Thoughtful Thursday: Late Arrival

On Thursdays during the school year, I go to work late.

This is because of several situations that happen on Wednesdays - a late night, strange medication side effects, and difficulty with vision and thinking after everything else. So, I take an additional hour to get to work in the mornings. It is easier to navigate a dawn-filled world rather than a pre-dawn world when my eyes are a bit wonky. So, I go to work late on Thursdays.

Now, I still work my 8 hours on Thursdays because I have to stay until 4pm when I have interns, so it is easy to fulfill my contractual obligation, even when arriving at 7:45 instead of 6:45. My problem is that I cannot really think until well after my arrival at work. I cannot organize my thoughts very well, so I rely on session plans from earlier in the week to keep me going. I do not have to figure out what I want to do with clients on Thursday mornings - I have already come up with the strategy and can just go through the strategies. That allows me to focus on doing music therapy rather than thinking about music therapy. 

The good news is that my intern does half of the sessions today, and I do the other half in the afternoon. The bad news is that my intern has filled up our Thursday schedule with individual sessions, so I will inherit those individuals when my intern graduates, but most of those sessions are also in the afternoon, after my brain has cleared and I can think and do music therapy again.

Once I get to work today, I will have to try to focus enough on my documentation for my groups from yesterday. The staff member that I think makes my Wednesdays a bit rough was absent, so that changed some of my attitude, but my clients are really struggling right now. We had lots of strange interactions yesterday. I am hoping that things calm a bit, but I am not counting on it.

We have finished the majority of our classroom sessions for the week. We have finished twelve groups in the last two days and only have seven to go. By this time most weeks, we have finished sixteen groups, but Monday was a holiday so we have not done as many as usual but the ones we led were stressful.

Thursdays are strange days for me.

I spend some of the time cutting out pieces of task boxes and file folders while I am watching my intern lead group sessions. I am now in the office for those sessions - still watching what is happening, but not being in the room to help my clients shift their focus to the intern as therapist rather than me. There is always a bit of grief when this happens - the shift is important for the interns, but it means that I no longer have the same sort of relationship with clients. It makes me a bit sad, but I also know that I will get to refresh those relationships once the intern graduates. For the moment, though, I have to sit - QUIETLY - in my office and limit my interference to times when it is necessary. (The quiet part is the second-most difficult part of being in this intern phase.)

The sky is getting lighter out there, so it is about time to head to work. I feel my eyes working well at the moment, and that is usually my cue to start the process of driving to work. When I leave a bit late, I avoid being stopped by school buses but have a greater chance of being stopped by construction or combines. I LOVE driving in rural areas!! Thanks for being here, dear reader!!