Wednesday

It is Wednesday morning - very early. I have not been sleeping as much as I like lately. This will be helpful next Sunday when my part of the world changes to Daylight Savings Time (ugh!), but it is not really helpful right now. Last night, things were complicated by high winds and blizzardy conditions at my home. Things were wuthering all over the place, and my neighbors have a trash bin in their backyard that had a banging lid each time the wind caught it. (The wind caught it many times!) The one good thing about this particular blizzard is that my power has not gone out... yet.

I am really hoping that I will not have to go out into the high winds, but schools are not closing around here. I will plan on going really slowly as I travel the 50 miles to work this morning. The winds are going at 30 miles per hour with gusts every couple of seconds that are around 60 miles per hour. I have a little car that catches every piece of wind that is out there. My job is located in a place where they did not have the blizzard, but they are having the high winds. I am hoping that the transportation department doesn't want to get out, but it's not looking good for another inclement weather day.

Today will be an easy day because, if school happens, two of my groups will be on a field trip and will not be available for specials. That means an entire afternoon of work in my storage/office areas. I made good progress last week, moving things back to places where I keep them and finding new places for things that had to move from one room to the other. Once I moved the drum pieces to my former office, there is so much room for activities in my former storage place and current office space! I will have about four hours of downtime to fill with my lunch time and my documentation time.

That is, if they go on their field trip...

Since I am counting on their absence, I am sure that something will happen to keep them at the facility on their regular schedule. That is something that has happened before, and I deal with it, but I like it when plans go as stated rather than changing last minute. The problem?? I am good at pivoting, so people think that it is no big deal. This is part of the reason that I always have more prepared than I need for any and every session. I have to pivot from my strategy often, so it becomes something that is expected.

I am also going to do some strategizing for next week's sessions. We are going to talk about woodwind instruments, but I also want to incorporate some of the ideas and TMEs that my clients and coworkers have requested in the last week or so. So, it is time to do some focused brainstorming about my session structure lately and time to try new session contours and ideas for implementation. I tend to go back and forth from wanting everything to be new and craving patterns in my therapy sessions. I am currently doing patterns, but it seems that my clients and coworkers are wanting less of my patterns and more of my other ways to engage - more improvisatory therapy sessions. It is time to seek a happy medium again.

This is a common theme in my writing and my professional life experiences. I go fully into the music education focus for a bit and then go fully back into improvisation with absolutely no planning or strategizing. Neither of those ways of doing music therapy are great for me - I do best when I am right in the middle of both of these ways of being a music therapist. Some thematic programming with an attitude that the clients are in the driver's seat of every session is the best way for me to strategize. It is time to think a bit more deeply about this situation.

I am hoping to turn off my florescent lights this afternoon in favor of my floor lamp. I am hoping to stretch my aching body out on the floor of my office space as I do some brainstorming and strategizing. I am hoping that people will not come looking for me (they don't often do that) so I can focus on work and thinking. We will see!

Time to take my shower, check the school closings, and then head to work... (ooh, the first delay is announced for our day students - will there be more??).