music, therapy, and me

It is raining outside and is supposed to rain most of today. After today, we will be heading back into a heat warning time for four days which means sticking around my home since I react strongly to the humidity. So, I have some time to do something by myself and in the relative quiet of my home. I currently have five unfinished journals sitting in various places around my craft/office space. I have some ideas of how to finish them, but I also see the piles of things that are around my home and feel the "you SHOULD [goblin] be cleaning" guilt pulling me away from those projects. I am getting better with actually moving things, but there is much to be done...still. It has been a month since I retired from my full-time job as a music therapist working in a psychiatric residential treatment facility and day school. I still have a month left on my self-imposed work break, and I am starting to panic about not having a steady job. I am looking at job announcements and am finding lo...

Happy - uh, I want to say - Thursday?  One of the things that is difficult for me right now is telling time - especially what day it is! The hours are not as difficult to feel, but the days are. I do not have lots of things that I have to get done these days, so the days just kinda slip away. Having appointments helps with discerning which day is which. Last night, I met with three others for a discussion about working with people who have a specific type of diagnosis. We had a good conversation about ways to work with this population. The other three music therapists were younger than me by about 15 years at least, so it was interesting to hear them speak about their own music therapy tools and materials and to contrast them with my own. I am a vintage music therapist. I wear that title proudly because I have been a clinician for 33 years now. I have earned the title of "vintage," and I am going to revel in the fact that I am still doing the thing that I love the most even a...

Creativity Camp is finished, so it is time for my next projects! I tend to do this to myself, but I enjoy having several projects going at the same time. In addition to meetings and conferences, I have some written projects to produce. All of this as I try to figure out if I have enough ideas to sustain my life as a music therapy consultant with a small business. It has been almost a month since I retired from my full-time job as a music therapist in a psychiatric residential treatment facility school. I have not received my first pension payment yet - it is due to arrive in nine days - so, I am currently running my life on my savings. I am paying lots of money for my health insurance, and I am nervous about how I will survive financially during the next couple of months, but I am trying to sustain a new quiet life. One where I can create, interact, support, and benefit fellow music therapists from my home with a bit more freedom than my recent job offered. In 17 days, we will be gathe...

The second ever (and hopefully, the first annual) Creativity Camp by musictherapyworks.com is now finished!! I am exhausted, but I feel good about what we accomplished this weekend. I have a BUNCH of new projects that are finished that I was able to complete in the 8 hours we were together, and the pile is growing as I get more inspiration from the campers' projects. That is the best thing about doing creative professional development workshops with and for music therapists - the expansion of ideas based on a similar format. I have done this type of workshop at regional conferences twice now, and this was the second online version of making things that I have finished. I think this will become a yearly workshop that I run from here at home. I have TONS of ideas that I enjoy sharing as starting points, so why not?? Currently, all of the cleaning that I did in preparation is in shambles. One of the problems that happens when creating is that there are messes that occur. While all of ...

It is early on Sunday morning, and it is the second day of Creativity Camp. As with camping outside my home, I am feeling tired and excited about what is yet to come, but also my head is spinning with possibilities and my to-do list. As a result, I am going to send you to a previous post today - it will show the entire process that takes place in my head as I go through my TME development system. Thanks for understanding that there are times when repeats are a good thing. Here's the post that I am talking about - Have a great week! I'm back to camp!! 

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was to go to camp. I went to day camp, overnight camp, science camp, Bible camp, sports camp, horse camp - you name it! There was something quite nice about leaving home to spend time outside. I was a camper, but where I REALLY loved camping was when I was a camp aide or counselor. I loved the summer that I spent in the Ozarks, being a camp counselor. I would still be doing that during summers if I hadn't become really sick and unable to return due to a lung fungus (sounds fun, doesn't it?? It wasn't!). Anyway, I have often wanted to work at a camp of some sorts, but music therapy came up and took over my professional goals. This is kinda where the impetus is behind today's Creativity Camp - my desire to be camping and also being around people. Creativity Camp is the type of camping that I like the best now - inside and not in the lung fungus inducing humidity! Today, I will be meeting with some music therapists to make ...