music, therapy, and me

If you have been reading anything from the past couple of weeks, then you know that my water heater sprung a leak and the water went all over my library closet and in part of the room itself. Today, I have a water mitigation company coming over to work with the now-dried but very mildewy carpet. I have been moving boxes and sorting through things for the last two weeks. I am hoping that everything will be finished up by the end of today, but who knows?  The good news is that I am finding all sorts of things to put into my music therapy room. The bad news is that I am finding all sorts of things to put into my music therapy room. Yesterday, I started brainstorming some uses for some visual aids that I found one of my many boxes. ( See the post here. ) I was able to find four ways to use the airplane and banner visuals, but I am still figuring out two more things to meet my self-imposed "six things" rule. If I can't find two more ideas, then I will try to give things away. ...

As I have been going through boxes and bags of things as a result of my recent water emergency, I have been finding all sorts of things that I have purchased and then packed away. These are things that I had been able to justify purchasing at the time, but that I have not actually used yet. So, as a result, it is time to start working on my Six Things Rule again. Just to refresh your memory (or introduce you to this rule that I have created for myself because I tend to hoard things and keep buying more and more things to use), I have established a "Six Things Rule" to help me figure out if I can purchase things for my music therapy clinic. This rule helps me a bit when it comes to impulse buys, but not much because I can think up six things to do with just about anything when motivated. Right now, though, I need to decide if I can keep these things that are taking over my very being and all my space. These bulletin board pieces, for example. I bought some paw print calendar n...

Happy Wednesday from my home desk at 6:20am. I was able to finish errands and make lots of food yesterday, so I feel pretty good about my Tuesday efforts. At the moment, I am still waiting for my insurance agent to tell me if my insurance company will be covering anything or if I can just go ahead and do my own renovation work. I will probably have to do my own renovation work, after this experience of interaction. Meanwhile, I keep having one piece of art fall off the wall at random times of the day and the night, and I am just trying really hard to keep myself together! Do I sound stressed on my break?? (Tongue firmly in my cheek, here!) Why not try some reading?? Now, I am not the type of person who does well with audio books - never have, and probably never will. I don't listen to them. For me, reading means looking at the words rather than hearing them. If I have to listen to something, I want it to have something to look at at the same time - so movies are my audio books, I g...

It is day five of break. I have five days left before I head back to our extended school year, summer schedule. Today is going to be a day for sorting out homeowners insurance things, getting my medications refilled, and taking a shower - NOT in that order!!  Yesterday, I spent most of the day crying. I don't know why I was so tearful, but I was just crying and crying at nothing and everything. I ate a good breakfast, watched entirely too much trash social media, and then nearly finished an ugly crochet basket that I have been working on. I have to attach the handles before it is completely finished. I want some baskets for my home, so I am going to make them. I have lots of inherited yarn that I will never really use for other projects, so I am going to use those skeins to make my baskets. I do not need things to look coordinated or even pretty - just finished. So, I am going through the bags and bags of yarn that I have collected to make my baskets. This first one is made up of a...

I don't know if you read yesterday's post or not, but I have an internship interview happening a week from today.  I know, I had all but decided to close my program, but then one applicant actually finished the application and accepted an interview invitation. I am getting ready to interview and audition a prospective intern again. Am I ready? Of course, I am ready to move back into that sort of interaction with the greater music therapy world, I guess. If this applicant is accepted and then accepts my acceptance, I will have another six months before the start date to be therapist. By that point, I might be tired of being "therapist" and be ready to give up that role a bit to an intern. I might. I might not, but I can do it as well. I've done it before and can do it again. First, though, the interview. Interviewing for my program includes a visit to the facility (which I know is a bit of a privilege, but I want applicants to know what they are in for before they ...

Happy Break for me, folks!! I took a week off from blogging - just because - last week. I have a week ahead of me to rest and work and make plans before heading back to work for our extended school year and an intern interview! Yep, that's right. As soon as I announced that I thought I would close things down, I got an applicant who finished all of my requirements and wants a place in the new year. So, that person is coming up for an interview on day 1 of our summer session - with a new schedule... oh well. That is not the topic for today, though. Today's topic is songwriting, and it is time for me to get some of that going again. I have a weekly reminder set on my work email to remind me to select a topic for my therapeutic music experience (TME) challenge. Here's what that is. I want my interns to complete five TMEs each week for the first four months of their internships. Sixteen weeks times five TMEs equals 80 TMEs for their file - I require 75 TMEs with 25 of them bein...

