Sentimental Sunday: What Does Past Me Have to Say to Present Me? Post 2117

Sentimental Sunday – Graphic has mottled gray background with yellow spindly flowers coming from off-screen on both bottom corners. In script, there is the text, “Sentimental Sunday.” Under the title text, in smaller print, the text states, “musictxandme.blogspot.com” and www.musictherapyworks.com -the URLs of the blog and the website.
It is Sunday again, and I have a little bit of time before I have to head out into the time change world to try to sing enough to lead worship this morning. It is time to see what past me has to say to present me. I plugged in the number of posts that I have written on this blog about music, therapy, and me (3,393) into a random number generator and then started up the generator. It spat out post #2117, so I am taking a glimpse back to February 27, 2019. 

Oh, February.

It is usually the month where we get the most inclement weather. For it being the shortest month in duration, it always seems like the longest month of the year. This year was no exception. I was not looking forward to anything about February 27th - it was a Wednesday. It was a 12-hour day. It was a possible inclement weather day after a series of inclement weather days. I was not happy when I was writing.

One of the things that I am noticing more and more about myself and about the people around me is when we get stuck in a negative pattern.

I am easily swept into negativity - I focus only on what goes wrong around me and have difficulty glimpsing what is going well. So, I do my best to make positivity a daily practice. It is not always easy, but there are times when it is essential for my mental well-being to find something positive in the perceptions that try to take over my brain.

Over my years of being a human on this planet (as opposed to what? I have no idea...), I have noticed that people get out of the world what they expect to see. If I head into a Wednesday with a crappy attitude, then it will probably be a crappy day. If I head into a Wednesday with a more positive outlook, I will probably feel better about what goes on during that time. When I spend time around people who cannot find any good in what happens around them, then the negativity becomes contagious, and I don't like being contaminated by the emotions of others.

Is this part of being empathetic? The emotional contamination? I think it is.

It is November now, not February, so I am not feeling as much negativity as I do in the second month of every year. We haven't had any inclement weather yet, and winter is still being held off by autumn. We just changed our clocks back an hour, so I get an extra amount of time in the morning - the best time of day for me - before heading out to work every day. My biggest concern with this "fall back" time change is that I want to go to sleep with the sunset, so it becomes difficult to remain awake once the sun goes down. I have to fight the urge to sleep once the sun sets at 5pm. I do not often do well when it is dark after a long day at work, but I try my best.

This is a good time of year for me. I like the darkness. I think I would be a pretty good candidate for living in places where there are more hours and months of darkness than sunshine. I've never tried it before, but I might like living farther north of where I am right now. I wonder if part of my February mollygrumps have something to do with the daylight getting longer. That's something to think about.

For now, though, I will take the reminder that negativity often begats negativity, and I will step into the dark world with a positive attitude. See you tomorrow?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dear AMTA

Dear American Music Therapy Association: I am debating long and hard about remaining in this relationship. I have been in this relationship since college, and this is not a decision that I am taking lightly or without great cost.  I am not happy with what you are bringing to this relationship. Now, I have been a selfish partner over the past several years - mainly because I am not feeling like we share a common mission anymore. It is easy for me to place the blame on you, but I know that this is not all on me. I have tried to be invested in communication and support and understanding, but everyone comes to a time where enough is enough. I am trying very hard to decide if the benefits that you provide to me are worth the feelings that I have about where I think you and I are going. I am not sure that our destination is the same anymore, and this makes me sad. To be completely honest, I am only in this relationship these days for the music therapy interns. I don't think that is a hea...
Read more

Songwriting Sunday: Repetition

Image
One of the things that I find to be helpful with my client population (children, adolescents, and young adults with dual diagnoses) is repetition of phrases, lyrics, and music. As a result of 30+ years of working with this population in various iterations, I have found that my clients respond the most to songs with three repeated phrases to prime their responses with a different phrase to communicate the important part of the experience. DISCLAIMER: This is not a definite way to write music for clinical interactions. This is what seems to work well with my particular group of human beings. Don't go to your supervisors and tell them that I told you that this is the ONLY way to write music - It is NOT! You have to find what works for your clients and for their clinical goals. Since my clients respond well to this type of song, I tend to write songs in this format more than any other. What I have found is that my clients remember these songs more than the ones that I do in different f...
Read more

Being An Internship Director: On Hiatus

Image
It has been long enough since I have had an intern that I am seriously feeling like I have little to say on the subject. At the same time, I am currently writing Chapter 5 of my general internship handbook, so I am able to write about being an intern and what types of things to think about during this important time in our professional development. It is a strange place to be in, and it is one that is a bit challenging for me. Right now, I have had three vacant internship positions since the beginning of the calendar year. I will have a vacant position next month and that will be an entire year of rejected offers. In the past nine months, I have offered positions to three applicants who have declined. It is interesting how people complain that there aren't enough internship programs, but programs like mine are empty. I guess there aren't enough internship programs that pay large stipends (which mine cannot) out there. I get it. It is interesting to me how we have moved from an ...
Read more