music, therapy, and me

My last three days have been taken over by allergies, so I haven't been doing much writing... or thinking... or anything other than sleeping due to medication side effects. It is Easter Sunday, so I have to slog over to see if anyone will show up for Sunday School (they didn't last year), and then lead worship for a full house. I am not feeling great, but that is usual these days. I will bark through the anthem and all the hymns. I will excuse myself during the sermon so I am not coughing loudly while the pastor is trying to speak. I hope my voice will hold out through the scripture readings. We will see. Since I am not feeling well, this is going to be it for today.  I hope to be back into feeling like writing tomorrow, but we'll see... 

This week is where my two roles in the professional world collide into a very long schedule of work, more work, worship, more worship, interrupted schedules, and exhaustion. It is Holy Week, the week in the Christian faith where believers commemorate the last days of Jesus before his death and resurrection. For church employees, like me, it means at least two extra worship services and more church than is on our typical weekly schedule. It means different music, more time involved in spiritual focus, and different things happening at different times in the week. I work in a publicly funded, special purpose school. The roots of the facility itself are deeply centered in the Catholic faith, but we no longer have a Catholic focus. When I first arrived at the facility so many years ago, we did have that particular religious focus. Fridays were fish days. The annual Christmas program included acting out the Nativity story. (I stopped that practice because I didn't feel that it was right...

Today is the 31st anniversary of an important day in my life - the day I finished my internship and became a professional music therapist. I am proud of my career as a music therapist. I have been employed for my entire life except for about three months after my internship finished up. I have not been a music therapist for all of that time, but I have had the title of music therapist for the past 28 years. Before I became a "music therapist" in title, I was an activity director for children, a "QMRP" for adults, and a "Rehabilitation Therapist - Music" for adults. In the first and third of these jobs, I was able to do some music therapy, but music was not my primary way of doing my job. In the "QMRP" job, I was an administrator of three group homes and did not do any music therapy at all. My first two jobs did not last long, but they taught me some valuable lessons about myself as a music therapist and as a human being. I learned that I enjoy wo...

Does anyone else find that nothing happens for a very long time and then EVERYTHING happens during one week per quarter? This is the week that I am the busiest for my first part-time job, that of director of music at a church, so naturally all sorts of stuff is happening this week in addition to my full-time job and the events of Holy Week. It starts today, the ramp-up, and continues until next Saturday when I will finally get a rest from it all. After that day, then the hoopla of Sunday begins. This is going to be a busy week. I have appointments, discussions, errands, bills, all sorts of things that need to happen right now so they will get finished. To add to the stress that is coming, my allergic reactions to Spring are going strong. My lips are chapped, and I am coughing which is how all this always starts. So, I have exhaustion and breathing issues to look forward to as well. Let's hope that it will be better than I am thinking it will be. I get to do my taxes today. Last yea...

Oooh, boy. You know the speech I mean. You are sitting next to a stranger who insists on talking to you and THAT question comes up. "So, what do you do for a living?" There are many different variants of this question, but it all boils down to the same thing - what are you going to share with this stranger about a profession that everyone seems to know about but doesn't really understand? How far do you want to talk to someone about this profession and the things that go along with it? When I first started my career as a music therapist, people were often confused by the title, "MUSIC THERAPIST." It got to the point where I could predict when they would ask the follow-up question, "So, what is MUSICAL THERAPY, anyway?" It was a three second processing latency for everyone who asked me about my job. Three seconds to go through the mental database and then ask for more information. I would then launch into my elevator speech - the first little bit of inf...

I am a vintage music therapist. This is something that I take some pride in because it takes grit and guts and a love for this profession to be able to claim 31 years in this role. It really does. In my career, I have not been able to find a music therapy job in the place I wanted to work, I have had to move for schooling and for work, I have taken pay cuts to move into a music therapy role, I have lived paycheck to paycheck, and I have finally become financially stable and successful. I have lived through significant changes in education and clinical training with our professional organization, and I have volunteered many ideas and hours for that same organization. I am a vintage music therapist. Being an older music therapist has perks and benefits, but it also has drawbacks. I am a member of Gen X - those latchkey kids who had moms who worked and who had lots of independent hours to fill. We are not easily defined as a group, and that's okay with me. I am also an oldest child of...

