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Organizing Thirty Years of Music Therapy Materials

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My home is full of stuff. Music Therapy stuff that I have collected, curated, and used over my career of 33 years as a music therapist. Thirty of those years were at a facility where I worked with school-aged clients in a residential and school setting, so I have lots of materials that are meant to spark the most uninterested of people into some sort of interaction. Add into that all the years of textbook purchases, intern training information, and several decades as a church musician, and I have lots of music and music therapy stuff around, and it is piling up. Right now, my focus is on getting things from work to home. I am almost finished with that process. Once everything is home, I will be ready to organize into my piles - give, sell, toss, and keep. Fortunately, once everything is home in two weeks, I will have all sorts of time to engage in organizing, but I am starting to do some of that right now. I am looking around my space and am trying to envision how I will need to access...
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Wednesdays in the Summer

Today is my busiest music therapy day during the summer. I have five music therapy groups and one leisure skill group to get through in a hot, humid room where I cannot change the air conditioning level. After today, I have only five more sessions to get through before a three day weekend. Last week, one of my afternoon groups arrived 30 minutes early and then got miffed when I asked them to leave and return when they were scheduled. "But it was at noon on the board in the classroom." "The schedule says 12:30. I'll see you all again in 30 minutes." "Hmph." (That was the staff member.) I thought I was losing my mind. Let's hope that doesn't happen again today. We are exploring my decrepit piano this week. It keeps breaking and then breaking more, but it is time to use it before I leave. Many of my students do not realize that the instrument is in the music therapy room all the time. They act like they have never seen the instrument before despit...
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Therapy Technique Tuesday: No More Session Planning!

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For my entire career, I have rebelled against the idea of session planning. I struggled with procedure sections in my undergrad training. I've written about this recently - how I would take the example in our practicum handbook, change the details but not the format, and would be told that it "was not right." That was all the feedback that I would get. I would ask how to make those sections "right," and no one could tell me how to do that. I had a revelation in the summer between my junior and senior years (thank all that is good in the universe), and then I was able to figure it all out, but that experience has left me a bit leery of writing session plans. One of the biggest issues that I have with session plans is that there is so much that happens in a session, and it is impossible to foresee every response. Plain old impossible! So, I don't write session plans. I haven't for my entire career because I find the practice to be busywork. Instead, I focu...
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Make It Monday: Creativity Camp 2026 - Some of the Things We Will Be Making...

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Not many words today - lots of pictures!! Join us at 2026 Creativity Camp - link to registration and all the details here . 
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A Lazy Sunday Morning

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Today is a lazy Sunday. I spent my Friday engaged in music therapy resource creation, my Saturday in actively avoiding anything other than sorting materials and clearing carpet, and now it is Sunday. Today's plans include a shower, washing bedding, a movie at the local theater, and spending some more time with music therapy stuff. I have to arrange my first-ever full conference scheduled for the second weekend in August. That is something that is zapping my energy right now. I have cleared some spaces in my home which has helped a bit with my attitude. Basically, I shifted piles from here to there, but I also went through those piles and started the sorting process. I want to get materials sorted into zones in my house. Instruments in one location, visuals in another, books in yet another. You know what I mean. This morning is something that I treasure. After working as a church music director for 26 years, it has only taken me 2 years to start to treasure my Sunday mornings. No mo...
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Making Progress

I spent a good part of yesterday putting together three projects as well as the task analyses for those projects in preparation for Creativity Camp 2026 . It was fun to create things to share with others, and I have three more projects to complete to get ready for Camp. I like it when I feel that I have made some progress towards reaching the end of my quests. Today's quest is to make a difference in the upstairs portion of my home. There is laundry to put away, dishes to wash, carpets to vacuum, and all of that cannot be started until some of the music therapy materials are stacked and sorted. Before all of that can happen, though, I have to go pick up my grocery order and get the food put away. I will also need to eat as I keep moving through my to-do list. I am feeling kinda jumpy and twitchy today. I don't know why, but my back itches, and I just keep having muscle twinges in my arms. I don't know if this is a reaction to my summer SAD or if I am just overwhelmed and th...
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How To Create When the Brain Feels Like It Has Stopped...

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This is the most challenging season for me, and it makes it difficult to get motivated to do ANYTHING! I am getting ready for a large life change (retirement, here I come, kicking and screaming and trying to pretend that I know what I'm doing) that is adding stressor after stressor after stressor. My brain is struggling with all sorts of things, so I am taking out my self-care and brain sparking routines to help me get started on some creative projects. When I find myself in a creativity slump, the only thing that really works to get me feeling inspired or remotely interested in composing or drawing or making things for my music therapy clinic is to create using rules. The rules are arbitrary, made up by me, and something that I can break at any time if inspiration takes hold. I have found that my rules for creating help me break out of a stagnant state. When I am in need of some new songs, I break out my composition kit and my rules. Chance composition is the best technique for me...
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