Week Two: Anticipation of What Is to Come

I am sitting here, waiting until it is time to leave my home for the hour-long drive to my place of full-time work. I am not sure how many clients will be present for the sessions that we have scheduled due to another COVID-19 outbreak and the rapid nature of kids who are getting sick. I know that my only individual session will not be happening, and it will be interesting to see who is missing from group sessions today.

We had an all-staff meeting on Thursday or Friday - I can't remember right now which day it was - to talk about the fact that we are still at "business as usual" stage right now. My school district has decided that masks are optional. My facility has decided that masks are mandatory. We have to follow school district mandates rather than our facility mandates. I have not stopped wearing my mask because I do not want this virus at all. I asked for some information on when we were going to shift from in-person teaching to some other format. What are the criteria? What will we be doing. The answer was that we did not know. I want as much time to prepare in advance so I am not surprised like I was again and again and again last year.

I have learned so much about myself during this past year and some. I like my structures and routines. I knew that before, but I really know that now. I like having consistent and predictable interactions with my clients. I do not get the same benefit from making YouTube content. I think I would like live, synchronous sessions much better than YouTube content creation. Now, I have also found that I am able to create content - my video editing skills have burgeoned over the past 17 months, but it is not something that I am really all that called to do. I think I would be able to work from home if my job was to work from home, but I have not been able to figure out how to do my particular job the way I feel it needs to be done from my home. We have lots of electronic restrictions and situations that keep us from doing telehealth, streaming, synchronous sessions. I also know that I do not like living in a state of uncertainty and that is all that the 2020-2021 year was - uncertainty. I was hoping that 2021-2022 would be a bit more stable - and it is this time. Business as usual...until it isn't.

I am not all that happy about the business as usual part of things. I have lots of anxiety about this virus which is complicated by all sorts of things going on in my personal life that affect me as a person and as a therapist. I am petrified that I will take germs from one workplace to another and make people there sick. I am scared of getting sick myself as I am in several high-ish risk categories for significant complications. The fact that I have not been symptomatic for this virus is nothing short of amazing considering how much time I've been around students with the virus before they were identified. Thank goodness for vaccinations and masking and my considerable personal space needs. 

I lead one group session today and that is all. My individual session will be cancelled since my client has COVID and is quarantined. My intern has three sessions to lead today. Last week, I did not do much for my group session - we traded off between preferred music choices with the listening station and using music-themed websites on the Promethean Board. My students seemed to enjoy Kandinsky over at Chrome Music the best. I worked my way up to doing more active musicking by the end of the week, but my heart really wasn't ready to be therapist on Monday. I got more into the role by the end of the week.

When I get to work, I have documentation to finish from Friday and planning to do for my sessions today. I am working on setting up a theme/idea book for me to keep track of TMEs to use with specific themes and for specific months. This project has helped me keep going without having the need for creative thought. I will need to get creative to build up my YouTube channel just in case we go back to asynchronous teaching later this fall.

There is too much to be thinking about, and this has been the case since March 2020. My brain is cluttered and jumping around from topic to topic. It is a privilege to be able to focus on music therapy with clients for portions of my day. This job still gives me so much joy. I love being able to bring music and enrichment into the lives of my clients in ways that seem to surprise them. I know it often surprises me. I am using my tools to identify what is going on in my existence right now - hence, the posts of the past two days. I am trying my best to organize what I have to get done and what I am thinking about. I am taking the time that I need to engage in self-care practices such as reading and writing and eating. I am trying to avoid mindless activities, but it is so easy to put a television show on and just stare at the box for a time. I did manage to finish the three tasks that I wanted to get finished yesterday. My laundry is clean and folded AND put away!! The robot vacuum is back up and running now that the laundry is no longer in the hallway. The recycling is in the bin. I have not come up with today's three things, but I think one of them might be unloading and then loading the dishwasher. The dishwasher is one task. I would like to come up with two more...anyway, it is about time to get out the door and start on my way to work - into the unknown. That has been a good song metaphor for the past two years - into the unknown. (If you haven't heard this song, - well, at first I would like to commend you for being able to avoid it - then I would recommend the version by Panic at the Disco. It always energizes me in a way that Idina Menzel's version just doesn't for some reason.) Into the unknown. 

Off I go!