music, therapy, and me

Anyone else feeling restless on this meteor shower, new moon, some people get to see an eclipse but not me, and planetary alignment day? Usually at this time of year, I am starting a new school year, and I have new quests and things to do. I would be getting into my schedule of music therapy sessions and getting to know my new clients while adjusting to not having other clients still at the facility. I would be going through professional development completely irrelevant to my job as music therapist. I would be lamenting the lack of time available to just work in my room, but once I got that time, I would fritter it away. The students would arrive, and things would proceed as usual. This year, I am no longer working at a school as a music therapist. I stay at my home and try to do things that I have always wanted to do but never had enough time to get finished. I am trying to figure out working on projects to generate some income, but I am not always good at self-motivation, so my work...

I did not sleep well last night. These nights of staying awake are becoming more prevalent in my life which is interesting to me. I am more likely to stay awake than I am to go to sleep these days, possibly because my energy output is less than it was when I went to work every day. My life is quiet now, and it is spent mostly in my own company. I am starting to feel an itch to get a job, not just for financial reasons but also for having something to do with myself. There is a reason for this first paragraph - while I was not sleeping, I kept working on my Game Board and first set of game cards. I now have two games in the design phase. The cards are finished, the game board arrangement is ready, and now I just need to make everything into a digital format for posting on TPT. After that is finished, I will print out copies and make the games for a video that I am thinking about. The games that I am designing are based on my usual games. They will use game cards and dice to move around ...

Most of this weekend was consumed with running my first ever solo conference, Rhythm to Results: Clinical Innovations for Music Therapy with Adolescents, but I also had an email from someone who was watching my Creativity Camp videos and wanted some thoughts. That started my own creativity going, and now I have some things to start generating for my TPT store and my Etsy shop! I love it when collaboration with other music therapists helps me figure out what to do next. The project that I have in front of me now is something that can be sustained almost indefinitely. I am looking forward to parsing the project, setting up templates, and then getting going on this project. I will be asking for ideas once I finish my own list, so stay tuned!  My book needs some love. Time to project plan the new ideas and continue to work on my current projects. I am going to see Hadestown, the musical movie, this morning, so I cannot spend all of my morning at my desk. That's a good thing. My sister ...

In about four hours, I will be starting the first ever Rhythm to Results conference with the goal of building a music therapy community for those of us who work with adolescents. This is the culmination and starting point of a dream of mine - something that I have wanted for a very long time - and I am excited about it. I am also very nervous. I hope that I can coordinate this project for a very long time to come. Since I am going to be in front of a computer for 8 hours today, I think I will sign off. See you later...

Today is the day before one of the biggest things I have attempted solo in my small business journey - the day before a brand new conference! To say that I am thrilled, terrified, and absolutely counting on this experience becoming something that I just do from now on is an understatement. I am hoping that things will go off without a hitch, but I have contingency plans -- just in case! If this was a physical conference where we were going to sit in the same room and do things, then there would be many more things to coordinate, but this is an online conference so there isn't that much to do before things get started tomorrow morning. That is the benefit of doing online conferences, most of the work is done before the conference starts and then you go into monitoring mode. This will be the first conference where I am acting without a group helping out. That is a bit concerning, but like I said, I have contingency plans. This is where being part of the Online Conference for Music Th...

I have been a professional music therapist, board certified, for 33 years now, so I feel like I have earned the title "Vintage Music Therapist." Having a bit of perspective that comes with being something and somewhere in a profession leads me to spend time thinking about all things music, therapy, and me. I spend lots of time thinking about music therapists and clinical interactions with the clients who come before us all. I am also part of many music therapy social media groups, threads, and what have you, so I see all sorts of things that happen in the clinical world outside of my own experience. One of the biggest difficulties with our profession at this time is one that has challenged us forever. It is the mismatch between where music therapists want to exist and where jobs are available. For many years, I have told interns that there are jobs available in this field, but those jobs are not always exactly where the interns want to be located. Professionals either have to...