music, therapy, and me

I am trying to be a bit more intentional in my writing this week, so here is a topic that I hope you all will like - the books that have influenced my music therapy practice over the past "ahem" MANY years. Some of these books are music therapy texts, others are not. There have been many different books that have made me think a bit more about who I am and what I do with my clients. Here they are, in no particular order... Music In Therapy , edited by E. Thayer Gaston, published in 1968. You can find a copy at this link here . The influential part of this book, for me at least, Chapter Two, Processes in Music Therapy by William W. Sears. This was one of the first things that I really understood when I encountered it as an undergraduate, and it still has deep meaning for me. I am lucky enough to own a physical copy of this book, and I am meaning to reread this chapter. It reminds me that there is so much more that music does than just fill the brain with stimuli. I think I wou...

I feel more ready for my Wednesday than I have for a long time. The migraine that started on Sunday seems to be mostly over - we will see - and it is cold again. There is snow on the ground after a 60 degree F change in temperature in the last 12 hours. I am sure that the snow will be gone in most places after about two hours of sunshine, but this was a good reminder that it is still February. This is my busiest day. I see six groups during the day, finish things off with a faculty meeting, head to the post office, and then finish the day with my next job. I will head home, speak to family, and then crash into bed to sleep before getting up to do things all over again. I am not in a good place for writing these days. I am not sure why, but it seems that my brain is foggy right now. I don't know if this is the last bit of the migraine or if it is due to brain fog, but there is something going on. My sister and I were talking about this phenomenon recently. This is not something that...

Tuesday. I did not go to work yesterday because of a migraine that started on Sunday morning during the worship service I led. I spent yesterday sleeping before heading to my Occupational Therapy appointment. The headache is a bit better today, but it is not finished - as my medication is wearing off, it is coming back. I have to head to work today. I have no choice. So, I am thinking it will be a sunglasses day in the music therapy room today. Oh dear. I have five groups today to get through. I was going to do some work on the Note Neighborhood with my students, but I am not sure if I will be able to work through these plans. I have to figure out something, though, because I will have about 40 clients who need something to do during their music therapy time with me. I also want to write some TMEs today but I'm not sure the brain will cooperate. Blech. Will these things happen? Who knows what will go on once I actually get to work. At this point in the day, I am just hoping that my...

Good morning. After two days of seriously angry attitudes and just feeling like everyone and everything outside of my home was stupid and set to make me even angrier, I think I am coming out of the mood - we will see, though. I haven't left home since Friday afternoon, so I am not sure if my anger issues have receded or just been unchallenged. Today's foray into the world will let me know if I am actually doing better or not. My random number generator spat out post #1711 for consideration today. I went back into the archives and found this post from December 15, 2017 - titled "...The 'Must Do' Rather Than the 'Want To Do' List. "  I am always a bit amused when I read past posts because they remind me that I am always struggling and striving to grow in many areas. This post tickles my fancy because it reminds me that I try really hard to be organized and to get things finished up in a logical manner but... I haven't used my "want to do" ...

I made a donation today to help save part of music therapy history. It wasn't a huge donation because I can't really do that at the moment, but it was something. It was something more than I was thinking I could donate. It is interesting that AMTA is going to crowd funding for things like this, and these types of money requests are confusing me right now. Why is this happening? I make no secret on my blog about how I feel about the directions that AMTA has decided to take in the recent years. I am still a member for the sole fact that I am not quite ready to give up my internship program. I do not feel like many of the views and opinions that AMTA currently promotes are representative of my own views or opinions, so I am a bit uneasy about being a member. I have pulled away from the music therapy community due to lots of screaming voices that do not seem to care about anyone other than themselves. So, I am coming to this particular post from a particular viewpoint. I love histo...

Today is a 12-hour day schedule at my school job. We have these days every so often where we are required to stay for longer than our contracted hours to accommodate parent/teacher conferences or professional development. When these days happen on Wednesdays, it is always challenging for me since I have a Wednesday evening job already and cannot do the full 12 hours on Wednesday evenings. We have one last 12-hour day on our calendar, and that is on a Thursday, so I will be able to stay for the entire time on that night. The number of evenings we have to stay late have decreased significantly with our new administration. We used to have 10 of these nights per year! TEN! It was ridiculous, and we put an end to that since our school district only has 4 of these nights as part of our contract time. We had 6 extra night obligations that no one else in the district had to do. We now match the district expectations, and that is very helpful, especially for me. I am not an evening person. At a...

It is TME Tuesday again, and I am going to head to work - reluctantly because my bed is more inviting than the thought of leaving it to go to be around other people. That is typical for me. I like sleeping so much more than working, but working is what I need to do in order to have a bed to sleep in, so I will haul my body to my car for a day of work. (I blame President's Day for this malaise this week - I HATE Monday holidays!) I will go reluctantly into this work week. Tomorrow is a 12-hour day at work - full day of work with kids and then additional professional development after school. I have to leave early because I have my Wednesday night job to get to, but I am hoping that it will be "work on your own" time that I will make up. Anyway, today is the first work day of the week. I have about 10 minutes to write this before my time anxiety will take over and make me jumpy. That brings me to today's topic - overcoming my tendencies to not do something because I am ...

