music, therapy, and me

This is the seventh week since my Father died, and I am in a mood. My mood is comprised of many different emotions, and I think I will name this mood something that has never been part of my consideration before - this mood shall be called, droplet. This word is making ripples in my mind right now (pun intended) because my emotions seem to be doing the same thing. One thought starts lots of feelings and responses and those feelings and responses ebb and flow and emanate from that one thought. When that one thought reaches the end, another begins. It is an interesting mood to be experiencing. Now, not all of these emotional ripples are negative or based in mourning. Many of them are pleasant and positive and areas of growth, but some are sad and tough to experience. For those, I cry a bit and then dry my tears with a small prayer of thanks for the lives shared with me. I allow those ripples to move across my body and then lose energy until the next thought starts the next ripple. I am r...

This evening, I have to do my least favorite thing - listen to lots of talk about IEP construction. This is not because the topic isn't important. It is simply because, due to the way my facility categorizes music therapy, it is irrelevant to my position as a school based music therapist. My administrators don't think that it is "fair" for those of us who are not considered related services to do other things during that time. They think that we should sit in the presentation so things will "look good to the other faculty who do have to write IEPs." Ugh. I have tried to fight this battle over and over again and have lost each time. It is one of my biggest frustrations. I find mandatory training in areas that I am not allowed to access to be ridiculous, and I know that some of my fellow "educational enrichment" service providers feel the same way about sitting in these trainings. I am not sure that my administrators realize how much training and con...

Oh, my goodness. It has been a week already and it is only Tuesday! I am tempted to call in for the last little bit of my personal time just so I don't have to go to work today, but it is the last little bit of my personal time, and I think I should hold onto it as much as possible. It would be three groups that I would skip, and that seems like lots of work to skip, but the call is there, especially since it is Tuesday, and that means working with THAT group. You know the one I mean. The group that challenges every single part of my determination to be calm, cool, collected. The group members who know all of my insecurities and are determined to make me lose my cool. The ones who test me week after week, day after day, and moment after moment. The group that I cannot relax about because as soon as I settle into complacency, they flip and zig when I am expecting them to zag.  (I just realized that I originally put in the day as Thursday - oh dear, I'm losing it already! Changed...

I set up another Zoom meeting this morning. This one is focused on music therapy students and is all about finding an internship for each one of those students. I have a week to coordinate it, but this is a topic that I have presented on for many years, so I feel confident that I can get this coordinated pretty quickly. As I was putting this together, I realized that my website is pretty out-of-date, so revising that goes on the to-do list. This task joins several other tasks that I have neglected, so the list is growing and embiggening (word courtesy of Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess!) in leaps and bounds. Most of the things that I have on the list are things that I enjoy doing, so neglecting them is pretty silly. The only reason that I have not accomplished those things is because other things became a bit more important in the moment. I spent some creative time yesterday putting together a digital kit for theme-based communication boards for music therapy sessions. My goal is to have a ...

I admit it. I am useless when it comes to the taxation system in this country, and the subject of taxes is something that causes my anxiety responses to go off the charts every single time I think about it all. I wake up at 3am in a cold sweat at times, worrying about getting those taxes done and correct and all that stuff. It is one of the biggest stress-inducing activities of my year...every year. Now, I act as the treasurer for a not-for-profit organization here in the states and that has increased my anxiety rather than decreasing it. I didn't want to be the treasurer for this not-for-profit organization, but I kinda fell into it because of where I lived. My role has been the source of great joy over the past eleven years and also the aforementioned stress. This year, my accountant retired, so I now have a new tax preparer. I met with her this last week to complete my personal taxes, and I will never go back to doing my own ever again! I found things that I could itemize tha...

As I was on my way to work yesterday, I remembered that this would be the day that everything at work would be changing. I mean everything. None of my students have the same classrooms that they had last Thursday when we were last in school. Everyone has either a new teacher, new actual classrooms, new classmates, or new classroom support staff members. No classroom has been left unchanged. So, three snow days, one holiday, and two weekend days ended and we then changed every bit of familiarity that my students knew for all sorts of new experiences! Apparently things were a bit strained in classrooms as clients are trying to figure out their new situations. We had three groups in music therapy and folks seemed to be glad to be with us. We had no issues with engagement or stress behaviors in our sessions. Kids who do not always engage got involved in what we were doing. New kids were demonstrating their skills in music therapy where they had just sat quietly in their new classes. It was...

