Feeling Better Today: A Day Off Can Work Wonders at Times

I took a day off yesterday - a day just to relax and not do much of anything. I did take the trash and the recycling out to the curb, so there's that, but nothing else really happened. I ate spaghetti. I waited for the mower WHO DID NOT ARRIVE YET AGAIN! My lawn looks horrible. I am not getting any sort of communication from the person who insisted that I postpone my appointment to yesterday. I am feeling inept and invisible. Ugh.

I do feel better today. I woke up extra early, but I felt refreshed. Good thing, too, because today will be the hottest day of the season so far. I hope my room feels comfortable today, but I am guessing that it will not. It doesn't get better when it gets hotter outside - it gets worse.

Tomorrow is payday. I should be getting a bonus this month for longevity which has already been spent on a new water heater and water mitigation services after the events of last month. It will be helpful but not completely cover the costs that I have had over the past 30 days. Oh well. Sometimes the little things help the most.

This is turning into a bit of a complaining post which was not my intention at all when I started.

I do feel better than I did on Tuesday evening. I felt very achy then. I needed the day off to just not do anything at all. I am now compiling my list of things to do before my family members arrive in two weeks. There are lots of things to do, but I am chipping away at my tasks while finding new ones. There will be lots of things to do this weekend.

Before I can get to the weekend, though, I have to get through five sessions and a meeting today. I will take my lunch, my water bottle, and my brain into my hot, HOT music therapy room to lead five sessions with five very different groups of students. Before I leave for the day, I will figure out what I am doing next week in my sessions for the third of four weeks before the next break.

It is time to head out into the sunrise, leaving my home for about 9 hours. I am hoping that the energy and lack of pain this morning will continue until the end of the day. We'll see. 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