One Hour to Write Something - Thoughtful Thursday
So, let's talk about music, therapy, and me this morning.
We will get the "me" part over with. I am still tired, very frustrated with a particular client who has decided to target aggression towards me, and happy that today is Thursday rather than yesterday. I wish I had some more stuff to get me energized, but tired seems to be my default lately. I'm going to blame my changing hormones for all of this exhaustion. I am currently feeling inundated by a plethora of phone calls from all sorts of people wanting to give me things or sell me something or to set up appointments. Some of these people know that I do not like calls but are calling anyway. I have been very frustrated about having to call back. I have not had much time to delve into things that I love lately either.
That's enough about me.
Let's talk a bit about music.
I haven't done much music listening or appreciation lately. The music that I have been listening to is client-based, and I realized that I haven't made music just for myself in months and months. I haven't sat at the keyboard with a music book and just played things that I love to sing. Not in a very long time.
I miss making music. Since I no longer have my church job, I don't have a time where I make music just to make music and not to therapize. I miss that, but not enough to go join a choir or anything like that.
It is time to put musicking back into my work routine. This is something that I stopped doing - for some reason or another - and it is something that every music therapist should (goblin) be doing. It is time to get started with that practice again. I have time every afternoon after my last session and before my afternoon meetings and bus duty responsibilities start, so I could put that practice into my schedule without difficulty.
This ended up being more stuff about me.
(19 minutes into my hour...)
Music is something I do. I was in a seminar for artists and musicians on Saturday, and a fellow musician asked about what types of hobbies the panel cultivated now that their primary creative modality was their livelihood. He stated that when he went to music school, his hobby of being a musician became his job. We all thought that he was going to ask about how you navigate those feelings from "this is what I do to have fun" to "this is what I have to do to pay my bills." This shift from fun to financing is rough, or I have found it to be rough. I have had to carve out music and time to make music just for me.
I have some songs that I will never use in therapy because I want to keep them for myself. Fortunately, my students prefer other music and do not encroach on my songs. It might be different if my clientele were my age, but it is not a problem with my students. They never ask for the music that I want to keep for myself (selfish? I hope not - it is self-preservation thing these days). I figure that I have plenty of music that we share that my clients will never miss the songs that are mine.
I encourage my clients to find their own songs to keep to themselves - things that they love; things that they find emotionally enriching; things that remind them of people that they want to remember. Some of my clients have started projects with me that help them identify those songs at this part of their lives. I hope that the clients who have left have continued to think about the role that music takes in their lives.
(32 minutes...)
Therapy.
There is so much to consider when you are trusted to be a therapist. There is the responsibility of being a helper as well as a guide. There is the need to recognize the potential of harm. So many things to consider before we even think about stepping into the profession. These are the things and expectations that we have for ourselves when we make the conscious decision to remain in this profession.
That's part of the point here - making the conscious decision to remain in the profession of music therapy.
I never tell someone that they have to continue to be a music therapist when it doesn't fit what they want from life. I have heard many therapists, mired in guilt and challenge, state that they have to keep being a music therapist to pay back their professors and supervisors. My question to them is always, "why?"
One of the messages that I have always tried to convey to my interns (especially the last 33 - sorry, the first three of you) is that there is NO debt to me except that they need to find the jobs that challenge them and make them feel happy. If that is not music therapy, then that is fine with me. You just can't stay in a job for someone else. You have to figure out what is best for you and not feel that you owe someone your happiness.
As far as I know, about half of my former interns are music therapists. The other half are other things. Not bad odds in a difficult profession with a high attrition rate. I always wonder why people leave this profession, and I mourn anyone who feels like there is a lack of support for them as a professional. I want to both give them that support but also encourage them to find what makes them feel happy, even when it means that I can no longer call them a fellow music therapist.
(49 minutes into my hour...)
I think I have not much else to say at this point, and my time consciousness and time anxiety is starting to tickle my brain. It is time to head into my day of four music therapy groups, one individual reward session, and a irrelevant meeting before heading back here. I hope to put some music playing into that schedule in between my last group and my irrelevant meeting. I will just have to do it. Sit down on my office space floor and just play.
Time to put some music back into the me part of this blog.
Comments
Post a Comment