As far as I can tell, today is a regular work day for me as a school-based music therapist. I have checked and rechecked the closings list and it has remained at 55 schools closed for quite some time now. It is doubtful that my school district will close at this late time in the morning - not unprecedented, but doubtful. I tried to go out and do some errands on Tuesday and found the world to be a slick, electricity-free mess, but yesterday was a bit warmer (seriously! We got up to 22 degrees Fahrenheit with full power in my town), so things should be a bit more controlled and less scary out there today. I am enjoying the last little bit of my relaxed morning (been up for 3 hours already at 5:00am) before changing into my winter uniform and heading to work. I am anticipating that my current intern will be asking about whether we are going to be working - I think I'll send an email right now while I am thinking about it. Today is an easy scheduled day but it will be the first day tha...

I had a webinar yesterday with music therapy interns. We spent some time going over some of the silly techniques that I have to break myself out of creative ruts and still have to make new music with clients. We did a bit of songwriting last evening, and it helped me find some creativity. One of the things that we did was develop a chord progression. Here it is: iii I iii I vi IV V I Now it is time to figure out what I am going to do with this progression. I like the way it sounds, so I will write it down and figure out something to do with it.  That's often the way that these things happen - something strikes a chord (pun intended) with me, and then it becomes a constant quest to finish it up. With a chord progression, it can fill so many different functions just by changing the pattern of the changes or the accompaniment. How do you write music? I don't attempt to write a permanent song without a post-it note, a pencil, and a piano. Oh dear, now I need to explain what a perm...

I am currently starting my second Inclement Weather Day - yesterday doesn't count as it was a planned holiday for us all, but Friday was our first snow day. I enjoyed not struggling through the snow and sub-zero temperatures and just staying in bed as long as I wanted. I also enjoyed that feeling yesterday, but my body got some revenge in the form of a migraine which made me change all my plans. Today, I am ready to get some things done around here. My view from my window shows snow and gray skies as far as the eye can see. The plows haven't come by yet and my maintenance folks haven't bothered to shovel because snow is still in the forecast. I have to start my car for the first time in five days this afternoon, and I'm a bit concerned that we are going to be frozen solid. I sat down and made my February/March goals yesterday. I've changed from making my Saturdays reserved for only rest to making sure that I take some time to craft and create every week. I am contin...

I did a bit of playing with paper yesterday. I've been trying out different techniques to see what hurts my fingers and what I can do with recovering tendon issues and a healed fracture, and I completed a project for a SkillShare Class that I signed up for a while ago. Here is the video of my most recent project - a junk journal. I took bits and pieces of paper that I had around the house and made them into a journal of sorts. This project is not finished - the only thing done is the construction of the book itself. True junk journalers then take their books and make them into masterpieces of painting, journaling, ephemera, and memories. I don't usually do that much with the things that I make, but I am going to try with this book. It is WAY out of my comfort zone, but that is what this year is all about for me - deepening my experiences to experience things more. For some reason, actually using a book that I make is difficult, but it was nice to know that I could assemble this...

This post is late because we are in the middle of an INCLEMENT WEATHER DAY!! I finally got one, and I am feeling really snuggly in my fleece robe and jammies. I am considering cancelling my Occupational Therapy appointment due to the cold that has taken over the outside. In fact, I think I will call and cancel...okay. That's finished. I have to do my hand exercises and stretches more diligently to make up for not going today. I now have no obligations until Monday at 3 when I go get my taxes started with my new accountant-type tax person. It is so nice to be sitting here all cuddly. There is not a flake of snow in sight, but the weather is very cold and is affected by the wind that's out there. Things are below freezing and just getting colder as the sun is finally shining for the first time this week. This is the first year that I haven't gone in on inclement weather days, and I am enjoying the idea of having this day to relax and just be. Like I said, I haven't chang...

I have a mantra that I say to myself before sessions that I just know are going to be a challenge for me and for my clients. It is a prayer, but it could also act as an affirmation if the person offering the thought does not believe in a deity or any sort of spiritual concept. Mine does start with an acknowledgement of my creator, so feel free to use this or scoff at it or change it to fit your belief system in any way that you need or want to. Here it is: "God, help me to be the therapist that these clients need in this moment." Variations include the following: God, help me be the best music therapist I can be for these clients right now. God, help me find the way into relationship with this group of diverse clients.  So, this mantra is something that I sit and say to myself on Tuesday mornings before my contentious group of young men who are "too cool" for following directions and doing work. Well, some of them are that way. Others are eager to engage and partici...

