music, therapy, and me

Last weekend, I sat down and made a handmade journal. It has about 80 pages in it and is made of scrapbook paper. I put in a coptic stitch binding, and it looks pretty good to me. Now, it is time to decorate the thing.  This is the point where I struggle. I am not someone who likes lots of frou-frou and gee gaws in my journals, but others do. I decided to use a sticker set I got from Stickii called "cozy critters" as the basis of my color palette and theme for the journal. Many of the journals that I see on social media and other places are packed to the gills with flip outs, journal pages, tuck spots, hidden compartments, and pockets galore. There are stamped cards and stained papers and all sorts of things that I just find make my own journaling process more complicated, so I don't bother in my own books, but this seems to be what sells, and I want things to sell. I find that forcing these types of projects places me into a place of suspension. I just cannot move into t...

I took some time off from ripping music to my computer, but I am ready to get back and get going again. I brought one of my very large CD books down from upstairs just to see that it was the one I finished earlier. So, I am going to trudge back upstairs and get the others that I have to still go through. Three more huge cases and one smaller case to go - the smaller case has holiday music only, so it fits in the smaller case without difficulty. As I stroll through my CD purchases from long ago, I am constantly reminded that I really love all sorts of songs. It is difficult to name a favorite singer or group or song, but I do have my favorites. My music library is eclectic to say the least. Throat singers and monks through to rap and hip-hop artists. I have CDs from groups that made one and never were heard from again. I have recordings that are greatest hits compilations from artists that had long careers. The books of CDs that I have and continue to keep in my home even though there a...

I tried to write every day this week - just something on the screen - but I did not make it. Thursday and Friday were quiet over here - I woke up late, had too many things to do before work, and just didn't feel the writing muse taking over. I am going to strive to do better.  I have a couple of websites bookmarked that have random story line or journal prompts available to me. Today's prompt comes from a website that offers  journal prompts for those enjoying music , and my random number generator selected #33 as my prompt. Here goes... Imagine you are a music video director. What kind of video would you create for your favorite song? Egad. This is not my favorite type of thinking. I am not really a visual type of person. I don't dream much (except for nightmares), and I have never been able to successfully engage in a GIM session. As a result, music videos have never been something that I have enjoyed or thought about much. The second half of the prompt - my favorite song...

I have been resisting the siren call of streaming services lately. There are so many shows that I want to watch that are behind a subscription wall that makes it easy to think that I could just watch more television if I paid more money. I don't want to pay more money, so I resist the call to take out my credit card and sign up for them all! This morning, however, I decided that it was time to become a member of PBS.  This was partly a political decision and partly an impulse decision. I like many of the shows on the PBS app, and it is a way to support something that has been part of my life for all of it. So, I signed up as an annual member of my local station. I have never done this before, but I am looking forward to being a member. I believe in Sesame Street and Arthur and Donkey Hotie, and I like the idea of helping PBS continue, even if it is only a little bit. For now, though, I am going to download the PBS app onto my travel tablet and start watching things that are offered...

Here it is, Tuesday again, and I am sitting here wondering what I am going to write about. Tuesdays are reserved for therapeutic music experience (TME) development, so here goes. I am a good improviser, but I forget what I improvised pretty much as soon as I am finished with the improvisation process. I will think, "wow, this is really working. I need to remember this song," and as soon as I change to something else in the clinic, my mind refuses to remember the music - all of it! As a result, I have had to learn to release those clinical improvisations as music therapy moments that are fleeting and not meant to be captured. It always makes me a bit sad when I hit on something that is really working with my clients that I cannot replicate afterwards, but I still cannot remember... All of this is just a prelude to the topic for today - writing things down. I have been writing TME ideas down for my entire music therapy career - preprofessional learning mode as well as professio...

