music, therapy, and me

Okay. This is going to be a strange blog post because I am feeling pretty fragile and not at all happy about things going on in my life. I find that writing about things like this helps me to navigate those feelings and figure out ways to move forward. My Dad used to be the person who helped with that more than anyone else, and his counsel is something I really miss at times like this. So, I am sitting here, waiting for the plumber to call me (30-45 minutes before they arrive) to fix a leaky faucet, and trying to keep myself together. I got the results of my allergy testing yesterday. It showed that I was only allergic to one thing that they tested for - a mold that grows on indoor plants. I don't have any indoor plants. I am not allergic to anything else - according to this test. This doesn't answer the main question in my life right now - why can't I breathe?? At least I can consider getting some kitties now - my blood did not respond to cat dander even though my eyes swe...

I try really hard NOT to get angry about things. I am surrounded by clients who live in anger for all sorts of reasons, and I have rarely found that responding to their anger with my own to be productive. So, I do lots of anger stuffing during the course of my work. At the moment, though, I am angry. Not at clients, but at the administration of my facility that has ignored my requests for things like a scent policy and WORKING AIR CONDITIONING in my music therapy room. I have been asking for both of these things to happen for years and years. Yesterday, I sent a polite and firm email refusing to work in the music therapy room until there was some sort of air circulation and temperature management in the room. I am currently under doctor's orders to stay in the air conditioning due to the illness that I have had since May 20th. My doctor wanted me to stay home and not work because of my illness, but I have a new intern. This is not the first time I have been sick since starting to a...

Today is day 38 of this particular round of illness. I am tired of coughing. I am tired of wheezing. I am just plain old tired. I am thankful that I am now working with a doctor who specializes in things like this and who have given me direction on when to call and for what. It is helpful to have more than medication thrown at me - though, there were certainly some new medications started on Saturday morning. There were also some medications taken away - which was nice. I prefer it when things are shifted rather than just added on... I also have an order that I have to be in an air conditioned environment for my breathing. My room has not had a functioning air conditioner for a couple of years now. For some reason, the maintenance department feels that my air conditioning system "cannot be fixed" and then uses that as an excuse not to fix it. All other air conditioning systems are fixed pretty quickly, but not mine. It will be interesting to see what happens since my doctor h...

I have been sick since my birthday, almost a month ago now, and this has directly affected my job performance in the last couple of weeks. I am having trouble breathing and am coughing most of the time. I am on so many medications that I cannot keep going with the schedule - some are every six hours, others are every eight hours, and, then there are the four hour meds. There isn't much time when I am not medicating in some way. Since all of this is going on, I fear I haven't been the best example of a music therapist for my newest intern.  Now, I am trying my best to be all the things that I want to do, but I have let lots of the administrative duties go because I am just exhausted, hot, sicker than sick, and uninterested in doing all sorts of things that responsible music therapists do as part of their jobs. These are not things that my intern is doing yet, so the intern has no idea how much I am slacking off. I am paying for those choices now, but I will get caught up eventua...

#36 has finished training and will be in music therapy for the rest of her time at the facility. This will be #36's first full week in the music therapy room, and this week will be full of teaching names and introducing clients to #36. We are going to be exploring our country of the month - Sweden - this week, so there will be lots of video watching and opportunities to talk about cultures. This introduction time is always interesting. Students think that I am leaving because I am introducing them to someone new. Others have been through the routine, so they are not as responsive to a new person in our environment. This week is for observation and getting familiar with our routine. My internship program is set up to provide lots of observation time during the first month of an intern's time with us. I want interns to feel like they have a good idea what we do before they start doing what we do. By the end of this month, #36 will be starting the process of taking over some of th...

Ah. It is Sunday again, which means that I go into my post archives and focus my attention on past me to see what lessons I have learned from past me... Today's post is #2576 . This post was written on November 28, 2020 and was two days before my Dad's last hospital visit and his death six weeks later. I was finishing up my Thanksgiving break and was bemoaning (a bit) my lack of organization and desire to clean my environment - common theme on this blog - I was also advertising my sing about songs  - something I do on an occasional basis.  Poor past me - there were lots of changes coming for her. Lots of things that we have to figure out very quickly in the next six weeks - lots of things that change because Dad will be gone soon. Even two and a half years later, the emotions are always there. Reading through all of these older posts help me identify trends in my current life that are ongoing. The theme of physical decluttering is one that always comes up in this blog - it is...

One of the things that I tend to do during my three day weekends is wander around my living place and explore stuff. Now, you might think that I would do that all the time, but I don't. It is not uncommon for rooms to go unvisited in my home for several days in a row, but I try to go into all the rooms at least once per week. During the summer, I tend to wander around a bit more. Now, this is not a new behavior for me - even when I lived in an apartment, there would be weeks where I wouldn't go into one of the bathrooms and the craft room. I visit the rooms more often now in my house than I did in my apartment - and, I have more rooms to visit now. So, anyway, I have spent a little bit of time in my library room. This is one of the rooms that needs work - well, all of them need work. I have about seven boxes in there that need to be unpacked. I need to get a bedframe for the bed in that room. I have an idea for a daybed setup in there, but I need to find a cheap frame to get st...