I teach in a school setting. My clients are not easy to teach and often have aggression and significant difficulties with communication of emotions, wants, and needs. They often have not had many positive experiences in school settings and come to us for specialized special education services. One of those services is educational enrichment music therapy services. Being an educational enrichment therapist means that I see every student for an hour per week. I do not have IEP goals for clients - music therapy is not considered a related service at my facility - I do not have to do eligibility assessments because every student is automatically eligible for music therapy just by being admitted to the school. All of this is just to give you a glimpse into my facility and how I operate before I head into my current sessions. Part of what I do in my sessions is introduce my clients to some general music education concepts because many of my clients have never been allowed to engage with inst...

It is the Monday after Spring Break, and I am trying really hard to get back into my work routine. I did not sleep well last night - probably because I had the alarm set which always leads me into not sleeping well. I was up about 2 hours before my alarm was set to go off. I will be doing three groups and a dyad today, bus duty, and then occupational therapy after work.  I am currently stuck in limbo mode when it comes to my internship process. None of my applicants have completed their applications - I am waiting on one letter of recommendation for them all, so I am not ready for an intern in June. Three months is a bit too short of a transition period for me. I am also waiting to hear about a job application that I submitted, and things are changing at work as well, so it may be a good thing that applicants aren't showing much interest in the internship. I have not had an intern since the middle of January, and I am enjoying aspects of being the sole music therapist at the facili...

Fridays are for focusing on things that work for me in my music therapy life which I then share with others in the hope that someone else might benefit from my lived experiences. Today, as I am surrounded by the leftover piles on the floor from my intense need to rearrange my office space, avoiding the thought of what I still need to put away and find places for in this area before the HVAC guy arrives at some point, I am thinking about my most successful organization tool - color-coding. It seems really simplistic, doesn't it? That's because it really is! I use color-coding for many things, but it really is most important in my storage and use of visual aids in my music therapy space. I have lots of music therapy visuals. Many of them I have purchased over the years, but many more are ones that I have made for my clients. All of my visuals are stored in boxes, but it is sometimes difficult to find what I want. As a result, I color-code things to help me find things based on pr...

It is a late start Thursday here at Spring Break central where I decided that I didn't need to sit up too much until just about now. I decided to take an easy day after a day of working which strained my back coupled with a surprise flat tire that just ratcheted up my stress to a point of pulling me out of whack, so I am now feeling the results. I am not ready for the next home visit, but I did stop by and tell my neighbor that we will be going into her backyard tomorrow at some point. My AC unit is on her side of the fence. She also agreed to allowing me to put in a gate in our shared fence so I could access the AC unit without having to walk around her side of the duplex, so that's good. So, this is a late post. My tire is fixed, I stopped by JoAnn's and bought some embossing folders and three sheets of spring themed paper, and talked to my neighbor, so it's already been a busy day. It only cost me $103 for the new tire and $6.42 for the crafting supplies. Not a bad d...

I am halfway finished with a project, but only halfway there. I am at the state where everything looks overwhelming and where I just can't fathom being able to finish anything at all. I am also at the halfway point of my Spring Break, so I know that the time is ending. Here is my current situation. To avoid having to do anything with my library (my original focus for this week), I started moving my office desk from sitting out in the center of the room to against the wall. That required me to take things off of five shelves and pile the contents on the floor. I also had to take some non-decorative things off the wall because I can no longer reach those things. I worked on this project for about five hours yesterday - working until my arthritis and sciatica took over, so I have moved everything that needs to be moved. but there are piles of things on the floor that still need my attention. I am working on setting up zones in this space. The first zone is my "tools and things I ...