I am less of an early bird than I used to be. I used to spring out of bed at 3:45am, get my writing done, talk to the cat, and get to work early enough to have about 45 minutes of quiet in my music therapy room before interns arrived. I would stay an extra hour after my contracted hours were up to accommodate the needs of interns, so I was working 9-10 hour days every day. I no longer do that, but I am also not springing anywhere these days! I don't know if this is just a regular habit for aging, but I am always tired and am finding it difficult to release myself from the comfort of my bed. Perhaps I should make my bed less comfortable?? It may have something to do with the amount of medication that I am on right now, but this has been going on even when I am not on my allergy medication. For right now, I am going to close this post because it is a shower day, and I am running later than usual... Does this actually count as a blog post?? Not in my mind, but at least I did something...

I am someone who reads science fiction and has always been suspicious of artificial intelligences - HAL, Sonny, David, O.T.T.O., Pat from Smart House - they have always been a bit spooky for me. As a result of my healthy reading and movie watching habits, I do not like the ways that AI is taking over some of the basic things that I love. Even as I write, there is a little icon suggesting that I use a tool to generate my ideas and blog posts. I just don't like it. I was recently encouraged to start using a common tool to help me figure out some of what I want to do with the rest of my life. When I first tried it out, the tool told me to "come back when you have answered these questions." Ugh. I was using the tool to generate the questions. I tried it again yesterday. This round was a bit better, but I still felt the creepiness overtaking me as I was using it. It finally gave me a printable product, so I printed things out and then moved on. I am not going to go back for a ...

It is October, and the fields are being harvested around my home and workplace right now. Since the dusty crops are being chopped and transported, I am showing my signs and symptoms of my typical respiratory issues for this year. I can't breathe smoothly, and my nose drips out of nowhere. I am exhausted, and I am not sleeping through the night anymore. All of this is affecting my mental well-being as well. The exhaustion leads me to being snappish and negative in my views. I am less creative when I am not feeling well. I am guessing that there are so many things happening in the world that are getting through my insulation that I am manifesting these things in my mind and my body. It is strange, but I have not had the energy to write or even think for some time now. Part of this is compounded by the fact that I have recently received two rejections of ideas, and that has bruised my ego a bit. I am feeling irrelevant, silenced, and hurt. All of these things are part of how I am work...

I have been unable to write the past two days. I'm not exactly sure why, but I know that I have been a bit preoccupied by the sheer stupidity of things happening out in the world. There are times when outside concerns take over my attention and push me down. I have also had some back problems lately that have also made me inwardly focused. The outward pull and the inward push have taken over my attention and have made it difficult to do much of anything, but I have made it to work and done my job. I am currently debating whether I want to take a later morning, and I think I will. I think I will try my best to go to work and get there on time rather than early. I have already worked more than my contracted hours this week, so I can do a regular day. When I am in these types of moods there are several things that I have to do. The first is to block political messages from my social media feeds. Lots of friends will be going on 30 day breaks. The constant calls for action make me feel...

So, I was driving home on Friday afternoon, and I passed two dead armadillos by the side of the road - they were about five miles apart, and I just started singing about them. I'll post the song somewhere, but it is just an absurd little dirge that popped into my head. That's how music happens for me. Things that endure pop into my head and stick there. I sang the song to my sister, and it stuck in her head as well, but she isn't singing the right melody yet. I will have to sing the dirge to her several more times until it sticks. I doubt that I will ever use the song in music therapy, but it fulfilled something for me. The lyrics are simple - Flat armadillo, flat armadillo, flat armadillo, flat armadillo by the side of the road. I also played around with some lyrics, but I didn't develop it any more. There are times when things just don't need to be developed into a therapeutic music experience. They just are. I haven't been taking the time to sing lately. I wi...