This was a very long week, for many different reasons, and I am not in the mood to dwell on all that, so let's focus on something new... Today, I have to record a video for the World Congress of Music Therapy. I also have to make a QR code for the presentation so folks can access the information that I've compiled for those who purchase video access to the World Congress. I tried to make the recording on Wednesday, but I coughed through it all making the talking part very difficult to do. Let's hope I do better today. This is my first summer Friday which is a happy thought. During the summers, we have three day weekends and this is the first of seven. I get so spoiled during the summer time with lots of time by myself. At one time, I tried to get a four ten-hour day schedule going but the school district refused to allow that change. I was disappointed at the time, but it seems that school districts are starting to think about those types of schedules these days, so I might...

I am not feeling well. My "unspecified upper respiratory infection with asthma exacerbation" is back. So far, the first three weeks of my new year are not going well. I am going to have to go back to the doctor because my family members will nag if I don't - and, rightfully so as medical attention is the only way to get out of this particular brand of ick. I woke up this morning, very early, with the nasty taste in my mouth again. So, I am doing a breathing treatment and will go to the doctor after work. Yep, I still have to go to work. Right now, I am not running a temperature, but I am sure that will change once I get going. So much fun! So, what do you do with clients on days when you are not contagious but are not feeling well?  Boy, do I have experience with these types of sessions!! I have the luxury of working in a facility where I stay put in my room and students come to me for music therapy sessions. I know that not every music therapist has a place or the luxury...

Today is the day that my next intern starts. I am not ready. I thought I would be in a better place than this, but being sick the last week of school really threw my schedule off. I neglected to tell HR that the intern was coming - I did arrange for training, but completely did not get to HR. I am hoping that I can get the intern to HR without a hitch, but they are a bit scattered over there, so who knows who to even talk to these days. Anyway, the assignment calendar is finished. I still want and need to print off things for the new special project and make the space a bit more intern friendly, but I should be able to do that before the intern arrives at the facility. I am assuming that the music therapy room is a mess. I asked folks to put things back in the room when they were finished with them after graduation and field day. I have not been back to the facility since graduation morning when I was kicked out and sent home. I am hoping that I will be able to put things together with...

Today's Sentimental Sunday post is from September 15. 2015 . On this date, I shared a song that I composed for a consultation contract that I had been asked to do. I wonder if the school district is still using my materials. Anyway, check out the link for that free song! I used to share entire TMEs on my blog on Tuesdays. This was my practice until a comment on Music Therapist Unite made me very angry. The comment was basically critical of any music therapist who dared to ask for payment for their intellectual property. The comment was not directed or in reference to me at all, but it made me angry. The attitude of the new music therapist was that she should get anything that she wanted from other music therapists because she was new and needed ideas from others. She was upset because other music therapists (like me) required payment for access to our ideas and work. That was the end of free ideas from me because I found the attitude of "gimme, gimme" to be very privileg...

Forgive me as I do a bit of bragging. I may not have cleaned my house this week or even made a huge dent in the boxes that pervade every single room in my home, but I did finish my recertification process through CBMT yesterday! This was my fifth recertification and my sixth round of board certification-ness. How does that work, exactly? Well, I am one of those older music therapists that you hear about in myths and legends. I have been a professional music therapist for 30 years now, and I plan on going along for another ten years at least. I finished an ethics course through CE4less yesterday with 97% of the test questions correct. That was the last part of my CMTE coursework for this round. I have been unable to attend ethics courses at AMTA conferences, so I have been lacking in that one requirement. I found this course on Ethics and Boundary Issues and read through the 124 pages of information that came along with the course. I liked this one because it addressed social media and...

Today is the last official day of break. On Monday, I will be heading back into my regular music therapy routine with the addition of a music therapy intern and the changes in the schedule between the regular school day and the summer session. We go to a four-day work week during the summer, so the five-day schedule has to be squished into four days. I end up moving from having prep and planning time to having very little during the summer hours. The benefit is that I get three-day weekends during the summer because I am not working at the church. I get lots of time to myself during the summers. I was gone the last week of school due to an upper respiratory infection that came along with a fever that I could not shake. Our rule is that you cannot come back until you have been fever-free without medication for 24 hours. I went to work for about an hour and a half on Tuesday, but my boss kicked me out and made me go home. I missed the first graduation in my time at the facility. I missed...

Over the past two weeks, I have been pretty sick which always leads me into strange thinking based on what I am consuming via television and all that. I have been watching true crime shows lots lately, but I have also consumed American Born Chinese  and Ms. Marvel  over and over again because I know the stories. I don't need any sort of thought process to watch these shows, but they also led me into thinking about bias. Stick with me here. Bias is something that pervades all situations. We all use our biases to structure our living and experiences. Every learning situation I have ever been in has had bias as part of the structure. Also, every work situation, every leisure opportunity, every single thing. While I was watching Ms. Marvel , I was exposed to the partition of India into India and Pakistan. I am sure that we spent about a class period on this time during World History, but the television show really shows the devastation that people felt in that era and illustrates ...