Scaling the Mountain
The time has come for me to work on Assessments and Treatment Plans for all my clients, as well as keep up with notes, session planning and more. The post-it notes reminding me of all the work I need to do keep stacking higher and higher. They have become a mountain of documents that I need to finish and submit, and I’ve had moments in the last week or so where I wondered if I’d ever be able to scale it. Every time I get something done, it seems there are three more to-dos to take its place.
Sometimes I get frustrated and whine, “This is not what I signed up for!” But of course, I did. It can’t always be smiles and giggles and exciting music making. The less fun things are important too. Without all the boring paperwork, we’d never have direction for the future and never see how far we’ve come.
Paperwork creates a papertrail. Just recently, I was cleaning out folders on my computer and ran across some homework from my very first college class in Music Therapy. The homework assignment was writing a short song, and I remember -not so fondly- how much I struggled with that assignment. I could think of words, melody, or accompaniment, but not all together and it frustrated me so much. Looking at it now, I can see several mistakes or things I would change knowing what I know now. But just getting it completed was so important, even if it wasn’t perfect, because I learned so much about the process and about myself while doing it. Certainly I can write better music now, but only because I did that then.
Paperwork is important everywhere… just think what would happen if employers never got around to the boring part of their job, processing payroll! Or what would happen if teachers never graded papers, or if doctors never sent the bill to insurance? And in our own families, if we don’t file taxes, it will eventually catch up to us in a very unpleasant way!
So though I may grumble and trudge my way through the rocky process, completing all the paperwork is important and vital in my journey to become a professional. And it’s something that I will never run out of. Much like laundry, it doesn’t stay completed for long, so I might as well get accustomed to the mountains and just tackle them step by step.
Step by step is oh so slow,
But step by step’s the way to go.
When work to do’s a mountain tall
Step by step will do it all.
A mountain’s too big to jump it.
Running won’t reach the summit.
No, the only way to get it done
Is step by step, one by one.
Work can pile up to the sky
But it can be done if we just try.
When work to do’s a mountain tall
Step by step will do it all.