Jennifer Morash

Planning a trip to Disney World is fraught with all sorts of decisions. Length of stay, where to stay, to park hop or not. One question that I encounter over and over again in the various Disney advice groups I’m in – and trust me, it’s a lot of groups – is this: is the Disney Dining Plan worth it?
The answer is… complicated. But I’m going to do my best to answer it by looking at a few areas. Pure economic worth, budgetting worth, convenience and emotional worth.
First, though, a few definitions.
Quick service dining is what Disney calls fast food eateries. It isn’t all burgers, fries and hotdogs, though. Some Quick Service  places are fancy, some are varied, some are exotic.
Table service is your basic sit-down restaurant. The sort where waitstaff take your orders and bring your food. Buffets also fall into this category.
Signature dining is high-end table service. It’s expensive, and it’s usually worth it, too. You might be surprised at the quality of some of Disney World’s Signature restaurants.
The Disney Dining Plan has three tiers:
* Quick Service comes with two quick service meals and two snacks per day, plus a refillable resort mug, which you can use at any resort’s food court as much as you like
* Standard comes with one quick service meal, one table service meal, and two snack credits per day, plus the refillable resort mug
* Deluxe comes with three meal credits which you can spent on either table or quick service, two snacks, and the refillable mug
Got it? Awesome.
Economic Worth
Will the dining plan save you money? With two exceptions, no. It very likely won’t. However, assuming you use all your credits, and don’t do things like spending a snack credit on a bottle of water, it won’t lose you money, either.
However, if you’re looking to cut back on spending, this is not really the way to go. You’d be better off bringing your own snacks, and even doing things like ordering groceries to your hotel to provide for breakfasts.
I mean, think about it. Disney, much as I love it, is a corporation who is trying to make money. They probably wouldn’t promote a dining plan that loses them money. So, no, this isn’t a way to save loads of mulah as a general rule.
The exceptions are twofold, as I said. The first is if you are taking advantage of free dining, which is usually offered once a year, and only for limited dates. If you book at the right Disney hotel for at least four park days, with parkhopper tickets, you qualify for free dining. However, you can’t use this with any other discount, so I suggest doing the math first to make sure this really is your least expensive option.
The second exception is if fine dining is a huge priority. See, Signature dining costs two credits, not one. With the Deluxe plan, if you eat at a signature restaurant every day, and have a regular table service meal for your other credit use, then you will save money. You’ll just also spend a lot of time eating. Which is great for some, not so great for others.
Budgetting Worth
However, sheer saving of money isn’t the only way you should consider the dining plan. As a budgetting tool, it is actually pretty great.
With the dining plan, you pay ahead of time. Disney does accept partial payments over a period of time, too. Prepaying for your food like this takes the guess-work out of trying to come up with a budget. After all, you know exactly how much you’re going to be spending on food, and can get it taken care of in a manner that works for you.
Convenience Worth
There is no two ways around it: the dining plan is just plain easy. As you can only have the dining plan if you’re staying on Disney property, you’re already getting a magic band, as that comes with your stay. This thing functions as your room key, park ticket, and possibly your credit card if you so choose, and it will also function as your dining plan card. Whenever you order food, you simply scan the band and the meal credits are deducted from your account. No need to carry cash. No need to pull out credit or debit cards. Just press your wrist to the reader, enter your PIN, and you’re good to go.
Emotional Worth
Finally, the big one. At least, I consider it to be the big one. Disney is expensive. Themepark food is expensive. There is also a lot of very tempting things. Things you may find yourself wanting quite badly. If you’re like me, you may refrain from ordering them, though. After all, do you really need the pretzel shaped like Mickey Mouse? Or the fancy, brightly coloured drink?
You may look at a menu, and try to calculate the least expensive item, rather than going for what you really want. Sure, that bison loin sounds good, or that sushi platter. But you could just order the least expensive option.
When you’ve already paid for it all, though, you gain a certain freedom. You can order the most expensive thing on the menu, if it’s what you want. You can have that ice cream float shaped like Peter Pan’s hat. That pretzel is all yours, if you want it. This one gets even more interesting if you’re there during one of Epcot’s festivals, and given how long those last there is a higher chance of being there during one than not. Most of the items sold at carts are snack credit eligible, and most of them sound intriguing.
Not only can you get those snacks, but you should get those snacks. After all, you already paid for them.
