I recently had an experience that opened my eyes about work and environment.
It’s rare that I do massage anywhere but my office. Occasionally in the floor at home or on location, but it’s rare. Sometimes someone will hire me to come to their location and do a massage, that is even more rare. Regardless, I recently visited away from home and did an Ashi massage on someone else’s setup.
The bars were fine, configured a little short for my taste, but nothing unmanageable. While working, I kept getting lost. I would find myself wondering how many Warriors have I done? Was that Mortisha’s Rack #2 or #3? I hope it’s not #4. Eek!
Anyway, I started really having to pay attention to what I was doing and feeling and it took a while, but I finally realized the difficulty was the room. There was no window and it was dark by design. There were lots of sparkly bits scattered about, a silvered shawl thrown over the frame of a mirror, a bowl full of glass ornaments, a jar of lights. Shadow and light everywhere made the place even darker and deeper than it actually was and gave the room the feeling of being very small and very full. It was all so interesting my brain kept getting lost exploring the shadowed nooks.
After I finished the massage and headed home I kept thinking about how the style was so very different from mine. I’ve always been a bit self-conscious about my sense of style. So much so that I will gladly tell you I am doing well to dress myself in the morning. If my clothes are cute, it’s probably an accident. Therefore, when it came time to decorate my massage office I was practically catatonic.
I knew even before I went to massage school that I wanted to have a light theme. I didn’t want a dark office. I find nothing wrong with the dark, rich decor usually found in massage treatment rooms, I just knew it wasn’t me and I probably wouldn’t be happy with it.
I was lucky in that I found an affordable space that was large and had a window. Somehow I decided on a color, painted, moved the furniture and equipment in and decided what to put on the shelves. Since then I’ve  slowly added art to the walls, hooks for hanging clothes, and made a curtain for the big window. There are more things that need to be done that will affect the aesthetic of the room, but it is a process finding and creating the things I need.
And in driving home last week, thinking about the massage I’d just finished in someone else’s lovely office surrounded by their lovely things that help them through the day, I realized how much I love my office and all the things that I’ve collected that help me through.
When decorating my office I tried to make sure everything had a purpose, the dark, swirly bowl to hold jewelry, three flower-shaped metal hooks for hanging clothing, chairs from the old Decatur High library that were to be tossed out for seating. In the crush of practicality and need I somehow managed to pick out beautiful, meaningful things that I love.
For me, this is new. Not just the realization that I shouldn’t be so self-conscious about my style, my clients seem to love my office, but also the awareness that workspace and the things in it effect my mood and job performance. I know these things about my home, what took me so long to connect the dots at work? I suppose I’m finally realizing that, like everything else, it’s a journey.
♥
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