music, therapy, and me

I just remembered that I have a small room carpet in the back of my car that needs to be removed from said car to be cleaned and so I can stuff my car full of groceries and, hopefully, some bookshelves or chairs for my home as I go out and about. I think I will dump the carpet in the garage for steam cleaning and park in my driveway for a bit until it dries and is ready to head back to my new (old) office space. I haven't had a carpet in that space before, but I am looking forward to getting it. If the rug doesn't clean up the way I think it will, I will just dump it into a local dumpster and be done with it. That thought, though, just popped into my head as I was debating whether I should order a big breakfast from a local restaurant before going to get my grocery order. Then, I remembered the rug. Over the past day, I managed to spend money on food and medications as well as on a bunch of poly storage folders for my communication binder system. I need to print those pages out...

This has been an interesting month. I have run the gamut of emotion in the past 30 days, and it is wearing on me. It has also been full of affirmations from unexpected places, opportunities to think differently than before, and creative surges. It often happens this way in my life - the most challenging things spur on the best things. I have been spending quite a bit of time on TikTok lately. It fills the space. I enjoy watching cats do catty things and I get easily sucked in. I am working on decreasing my access, but I really enjoy watching. My page has been full of predictions lately. You know the ones - "I didn't put any labels on this, so if you are seeing it, it is meant for you." They are all promising prosperity. Should I buy a lottery ticket? The point of this particular post is to realize (for myself) that there is often good that comes from going through the not so happy parts of life. This realization, which happens every year about this time, helps me to remem...

I just have time for a very short post today, but there have been many things that I have thought about wanting to write about but those ideas slip through my head when it is actually time to write. I need to write them down - that is the best way for me to remember things that I want to remember... ANYWAY... The reason that I have a short amount of time is that I wrote a long email to a friend of mine. She has lost her husband quite suddenly and is trying to figure out how to be a single parent. We found out yesterday that my sister's best friend from elementary school had a husband pass away. This summer has been difficult for friends' husbands. I am finding that my own grief gets restarted when others experience their own losses. I have to remember that my grief is different from theirs, but I often find myself back in the throes of my own grief when I am thinking about children losing their fathers. I lost mine when I was 50, but Dad's absence still affects me. I am so ...

We have two more days with kids and then one day without students to go until the end of this Extended School Year session. I am ready for a week and a half of not going to work. The BCBA at work is cranky that I get so many days off, but he doesn't realize that he gets paid for the 30 days that I get off that he doesn't. If I worked those days, then I would get significantly more money than I do now. I prefer the time off, to be frank. This year, I wish I had an option to take more time off than I can, but that's the life of a 12 month school employee. We are still waiting for our new contracts, but at least the negotiation team has finished the process of negotiating. Contracts should be coming soon. Once that arrives, I will be able to budget for the next year. Oh, my goodness. We have more sessions ahead of us than behind us at this time. My schedule will change in August. We have five days to spread out 20 group sessions rather than the four days we have now. My schedu...

There are times when I go in search of creativity. There are times when creative thoughts spurt out of my body in ways that are unbelievable. There are times when creativity has to be forced. I am somewhere in a strange middle type situation at the moment. Lots of ideas, but little to no push to complete anything. At the moment, my work attention is focused on getting ready for the new year as well as thinking about moving to my old office space. Even through all of the things taking up my attention these days, I am still working on music and ideas and finding some dregs of creativity in my existence. One of the things that I do in my life is write songs based on random things. I might write a song about the floating plastic bag that danced around my backyard last Friday. I also have a collection of advertisement pictures from the 80's and beyond. I pulled pictures out of magazines, cut around them, and then glued them onto white paper. I keep my images book for inspiration. There ...

As I am getting ready for work this morning, I am thinking about the fact that there are five days left until my next break. We work on Friday this week because of how the summer session and inservice days worked out. That is a no-contact day meaning that kids will not be present. I have an intern who needs her hours and then will be graduating and another one that could use an entire day of work time to get assignments done. I am hoping to be moving into a small office in my music therapy room. It is my old office, and I am looking forward to getting my professional space back. As much as I enjoy being around my interns, I really like having a place where I can do my own thing. I don't know if things will be moved out by Friday, but I will prepare for that move regardless. I have two cabinets that will make the move across the room with me. That will give my interns more space and less clutter to have to deal with, a place of privacy where they can talk about me, and a place where...

