Fears and Foibles

I did it. I missed an important, self-imposed deadline, and I just didn't even think about it coming up at all until after the deadline had passed and I realized that it was gone...

I hate that. I hate it when I miss things, especially things that are tied to a deadline.

Now, my mess up is not horrible nor is it something that will ruin me, but it did make me stop and think a bit about what types of things I have been focusing on lately. My missed deadline was a direct function of not looking in my book - where the deadline is prominently displayed on yesterday's date!! So, I sent out an email to folks last night, apologizing for my mistake and promising the completed project by tomorrow morning. That gives me a bit of breathing room, but not too much.

I have a fear of letting others down - comes from being a perfectionist with a strong work ethic, I guess. I get very disappointed in myself when I miss deadlines (like I did today), even when others probably didn't notice. I have fixed the issue, but I will still spend most of my early morning waking times just wallowing in my personal disappointment until tomorrow when I actually send the stuff off.

I took a bit of self-care time yesterday and talked to two friends from my childhood. We live in different parts of the world and have known each other for many, MANY decades, so it is nice to catch up. We started doing a happy hour chat during the summer and then got very busy and stopped. My best friend from elementary school on asked to start it up again. We had our first chat in a long time last night. I am continuously amazed by the technology that we have available to us these days.

My week will progress as follows - today, I have two of my most challenging groups. I will try my best to be therapeutic with students who do everything possible to disrupt what I am doing the entire session time. Last week, one of these groups broke me down. I am not really looking forward to this week's group, but I made the decision to be here today rather than taking my professional development days on this day. I could have done that, but I didn't. I decided that avoiding the situation was not the way to progress. We shall see. The problem that I have is that the groups are not consistently challenging or easy to lead - they have no consistency. This makes planning very difficult for me. I never know if I will get through any of the therapeutic music experiences that I have prepared for or not. I guess that's part of what makes my job interesting.

Tomorrow and Thursday are reserved for video training about technology in the classroom. I found out that I will be getting a board in my room - it was a grant that was totally funded - so it is time to start figuring out how to use the technology. I will be spending a bit of time watching recorded sessions from the CUE conference that was held last month. I hope that I will learn some new things about how to incorporate a board into music therapy treatment. I was also told that they were going to come in and measure the room for bids for partially carpeting my music therapy room. That will still be on the list of things to get done, but my chances are pretty good since it is a small expenditure compared to other things that are requested.

So, my biggest personal fear has happened this week - missing a deadline - and I am currently wondering what my sessions will bring today. Can't dwell, though. I need to move through the rest of my morning routine and get my body to work to do what I can do.

That's all that I can do, of course, only what I can do.