music, therapy, and me

Yesterday, I woke up, took my time taking a nice, leisurely shower, and arrived at work at my usual time, 6:45 am (30 minutes before I'm supposed to be there). I did my notes, got some session elements arranged, and was sending out emails to my fellow staff members about the Holiday Sing, and then I looked down at the clock. I was late for an individual session. Crud! Being late is my first most frustrating situation, and missing a session is my second most frustrating situation. This made me feel both frustrations simultaneously. I set off for the classroom to apologize to the client for missing the session. As I was walking, I walked past the pop-up coffee shop that my clients and the vocational department run in the mornings and the afternoons. A client stopped me and said, "Mary Jane, do you feel nauseous?" That stopped me in my tracks. Honestly, I felt well-rested, happy, but a bit frustrated with myself for missing the session, but everything else that I w...

I recently posted a presentation on my website for folks who attended my AMTA 2017 talk about writing clinical goals, objectives, and benchmarks. I did my usual routine when posting videos - make a powerpoint presentation, record myself on video, and then transform the presentation to an mp4 and post on YouTube. I then post the link on the website which transforms into a thumbnail with a snapshot of the video. When I saw one of the thumbnails, I just had to laugh. You know, when I think about what I look like, I don't always think about the double chin, the occasional spots on my forehead, or the fact that my hair has a way of just going wherever it wants to go. This thumbnail reminded me of all of those things and more.  I posted it anyway. Hopefully, the folks who are getting the information will be led into watching the last part of the presentation in spite of the picture that I present on social media. If not, well... Really, YouTube? What about the picture that wa...

I am spending some time looking over my therapeutic music experience (TME) collection, trying to isolate everything that includes social skill development and coping skills. Why? Inspiration from conference, of course! The problem? I have 25+ years of my own TMEs and 23 intern TME collections (there are lots of gems in my compilation of TMEs from all of my interns - their intellectual property, so I use them, but do not share those TMEs outside of my music therapy clinic), and I have no effective way to search for specific skills or goal areas. I have a dream where I put in a couple of search words and a list of TMEs pop out - with links to sheet music and/or the music in my library. One of these days, I will have this type of database/software program, but I don't have it yet. So, I am going through my database (currently just an excel database), selecting everything that includes "social interaction" and/or "coping skill development" to put on another ...