music, therapy, and me

So... There was no post yesterday because I couldn't seem to break out of a slump of self-pity and repetitive thoughts about stuff. I decided that my thoughts needed to stay in my own radar and not be shared with the music therapy world. I am in a better space this morning, so here goes another attempt at writing something. I went to work yesterday without an idea in my mind as to what I was going to do with my clients. This is not an unfamiliar state for me. I often start Mondays without any sort of idea what I am going to do with my clients, but I always come up with something. Sometimes what I come up with works with my students, and sometimes it doesn't. Yesterday worked. I sat in my office yesterday, looking through my options. We did some Orff work two weeks ago when I had a full week of sessions. I didn't want to do those instruments again, mainly because my students complain when I repeat things too often. I also established the idea of word rhythms during those gro...

It is time to get back to work for the next seventeen work days (23 calendar days) that are left before Winter Break. At this time last year, we returned to work to find a COVID outbreak amongst our residents, and we ended up being away from our students for six weeks. This coincided with my father's decline and eventual death and was a very dark period in my life.  I am hoping that this year will be a bit more festive and a bit better for us all. So, seventeen work days between now and the end of the calendar year. These seventeen days will be fraught with emotion for my students. Jealousy and uncertainty become evident between students who do not have stable family lives and those who do. There will be excitement about the upcoming holiday but there will also be a change in traditions for my residents. My day students are at home and have more stability than the residents. It is a difficult time of year for many reasons. When we head back to school tomorrow, we will find out if a...

One of my constant quests is to be more organized in all sorts of ways. I am a bit better about being organized in my music therapy professional life than I am in my personal life, but I am striving to be better. The recent change in my life of moving to place with a dedicated room large enough for my music therapy office and my crafting studio is leading me to rearrange my world significantly. I am trying to think about what I want to be doing as well as how my practices will affect my organization. I also want my organization to affect my practices, so... Lots of thinking going on around here. Yesterday was a day of rest after the angst of Wednesday and the unpacking start of Thursday. I spent most of yesterday watching vapid television and reading books rather than doing anything of import. I did figure out that the spare remote control that I have that doesn't work probably needs to be reprogrammed and then it should work. I ordered some gifts for Christmas for my mom and my si...

I am currently in the "I just want this to be finished" part of my move. I ended up getting about 2/3 of my junk moved over to the house on Wednesday, but that means that there is still 1/3 left. There are some small modular shelving units left over there, one bookshelf, and a whole slew of bath, kitchen, and instrument things that need to be packed up and moved over. Almost everything is portable, but I still have to go over there and get things finished up. I have no motivation to do any of the things that I need to do. I put up most of my crafting storage yesterday during my Thanksgiving. I now have a wall of white modular furniture shelving and my large television. I also have my computer desk set up with my door desktop and the black bookshelves as supports for the desktop. I am starting my zone organization system up. The markers are going on the left side of the storage - the paper is going on the small shoe holders that are under the television. I am going slowly, but...

This post started off very differently this morning, but my post on grief was making me cry, so I decided I needed to change topics to something a bit less maudlin and a bit better for a holiday. So, here it goes. This year is a year of firsts for myself and my family.  We are coming up to the first anniversary of my Dad's ultimately fatal fall. My cat died on Christmas morning. My father passed away two weeks after that, on my mother's birthday. This has been a year of grief and getting used to life without Bella and without Dad. It has not been easy on any of us. Because it is almost time for the first anniversary of my Dad's fall and because I am moving away from the home that I shared with my first ever pet of my own, I am feeling very sentimental and nostalgic. So, for this post, I think I will come up with several songs to help me remember and mourn and celebrate the lives of these two important souls in my life. Some of these will be funny, some will be sad, and othe...

Folks, my stress level is soaring to the heights of tolerance at the moment. I am not doing very well with being calm or organized or ready for anything, but I found that I made a BIG mistake this week, and that has just sent me over the top. Apparently, I have inadvertently booked two moving companies for my move today. I got a phone call on Monday (I think - all the days just blur together at the moment), asking me to confirm information about moving. Now, I answered all sorts of questions and paid my money when I got the invoice, so now I was being told that I had not paid my invoice or completed the information that they needed. I was very confused, so I checked my bank account - yep, the deposit had gone through on the first of the month. The questions being asked were the ones I had already answered, so I said to the guy, "Is there is reason why I am answering these questions again?" He said that there must have been a mess up with the paperwork, and we ended the call. ...

Right now, it is 4:12 am, and I am sitting in my almost empty office, watching James Corden's monologue and writing this blog post. I am bone tired and decided to do some more passive music therapy sessions this week than active ones. I traveled into work yesterday, wondering what I was going to do with my three groups that would require less motion from me but that would also fulfill my mission with my clients which is educational enrichment through engagement and therapeutic programming. My quandary continued through sitting at my desk and trying to get things strategized. I started my planning with thinking about getting centers running, but the center ideas that I had needed some work on my part, and my brain is not working well right now. So, I scrapped that idea for later. I wrote that idea down, but I abandoned it for this week. I was almost in tears when I remembered something that I had already put together that was ready to go! Do you remember in August when I stated tha...