It is Saturday again, and I am two hours away from a video meeting with a friend who is also a music therapist and four hours away from getting a new tire. In that time, I have to blog, shower, clean out the car, and eat something for breakfast. I had some homework to do before meeting, and I did it, but I decided that my health will not allow me to do what I want to do. It involves an evening class that I just will not be able to do due to my work and medication schedules. After the response to later medication ingestion from the past two weeks, I know that I cannot dedicate six weeks of late night Tuesdays that will affect my early morning Wednesdays, but I did write out my responses to the application questions. That helped me think about what I want to do next. Are you ready? I want to do everything I possibly can to support music therapists, students, and interns in doing their jobs. This has always been my mission - for my website, for my business, for everything that I am passio...

Yesterday was a challenging day. Not because of clients - they were just what I expect from my clients - but the staff and the universe conspired against me - AGAIN! I was called to the principal's office to discuss an event that happened during my Tuesday sessions. I have a client who is targeting me and new staff who do not understand that the reason that he is targeting me is to get attention from a preferred staff member who is not in the session anymore - for some reason unknown to the teachers in this school. When the preferred staff member arrives, this client will stop engaging in targeting me and will sit next to the preferred staff member. I have requested that this staff member stop engaging with the client during his outbursts and instead attend to all the students who are engaging appropriately. I have asked this staff member over and over again to not reinforce the attacks by paying attention to the client. Anyway, this client attacked me on Tuesday - hit me in the fa...

Here it is... Yet another Wednesday, and I don't have a writing plan. I really hate when I do not have a plan. My brain craves structure. I like planning, and being without a plan causes stress in my life. Add in the fact that this is Wednesday, I am perpetually exhausted, and I really don't want to go to work today, and this day is not going the way I want it to. It was hard to get up, and I am going to take a later than usual day. So, a website for Wednesday... Have you all checked out Bear Paw Creek ?  Bear Paw Creek is a music and movement focused company that produces movement props. Janet Stephens, the owner, is the sister of a music therapist, and started making these props to help music therapists (and others, but let's be serious - this is a music therapy blog, so...) tote things around. Starting with bags, Janet moved into making other props as well - scarves, balloon balls, body bands. I do not get any sort of financial recompense for sending you to Bear Paw Cre...

Here I sit - again - staring at a blinking cursor on my computer screen as I scramble for something to write about. You know what? I am just going to go back to what I know the best - talking about writing therapeutic music experiences (TMEs and my selection for what to call what I do with my clients during sessions) and making sure that others can replicate those TMEs with their clients. So, TME Tuesday is returning - at least for today. I will try to make this a thing, but my brain is not tracking themes for writing very well at the moment. (It is now on a super-sticky post-it note on my monitor - that usually helps - super-sticky post-its are a wonderful invention for my brain and organizational needs!)   It has been some time since I created something completely new, from scratch, and then written it down so I could replicate it. I tend to engage in lots of improvisation in my work, but those songs just evaporate when I try to write them down. As such, I have to write things do...

I spent much of my Friday afternoon making file folder activities for one of the teachers in my school who needed some large safety sign practice folders. So, I sat down and cut out all sorts of safety signs from Breezy Special Ed . There are twelve different folders in the set that my school uses, so I made a complete copy for the teacher in folder size and am continuing to make smaller versions in half size for some of the other students in my school. As I was making the folders, I was reminded of my thesis where I wrote songs specifically for sight-word recognition purposes. Many of the safety signs were also part of our sight-word list back then, so I already have a bunch of songs written that go along with the file folders. Of course, my sings do not cover all the signs on any of the folders, but that's the way things go. My thesis was uninteresting, especially to me. I got laryngitis during the testing period so I am sure that things were affected by that fact, but it was jus...

I didn't do much music listening during my commutes this week, but I did spend about an hour and a half making file folder activities and singing to my favorites playlist on Spotify on Friday afternoon. I listened to many different songs in that time, but none of them really stuck with me. As a result, it is difficult to find a song for today's Sunday Song. I am glad that I am listening to more music these days. There is something lonely when I do not spend much time listening and making music for myself. Since I left my church job a year ago, I have not been singing in worship or with others at all, and I miss it a bit. I don't miss the church community - I still have the great big knife in my back that they shoved in there - but I do miss singing with people. Music listening is a good way to get back into musicking for myself.  It is amazing how quickly I get into a feeling like I need to have no music around me. Music is my job, but it is also what got me to music therap...

