Me vs. Math

I have a client who is 39 weeks pregnant with her first full-term pregnancy.  It is a very exciting time for her and I am honored to be her Doula.  While we have been spending the last several days texting and talking about the progress her body is making, I have also been serving my massage therapy clients in my office.

As you may have read in my last blog post, I really love my job.  I love giving massage and helping women find comfort to cope with stress and the physical pains caused by it.  I also really love working with women as they enter the homestretch of pregnancy in preparation for their baby’s birth.

What I don’t like is math!  I’m in the process of preparing to write a grant to hopefully get some money to expand my business and relieve some of the financial stress on my family (teenagers are so expensive!)  As I began this process, I have realized that the business plan I prepared 6 years ago in massage therapy school is no longer adequate.  I am so very thankful that I have reached all the goals I set up for my business back then, but I would much rather have my hands on someone’s body, helping  her muscles release, than having my hands on a calculator and my laptop!  Some people enjoy the exactness of math, the way that there is always a formula that ends with an answer that tells you that you are exactly right.  I, however, enjoy the idea of possibilities, that there may be outcomes we don’t expect and surprises that we don’t plan.  That’s why massage therapy is so exciting to me and being a Doula is so amazing.  A client may walk in with a complaint that she thinks is the result of one thing, then as I work to loosen the muscle, she may remember a childhood injury that has actually been aggravated by a recent event.  A woman may plan on using pain medications to manage her labor, only to discover that she indeed has the strength and power to manage it herself and to birth her baby.

However, I realize that everything in life has a price.  If I want the privilege, opportunity and joy of owning my own business and doing things my way, then every now and again, I am going to have to do things I don’t like.  For me, for now, that is math.  Fortunately, when my husband was working on his marketing degree, he used my business as the source to create the business plan that he needed for one of his classes.  Thank goodness he saved it all and I at least have it to reference as a rough draft for the one I will be sending in with my grant request.

So, while I keep reminding myself that this will all be for the best, especially if I succeed in getting some funding, I will continue fighting with numbers, charts, percentages, graphs, and other math-related issues.  It’s a wonder I made it through pre-calc in high school!  At any rate, this is the price I must pay to keep doing what I love so much.

I love my job, I love my husband, but I still hate math!!