Email: jenny@movementgallery.com Email: jenny@movementgallery.comAre you one of those professionals who hesitates when others ask what you do? Maybe when asked you mutter, “I am a consultant” (or an independent contractor or self-employed), and hope the subject matter might be dropped. Perhaps you can’t count the number of times you eagerly begin to spill the beans of your professional wonderland only to notice that your fellow conversant is nodding off or completely zoned. While filling out that survey question regarding “place of employment” your only option is to check “other”. Do you imagine what it might be like to respond, “I am a zookeeper” and otherwise trim your resume?
Well, not me! Not anymore!
Since meeting so many fellow creatives and coming to know organizations like CTB, I am begging folks to ask me what it is that I do. In fact, I have chosen to view such conversations as combustible opportunities to out the rest of us who are hiding underground doing good, honest, creative work that we love.
As for me, I AM A DANCE/MOVEMENT THERAPIST! Folks like me are transforming talk therapy sessions into interactive, inspired encounters all over the map!
Thanks to a gathering called the World Café hosted by CTB in June, as well as recently attending my professional conference (www.adta.org), I am on fire about doing the work I love in the public eye. I have launched www.movementgallery.com, my own website declaring the good news, gathered work at local agencies such as Creative Clay and Bon Secours, and developed therapeutic yoga classes for new moms and babies, to name a few.
Recently I was reminded by Annie Kirschenmann, a fellow D/MT and 2005’s Entrepreneur of the Year to “take my place in the family of things. . .people are looking for creative individuals in a wide variety of professional arenas; they are looking for you. If you don’t step forward and say “YES I do this” and engage others in a conversation about what you do; someone else will.”
I am calling to all creatives who are lurking in the shadows; consider joining me out here in the light.
Jenny Baxley Lee, MA, DTR, CCLS
More about Annie Kirschenmann, www.akacoachandcompany.com/matrix.html