music, therapy, and me

It is the first morning of my break, and I already have thought that it was Tuesday for some strange reason. I sat down, looked at the empty page and thought, "Time to figure out my TME since it's Tuesday." Sigh. This may be a long week. Fortunately, I remembered that it is actually Friday, NOT Tuesday, so I am writing a less structured post right now. I am going to go house hunting this afternoon with my very patient realtor who continues to try to find a place for me to move into. We both find the same listings and contact one another about then, which I find pretty funny but also find a good indication that she knows what I am interested in. Anyway, we have two places to go see today, and who knows? It is time to start my day, but I have very little idea where to start. The only task that I put on my list for today is the dishes, so I guess that will be a good place to go. Once the dishes are done, I can put the rest of the groceries away. That will uncover some of the...

Today is the last day I have to go to work for our Extended School Year session. After today, we have 10 days off before we go back to work for the 2021-2022 school year. If I survive having to call off going to the lake (I chickened out yesterday), I will take the 10 days to pack and sort and sleep, all in the coolness of my house. I do not plan on leaving to do much - just grocery pick up. I will be a hermit until I go back to work. Work is tense these days. There are lots of things being revealed about our former administrators that are not flattering to them and that directly affect us. It will be interesting to see what changes in the next couple of months. To top it all off, we are in the midst of the hottest days of the summer (so far), and tempers are short because we are all hot. So, cue the tense attitudes! Anyway. I, as always, have lots of aspirations for this break, but I know that I will not get them finished. I will be pushing myself to sort, donate, recycle, and box ite...

This morning, as I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and trying to figure out how to navigate a particularly challenging work situation, I found a tweet from my favorite author/blogger, The Bloggess . If you don't know about her, Jenny Lawson is a wonderful human who writes about her life. Her story includes questions, answers, lots of silliness, a bit of profanity, and some serious discussions about medical issues and mental health. She has inspired me to be a bit more honest about my own struggles because she tells me things that I can relate to. I figure that if I need to hear this from her, then maybe some of you need to hear this from me. Anyway, the quote was simple. "It's okay to say 'No'." I'm being completely honest when I said that I needed to see someone else saying this today. There is a situation happening that I am expected to be doing but that would put my health in jeopardy - both physically and emotionally. I am being pressured to be t...

Today, I want to talk about the amount of time that it takes to write a Therapeutic Music Experience (TME) in my system. It is not something that is easy to do, but the amount of time is worth it when I have to justify some of my ideas to others because I have put in the thought and effort to get things firmly designed... I am a bit rambly today, so please forgive me. My system is not the easiest system to do. It is not something that just happens without some thought and work. When I time how long it takes for me to "write" a TME, the duration is pretty long from initial idea to a set format on paper. In some cases, music sits in my file in the post-it note format for years before I get everything finalized, but I am not going to count those examples here. As soon as an idea comes into my head, I try to set the basic idea down on paper. Yesterday, I was sitting on the floor, coordinating my session strategy, when inspiration struck for another True/False song came into my he...

Yesterday morning, I was notified that one of my cousins out there on the East coast was missing. He had been out hiking (by himself - hope that lesson has been learned) and had not been heard from in 72 hours. (Don't worry, he was found by park rangers and is being observed in the hospital, so happy ending at the moment - just wanted you to know this up front so you didn't have to wonder...) His sister let us in Facebook world know that he was missing and then updated us during the day about the process of finding him. Turns out, he wasn't where he had last checked in from - he was in a completely different state and a different state park. Once his car was found in the parking lot, the park rangers coordinated a search and found him. He was sent to the local hospital for evaluation and there has been no more news. The entire day was spent watching Facebook for news and hoping that it would be a good outcome. Being 1500 miles away from situations like this is frustrating. ...