I am not an internship supervisor at the moment. I am on hiatus, and I have been enjoying the solitary existence. I have been rearranging my storage areas without having to worry about the work spaces of others, and I am reveling in the opportunity to think through things without having to explain them. At the moment, I am also thinking about my next round of interns while I am waiting for current applicants to finish their applications. I have several of them, but none of the applications are complete at this point. All of them are waiting on a letter of reference... well, except for the two who have letters of reference but no application. It is interesting what things are revealed to me in the application process, but I digress. I decided to re-up my AMTA membership at a tier that I felt was comfortable for me just so I could accept interns in this calendar year. I still feel the pull towards training and mentoring, but I am not as enthusiastic about our professional organization th...

It has started - the #100DayChallenge has begun, and I have finished my first little bit of art for this challenge. I started this challenge last year, went for about 40 days and then stopped. I am trying this again by starting the challenge I abandoned last year right where I left off.  My word of the year is "play," and I chose that word because I have felt that I have over-focused on doing more and more for the past several years. I have come up short for the same past several years - not doing what I state I want to do. As a result, I have been in a cycle of guilt and self-recrimination for all of these years. So, I decided that this year would be a year where I focus on the things that I love to do rather than the things that I feel like I should be doing. I cut out the projects that I am working on yesterday. I started to put one together, forgetting that I want to laminate the covers before I put in the signatures, but that's the way my projects often go, so I plan...

It is Saturday, and I am only interested in sleeping ... and eating right now. I feel guilty when I just nap and eat on my Saturdays, so I try to make something happen on these days. I am getting ready for the start of my #100DayChallenge tomorrow. I may get a jumpstart on that by making a card today, but I might not. I am not really all that inspired to do anything right now. That might change after a nap, but it probably will not. I want to make some journals today. I have been collecting the outer packaging to blu-rays that I purchase, and I want to laminate the packaging and make journals out of those disc covers. I have about eight covers that I have been putting off laminating because I haven't set up the laminating area that I envision, but it is time. I want to get these projects going so I can add them to my Etsy store and, hopefully, sell a couple of them to people out there in the world. Okay. Now I have some direction. I want to get some paper signatures ready to put in...

I wrote two TMEs yesterday during my non-session time. I am pleased with myself and with my start on my most recent project - writing TMEs to put into my compendium and to share with others. I am tired and I am crabby and I have two days off after today. I work most of the day on Sunday - for the church and for OCMT, so my three day weekend is really a two day weekend with a day of work in the middle. That's okay. I am ready to have another day to rest and be away. After this one day off, I will have three weeks until Spring Break. I am looking forward to some home maintenance projects during Break and that is all other than sleeping and being by myself. I went home to CA during my last Spring Break because it was my Christmas make-up trip. It will be nice to stay home this time around. There is plenty of stuff to do here. My #100DayChallenge starts on Sunday. I have 64 cards left from last year's art challenge, so I am hoping to fill those up with little bits of art. I also wa...

Yesterday was a day of ups and downs for my part of the country. We were celebrating the win of the local football team when someone started shooting others. There was one casualty and many injuries after the panic. I heard about things when I was waiting to start the Ash Wednesday service last night. I know that two friends were present at the celebration, and it will be interesting to know if they were part of the situation at all when I make it to work this morning. We are now in a season of mourning around our area because of three people who caused this situation. I do not watch the news. I do not listen to the news. I read the news when I feel like I need to catch up with what is happening in the world. I do not find it healthy for me to watch the news or listen to the constant reporting of the bad things that happen in the world. I cannot deal with the ways that people choose to hurt other people - the emotions that come up are not good for me, and I get enough angst at work wit...

It is Wednesday. I found out yesterday that a bonus situation that I was working out will not be happening which is disappointing but not really all that surprising as this has happened before. All the assurances that it WOULD happen were false and things did not pan out. So, I started thinking about interns, and that made me feel a bit overwhelmed. I had two sessions canceled due to a field trip, so I had an afternoon mostly to myself to think and stew. Today will be completely full. I have my regular six groups and then Ash Wednesday service rather than choir rehearsal this evening. I am tired already, but less tired than I was yesterday when I woke up. It is going to be a long day, but that's what my Wednesdays are right now. Long days.  It is pretty funny because the person who put together the schedule doesn't like it and complains about how it happens. I am finding that ironically funny these days. She puts the schedule together all by herself but doesn't like how it ...

This year, I am going to try the 100 Day Challenge again. Last year, I made it through 36 days of doing something for the challenge, so I am going to strive to get the entire 100 days this time. I am still trying my TME challenge, so I am hoping to combine the two into one big challenge. For the first part of my challenge, I am going to make a small piece of art on rolodex cards. The second part is a TME challenge. I do these things every once in a while. I set myself challenges and then try to do them. If I do not make it through the challenge, I tend to engage in some self-recrimination, but I am working on that as well - not doing the entire self-recrimination thing. Last year, I made 36 pieces of art. This year, I would like 100 new TMEs, but I will take what I can create as a positive contribution to my music therapy compendium. I started a TME yesterday when I was at work. I started writing up something that my students are doing this week as we explore percussion instruments and...

