music, therapy, and me

Twenty-nine years ago, on this date, I was packing up my car and driving away from Phoenix, Arizona. I had graduated from my internship the day before, and it was time to start being a music therapist. I had no plans except to head to the place that I wanted to be more than any place else - home. This time, of course, was before the internet was a common thing. There were no handy emails with job listings coming to an email address each morning. Music therapy positions were not advertised in many places, so finding a music therapy job was really limited in various areas. I had no idea if I would find anything to do in my geographical location, and my parents needed me to work. I had to work so I could have a car and to contribute to the bills that I generated while I was at home. It took me two months and a week to find and start a job, and that was an uncomfortable span of time in my life. Once I found a job, I was able to contribute money towards household expenses and was able to bu...

My latest system revamp, my visual aid system, has stalled over the past several weeks. One of those weeks was a break from work, so I get some credit for not working during that week. One of the other weeks, I was alone in the music therapy clinic - my intern was sick, so I had to do my ENTIRE job and had less time to sit and move visuals around. This week, I have wrenched my back and cannot pick things up. I know, excuses, excuses, excuses. It is time to get back into this quest - the quest to have my visual aids arranged a bit more than they have ever been before!! I anticipate that I will be spending more time in my office starting next week, so it is time to plan the next steps in my journey to better organization. First, though, it is important to see what I have already accomplished. I have filled up the boxes with visual aids that used to be in my cabinet. I am slowly finding card sets and am putting them in the card boxes with labels! I have decided how I am storing materials ...

I had a big win at work yesterday, and I am engaged in quite a bit of gloating about it! Let me explain... We have to engage in physical behavior management techniques every so often to maintain safety of our clients. These techniques involve placing clients in specific holds and assisting them when their behaviors of concern become severely aggressive in nature and are causing significant harm to themselves or to others. We are trained and engage in refreshers every three months.  We started this form of behavior management 13 years ago. During our initial training, there was one movement that I could not complete safely. This was due to a complex medical diagnosis that I got when I was 16 years old and involves severe vertigo and falling. It is the only movement (out of seventy-some) that I am not able to do, so I do not use that assist...ever. The day before break, we had to go through a certification test where we had to demonstrate all of the skills. When we came to that one m...

Today is the day where I have the most groups of the week. In a recent development, I no longer have an individual session on Wednesday - not because of anything other than classroom reassignments - so Wednesday is my group day. We have six groups and a meeting on the schedule. Intern 34 will be in training for most of the day, and Intern 33 is getting more and more independent as I am moving myself farther and farther from the group area to do "work" while clients are engaging in music therapy. I will be running three groups today, and yesterday was not a successful day for any of the groups that we saw, so I want to do other things today. Nothing worked yesterday. My students weren't interested in any of the things that I had selected. My intern's students weren't interested in any of the things that she presented. No one was interested in anything - and, not just in music therapy. It was rough, and it was one of those days where you could have had the most famo...

I am bored with the therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that I have in my repertoire, and I am yearning to be writing new songs. It just isn't happening much at all. I haven't really "written" anything that I have deemed worth fixing into permanence for a long time. I am not really sure why I have this feeling, but I do. Yesterday, my intern sang three new songs with our clients. One of the things that I require of my interns is writing at least 25 original songs for use in TMEs with our clients. These songs don't have to be great at all, but they do have to be written because that skill is something that comes in handy when you have an unusual goal or topic to share with a particular client. I had a conversation with a former intern who is now working with older adults. During the conversation, #31 shared that how music was used with older adults is different from how music was used in my program. There is more of a focus on repertoire with older adults. With my...

It is time to go back to work after a week off for Spring Break. I am nervous about going back - I always am when I have a new intern starting. I have been up since a little before 3am, and I am starting to feel the "get there early" twinges of anxiety starting to rear their ugly heads. It is WAY too early for that, but I still am feeling those twinges. It has been a long time since I have had two interns at the same time - about a year now. I do this every so often when I need to take a break from being supervisor and to simply be therapist. I had offered a position to someone last year who would have filled up my time, but that person declined the offer, so I left it open. The second time frame where I could have had an intern was a time that I really needed to be therapist again, so I did not fill up the available spot. This is one of the tricks that I have to keep myself from burning out - taking time away from supervision in order to be therapist again. I have lots of in...

It is time to start getting back into a work frame of mind. I have been away from my job for the past week while on Spring Break. Since I haven't been at work, I have tried to embrace the idea of not thinking too much about the things that happen as part of my job, but it is time to start getting my focus back. I go back to my full time job on Monday, so I need to start thinking about what is coming up this week at work. On Monday morning, my next intern will arrive to start his internship. I am feeling my regular jitters about all of this - every time I accept an intern, every time an intern is getting ready to start, and every time I am sitting in the lobby waiting for that intern to arrive, I have jitters. You would think that it would become a bit less of a deal after 33 of these folks, but it is still part of my process. As I prepare for another new intern, there are things that I have to get coordinated. One of the things that I need to do is to establish a shared drive on Go...