healthcare (something we don’t have at the moment) and vacation.
Today, I got called back to the one that is closer and was shown the lesson plans. This school has things really laid out well. Everything is on computer. An instructor will print out the calendar, syllabus, tests, and lecture notes. Basically, with a little bit of study, anyone could walk in and teach this material. The benefit to massage therapists doing it is that they have experience in the field that they can share. (Actually, anyone can teach the supplemental programs, anatomy and physiology, pathology, ethics, etc. It is state mandated that one has to be a massage therapist, and have been licensed for three years to teach any type of massage.) This makes teaching there so much easier than other schools. I would expect in other places, they simply give the teacher a book and say “teach this.”
If I get this, it would mean changing the shop hours and working long days. I would have to start my last session no later than 3:45 to be out of the door by 5:00 or 5:15, which I would need to do to get to the school on time. Since I would be keeping the shop open, I would be there from 10am to 5pm and then teaching from 6pm to 10pm, basically 12 hour days. It’s not something I really want to do, but right now, it’s something I really feel I need to do. I need to generate some income somehow.
Oh well. Wish me luck.