This has never happened before, but today's selected post is a Sentimental Sunday post. Post #3360 was written on October 1, 2023 , and it was all about a post I wrote back in 2011 (there is a link in post #3360 to the original post). Rough weeks happen, and they tend to happen quite often at my job. They seem to be happening more often these days, so it is nice to be reminde d that things really haven't changed much - I might just be more attentive to the continuing issues of the people that I work for and with right now than I have been in the past. All of these posts are concerned with figuring out what I need to do to engage my clients in their music therapy treatment process. I still struggle with this with some of my clients, but those clients are the ones that do not engage in any sort of education with any sort of enthusiasm, so I know that music therapy is not the only thing that they hate about school, but it still bores into my brain. I want people to love music and ...

Today is Saturday - the one day per week that I do not work... well, that's not entirely true, but I do not work for other people on Saturdays. I only work for myself, and I don't tend to do much of that. Saturdays are my days to sleep in, to putter around my town and my home, and to spend a bit of time just being quiet. I usually take a nap at some point during the day. I also try to create something for myself or for others, taking great pleasure in the process of creation. This week, I took a little bit of time to play with paper. I made a book late last year that I decided I wanted to use for me. I have made many books that I have given to other people, but I decided I wanted this one just for me. It is my "Love" journal and is dedicated as a scrapbook for celebrating things that I love. My family is first and foremost in my book. It couldn't be a book about things I love without them being in there. I am starting to put in different things as I find some insp...

Okay, I'm going to say it. One of the best things about not having a music therapy intern right now is being able to put some of my systems back into place without having to explain those same systems.  I am taking time on Fridays to organize things in my areas. Today's focus is my office where things are piled on the floor. Since I have the entire morning, I am going to take things out of the office, sort them, and then take things to my car that no longer need to be at work. I work two hours with students today, so the other six hours will be spent in setting up my office area in a better way than it is at this moment. I made progress last week in the storage room/intern office. The drum set is up and accessible in the closet, and I have moved all of my task box creation materials to the other side of things. I will need to figure out some storage options, but that will happen by the time I get interns back again. For the moment, my office is the priority. I enjoy being able ...

All week, I have been getting some flashes of inspiration on things to write about on this blog, but I have NOT been writing them down, so here it is, writing time, and I have no guidance at all. It is pretty frustrating to realize that I need to write down every thought that comes into my head or they just flit on by. Today is my late day, so I am sitting here after my late rising time, trying to convince myself that I have something to say... hmm. This has not been an easy week in the areas surrounding my music therapy room. So far, my sessions have been pretty smooth with the exception of one kid chasing another one around, some passive staff members who spend more time looking at their watches than at students, and my own exhaustion. It is good to be back in the role of "therapist" again. The rest of the school is pretty scattered these days. There are many situations going on that have not touched my small program - yet. I hate it when our students have significant issue...

It is Wednesday. This is my busiest day of the work week, and I have so many other things to get finished right at the moment that I am a bit overwhelmed. In addition, there are other people messing around with things that they should not be messing with, so I have to untangle their messes on top of the ones that I have going.  Now, I am not perfect, by any means at all, BUT - life is a bit easier when people leave me alone to do my jobs!! Most of my frustration at this time of year comes from other people doing things that are my jobs - and doing those jobs WRONG!!  So, I am someone who prefers to work on my tasks without the interference of others, but that's not today's topic.  Today is all about Wednesdays and how things seem to happen over and over again. I don't have much time to write because getting out of bed was challenging this morning. This happens quite often on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Today, I am thinking that I want to take the trash and recycling out whe...

Forgive me as I deviate from my daily theme posts to reflect on something that is happening right here, right now in my life. I am, once again, the client of a therapist. I am not always in therapy of any sort, but over the past seven years, I have been in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and again, occupational therapy. I don't tend to go to therapy for supervisory purposes - I do most of my processing in my journals and (to some extent) here on this blog rather than going to talk to someone else. I know that there are many music therapists out there who insist that all music therapists do what they do - go to regular counseling and supervisory sessions - but not everyone does. I am that everyone. Anyway, I am starting up in Occupational Therapy again due to the finger injury that I sustained last October. One of my clients hyperextended my ring finger on my left hand, fracturing it, and possibly injuring the ligament (no one has ever let me see my records, so I am not exac...

How have you all been? I've been absent from this blog for almost an entire week for a multitude of reasons including feeling sick, being completely exhausted due to said sickness, and then the Online Conference for Music Therapy conference this past weekend. I am still recovering from the illness and the conference, and the exhaustion has not gone away yet. I start occupational therapy this afternoon, so my afternoons will be taken up by OT in the near future (the doctor ordered OT 3-4 times per WEEK for the next MONTH!). This will mean less time at home to rest, but it may also mean getting back to playing my guitar with fluency. I hope that is what it means. I took up the guitar on Friday - just to see what is going on. I am not able to bend my finger enough to reach the high E string for a G chord right now. I am also feeling pain in the finger when I press strings down, so there is something going on beyond a simple fracture. When I saw my hand specialist at the beginning of J...