It is Friday, and this is a late post because I FINALLY GOT SOME SLEEP! I fell asleep around 7:30 last night and slept until 3am, got up and used the bathroom, watched some videos until 5 and then flipped over and slept again until 7:45. I have a little less than an hour to get ready for an eye examination and blog and all that. I am still exhausted, but at least I was able to sleep for an extended amount of time. Having the occasional night where I do not get much sleep is not completely unusual for me, but two nights in a row is VERY unusual. I blame my depression (appears that I do this every summer with high temperatures and soggy air) and my current emotional state for all of this. Yesterday, I had a couple of wins. I was able to change a system where I really was getting screwed over as well as acknowledgement of a service delivery system that I organized for our new vocational program. I'm not sure that anyone other than the two of us who discussed this know that it is my sy...

There is something challenging about being awake after only four hours of sleep for the second day in a row that just makes me crabby. I have already been up for four hours, and it is only 3:37 am right now. I still have two and a half hours before I absolutely have to head out to work, and I have already written a private post to this blog. That one will not be published. This one will. I am exhausted. I am currently in a depressive state which is complicated by the high heat in my area of the world and exacerbated by my recent bout of COVID. I am tired. I am crabby. I am magnifying small things into huge things and devoting too much of my attention to these small things. I know all these things. Being conscious of these things helps me to move forward and through these feelings and emotions and actions. I know that the actions of others have NOTHING to do with me, but I tend to take their actions personally. I am stepping up my mantras and my reality checks. I have six more work days...

It is Tuesday again. I am late, after going to bed at an earlier time than in the recent past, but it was still VERY difficult to wake up. Tonight will be a later night than yesterday since I have a webinar to offer on the topic that I am discussing here today - finding ideas and making them into therapeutic music experiences. The most interesting thing about this particular topic is that it is something that is eluding me at the moment - well, sorta. I am feeling the stirring of creativity starting up, but the thought of sitting down to write out a therapeutic music experience is daunting to me. I am improvising to what my interns are singing in my dark little closet, so I know that music is still reachable, but writing down ideas is too much work. I love being a music therapist. I really do, but I am tired of it right now...and, we are getting ready to head into the hottest week of our summer so far. Enough of this pity party for one. I do enjoy figuring out how to take an idea and t...

It is amazing how things revolve and how Mondays inevitably return, week after week, month after month. My Mondays are not (currently) full of groups, even though that would be the way I would prefer it - full Mondays and emptier Fridays, so I am preparing myself for supervision, consultation, an individual session, and an in-class relaxation session. We've had a definite COVID exposure in our department, so we will be looking for symptoms and monitoring ourselves as well as monitoring others. We still wear our masks around each other, but we had relaxed a bit. Then, I exposed everyone. Now we have another exposure in our department. My school's policy is that if you are asymptomatic, you can work with your mask on. Nothing has really changed all that much for us. I am still testing positive on my at-home kits, but most of my issues at the moment are my typical asthma symptoms so I am not sure if they are COVID symptoms or asthma situations. So, I am continuing my social distan...

I had a good day yesterday. I did two loads of laundry (one was bedding), went grocery shopping, wrote a bunch of ideas down for my new project, and watched lots of television. I am currently enjoying some British quiz shows and doughnuts. I have been craving doughnuts lately, so this was my major impulse buy yesterday when I went to the grocery store and actually went into the store. That's one of the problems with going into the store - the doughnuts are right there. (Now, I am writing doughnuts because that's what's on the package of the box that I bought. Usually, I would just order so the temptation is not as strong, but I felt that I needed to go out and be people-adjacent (masked and everything safe), so off I went! It was raining early in the morning (my favorite time to go grocery shopping), and I set out. It continued to rain until I had brought in the trash cans and unloaded the groceries and then it cleared up and got HOT! I remained in my home for the rest of t...

Oo-ee. Yesterday was a day for the rollercoaster that represents my emotional state! I am going to blame the BEAUTIFUL full moon that I got to watch set during my commute, but, to be completely honest, this has been coming for quite some time. It has been pretty evident in my blog posts lately, and I finally figured out how to fix some of the issues with my work place, so I did it! I was steeping in a stew of jealousy and boredom and feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome and frustration and difficulty breathing. Basically, I was letting my emotional mind run the show yesterday. I don't like it when I sink into my emotional depths, so I decided to get out the stew and do something about how I was feeling. Now, if you have read my blog before, you probably know most of what is in the next paragraph. Feel free to completely skip it if you want to get to the meat of this post. New to this blog? Here is some background about me... I'm a music therapist with 29.5 years of prof...