So, is the dining plan worth it? I think that it is, so long as you are not looking at it from a purely money-saving standpoint. Will it work for you? Only you can answer that. If you’re a light eater, probably not. If you want to cut corners anywhere you can, probably not. But aside from that? Probably.
Oh, and remember that if you do wind up with leftover snack credits, and you may very well wind up with them, you can spend them in gift shops on packaged snacks to bring home and drown your post-Disney blues with. Or, you know, give as gifts.
I want to thank my friend Jen from the Will Save For Travel blog for her input on this topic. She has some really great advice for budgetting, and is as big a Disney fanatic as I am. If you want to check out her blog pop on over to https://willsavefortravel.com/ and take a gander.
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.

Before we begin, I’m going to be using a specific story as an example throughout this blog post. That story is ‘A Home For Christmas’, and you can find it here: https://jennifermorash.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-home-for-christmas-short-story.html
So, I’ve talked before about how I write when an idea occurs to me out of the blue. But what about when I sit down to write a story without first getting the inspiration? The process is quite different, or at least it was for me.
First is the premise. Well, technically the decision comes first, but that is pretty self-explanitory, so we’ll just take it as given. Now, premise and plot aren’t the same thing. The plot is the story, the premise is the seed of the idea. I wanted to write a Christmas story, but I didn’t want to write another version of a story we’d all read before. That ruled out Santa, elves, reindeer, angels, wise men, lost children, sentient toys/snowmen/nut sundering implements and all the rest.
I sat and thought and occasionally typed out a quick five to ten word line. I doubt these made sense to anyone but me, and moreover they weren’t striking any sort of spark. Chimney sweep in Victorian London on Christmas? Nah. Christmas in an alternate reality? Meh. Finally, my thoughts shifted. Instead of writing about something automatically associated with Christmas, why not take something else and relate it? Perhaps something from folklore. Well. I’ve always liked the hob/brownie/house elf mythos. Little fae folk who clean homes invisibly so long as you don’t offend them. Then I thought ‘Okay, what if one of those doesn’t understand what Christmas is?” And that was the premise. A fae person attached to the home of humans they never interact with who doesn’t know what Christmas is.
Next came research. This is not a step I always take. Usually, I don’t really have to. I’m either making something up from whole cloth or else writing something where I can make all the rules. But this story was going to have a basis in actual folklore, I wanted to make sure I was getting it right. Any deviations from the bog standard should be deliberate. The name hob appealed to me more than brownie, and always has, but I couldn’t find anything on wikipedia. Turns out I was spelling it wrong, but I didn’t know that, so I switched the search term to brownie and found what I wanted. My knowledge all seemed to be correct, but then I learned that “brownie” is from Scotland. Hob is what they’re called in the north of England. Then, I read a reference to a tale of a hob from Lincolnshire. My brother in law is from Lincolnshire, and Lincoln itself is a city I love, so I decided that I’d have my little hob hail from there, at least originally.
Interesting side note: the course on medical research I had to take in college when studying massage therapy can be useful for non-medical research. I didn’t use it this time, since I was just doing a simple wikipedia search, but I have used it for writing before. You can adapt a lot of things you learned elsewhere to writing.
So, armed with premise and knowledge, I pondered plot. Simply wondering what Christmas was wouldn’t be compelling on its own, it needed something else. But fewer and fewer people believe in such things. Perhaps this little hob is in a family where only the grandmother believes, and she’s worrying about her future as well as wondering what’s up with the tree? Meanwhile, there’s this woman from Lincoln herself who is distressed at the rest of the family’s lack of belief.
Bingo. That is what we call a plot.
This is where I actually started to write. I named my little hob Tansin, and started with her finding the Christmas tree. This is where I decided that she loved the scraps of wrapping paper left after Christmas and that she always saved some when she tidied up.  I also decided that I would use the framing device of a storyteller talking to the reader, mostly so I could occasionally toss in explinations about what hobs were and the like. These were all decisions made on the fly while I was telling the story.
The grandmother got a name, and I decided that she was smart enough to realize that Tansin didn’t know what Christmas was, and that Ellie also wanted to get Tansin to show herself to the family to instill belief, so to get her attention, she began teaching Tansin about Christmas through story books.
Now. I had to make some decisions and brush over some things here. A hob is likely centuries old. Is it actually logical that she never learned what Christmas was? Perhaps not. But is a magical creature that happily does the housework without taking credit logical? Not really.
