music, therapy, and me

It is Sunday again. Today's randomly selected post comes to us from May 22, 2015 - the day after my birthday - and is all about music-themed gifts. Do you ever get things that are musical because you are a music therapist? I don't get them very often, so when music-themed gifts arrive for various celebrations, they make an impact. On this birthday, I found a music and cat themed necklace in my gifts. It is still one of my favorite pieces of jewelry because it combined things that I love into one representation. My jewelry is still in a box somewhere - I need to find it and unpack all that stuff so I can wear it again. (Not at work, but when I am not at work... you get it!) Most of the things that I own that are music-themed are things that I have found for myself. Most of the things that I own that are music instruments are from my family members. Most of the music that I own is something that I purchased, but some of it was gifted to me. It is interesting how things arrive in ...

Welcome to the malaise of my mind... I tried my best to start doing some blogging in the afternoons, but, as you can see, this hasn't happened this week. I am not going to give up, though. I think that I will enjoy blogging in the afternoon, once it becomes a habit. I will do better...that's the plan...doing better. This has been a week of pain, exhaustion, and revelations that have challenged my ways of thinking about myself and what I want to be doing. I looked up my retirement eligibility date this week on our Public Employees' Retirement System website and found out that it is June 1, 2026. This has shaken my world a bit because it is a definite date now - not just a thought. I may not retire at that point, but I might retire in 2026 at the end of the contract year, or I might go another year. I'm not sure at this point what my future will hold, but that's okay. That's also a bit of why I was dithering about what I want to do in my future. Here's what I ...

Just in case you missed yesterday's post, I have decided to try changing up my morning routine. As a result of lots of stuff going on, I am allowing myself to sleep later in the mornings. I am now going to try writing this blog in the afternoons. Today is the first day that I have actually been able to do this, so let's see how things go. Today is Tuesday, which is usually the day that I write about therapeutic music experiences or TMEs. This is the terminology that I like best to refer to what I do with my clients in their sessions - others call these same things modules, or interventions, or applications, or even the outdated term, activities. I just like the terminology of therapeutic music experiences, so that's what I call my ideas. More information is called for here. I enjoy writing songs, finding new ways for my clients to experience music, and challenging the same clients to develop their own relationships with music outside of our sessions. I write music for all s...

I am so sorry - in advance - for deviating from my usual posts. If you know, I am having a bit of a struggle with exhaustion. My brain is not waking up easily. I think this is medication side effects, but I am not used to it and it is frustrating. I am having to rely on audible alarms to wake up which is not my typical situation. I hate being startled awake by a sound - any sound, so I am waking before that sound goes off, but I still have that tension present every morning. I am having to use the alarms because I am sleeping through my light, but only sometimes. I am not consistently waking up when the light clicks on - that time is at 3:50am, if you are interested. I am struggling to come up with ideas for this blog at the moment. I am not sure what to write about and how to make things work for me. This is something that has been happening more often lately, and I am wondering if I should just take a break from writing for a bit. I hate doing that because I find that this practice i...

It is Sentimental Sunday, and my brain is not very cooperative, but that is the nice thing about Sentimental Sundays - I get to review my past posts to see what past me was writing about. Today's post comes from 1/25/2021 and is all about my upstairs neighbors and the incident that drove me (finally) into homeownership! January 2021 was a rough time for my family. My father died on my mother's birthday early in the month. We had to navigate life and grief and COVID and new family situations. It was not the easiest of times, but my family was surviving. I was in my apartment, missing my cat who died two weeks before my father, and trying to grieve whilst away from all that I wanted to be near. To add to all the grieving and changes in my family life, my upstairs neighbors were becoming a problem. Here are the details . I don't know much about them, but I do know that they became very much a problem during this time. In fact, this was the last straw for me, and I started loo...

I haven't written since Wednesday this week. I seem to be falling into a pattern of not writing as much, but I want to write more. I'm just not doing it. I have no reason other than just not feeling like writing in the mornings lately. There's not much going on that is different from other seasons in my life, but writing still just feels like too much right now. I am trying really hard to figure some things out. I am tired. My body is doing strange things - gotta love perimenopause. I feel like I am stagnating yet again. I have lots of ideas, but absolutely no impetus to follow through on those ideas. Does anyone else have this existence? Okay. That's enough self-pity. Time to get started with something more productive. I spent some time on Tuesday laminating things for music therapy. I have been spending lots of time at work making things for other people, so it was nice to have some time to just sit and laminate things for my use rather than giving things away. I have...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a bit about wanting to remember self-care when I was feeling overwhelmed. I sat down with a post-it note and put some ideas of what to do in that specific emotional set. Yesterday, I took that information and made it into an index card reminder. Here it is... The stickers are from Audrey Okaya - you can find her on Instagram - @audreyokaya if you are interested in purchasing some of these stickers. (Please note that I do not get any financial benefit from using anyone's materials - I just wanted you to know whose work contributed to this project. The colorful illustrations are hers. The black and white line drawings are mine.) With these stickers, I was able to make a collage of self-care themes. One of the things that I wanted to focus on with this reminder card is that self-care does not mean going somewhere, but it can. There are many things that help me when I am overwhelmed with things happening in the world that do not cost me anything but a bit...