Okay, I admit it. I am a bit obsessed with getting into a routine on how to do things - in both my personal and professional lives. It is much easier for me to make and use routines at work than it is at home which is strange since at home there is only me to coordinate and lead through routines. At work, it is co-workers, clients, and interns who are part of the routine. Summer sessions are also a bit more difficult than the regular school year because we work four days and then I get three days off in a row. It is amazing how quickly you can get accustomed to longer stretches of time off. I enjoy three days in a row that include nothing but being on my own at home. It makes getting up early on work days more difficult than it is in the regular school year when I only have one day where I do not work. This past week has been rough. I know that I always feel this way when summer temperatures and humidity arrives. I am tired - not to the bone, but through the lungs. I am taking another ...

We have hit the mid-point of this week. Today has six groups and no individual sessions. The forecast is for a bit better temperatures for my breathing but the humidity levels are still very high for my clogged lungs. My music therapy room is very hot - maintenance just keeps telling me that there is NOTHING that they can do - I do not agree with that and will continue to request less heat in the music therapy room. There has to be something that can be done to make the room more tolerable. Students are just not motivated to do anything, and I don't blame them. I'm not able to think or create or function in the heat, much less breathe in the humid air. I may have to do some sort of formal complaint with some health stuff brought in before this becomes a priority for anyone other than me. I don't think I'm asking much, but having the air coming out of the vents be the exact same temperature as the air going into the vents seems to indicate that THINGS ARE NOT WORKING! An...

It is TME Tuesday, and, as predicted, I am less happy about being up and getting ready to go. I have been tied to my asthma medication in order to not be coughing all the time and wheezing, so there are things that could be better, but there are things that could be worse, of course! Today's focus is my typical Tuesday focus - therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). There are many ways to come up with ideas, but I find that most of mine either start with a goal or with an object of some sort. Let's focus on how I start with an object and then figure out things I can do with clients and the object. This requires some post-it notes or my Ideas book, a PENCIL, an eraser, and an object. I usually start with brainstorming some sensory information. What can I see? What can I feel? What can I hear? How do I move with or to use the object? What is the payoff for using the object? Other questions come about as I go through this process. I start to fill out my brainstorming post-its or pag...

It is Monday, and I managed to wake up at 4am, and I am starting to get ready for returning to work. I am still testing positive on my COVID tests, but my work doesn't care about that at all. In fact, I am not even required to have anything negative. I will wear a mask until I no longer test positive on the at-home tests. To be honest, I will continue to wear a mask until the virus is no longer happening, so I will continue to be in the mask longer than anyone else at my facility. My asthma is back, so breathing is complicated at the best of times. Add in thoughts about COVID and this virus being more prevalent in my environment now, I don't think I will unmask for a very long time when I am around clients. I am glad that I have had the virus now - that lessens the guilt about bringing it into the facility - that's where I got it because I was not unmasked anyplace other than at work - with my interns and with other staff members. I will be leaving in about an hour so I can...

I take a cue from some of the bullet journal bloggers and select a word for each new year. I have two of them - one that I select in December for my personal calendar year and one in August for the school year. This year's calendar year word is Explore. This school year word is Transform. I do this because it gives a focus, a centering point, and an idea of how to move forward - a way to identify what is important to me at the moment. I am exploring ideas, society, places, and my own experiences this year. In December and January 2022, I selected the following categories - ideas, health, places, connection, and identity to steer my thoughts about this word of the year and to help me with what I wanted to do to enrich my life in 2022. From these areas, I have developed some quests towards things that I want to do and learn about and experience. Some of these tasks are just that - tasks. I can get them finished in one step - for example, renewing my passport. Others are more complex....

My brain is reaching post-COVID stage, and I am starting to think logically again (at least, I feel like I am being logical...), so I am thinking about things that are not entirely important but that make a difference in my life. Yesterday's post on systems was about classroom systems that my sister (Hi, KB!) uses in her second grade class, and included some talk about centers. Now, centers are one of my favorite ways to check for independence and generalization of skills for my clients, but they are hard to run in my music therapy room - mainly because of constant staff turnover and the need to constantly train staff members on how to interact and how to stay out of what clients are doing! **We all want to help, but we don't all realize that helping too much hinders people rather than actually helping them.** I want my students to explore and figure out answers without interference from well-meaning staff members who just don't get how we all learn. Anyway... Lately, I hav...