I am in a unique position for me - that of longing for a snow day. Up until this year, I had volunteered to be on the inclement weather staff at my residential school. We had students living on campus that someone had to supervise, so I would go in and do shorter sessions with all students and then get a day off of my choosing later in the year. As I have become more mature and stiff and unable to navigate the icy world easily, I have lost my enthusiasm for getting out there. Also, our staffing situation changed dramatically when we eliminated all the paraprofessional positions and the facility replaced them with facility-paid Behavioral Health Technicians. Now, the BHTs are required to work rather than choosing whether they will work on snow days (teachers still have that option, but BHTs do not). I decided to try the actual snow day life this year...and no snow days yet. It is bitterly cold out there today. The school district in my town has already decided to go to virtual learning ...

The Online Conference for Music Therapy is over for this year. That is a sentence that always fills me with such joy, exhaustion, and wonder because it is a true labor of love - this conference. I enjoy it so much when it is not going on, and I curse my participation in it from the beginning while it is happening. I blame my perfectionist tendencies to want everyone to do exactly what I tell them to do the way I tell them to do it - emotional brain tries to take over. I just want people to follow my directions. That's all. With the end of yesterday, I finished almost all of what is on my to-do list for this month. OCMT - check. sing about may - check. CMTE course for my own personal development - check. Here it is the seventh (right?) and I have only three more obligations to others this month - taxes with my new tax preparer, the OCMT annual board meeting, and contacting a realtor because I am tired of living under a couple that holds demon exorcisms over my head at all hours of ...

Yesterday is over. It went pretty well in the music therapy clinic - we had our five groups with only one classroom assignment change that hadn't been announced to the faculty. We saw the one individual who is actually at school right now. We didn't have much time to talk to one another (my intern and me), but I did get in some reading during lunchtime. Wednesdays are our busiest days right now and that won't change any time soon. The other days will become busier when we get into our summer schedule because we will have to smash four sessions into the four days a week that we work during summer. In my opinion, we didn't have to do this type of scheduling, but no one asked me or even cares about my opinion on scheduling. I am a bit disgruntled about that, but again, no one really cares. We ended our day with a meeting with our Behavior Specialist. In 2019 (way, WAY back in the distant mists of time when sitting next to someone in a room was commonplace...gather 'rou...

So, after yesterday's dread of a specific session, everything went fine. I had a couple of cuss words thrown my direction and one student getting upset because I wouldn't let him leave to get a drink of water (it was 3 minutes before the end of the session, mind you), but the rest of the day went pretty well. I ended up doing all the sessions yesterday because my intern was sick, so I had to plan for four groups instead of two. I enjoyed working with one group that I haven't led since my intern has arrived and taken over. It was refreshing to move into that session and play with my students. I then went to Occupational Therapy where my OTR/L is starting the termination process in a gentle manner. She told me that my tendon finger may never straighten out again. She is also working on strengthening both fingers so that I can do things with my hands without pain. I haven't made it to that point yet. I can play guitar (with pain) but I cannot barre chords yet and my finger...

I just finished an introductory overview course on a technique that I have heard about but never really examined closely. The course itself offered information that was good but it was not exactly what I wanted to learn. That's okay and happens quite often to me these days with presentations and coursework and all that. I think some of the problem is that I am not sure what I want to learn about this profession. All I know is that I am still seeking greater knowledge and wisdom about music as a therapeutic medium for my clients. I am reading a bit. My hope for reading daily has been shattered for another month since I didn't read yesterday. I will not be reading much today since I have to leave for OT before I can get into my late afternoon time which is the time I've set aside for reading. Oh well. This fact doesn't mean that I stop - it just means that I have to focus on the goal a bit more. I FINALLY finished the second chapter of my current book. It has taken me SOO...

The rollercoaster life of 2020 is continuing into 2021...when will it all end? Last Friday brought with it a breakdown at work where I cried in front of my Vice Principal and ended up being YET ANOTHER wasted effort because the situation that had led me to such emotional lengths was YET ANOTHER misstep on the part of administrators more interested in money than in health and safety that was rescinded almost as fast as it wreaked havoc on my mental and professional well-being. Almost. This happens quite often - we are told to make huge changes to how we do what we are told to do and then we are told "never mind, we're not doing that after all." So, we ask, "what are we going to do?" The answer is often, "we're not sure yet, but we aren't doing that thing we INSISTED that you drop everything and address yesterday, that's for sure!" I am tired. I am tired of having to change my schedules every five weeks.  I am tired of not knowing from day to...