Gentle reader. If you are here, seeking some music therapy thoughts or wisdom, please know that this is not that kind of post. Well, maybe it is, but it's not going to be entirely focused on music or therapy, but on me.  Yesterday was Talent Show day, and every Talent Show day comes with a special type of melt-down for my clients. Usually, my day is full of kids yelling at me because I don't have exactly what they envisioned (but didn't write on their sign-up forms) or panic-induced meltdowns that happen as soon as they see the entire school looking at them (we did have two of those). One kid got angry because I do not play Cardi B at all - not even the "clean" versions at school. I had the karaoke version for the student's dance, but that wasn't good enough for the student who wanted to sing but had not indicated that singing was what the talent was. I had the petty satisfaction of being able to show said student the filled out sign-up sheet, in the stude...

Today is one of the favorite days of the year for many of my clients and the staff members. It's not my favorite day since it involves LOTS of work, but it is theirs. Today is Talent Show day. We do this every year around this time, and it always amazes me how many of my kids stand up in front of the entire school and sing or dance or strum a guitar in front of everyone else. This morning, I will be printing off lyrics, disassembling my drum set, and toting the karaoke cart, computer, and microphones down to the gymnasium to set up for the hour. After the talent show, I will do the same process in reverse and take things back to the music therapy room. It is a labor of love, to be sure. I will need to take my heavy duty Tylenol before I start up today. I will take a half dose now and the second half of the dose right before I start moving things down to the gym. We have some singers and some dancers and some instrumentalists who will be sharing their talents with us this afternoon,...

I have been on a book buying mission lately. My "To Be Read" pile is growing and growing, and I still am going back for more. I have all sorts of things to read during my break in 9 days. Until that point, I will keep reading the books that I am collecting. I used to be a library person, but my town library is located in an inconvenient part of my town - too much traffic for my taste, so I tend to purchase books now rather than borrowing books. I stopped borrowing books from the small library in the town where I work during COVID, and I haven't gone back since. I miss the library, but I haven't mustered the energy to go back yet. Right now, I am reading a book series on my Kindle. It is a bunch of stories about a group of cats who can speak to their human and who help her solve mysteries. I think it falls under the category of "cozy mysteries," and I read these on my Kindle when I can find them for free. Cozy mysteries are quick and easy reads. They are fun ...

It is Monday again, and I am wiped out! There is just something about May that just makes me feel disjointed. At this moment, I have a Talent Show to coordinate, graduation music to provide, a school-wide carnival to work through, and then a day of school district schmoozing and training to survive before a week of medical testing before our extended school year starts up. So, this is a busy time of year, and I am feeling the pinch just like I always do. I am still in the process of deciding about my internship program. I have six incomplete applications in my files at this moment. No applicant has completed their application except for one who did not want to pursue the internship. I have one application for January 2025, but it is also not complete. I am hoping that I will get a completed application really soon so I can move forward with the process of evaluation, audition, and interview. We will see what will happen. This application situation makes me wonder what is going on, and ...

Do you ever think about how you write songs? Now, I don't mean the theory or the way you match pitches with chords and that stuff. I mean the environment, the materials, and stuff that you have around you when you compose. For me, and this is a completely personal thing for all of us - so, you don't have to do things like I do them, I like using the keyboard to compose rather than any other accompanying instrument. For some reason, it is easier for me to figure out the notes that I am singing when I am playing the piano than when I play the guitar. I don't have to think as much with the keyboard, so creativity is easier to access, I guess. When I use the guitar, I have to figure out notes, and that process takes me away from playing around. It is time to compose again, so I have my songwriting kit, my keyboard, and my brain to engage. Once I have my materials around me, I just start to play things on the keyboard. Most of the time, my lyrics and melodies emerge first, but t...

This will probably be a short post because I got out of bed an hour and a half after I woke this morning. I do not have much time to write, but I do want to keep up with my named posts, so here goes. Today is Friday (thank goodness), and I have a chance to write about something fun... for me, at least. I am a puzzler. I especially love logic puzzles, and I am very drawn to real-life puzzles. I manufacture puzzles at times just so I have something to solve. Right now, my biggest puzzle is how to do better with using the materials that I have to support music therapy services in my clinic. Here's how this particular thought got started... For two weeks now, I have had sessions that I have lots of things that supplement at various places. For example, I have lots of instruments that would have supplemented my unit on the Pacific Island cultures very nicely, but they are at home and not at work. I did not take them into work for this week because I did not remember that I have said ins...

