Sentimental Sunday: #28 - From August 2007

Today's randomly selected post to revisit and develop comes to us from the year 2007. Yep, that's right. I've been blogging since the year 2006 here at blogspot and at this site. If you haven't been reading lately, I have decided to revisit old posts on Sundays to see what I was thinking when I was writing over the entire history of this site.

To do this, I am using a random number generator that allows me to add in the number of posts that I have at the moment (3,184) and that will select a number for me. I then go into my archived posts to find the number indicated. There is some addition involved in this process, and I enjoy it, so why not? Today's post number is 28, and you can read the post by clicking here.

Let's jump into my time machine and see what I felt was important to talk about during August of 2007. Please remember that this was only my 28th post, and I still hadn't quite figured out what I wanted to use this space for in my professional life. It took some time to get into a writing habit and even more time to figure out my voice here.

So, post #28 is not really all that interesting to me now, except for the slight glimpse into my work situations - things don't really change all that much when you work with adolescents in group treatment. The clients are different, but the challenges are very much the same no matter who is in the group. Apparently, on August 21, 2007, I had to use a behavior management technique to keep a student safe. I had to help with one this week as well.

I had spent some time engaged in online interaction with other music therapists through both the blog and the music therapy listserv. (Does anyone remember that?? It is what we used before social media became a thing.) I reaffirmed my desire to be a clinician for my entire life in this blog post. I'm glad to know that this desire continues. I still do not want to be anyplace other than the music therapy direct service world.

What would present me tell past me? Well, I would tell past me that we will continue to be clinicians through all of the upcoming issues and challenges. We will still be just as dedicated to the world of music therapy, even though we will not be as much a part of that world in about nine years. We will also continue to be passionate about many of the things that we are passionate about in 2007. This is three years before I find out about the possibility of the Online Conference for Music Therapy, so my interactions with the world of the internet are very limited at this time. In two years, past me, we will become part of the Facebook world and things will change. In three years, we will start planning the first OCMT and will meet therapists from around the world. There are rough years ahead, but you will come out of them to better times.

Thanks for going on this journey to the past with me. My favorite quotation from this particular post is as follows:

I had some wonderful music making moments today as well as the frustrating one that I kinda described. We ribbon danced today before writing rhythmic patterns on our rhythm wheels. Kids were singing, yelling, clapping, laughing, and generally in a good mood during their sessions. I love this job! Where else can you dance, sing, scream, laugh, whisper, stomp, and jiggle - and get paid to do it?

See you later, 2007 me!