Monday Morning - Getting Ready for a Possible Inclement Weather Day???

It is Monday.

I was going to start this post with a title that included the word "exhaustion," but that's really the theme of life at the moment, so I decided not to focus on feeling tired and on getting ready for this week.

This is the busiest week of my year, everyone. It is Online Conference for Music Therapy week, so my life will be taken over by last minute registration questions, trying to keep myself from losing it when other people make demands on my time and my process, and combating the stress that comes from having to do my parts of the conference. It is a difficult time for all of us who run the conference - anyone who tells you that running a conference is easy is seriously lying to you! I get very frustrated by the people who "forget" to register and then complain when they do not get information. I get very frustrated by those who seem to think that rules and deadlines are not meant for them. I tend to get very frustrated by those who do not read the information given to them and who then expect that other people will drop everything and accommodate their last minute needs...

I'm starting to get stressed about this, and it hasn't started yet. Time to do my breathing and get my mantra going - I may need a new OCMT mantra after ten conferences and coming up to the eleventh.

Breathe.

We are looking at the possibility of a winter storm starting tomorrow evening and lasting for about a day and a half. I am hoping for a couple of inclement weather days this week. I will be figuring out what I want to do - I have to decide if I head to work on those days or not. If I do, I get 8 hours to take at a later date which would be good for my sick time tally. If I don't, I get to have that 8 hours this week to get other things done, especially for OCMT. So, I am not exactly sure what I will do on Wednesday, but I am hoping for the option. Nothing is worse than slogging through a whole bunch of snow and slippery roads and having to slip and slide into work the entire way. Nothing. I have had one accident (not on a snow day, but should have been), and one morning sitting in a ditch (on a snow day) in my years of being at work. I am getting old enough that a snow day is something that I like the thought of sitting at home and not even trying to get out. The problem? I have an intern at the moment who needs clinical hours. Fortunately, she is at the start of her clinical interactions, so all she would be missing this week would be leading opening songs. That would make inclement weather days a bit easier to accomplish now than later. February tends to be the month where we get more inclement weather days than any other, so this may be the first of many times where I have to ponder this dilemma. It may not even happen, so I may be thinking about this in vain this morning. Oh well.

I am ready to go into my day of supporting my intern as she takes her first steps into session leadership. Today, she will be leading the opening therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) for two groups. Eventually, she will take over the entire groups, but I always start folks off with just a little bit of session leadership at a time. This seems to work best with transitioning my clients from one therapist to another therapist - a slow transition. Eventually, my current intern will be joined by another intern, and they will share about half of the groups that we currently run.

My schedule is a bit messed up at the moment because we have significantly decreased our census. We have two empty classrooms right now, so my ability to get interns as much as experience leading as possible is complicated by the fact that we have four group times that are not happening. My interns will be co-leading about half of their groups with each other. This hasn't happened this way since I had two interns who started at the same time. My start dates stagger, so my current intern will be doing full sessions before my newer intern will arrive. They will work together on how to co-lead their shared sessions. Neither of them know that yet, but it will work. If we get our two classrooms back, then I will have some space to change things, but I'm not sure that we will be getting those back before the start of the next school year.

Also, my school is trying to start a new program which will impact music therapy by shifting students from current treatment into a different focus. My services will be changing, but no one knows how they will change just yet. We are hoping that things will start at the beginning of this upcoming year, but we are not sure if it will actually happen.

Have I ever mentioned that I am not happy when things are wishy-washy?? (Tongue firmly in my cheek here!)

So, this morning will involve some support for my intern who will be leading the first session elements of her internship. I will lead one group and go see an individual in a classroom. I will spend more time working on my visual aid system - I have a thought about how to progress, thanks to my post last Friday - types of materials with labels and TME use card thingies... that's not really clear, but it makes sense in my head! 

Yesterday, I spent some time with my personal bullet journal and started thinking about my personal bullet journal. I used a coupon from Michaels and took advantage of a "buy one, get one half off" deal and bought two new journals to use here at home. I still have three months left in the journal that I am currently using, but it is time to start setting up my next journal. I typically set up months about three months in advance so I can put things on my calendar. I do not usually need more than those three months in my home journal. I do need more than that for my work journal, but not at home. I have decided that I want to try a theme journal for the next one, and I have chosen my favorite movie franchise as my theme. Do you know what that movie franchise is??? It might help if you know that this journal will start in May which contains my favorite silly movie-related celebration...it might not.

Anyway, I will be figuring out ways to incorporate my theme into my journal pages in the next several weeks as I get going. These are happy thoughts for me - using my planner and making it something that I enjoy working with and in. My next work bullet journal is started and waiting for me to fill out the last page in my current journal. I do very different things in my two planners, and that works for me.

I digress.

I have about 30 minutes before I have to head out into the cold morning to head to work. I am loving the fact that I have a garage right now for my car. I don't have to scrape ice and frost off my car in the early mornings any more! If I have to scrape stuff off my windshield now, it happens in the daylight hours instead of in the early morning. I love that above all other things in this new house. The GARAGE!!

Now it is about 25 minutes before I head out. It is supposed to be 61 degrees F here this afternoon, so I am wearing my lighter pants today. They are a size smaller than I have been able to wear, so that's a very good thing for me. They are not tight, either!! Whoo-hoo for me! Maybe I will be able to start wearing some of my smaller sizes again. That would be really nice, and it is affirming because I am trying to lose some weight. My scale is currently in my garage, so I am not standing on it very often. That might be helping as well. Who knows? I have some letters to mail to friends around the country, and then I will be off to the south to my place of work to do the music therapy. I have to figure out what I will be doing with students after my intern is finished with her part of the session. My session strategizing will become less formal as we start to share time with each other. My intern will be doing more and more each week, so the strategizing will become hers to do. I will only be strategizing for my sessions, and there will be less and less of those to do, especially after about April when my next intern will probably take over the remaining sessions. My role will shift from that of "therapist" to "supervisor" and "who's that lady sitting in the corner of the room taking notes that everyone keeps talking to?" Ah, the changes that happen when you are an internship supervisor...

Happy Monday.