I am currently between books. I finished In Cold Blood  yesterday, Truman Capote's book about a true crime in Kansas in the late 1950's. It was not what I had thought it would be, but it was a good book. So, I am now looking around for something else to read. I should be getting a mystery box from my local bookstore today. I ordered it on Independent Bookstore Day, and it was supposed to be waiting for me last week. They felt that it might get rained on, so they delayed the delivery. It should happen today - I am looking forward to it. In addition, I have a stack of new, used books to read from Thriftbooks.com. I also have tons of books on my Kindle so finding a book to read is not going to be an issue.   People fill out reading journals, but I do not want to do that myself. I was the kid who read Gone With the Wind  twice in junior high to get credit for the 1000+ pages and to only have to write one book report. I wrote a separate report each year, but I have never reall...

I work in a publicly funded private school embedded within a residential treatment facility. I am a music therapist, but I am employed by the school at this treatment facility, so for all intents and purposes, I am often incorrectly classified as a teacher rather than as a therapist. During Therapist Appreciation week, I am ignored. During Teacher Appreciation week, I am often grudgingly included. Comments happen like "Well, we know that you are not a teacher, but we're including you anyway." Gee. This week has been full of food to begin with - I cannot eat things that are prepared or washed in the local water because of how it is softened, so I can't partake. I am not upset about that because I would prefer to not get sick for months on end because of what my body does when I try to digest the softening chemicals, but it is a bit disappointing when food is the only focus of our celebration. I would love a card or a magnet or something other than food, but that's ...

Oh, composition. There are times when I have to write a song but just can't get the creative flow going. When I am not feeling like writing music, I have some tricks to get things started. I have pictures that help me get going, thinking about goals, and today's topic, chance composition! Chance composition is one of the best ways for me to unstop dams clogging up my creativity. I use either dice or small cards to help me. The way it works is pretty easy. I decide what each card or number indicates. The dice have the numbers 1-6 already there, so I can use those for pitches. I roll a die, jot down the number, figure out what that means in pitch, and then, off I go to grab some staff paper. I think I am going to add my small cards to my songwriting kit. I can make some really little ones that will fit into a snack baggie that will fit into the kit without any sort of issue. The biggest problem with doing some chance composition is that the dice do not always make the most musica...

It is Saturday, and I am going to do as little as I can. Well, that's not entirely true. I have already found some resources on TPT for my culture of the month bulletin board, but that is about all I want to do for people outside my house and family today. Saturdays are my only days off during the regular school year. In about 19 days, I will go on my summer schedule which will mean three day weekends which are wonderful experiences during months when I have more struggles with my well-being. I have tried for years to get a four-day workweek established and it was almost within reach (again) this year. So, when our next regular school schedule starts up, I will be returning to a five day workweek with some extra paid time off and a little bit more money as incentives to stay. So, we got a bit of a win - not the amount of time off that I wanted, but a bit more than we had before, so there's that. For the next three weekends, though, I have one day to be completely on my own, and...

I have been playing with some of my Star Wars toys this week in my music therapy sessions. I have some VERY cool Star Wars toys, including lots of R2-D2 toys that beep, move, and need voice activation to get going. I enjoy taking in my cool things every year during this week (because it is almost May the Fourth!), and I find it interesting to watch how my clients do not know how to play. My piece de resistance is my voice-activated R2-D2. He is obstinate, refuses to listen to any and all commands, and does such a great job of ignoring my students that I just want to hug him! They express their frustration with his defiance, and I can use that as an exemplar of why others are often frustrated with their defiance. There are times when their eyes show a bit of understanding - for a split second. I use toys in my therapy sessions quite often. Some of my students do not want to interact with me, but they will play with me if we have some toys available. So, if you open my cabinets, you will...

Gee whiz. Two weeks ago, I was actually reading some pretty interesting things in the world of music therapy, but I am not reading anything in our field right now. This, of course, doesn't mean that I am not reading - I am just not reading something about the field of music therapy at the moment. This is not unusual for me to not read things about our profession. I do not like to do that very often, but I recognize that it is important to do so on occasion. My problem with reading research articles and the like is that it takes lots of work to make the research relevant to my experience as a clinician. I am naturally suspicious of research results, having done my own and recognizing the limitations present in the process, and I find it hard to justify some of the results with my reality in my clinic.  As a result of my avoidance of research and desire to know more about research, I have developed a research to practice process that works for me. It involves a form - swoon! Perhaps ...