What about the mysterious cleaning? Why doesn’t the family notice? This one actually is logical. If I lived with a family with children, a spouse and either one of my parents or an in-law, and dishes got washed when I wasn’t looking, or things got tidied away, I’d likely just assume someone else did it and be glad of it. I almost explained this, but decided just to leave it.
It took a few days to get the first draft done. Now, I actually can write more quickly than that, but December is a busy month. Once that was done, I thought about rewriting it from scratch, but my first read through left me feeling happy with the majority of it. Instead, I editted within the already existing document. Things were changed. Some were added, some were removed. But editting on this was simple. It was a simple enough story.
Then, I let it sit for a week. I tried not to think about it at all. This can be hard to do, but I mostly succeeded. This let me come back to it with fresher eyes. I noticed a few things that I didn’t like. For instance, Tansin was originally quite suspicious and distrustful of Ellie. But that didn’t make sense. Why would she stay in a home where she didn’t trust the sole human who believed in her? So I rewrote that part.
A few changes, a bit of polish, and voila. A story for you all.
So. That’s my process when I’m being deliberate, and not writing because I was struck with inspiration. Or it was this time, I do often ch ange up how I do things, but that’s close enough to normal for me. As always, my ways may not work for you, but feel free to give them a try if you want to try writing. Take what works, discard what doesn’t.
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.

Welcome to the twenties.
It’s going to take me a long time to get used to saying that after a lifetime of associating “the twenties” with the 1920’s. Still, here we are, in a year that still sounds like the date in a scifi story. It’s a new year, and a new decade.
Now, I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions. After all, if something is worth doing, it’s worth starting when the idea occurs to me, rather than at a specific calendar date. But this does seem like a good time to assess my goals.
It will come to no surprise to anyone that they largely revolve around writing. It isn’t that I’m not invested in my massage therapy career, it’s just that I’m quite happy with where I am in that spot. Still, keep reading and it might just show up.
In the short term are my two novels in progress. I want to finish the first draft of my second novel, and that is my first priority. I’m not setting any sort of time frame for this, though I expect it will be done in a month or two. Still, it’s alright if it isn’t. Then, I want to do a third draft of the first. Unlike the second draft, this isn’t going to be a full rewrite, but rather a polishing with small changes in response to my beta readers. After that, I’ll do a second draft of novel number two and put it through beta reading, then do a third.
Hopefully, by that time, both will be ready to go, and I can start trying to sell this little brain baby of mine. I have no idea of when that will be. It could be by the end of this year and it could take longer. With practice and honing, I hope to get to a point where I can take a novel from initial idea to complete manuscript in a year.
Meanwhile, there are smaller projects. I need to get back on the horse of short story submissions. I’ve got a fair few that need to be reworked and polished, and then it’s time to start trying to sell them. Plus, there is this blog, which I want to keep on writing and hopefully grow a larger readership base. If you want to help with that, sharing specific articles or my Facebook page (see the link in the end tag for where that is), I’d certainly appreciate it, and it does help.  For that matter, commenting on the Facebook page’s posts helps, as does liking them.
Finally on the writing end of things, there’s my freelance writing. I am currently a freelance writer for the Feel Better blog hosted by Massage Experts, the company I work for. I am very excited about that project in general, and my part in specific, and want to keep on writing for it. I’d also like to branch out and perhaps do an article for one of the industry publications. See, I told you massage would show up eventually.
Finally, on the more fun side, I want to get back to Disney World. Now, short of miraculous intervention it isn’t going to happen this year, and unless I sell a book, it’s not going to happen the next year, either, but perhaps I can make it happen without waiting another fifteen years, which where the last two gaps between trips. It’s my happy place. 
And perhaps, just perhaps, by the time 2030 rolls around, I’ll be not just a published author but an established one. A girl can dream.
Here’s to hoping these twenties roar. Happy New Year, everyone!
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.

Christmas is a time for giving. We all know that. But as you make your way to the tree to open gifts, or to the table for your Christmas feast, think about the story I have to tell you, and how sometimes the simplest gifts are the most profound. So settle in, all cozy in your Christmas jammies or resplendant in your holidayfinery, and enjoy a Christmas story.
Tansin was cleaning, as she always did, in the wee hours of the morning as the family slept. Outside, softflakes were starting to fall through the darkness. The ground would be white by morning, though Tansin would tell that the snow wouldn’t be deep.