I get to escape to my happy place today and finish up a whole bunch of file folder activities for one of our teachers. I ran out of Velcro on Wednesday evening, so I couldn't finish then, but I have replenished my stash and am ready to go! This is truly something that I enjoy. I like taking paper and turning it into activities of various kinds. My joy comes in the making of such things. I tend to get a bit distressed when I watch people using those things that I have crafted with my hands. So, it is easier for me to make multiple copies and send them out into the world rather than make things for my clients to use. That's where the Pristine Folder comes in. For every project that I make for my music therapy sessions, I make one that lives within a filing cabinet. It does not get touched by hands other than mine because I can take it when folders are ripped or crumpled knowing that there is one that is picture perfect - Pinterest Perfect - safely tucked away. With the folders I ...

I am flummoxed about finding something new to write about this Wednesday morning. All of the websites that I can come up with that influences my world as a music therapist is something I have already written about at one time or another. It is interesting to get to the point where I need to go exploring around the internet to see if there is anything new out there for me. So, here is a list of my favorite websites for music therapy resources and ideas... there really isn't anything new... Pinterest TPT (formally known as Teachers Pay Teachers ) Ms. Stouffer's Music Room West Music Music Is Elementary Bear Paw Creek   What am I missing? I use these for lots of purposes, but usually to either give me some inspiration or for materials. I often will browse and then write TMEs or make visuals to support ideas that I generate. TPT is the best for that type of process for me. Bear Paw Creek is great for durable props like scarves, body bands, and balloon balls (I am looking forward to...

It is time to revisit the idea of thematic music therapy programming in my blog. I don't always remember this particular theme for Tuesday posts, but I feel like I need the structure this morning, so here goes! For today's theme, I am focusing on emotions. The book packet that I am putting together is based on a book where emotions are displayed in inappropriate ways. I enjoy the book so much, especially the illustrations. I have all the TMEs planned out, but I haven't written them down yet. That's the next step. One of the things that happens over and over in my sessions - often by well-intentioned adults rather than my clients - is that emotions are labeled as good or bad rather than just there. I stress, over and over again, that emotions are not the important thing - it is how we handle our emotions that make them good or bad. If we are feeling angry, then that is fine. If we are feeling angry and hit someone, that is a bad action that came through our emotional sta...

It is Monday again, and I am watching a British sewing show as I am sitting here. There is a stack of file folders waiting lamination, but I am not really all that interested in laminating at the moment. I could get through the stack pretty quickly, but I think I will wait until this afternoon to get this part of my project finished. Laminating folders is a good task when my brain and body are tired. I can just sit, watch television, and feed folders through the laminating machine. These folders are not for me. They are not something I will use in my sessions at my current facility. They are for a teacher who has specific goals for these folders. One of the things that I do during my planning/preparation time at work is make these things for others. So, I have a stack of large safety signs that I am making in large and mini versions. When I am making visuals, I always try to make them in file folder size and both larger than that and smaller than that as well. My thinking behind having...

One of my quests for this year is to rip all of my CDs (yep, I still have CDs) onto my computer so I have the music in digital form without having to stream. So, I have been ripping CDs and listening to more music lately. I have realized that music has been missing from my life lately... Now, let me clarify because I am musicking all the time with my clients, but I have not been engaging in music for me lately. I listen to what my clients want to hear, not what I need in my own musical journey. So, part of this quest is to remind me of music for me. I was asked why I still have all of my CDs, and the simple reason is that I paid good money for all of these, and I don't want to give them away! I will keep them for as long as I possibly can! As I was listening and ripping and appreciating the music I have collected over the years, I have started to select songs for specific reasons (because I am a music therapist and goals are ALWAYS things that I think about - even for myself). One ...