It is Monday. It is Spring Break. I have an appointment with a plumber to install a pressure regulation valve in my water system that will happen at some point today - who knows when?? I am falling horribly behind in my #100DayChallenge, but I am learning how to let things go, so that is what I will be releasing for the moment. I want to spend some time rearranging my craft area to give me some more room, but there are so many things that have to happen before I get there that I may not be able to accomplish that goal. We will see. Is anyone else reading through the Commission on the 21st Century Music Therapist report? I have not read it as much as I feel I should, but I am interested in what they recommend happen for the next 70 years. I am sure that this will go by the wayside like all the other recommendations and requests from AMTA members, but at least it is reiterated - yet again - that our educational and clinical training processes need reformation. Duh. This has been a consta...

Today's Sentimental Sunday post is the most viewed post on my blog - ever, and I am glad that I happened upon this one in my morning perusal on this Spring Forward Sunday. Here it is - the 7 things I wish someone had told me about music therapy post.  The sad thing about this post is that I think we still do not talk about these things much in the music therapy world. It has been almost 10 years since I wrote this first post and not much changes in the world of music therapy...ever. I still think that we, as a profession, are on a precipice.  We have to do better, as a collective group of professionals, at preparing our future professionals for this life. I am reading through the report of the commission for the 21st century group very slowly. My initial reaction is that what I have read is very similar to what was recommended 10 years ago, but I haven't delved into things the way I should before I start to talk about it all.  I am frustrated with how long it takes to ge...

It is Saturday, and I am back to blogging after a three day hiatus. I haven't blogged lately just because. I have no excuse except I just dinna wanna write anything. I have also not done anything on my #100DayChallenge since last Saturday, so I haven't been very productive outside of doing my regular work practices. I am trying to be okay with that, but there is always a little bit of self-criticism and flagellation in the back of my head. My goblins come out to play. I am officially on Spring Break at this moment. The entire break is before me at this point, and I am going back into old habits of establishing so many goals and objectives that I may not be motivated to accomplish. I have a home repair scheduled for Monday and a home evaluation on Friday but nothing else to take up my time, so I am on my own for filling up the week. One of the self-critical moments that I had yesterday (while in the midst of low-grade anxiety about my fingers and having to physically assist stud...

When I first started TME Tuesdays, I wanted to share ideas and get comments and interact with other music therapists who were interested in providing music therapy ideas and experiences with clients that were new and different. I wanted to create community, but then I got cranky. When I was a part of Music Therapists [Aren't] United  (the additional word is completely mine and mine alone), one of the people posting went on a rant about gatekeeping and how music therapists should just give things away to younger music therapists rather than expecting to be paid for TME ideas, visual aids, business advice, etc. I got angry at that because I feel that we should be paid for the work that we do. I don't believe that I should give away my hard work to everyone and anyone just because they feel that they want to take it. There is a difference between sharing with someone and someone just taking from you without reciprocation. That is when I stopped publishing my therapeutic music expe...

I do not have any interns these days, and I am enjoying the opportunity to leave at the end of my contracted hours. This may seem like a small thing to be happy about, but it is one of the perks to not being supervisor at the moment - I get to leave my workplace at the end of my day! Let me explain. In order for my interns to be able to finish up the 1020 hours that are required by most university programs in seven months (with a generous time off schedule), they have to work 8.5 hour days. I need some quiet time every morning, so I tend to arrive at work between 6:45 and 7:00 am. My contract time starts at 7:15 am. Interns arrive at 7:30 am which means that they leave the workplace at 4:00 pm in order to get their 8.5 hours each day. Since I do not believe that I should require them to work when I am not present, I end up working until 4:00 pm each day. When I do not have interns, I get to arrive when I am ready to arrive and leave when my 8 hours are finished. This means that I get t...

I have forty-five minutes to go until I leave for work. I am tired. There is one more week until the time change, Spring Break, and a week of sleeping. I hope that I will feel less exhausted once break is over, but history tells me that I won't. Forty minutes to go until I leave for work. I decided not to stress about putting together a job application that is officially due today. I will work on it this weekend. I didn't get the invitation until 3 days ago, so I don't think that things I've written in three days are as put together as things I write with six days worth of contemplation and review. So, I will continue to work on things this weekend. If I don't get considered for the job, that's okay with me because I didn't plan on applying - it was an invited application... Thirty-eight minutes to go until I leave for work. I am hoping that I will finish my documentation for this week this morning because I have not done much on that task this week. This is...