Heading into the living room, she stopped. blinking. There it was again. Every year at about this time, her family brought a tree in from outside and hug bright lights and shiny things from its branches. Soon, she knew, boxes all covered in paper and ribbons would start to appear beneath it. More and more would show up there for the rest of the month, until one night they’d all be gone, but scraps of paper would be left all over the place for her to find and tidy away. Tansin adored that night, for she greatly loved cleaning for the family, and those bits of coloured paper were so pretty. Sometimes, they had pictures on them.
Still, Tansin wondered as she did every year what this was all about. Why bring a tree inside? Why make it look like that? Not that it wasn’t pretty. In fact, Tansin was always taken with it. She liked it best when the lights were left on, but that only happened the night before the boxes disappeared and the bits of paper were left behind.
Tansin liked to pretend that the paper was left as gifts for her by the two children of her family, though she knew better. The children didn’t believe in her. The parents didn’t believe in her. Only Granny Ellie believed. Granny Ellie was from the old country, and she’d brought her beliefs with her. She was the one who left the little bowls of cream and cakes or cookies on the stove top for Tansin to find. Granny Ellie was, in fact, the reason that Tansin had moved in with this family and made it her own. Granny Ellie told the children about Tansin, despite not knowing her name, but the children didn’t believe.
It was getting harder and harder to be a hob.
What’s a hob, you ask? Well, some people know them as brownies. Hobs are fae folk, you know, but not the malicious kind, unless you make them mad. They love to clean and care for homes, and the families that live in them, in exchange for gifts of cream or cakes, though Tansin happily accepted cookies. When Granny Ellie moved on from this world, Tansin would have to leave, too, and where would she be then? No one seemed to believe anymore. Who would leave her cream and cakes? Why didn’t the family notice her efforts? Goodness, but you ask a lot of questions. It’s simply. Mother always assumed that Father or the kids were good abot tidying up. Father assumed the same. The kids didn’t notice. Humans have a way of not questionning the nice things in life. But, let’s get back to the story.
Shaking herself out of her sad thoughts, Tansin approached the tree and reached up to adjust one of the ornaments that was hanging crookedly from its bough. For a moment more, she admired the tree, then went back to her cleaning.
Days passed, or nights did, since Tansin always kept herself hidden away during the days. Those pretty boxes began to appear under the tree. Just one at first, then three, now six. They had little tags attached with names of the family printed on them. The mood of the family seemed to become more joyful, something that Tansin was particularly sensitive to. Then one night when Tansin was once more in the living room, she noticed that one of the children’s books had been lef out of place. Moving to pick it up in order to return it to its normal home, Tansin noticed that there was a picture of a tree on it, one that looked similar to the one the family had. Curious, Tansin carried it over to the big armchair and hopped up to sit on it. As she was the size of a child herself, her bare feet dangled off the floor. Curiously, she opened the book and began to read. It was a story about something called Christmas, when good little boys and girls got presents. Evidently, those pretty boxes contained presents inside them, and the tree was a Christmas tree. Though she didn’t understand, Tansin was intrigued. Finally, she shut the book, hopped down from the chair and put it in its proper place before getting back to her tidying.
The following night, though, she found another book where the first had been left. This one had a picture of a fat, white-haired man in a red suit, and she recognized the picture as one of those that sometimes appeared on the paper around the presents. She sat down and read this one, too, learning that the man was called Santa Claus, and that he flew around the world in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and brought more presents to children. He sounded a bit like a fae person, Tansin thought, though not one she’d ever heard of.
The next night, there was another book. And then another the following night. Tansin was learning just how magical a time Christmas was, even more so than she had thought when all she knew about was the tree, the pretty boxes and her coveted bits of paper. It made her a bit wistful, though, for she was beginning to wish that she could have Christmas too. And she still didn’t understand what it was really all about.
Finally, the night of the tree lights came. Christmas Eve, as she now knew. Sure enough, the lights were left on. But there was no book. Instead, Tansin found a piece of paper with a note left on it.
‘My dearest hob,
I know that it is your way to hide yourself away from the families that you adopt. That you love us and help us, but you don’t join us. But I wonder if you will grant an old woman her Christmas wish. Come up to my room and speak with me?
love,Ellie’
For a long time, Tansin sat and thought, clutching the note. Talking to humans wasn’t the way it was done. But times kept changing, and Tansin found herself thinking that perhaps she should change, too. Besides, she wasn’t sure how many more years Ellie would even be here, and she’d been taking care of Ellie and her family ever since the woman had moved here from Lincolnshire in England.
