A 12-Hour Day

I am mentally preparing myself for today's adventures. First of all, I have to spend some of my personal time because I have to leave for my second job. For some reason, my administrator has decided that I cannot use an option offered to many others at the facility. Tonight is parent/teacher conferences which means that I will sit in my room waiting for someone - ANYONE - to show up to talk to the music therapist. Of course, most of the parents of my students do not know that I even exist. They never have. I have been invited to about 7 conferences over the past 26 years of employment at the facility, so I feel like these days are wasted opportunities...AND I get punished for having to leave - even though there is NOTHING for me to do!

I am going to take some extra time this morning since I will be penalized for the time that I am having to leave. There is no reason to get there early when I will not get credit for being there. I am not really happy about this situation - can you tell?? What gets me is that other people are taking all sorts of "comp time," but I am not able to do so.

I hate these days.

Just knowing that this is a 12-hour day makes my blood pressure spike and makes me very crabby. Add into it six groups and a dyad session, and I am just primed for a tantrum. I always am.

On a happier note, I went to a pre-retirement seminar last evening. I will be eligible to retire from my current job in four years. I am hoping to move from this position into something a bit less taxing on my body. I now know what I need to do in order to get to that point. That is a happy thought - retiring for a bit.

I am starting to think about my next iteration as a music therapist. I would like to turn my ideas and energy towards my own business, but I need to be better at marketing myself and getting the word out there that I exist. If I can make this work, then I can just work from home and make things. If I can't, then I will need another job to help me make ends meet and to get my mortgage and other bills covered. My sister wants me to move back home to CA, but we will see if I can afford it all. The benefit to moving back to CA is the opportunity to do music therapy contracting - it seems to be booming right now. I hope it still is in five years!! 

I earned $4.02 this month on my Teachers Pay Teachers files. Thank you to whomever buys my files out there. I try to keep them low-cost to help out those who do not make much money. You can join Teacher Pay Teachers for free, and there are TONS of free resources that can enhance music therapy sessions for children and older adults. I also share lots of my internship program documents for use by others on the site. I am going to make my site a bit more of a priority this upcoming year. I found that I lost my original files for my task boxes, so I am working on making them again - better the second time around! I have a Boomwhacker task almost ready to post to my site. I'm pretty proud of it, to say the least!! I am working on lots of tasks and files, so I will be putting those together pretty soon - when I get a chance to sit and work.

That's really the thing, isn't it? Wanting more time. I always want more time. I would have lots of time if I didn't have to do anything as pesky as work. Guess I should be buying more lottery tickets (especially since my current number of tickets is zero!). If I had more money, I could retire now and then figure out what to do when I became very bored with my own company all the time! Oh well, that's just a hazy dream that will never come true. I will never be completely independently wealthy, no matter what happens. I chose the wrong profession for being rich and famous! So, I will settle for comfortable and tired...so very tired!

See you tomorrow...