Monday Morning Musings - Who Knows What Will Come Up?

I am a bit overly medicated at the moment, so I have to delay my commute for another hour. I am not accustomed to being late to work, but I do have a dispensation from my principal due to my current medical issues, so I am going to take advantage of that dispensation and not leave until the sun has risen completely. I am hoping that my side effects will be gone by that time so I can drive myself the hour to work safely. We shall see...

I am tired today, but I am ready to get the last month of school for the 21-22 school year going. We have 32 days left (including weekends) until we have two weeks - TWO WEEKS - off for our first summer break. My facility has an extended school year, so we will work four days a week for most of the month of June and then the same schedule for three weeks of July before our last summer break. The 22-23 school year starts up in August, and my school calendar is finally starting to mirror the school district calendar. We will have less 12-hour days and more things like parent-teacher conferences and back to school nights. I am happy with the changes that are going on - at least, with the ones that I know about right now. I am sure there will be some surprises along the way - there always are...

I have three groups to oversee today. I will be acting as therapist for most of one of those groups. I will be acting as observer for the other two. My junior intern is going to start leading session elements today. My senior intern has taken over her full caseload so she will start co-leading with the other intern and learn how to accommodate the skills and styles of another therapist in the session. This is the first time that I have had to double up interns in group sessions, but our client numbers are down by about 40 students due to staffing shortages, so in order to give my interns enough session time, I have had to have them share groups. This is something that we will go through together.

In the meantime, I am still working on navigating my world with a back that hurts all the time and a numb leg. My pain has decreased this past week - I can now sit for longer periods of time without too many spasms. I am still unable to walk for much distance or stand to do things for longer than about a minute, but I can sit better than I could last week at this time. My left leg is numb which adds some other issues that are very much situational. I still can do much of what I have on my caseload, but I cannot walk to get students for individual sessions, so I am not doing that part of my responsibilities. This frustrates me because I love individual sessions more than group sessions. There is something quite fun about working with only one person within a music environment and relationship. I would like to do so much more with individuals than I can do at the moment. Well, more than I was able to do a month ago.

We are getting ready to start another program at my facility. At this point, details about how this will affect music therapy services, but there will be some changes that will have to happen. For one thing, we anticipate that the number of clients served will decrease because music therapy is not part of the educational priorities for the new program. We may have less classrooms to serve. We will definitely have less students per classroom - Yay - which will change how things are done in the music therapy room. I have started dreaming about what I would like to change, add, replace, and adapt with less students and more opportunities. I dream of a music therapy program where I can do therapy that is targeted specifically to social-emotional and communication goals based on client need and not classroom assignment. I would like to do more individual sessions and change how we do group sessions significantly. We will see what we end up with at the end of the program change. This, of course, depends on whether we start this other program. Those of us who run therapy programs and "special" programs have not been part of the conversation right now. No one really knows what will happen with us - it isn't a topic of discussion yet - the entire focus is on the new program, not what will happen to the rest of us. Of course, the rest of us want to know what will happen so we can start planning for the changes that are inevitable.

I have about 40 more minutes before I start on my way to work.

I was able to spend some time relaxing yesterday after church. I spent the afternoon in my bed, feeling a bit guilty about not doing anything, but I was mindful about those feelings and then released them. I felt that reclining was the thing that my body needed, and I think I was right. I forgot to take my medications until very late, so that is one reason that I am still here and will be starting out late. My medications keep me drowsy and a bit slow, so driving is not the best idea. I will be on my way once the sun is up a bit more. I have 35 minutes now.

It is time to wrap this up and to start looking at all of my social media accounts to see what is happening in the world. I have to fill up time and not go into my "getting ready to go" routine since I still have 28 minutes before I will be leaving. So, thank you for reading. Tomorrow will be a TME Tuesday post...