Finally, Ellie crept upstairs, the note still held in her hand. She hesitated outside Ellie’s door, then slowly opened it and stepped inside.
The old woman was sitting up in bed, her silver hair loose around her shoulders, clearly waiting, and when she saw Tansin there her face broke into a beaming smile.
“You came! Oh, I’m so glad tomeet you.”
“Hello, Ellie,” Tansin said, hesitantly drawing closer. “I’m glad to meet you, too. But why now?”
“Because it’s Christmas,” Ellie said. “And because my son and his wife don’t believe in you. The children don’t believe in you. I worry about what will happen to you after I am gone. So I want you to join us for Christmas.”
Tansin didn’t know what to do, so she stalled for time by asking the question that had been keeping her up at day. “What is Christmas, really? I read those books. I suppose you must have left them for me so I’d know about Christmas, but they don’t really say what it is.”
Ellie paused for a long moment. “Well,” she said. “That’s a complicated question. Christmas means different things to different people. Christmas is a religious holiday, celebrating the birth of Christ. But not everyone who celebrates Christmas believes in that. I do, but not everyone does, and that’s okay. Christmas is… well. It is a celebration of love, and of giving. Giving presents, yes, but giving time, giving considration, giving kindness.”
“Ahh,” Tansin said, finally understanding. “Giving kindness. Of course. No wonder I was drawn to it.”
“Will you join us?” Ellie asked. “If the family meets you, they’ll believe. Then you’ll always have a home.”
“A home for Christmas,” Tansin mused. “That sounds like the best present.”
And so, the next morning, Tansin gathered all of her courage and crept out of her place of concealment and let Ellie lead her in to mee the family. To say that there was a lot of surprise would be an understatement, but after all the stories Granny Ellie had told them about hobs and other fae folk, they at least quickly understood who and what Tansin was. Ellie even had a few gifts for Tansin, though fortunately none of them were clothes, for hobs tend to leave when given clothes. Why? Only the hobs themselves know.
From that day on, Tansin became a real part of the family, even if she did still go unseen more often than not. But every Christmas, she came out into the open to join the family around the Christmas tree. For now, Tansin had a home for Christmas, and a family who believed.
So that’s my Christmas tale for you. And to go along with it, a wish that no matter what you celebrate at this time of year, that it is a joyous and warm time.
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.

This has been quite a year. Some of it good, some of it bad, but on balance I would say more of it fell on the better end of the spectrum.
Back at the start of the year, I had no idea that I’d be writing this, or that I’d even have a blog, let alone post to it weekly. I had no idea I’d resurrect my penchant for writing. Honestly, all that was really on my mind most of the time was planning my trip to Disney, with occasional thoughts straying to this novel idea that kept popping up to wave at me. Well, and the issue of recovering from minor whiplash and concussion, but by the time 2019 rolled into existence, that recovery was pretty well in hand.
In February, I turned 43, but more importantly I took the vacationI had been planning; a mother daughter trip with my Mom and I to the most magical place on earth for a week. It was glorious. Rides were ridden, good food was eaten, and I even met a lovely lady named Pammie for whom I had recently offered to help run a Facebook group that functionned in support of her youtube channel. Pammie runs a channel dedicated to themeparks and travel for people of size or those with physical, cognitive, sensory or other accessibility issues. It’s wonderful, and so is she.
After the trip, life settled back into normalcy. Back to work, back to reality. I did begin moderating that group, but otherwise things seemed to be fairly humdrum. Until May.
May is when it all started. That idea I mentionned earlier? It would. Not. Leave. Me. Alone. Ever since the previous Thanksgiving, I’d been thinking about this thing. Sort of a Narnia for adults. Where a woman was meant to go through a portal in a lake as a kid and enter a fantasy world and then need to try to save it. They were waiting for her. Unfortunately, a responsible adult saw a kid about to fall into a lake and di the responsible adult thing and pulled her back. That world kept waiting, and now she’s all grown up.
I wished someone else would write something sort of like it. Seanan McGuire was writing about the children who found doors into magical worlds and what happened to them when they came back, and they are wonderful books, but they were still about kids. Or teens, anyway. I wanted something about an adult. There was only one way to make that happen, though. I had to write it myself.