If you have been reading this blog for a while now, you know that I am a music therapist who struggles with things off and on. These things are often personal, but there are professional struggles as well. Let's talk about one of those professional struggles that happens to me occasionally on this day. I do not practice music. It is rare for me to pick up an instrument and just play music these days. I spend lots of time playing my guitar and other instruments during my work week, so when I get home, I am not as likely to pick up an instrument and just play. That is going to change because I finally did something that I promised I would do back in 2020 when I broke two fingertips in a work situation - I have bought a new guitar for myself. Now, before you get too excited, know that I bought this guitar from Amazon and have not played it yet. It arrives today, and I am looking forward to getting to know this instrument. Tangent - Do you name your instruments? I don't, but I know...

Today's past post comes to us from March 20, 2017 . Post #1478 was the second post in a series. I am often surprised by things that I have written - this is one of those things. I do not remember these posts, but they challenge my way of thinking at the moment - this is a good thing, and it amazes me that these thoughts were my thoughts! This post happened after my attendance at a super regional conference in Colorado. It was a good conference - one where I had the opportunity to share my interests with others in ways that I find most relevant to me - we created some art, we watched videos, we talked about burnout, we talked about research in clinical practice. It was a good conference for me, and one of the last ones that I attended in person - I think there was one more regional conference in 2018 that I attended because it was at home. I was able to save on hotel fees while getting some time with my parents and siblings. I came home to write this series of posts. For some reaso...

Here is the next chapter in the Persephone story. Let me know what you think... CHAPTER THREE “See you on Wednesday,” the teaching assistant in Clinical Musicianship closed the class session and started packing instruments into the cases. Persephone followed suit, placing her keyboard interface into its case, and packing it into her carry sack. She and her cohort, comprised of twenty-nine other first year music therapy students, had moved from instrument to instrument playing songs projected on the holoscreens. The repertoire was varied and all from the turn of the century. There were country songs, rock ballads, rap patterns to learn, and all sorts of different artists to experience. Persephone’s favorite song so far was one by an artist called “3 Doors Down.” The song was called Kryptonite , and it felt a bit familiar to her. Persephone was ready to be heading back to her living space. She had spent the entire day surrounded by people and it was necessary that she have some time ...

I took yesterday off to get some breathing treatments going and some relief from the pollen that has taken over my existence. Today, though, I have to get going to work. The day has already started out better than yesterday did. When my alarm went off, I was able to get up, and I haven't coughed much at all. I will take my nebulizer to work and do a treatment when I arrive. I can't do a treatment before that because it makes me shaky. It is better to wait than to drive under the influence of this drug. So, breathing treatments have to wait for later this morning. I can do another treatment when I get home and then I will be ready to sleep. We will play Instrument JINGO today. I had originally planned on doing a brass demonstration, but my breathing just hasn't cooperated, so I remembered JINGO and prepared that instead. It fits the theme of the second week of the month, so JINGO it is. (By the way, my theme for this week is "instrument information.") Some of my gr...

It is Tuesday. I have decided to use the last bit of my sick time to do some breathing treatments because the Bradford Pear trees are in full bloom and have wreaked havoc on my breathing and my sleeping patterns. I will start my steroid inhaler and my nebulizer treatments to break my lungs open and get some rest. I woke up yesterday in high stress mode - I was exhausted and could not figure out what I was going to do with my students. It was a problem for me, but once I got to work, I was able to figure out a strategy that allowed me to have little energy expended from me and lots of payoff for my students, so the day went pretty well. Today, though, I can't catch my breath, so my breathing has to be my focus. I just took my steroid inhaler and will be doing the nebulizer treatment in about an hour. All medication has side effects and one of mine with the nebulizer is being shaky. The steroid tends to give me headaches. I prefer to be home when I am starting up the full regimen aga...

Today's sentimental post comes to us from July 25, 2019 . It is on a topic that makes up the cornerstone of my organizational system - bullet journaling. If you are interested in reading this particular post, here's the link .  I am currently starting the process of migrating into a new bullet journal, so this random selection is interesting to me. It is interesting that this came up (I use a random number generator, so I didn't actually select this post, it was selected for me) this week. I sat down on Friday and selected my next book from the stash of blank books that I have available at all times. So, when this was the post that my generator selected, it seemed to be a good time to review the reasons why I do what I do... I have always had a planner of some sort. My aunts and uncles gave me planning systems from the time I entered high school until I graduated. After that, I used my own calendars to keep track of assignments, tasks, appointments, etc. I use this planner ...