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The Thrifty Therapist: Things I Do for Self-Care on a Budget

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One of the essential tools in my thrifty toolbox is finding things to do that take little to no money but offer great rewards in terms of self-care and relaxation. Now, the hardest thing about this is that what I find valuable might make you more stressed, so you have to find your own way into self-care. What I talk about here might not be something that works for you, so the first thing to know is that you have to find what interests you. My self-care routines include reading, making books and other papercrafts, crocheting, watching movies, and napping. I also like taking classes on papercrafting and self-improvement, and all that, so I look for ways to get the most bang for my buck! I subscribe to a service called SkillShare where I can take classes on lots of different topics. I also have an unlimited movie subscription to my local theater where I can watch as many movies as I want every month. Between these two subscriptions, I spend about $30 per month. My other hobbies and self-c
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What Next??

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It is my season for thinking about what comes next for me. This year has been especially challenging due to leaving the worlds of church and internships within a couple of months of each other. I am faced with less income and more time - things that are both good and not so good. So, my natural period of reflection and planning is laced with thoughts about finding more money and using the time I have from this current iteration of my body and mind. I am not struggling with my current salary, but more money is always nice. I am also going to have to pay quite a bit for some medical procedures this year, so extra money would be good for me. I feel that I have some options, but it will mean breaking a habit of needing to crash as soon as I get home from my 7-3 job. The big question for today is "where do I feel I need to be?" Lately, something that has bothered me for most of my career has been expressed by someone else, so it has come to the forefront of my brain again. It is t
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Songwriting Sunday: The Power of the Piggyback or Parody Song

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Two weeks ago, I shared music from people born in the month of October with my students as part of our Musicians of the Month series. One of the musicians that I shared was Weird Al Yankovic - one of my favorite people since I met him in a sandwich shop at 2am in West Hollywood in 1986. I put "Eat It" on the playlist, and my clients got angry! They were upset that the song that they were listening to sounded like Michael Jackson's song, but it wasn't. For those that were able to listen rather than just engage in bluster, I explained the concept of a parody song, and I remembered that I haven't written about this valuable tool in this blog series. I combine the concepts of piggyback and parody songs into one. It just makes sense that I am doing the same thing when I use a melody for a piggyback song or a parody - they are the same things. I have used piggyback techniques for myself, with my clients, and with my interns over the years. How do I do this? I strip the
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Saturday

It is Saturday, and I am getting a slow start to my day. After a day of horrible pain and behavior management recertification, things are starting to calm down a bit. I put my feet up on a chair and did some stretching before behavior management, and that seemed to help. We will see how the back and the knees go as the day progresses, but I know how to help it if it goes bad on me again. Well, not if, but when. Do you ever have a time when you feel like something needs to happen, but you don't know what? My brain is spinning. My body is hurting, and it feels like autumn outside. We are expecting rain throughout the weekend which is good because it will tamp down the dust kicked up by the harvest. That should help my breathing - less dust and plant-based mold in the air. What do I want to get done these days? I have no idea. I just have this feeling that something needs to be accomplished. So, I will take some time to explore this feeling a bit more. See you tomorrow!
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Fun Friday: Day After Halloween - Thank Goodness for Prep Time!!

It is the day after Halloween, and other than a screaming fit from my first group of students where I had to yell in order to be heard, the day went pretty well. I am in immense levels of pain from my repaired knee - don't know if it was sitting on the floor so much, CPR recertification, or the weather that has had the most effect on this level of pain, but it is pretty bad. So, here I am, facing physical behavior management training this afternoon with a bum leg and a close to bum back. Can't wait! Anyway, let's talk about fun things on this Friday. This week, I have been introducing my 21st century musicians to 20th century music technology. I have managed to break two cassette players, a record player from the 1960's, an RCA cord, and my RCA input in my karaoke machine. I did something really hard for me - I threw out the broken cassette players after trying to open them up and fix them. I hate throwing things out that might be able to be fixed, but I also cannot jus
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Halloween

I admit, I am not a fan of this day, and I feel it every single year. I am not interested in dressing up or opening my door to trick-or-treaters. I am just not interested in much of this at all. I thought about doing a costume, but I just haven't done anything for the parade this afternoon. I am supposed to get something to hand out to my students, but I am not sure that I will. Communication about things does not often get through to the people that need to know the information. Also, the week of Halloween is always a rough week in education, and throw in many layers of diagnoses and things get so much more complex. There are things that will happen, and we have some who are forgetting that our students do not have any good concept of cause and effect and do not respond well to threats of taking things away based on behavior choices. So, there have been so many tantrums over statements like, "You haven't earned the Halloween party," and "You just lost your Hallo
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The Thrifty Therapist: Free CMTEs That I Use Every Five Years for Recertification

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This is the first year of my seventh certification cycle as a board-certified music therapist. I am going to say, right now, that I usually send in my CMTEs once per cycle, and usually at the end of year four, and that I usually spend very little money on my CMTEs. I take full advantage of all the opportunities for collecting free continuing music therapy education credits. So, if you are a MT-BC who has gone through your first certification cycle (at least), you can skip this paragraph, but if you haven't gone through a recertification process, let's talk a bit about how to get CMTEs. You do not have to pay money for every single CMTE that you have to get to continue your certification. You can get many credits for things that you might already be doing. It is always a good idea to submit things that you are not sure about because the worst thing that CBMT can say is that there is no clear link to the Board Certification Domains. The good news is that almost everything that yo
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