The decision to start was abrupt. I was listening to a podcast for creative types – I don’t remember it’s name, because I got distracted by what came next and didn’t subscribe – and it said to stop procrastinating with elaborate preparations and just start writing. So I did. I wrote every day. Sometimes, just a paragraph, some days several chapters. Three weeks later, I had a rather short rough draft finished. Super short, it was only about 35000 words. But I’d done it. About this time, I started this blog, too, in furtherance of this newfound writing thing, and decided to post every week. I chose Wednesdays as posting day, because I have Tuesdays off, so even if I leave a post to thelast minute, I’ll have a non-work day to see to it.
Then, my sister enrolled me in this crazy writing challenge where I had to write one short story a day, in response to a prompt, for the entire month of June. It was insane, and it was glorious.
However, at the same time I was also facing health trouble. My thyroid was in overdrive, which sent my metabolism haywire. I was tired, constantly dizzy – not a good state for a blind person – and my spatial sense was nowhere to be found. Doctors decided to treatit with radiation and essentially kill off part of the thyroid, which we eventually did, but I had to wait for it. I kept writing, though.
In July, I began working on a second draft of the novel. This one was roughly twice the length of the first, thank goodness, as35000 words isn’t really a novel. More of a novella. Or novelette. I finished that in August, and put it into beta reading.
By the fall, my thyroid levels were finally dropping. Of course, they fell below the normal level, but that was expected and more easily dealt with.
Meanwhile, remember the Pammie Plus Parks youtube channel? She decided along with the rest of the moderator team that she needed a website, with articles, and so http://www.pammieplusparks.com was born, and yes, you can find several things written by yours truly there. It’s a terrific resource.
Finally, the place I work for decided that they needed a blog, and put out a call for freelance bloggers. Needless to say, I jumped on that and was accepted. So now I’m a freelance writer for them. Paid work 3/4 of a year past when I decided to actually make a real try at a writing career isn’t bad. And I’m partway through a sequel to the first novel, as I hope to try to sell them as a pair for hopefully better luck finding an agent and publisher.
Not too bad for a year. Sure, the health issues weren’t fun, but at least they were issues that could be dealt with. Taken altogether, the good things absolutely outweigh the bad ones.
Makes me wonder what the next year will bring. Or the next decade, for that matter. I’m entering both with optimism.
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.

Massage therapy really is an excellent choice for a career. The job market is actually pretty good, particularly compared to some others, or at least it is in my little corner of the world.
But what is it like, and what does it take to become one?
First and foremost, a little disclaimer. While many of my readers are local to me, there are also a fair few who are not. Requirements can differ pretty widely, especially once you hit the global level. What is true for most of Canada is not true for the United States, the UK, Australia, etc. I will mainly be speaking to my own experiences here, you will want to look into how things work for your area.
So, firstly, what is it really like? It is hard, glorious work. Massage therapy is one of those careers that requires exercise of both your brain and your muscles. Physically, it can be strenuous, especially once you venture into the realms of deep pressure. But you can’t just turn off your brain and exert yourself, as you do need to figure out what is actually causing discomfort/pain/tension/reduced mobility, etc, and help the client correct it.
You will get to meet and interact closely with a wide variety of people. How much you interact with the same people really depends on the sort of place you work. The place I work at, for example, has a high rate of regular clients as it is built around encouraging that. Someone working at a hotel spa, or the sort of clinic that specializes in injury recovery, may only see someone once or for a limited number of visits. Neither way is “better”, in and of itself, it all depends on where your preferences are. Mine are for building a working relationship with my clients and working with them to promote long term improvements in their physical health.
You don’t need to be an extrovert to do this job, though. I am not. In fact, I am a massive introvert socially, and quite comfortable being one. But I do enjoy one on one interactions with people, and that is precisely what I get. You also don’t need to be a chatty Kathy, as some clients prefer silence. On the other hand, some prefer to talk a lot. Don’t worry too much about being one or the other, whatever your style is, clients who prefer it will stick with you. What you do have to be is comfortable with being in close proximity to strangers. You will, after all, be all up in their personal space for extended periods of time. A healthy sense of boundaries, both yours and others, is important.