(I have NO idea why this font changes when it does...frustrating.) I FINALLY finished chapter three of my current music therapy enrichment book - Emotional Processes in Music Therapy by John Pellitteri. This has not been a difficult read, but it has been difficult to get back into the routine of reading again. I shall strive to do more, but I am making absolutely zero promises these days. I finished reading the last part of the third chapter last night before bed, and it was an interesting view on emotion and how emotion is linked inexorably with culture. This was a concept that I have never considered before - that culture shapes how we feel about things. As I look over emotional times in my own life, I can see some of this cultural influence coming into play. As an introvert, I have had times when my behaviors were considered "less than desirable" and "weird." I didn't want to go to church youth group if all we were going to do was talk about going skiing. I ...

My favorite day of the week is Saturday because it is usually the only day of the week where my time is mostly my own. I do not have to go out (most Saturdays - there are exceptions), I have limited work responsibilities (the occasional OCMT board meeting happens on Saturday mornings), and I can stay in my pajamas all day if I want! I will not be staying in my pajamas today because I need to go and take my confidential shredding to the shredding place. While I am out, I will probably get my groceries as well. Saturday is my day to relax as much as possible. I have been trying to have little to no goal demands as a way of existing these days. I have found that my goals have been unsuccessful because I am not interested in them. I am trying a different type of mindset, and it is one that seems a bit more positive for me. I am getting some things done that I haven't accomplished during goal times. Today's goals are to get my groceries, take the shredding, make some animal choice b...

On Tuesday, we were informed that there would be a mandatory meeting after school for all staff. We were to gather on the front lawn. That was it. No other details. As I was sitting in the hallway for my break, I heard one of the quality assurance staff members talking about water balloons. The first thought in my head? "Crap. It's another 'team building' thing." Oh, dear reader. It was. I am not a fan of team building activities at my facility for the simple reason that they do not actually build teams. This term is bandied about for things that people think will be fun, but there is no learning about the people that you work with during these times. I find them to be absurd, especially because the only people who seem to find value in these situations are the people who put them on. We were split into four teams, given a ball and a baseball bat, told to spin (which no one did that I saw), then try to hit the ball, and then move to the pitching spot. The first te...

black background with colorful squiggles, the word Think, and the web address of musictherapyworks.com   It is amazing how much time I spend staring at a blank computer screen these days. I used to spend just as much time staring at a blank piece of paper, but my paper use has decreased for things like writing. I do most of my creative writing on the computer these days, and this (almost) daily practice of writing my blog puts me in this exact same space every single morning, staring at the cursor blinking and blinking away, ready to translate any keyboard strokes into letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. In the more artistic art journaling world of my interests (not as much in the very narrow interpretation of bullet journaling but in more creative journaling circles), the advice is just to put pen to paper and make a mark. Any mark. Just break up the vast emptiness in front of you with the first touch of pen to paper and then see what happens next. I use this same technique...

From time to time, I like to focus on things that make up me that are not part of music therapy. I will write about my crafting interests, my current fiction reading, and topics that are more personal rather than professional. This is a purposeful practice of mine because I sometimes (ahem) get a bit over-focused on what I do rather than on who I am. There is a difference, you know? I am not only a music therapist, and I found that I was only going down a music therapy hole at times. My social media feeds were just about music therapy connections, and that became a morass of emotional responses that were not always the most positive responses in my life. It was time to expand my focus and see what other things I have to offer the world. As a result, I went against my natural inclinations and requested to join some groups that are not music therapy related at all. On Facebook, I am part of three multi-media and junk journaling groups. Now, I am not an active poster on any of these group...

I make no secret of the fact that I make my interns start a therapeutic music experience (TME) compendium as a part of their time with me. My database and card boxes have done me well over the years (as well as done them well), so I find that the acts of writing things down and thinking them through are valuable to developing music therapists as well as to seasoned therapists. My interns have an assignment of writing down 75 TMEs to present to me at the end of their fourth month of internship. Twenty-five of those have to be original songs - things that the intern has written all of the music for - and the remaining fifty have to be complete ideas but can come from anywhere. Most of my interns also include what I call the "generic" TMEs, the ones we all know about and use in music therapy practice but that do not really have a clear source. You know these types of TMEs - musical chairs...drawing to music...musical mad-libs...sing a longs...hot potato...playing to specific wor...