Break Chronicles: Day One of Nine

Break Chronicles: Picture has a background image of a meadow with several tall trees, the sun shining through leaves, and a lake in the far background. The text includes the author’s Instagram handle, @musictherapyworkslandaker, the title of the post, “Break Chronicles,” and the URL of the website, www.musictherapyworks.com.
It is time for Spring Break from my school job, and I am getting ready for a week of staycation and time to myself. As a result, I may or may not be writing as much this week. I am getting myself ready for rest and cleaning. I just now realized that my plans to go to the library on Monday have to change because there will be a St. Patrick's Day parade on Monday. I will not be going anywhere near my downtown area because of the parade. Getting free parking will be difficult, so I will be remaining away from the library on the 17th. Already, I am shifting my plans around. Going to the library was one of two things that I have to do outside of my house, and now the plan has changed. I am really thankful that I remembered the parade today and not on Monday morning when I was stuck in the whole mess!!

It is time to buckle down and get my home environment working for me. I am working on my motivation and follow through for this week, so I am going to try to work on reconfiguring my living spaces to make them more efficient for me.

I crave efficiency.

More than anything else, I want things to work smoothly and in systems that function without much thought or extra energy. I want my home to be that way, and it is not at the moment. There are just too many places to work on, and I tend to get a bit of task paralysis when I become overwhelmed by my environment.

So, it is time to shake myself out of that indecision and get going. Right now, I am sitting at my office desk, looking at so many things to do and get organized. I really need a genie to figure things out for me, but I'm stuck with me.

I want to start with my living room. That is a space where I have placed lots of boxes of things that do not belong. It is time to move things around and organize that space a bit differently. To do that, I have to move some things down here to accommodate what I know is upstairs in the living room.

I bought some more visual aid and music therapy resource containers. There are two boxes full of these containers upstairs in my living room. I need some display cases, so I was thinking I could use some of the cardboard lurking around to make some. Everything takes time, so I have to figure out how I want to use my time and then use it. Perhaps that is the way to get going on these tasks - do some time blocking and use my 30 minute process. I change what I am doing every 30 minutes, alternating tasks until they are finished up. So, to start, I can do some cleaning boxes out and putting things away with making these display cases, switching every 30 minutes.

I suggested an accountability check with a friend of mine. I'm not sure she would go with it, but who knows. Perhaps we will get something going together to help with motivation. Perhaps not, and it really only matters if I get myself going as much as I can, so it is time.

When I am on break, I tend to categorize my time based on when I want to leave my house. I have no real plans to leave my house, but I could go to the library today instead of Monday. I am not sure that I want to go somewhere, though. I know that I have an appointment on Tuesday, so my Tuesday morning will be spent being nervous about that appointment. Until then, I have no real plans. So, I do not have to do anything outside of my house in several days, so there is nothing between me and significant change in my environment but me.

For accountability purposes, here is the environment in my office and craft area. Let's hope that tomorrow's pictures show a much less cluttered space. See you tomorrow!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Songwriting Sunday: Client Goals First and Foremost

Image
When I am writing music, I tend to do one of two things. I either start with a specific client in mind and write for that client's goals and objectives, or I start with an idea and let the idea grow regardless of the clients that I am serving at the time. I spend time with lots of hypothetical clients - thinking about the vast number of clients and their unique goals as I develop songs and therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). Today, though, I would like to start with the first focus - that of a specific client and his or her or their goals. Currently, I am sharing a wall with a class of students who are experiencing lots of life and school changes. Two students have transferred from residential care to home care and are now day students. One student is brand new to the classroom. Another student recently left the class. All of these changes have shifted the dynamics in the classroom group, and old behaviors of concern have reemerged as well as finding new behaviors to contribute. ...
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

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