For the most part, I have found massage therapy to be a pretty low stress work environment. Generally speaking, the people you meet are very happy to be there. You are making them feel better, and most folks are nice to the person making them feel better. Is that always the case? No. You’ll encounter jerks no matter what career you follow, but the jerks, for me at least, have been an extreme minority. You’ll also get the very real satisfaction of feeling the positive changes you’re helping your clients achieve happen right under your hands.
So, yes, I think it’s a wonderful career choice. But how does one become a massage therapist?
Here in Canada, you can’t just decide to be one and go apply for a job. Or at least, you shouldn’t, and can’t in a lot of places. Here in Nova Scotia, a bill is currently being worked on to protect the term “massage therapist”. We call ourselves Registered Massage Therapists (RMT’s) because we are, in fact, registered with a professional association.
To achieve that state, you have to go to school. In most of Canada, that involves a 2200 hour long program. I’m going to be blunt here… that program is no cakewalk. I urge anyone considering this to contact their local colleges offering this training and find out in advance exactly what you’re going to be getting yourself in for. It is absolutely worth it, but it isn’t easy.
I didn’t just learn various ways to rub sore muscles. I learned an incredibly detailed amount of anatomy & physiology. I studied pathology, neurology and kinesiology. I did a course on medical research, and how to do it properly. Passing grade was 70%. Comprehensive exams lurked at the end of it all where we were again tested on everything and anything covered, with again, passing grade of 70%.
It was a lot of work. It was also a lot of fun. And at the end of the day, I came out of it with a deep understanding of exactly what I was doing, and thanks to copious hours working in the student clinic, a lot of real world experience, so that by the time I treated my very first client as a fully registered therapist, I knew exactly what I was doing.
Is massage therapy right for you? Honestly, I can’t answer that. But if it interests you, do check out your local colleges. If they have something like a student for a day program, go ahead and do it.  Ask any questions that crop up, and if it seems right, go for it. I haven’t regretted for one moment my decision to do this.
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.

About a month ago, I announced that I had begun my second novel. Not only that, but I was going to finish it, or hit 50000 words before the end of November as part of NaNoWriMo.
I did not. In point of fact, I stalled out about halfway through the month at roughly 20000 words and ten chapters.
Technically, this counts as failure. I mean, I set a goal and didn’t meet it. Now, I could hang my head in shame. I could take this as a sign that I’m not cut out to be a writer. After all, I wrote my first novel in less than a month. Sure, it was super short at roughly 35000 words in the first draft, but I finished it. (And, yes, the second draft is more than twice as long)
I’m not going to do that, though. This little endeavour taught me a few important things. First and foremost, it taught me that this style of daily goal oriented writing simply does not work for me. The NaNoWriMo model gives you a daily suggested word count. It’s not static, mind you. It is the number of words left to reach your goal divided by the number of days left, or at least I think so. I found that super daunting.
Secondly, I don’t evidently like reporting daily progress when it comes to writing. With my first novel, the only goal I set for myself was “write something every day, even if it’s only a paragraph”. I managed that. I made progress every day. It was almost always far more than a paragraph, but on the odd day where I was super busy or tired, and only managed that little bit, I still felt as though I had accomplished something. Doing it this way made me feel as though I had failed more than once.
I also learned to listen to my gut. See, he place I stalled out was right after a day where doubling up was the theme. Double the words written, doubling up on donations, and the like. I decided I would surpass twice the number of words I’d managed so far. The trouble was, I’d had some super productive days already. Doubling that pushed me further than was reasonable. I wanted to stop, and didn’t. The next day, I felt burnt out, so took a day off. The next day was a work day, so I didn’t write anything. Then I felt ill the next day, and so on. I haven’t made any progress since then. I should have listened to my little inner voice.
I also learned that the NaNoWriMo template is really hard for me to use with my screen reader. Reporting my daily word count was very tricky, which led to frustration. Frustration is not a great state of mind in which to write.
But the most important lesson I learned is that it’s okay to fail. Not meeting my NaNoWriMo goal doesn’t mean I’m not going to finish this book. I am. I simply decided to put it on hold until the month was over and pick it up again without the pressure. Failure taught me what not to do in the future. Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what works.
So, yes, technically I failed. But I also won, because I learned some hings about how I write, and that’s valuable.  I also learned that minor failures aren’t enough to dissuade me from this crazy dream of mine.
Onward and upward.
Want to follow or interact with me on social media? Find me on Twitter by following @jennifermorash or head over to https://www.facebook.com/jennifermorashblog. I post blogs every Wednesday.