music, therapy, and me

Two groups, bus duty, and lots of cleaning between me and a long weekend of cleaning here at home. Today is payday which is helpful since I was scraping the bottom of the money barrel this month. January was a bit more expensive than I thought it would be. Back to my budget, I guess. My anxiety dreams continue, but this one was a bit better than the one on Tuesday. This morning's edition was about a competition where I had to find something out before two guys, and I was flailing about without knowing what they were doing. I don't have to guess where that theme came from. I have to come up with questions to ask potential replacements for my principal, and I'm not sure what to suggest. How do you send questions about music therapy to a non-music therapist to screen candidates for the job that you have? While I appreciate the trust, I am concerned about being part of the conversations. It's just weird to be part of the interview to find a replacement. I woke up to find th...

I am not the only one struggling with things and client issues right now. This is really good to hear because it is easy to get so inwardly focused that you start to internalize thoughts like "I am such a failure at this job" and "Maybe I can no longer do this job." It is important to find out whether issues in the therapy room are solely related to me as a therapist or if it may be the clients. Sometimes, it is both, but often it is not entirely me. That's the case right now. We have a monthly meeting of the "specials" pod teachers and therapists. It is a chance to communicate with one another and talk. We all are struggling with the same clients which is heartening. It means that these groups are struggling rather than me being a horrible music therapist at the moment. So, hearing that the art therapist, the adaptive physical education teacher, the agriculture teacher, the speech-language pathologist, the occupational therapy assistants, AND the voca...

Was yesterday a strange day for anyone else? Everyone in my life seemed to be having a strange day - weird dreams, strange feelings, all that stuff. Hearing that coming from others made my strange day feel a bit better. At least I wasn't alone in all of my stuff. There is safety in numbers, my friends! Today is starting off a little bit better. I had reflux last night and did not sleep well. I managed to get back to sleep around midnight until about 2am, but I did not allow myself to try to doze after that. I don't need more anxiety dreams happening - those are EXHAUSTING! So, I am heading into my job with less sleep than I would like, the remains of the reflux happening, and the effects of two nights of difficult sleep.  At least this next weekend is a three-day one. Unfortunately, it is a Monday off which I do not like at all, but it is another day off. I hope that I will do some resting, but I doubt it. Monday was so promising this week - I wonder why Tuesday and today are s...

I have entered a time when my life is feeling strange. I know, what else is new, but this is very strange for me. I saw the job announcement for my current position on my personal email account this morning. Now, I am happy that I am able to retire from this position, but it is strange to have LinkedIn recommend that I apply for the job that I currently hold. I think my principal may try really hard to get me into the interview process - something that I do NOT want to do - I want to show them the quirks and benefits of the job without having ANY say into who is hired. He showed me a resume yesterday that I glanced at but did not look deeply into. I realized that I really need to neaten up my work area if we are already arranging interviews. I have left jobs before, and I usually try to have a closing time and date. I have also been fired from jobs before, and those situations cling to me for many years. I dwell on choices, especially when they are not my choices. It is never a good th...

Today is Monday, February 9, 2026, and the Online Conference for Music Therapy 2026 is over! This is a really good thing because it means that I have little to do but my own stuff for the rest of the month. There is very little that feels better than having a large project completed, and this is that feeling. I am tired, but that is my usual state these days, so I really can't pin my exhaustion on OCMT - it's just me! My sister has the day off today, but I do not. We both have next Monday off which will be nice. I won't be doing anything special next Monday, but I will not have to go to work, so there's that! I do have to get going and get things happening at work today. I am not sure what we are going to do this week, but I will come up with something. I am having to rethink what I do with my groups because they have become less coherent than they used to be. I used to be able to plan one session for each of my four different types of groups, but I can't do that ri...

It is almost time. In 11 hours and 15 minutes, the 16th Online Conference for Music Therapy will start, and it will be a 24 hour, international experience where we discuss music therapy all over the world. This is a labor of love for me - one that I got into completely by accident but that I continue because I enjoy it so much. I am doing less of the actual conference work than I ever have before. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I will only be the primary moderator for one session - at the very end. I am the second moderator for four sessions. Gone are the days when I had to be at every session - thank goodness! I work lots behind the scenes of the conference, so having a bit of a break from being on camera is a very good thing for me. It allows me to respond to the countless emails about "I didn't know that the conference started at my time," and "where are the links to the conference" emails that I am bombarded with during the conference itself. The...

I was the recipient of a cough in the face yesterday. This happens when you work with humans, and especially when you work with kids, so it is not unusual, but I felt this one brush the hair on my arms and move up my body into my mouth. I tried to blow the germs away (very effective, I know), but I am not sure that I was able to fend off the germs wafting all around me. I have already had the flu once this season, and I would REALLY like to avoid the experience a second time! Two of my students (in two different sessions) looked sick yesterday. They were flushed and juicy, and I am just waiting for the note from nursing stating that they should not be around others. The thing is, working in a residential facility means that any germs will go through the entire community - clients, staff, teachers, therapists, and back again. It is not a pretty picture. Next year, at this time, I will be elsewhere, dealing with the germ culture someplace at that location - wherever it may be. Germs are ...

I am an old music therapist. I am getting ready to retire from my full-time job as a school-based music therapist in a psychiatric treatment facility and associated day school after almost 30 years there. I have been around a long time. My music therapy heroes are starting to pass away. Barbara Wheeler was one of those music therapy heroes who left this world this week. After a long career in academia, she "retired" and started more music therapy programs and acted as a consultant for programs around the world. She seemed to spend more time with other music therapists than she did at home, and that is the type of music therapy life that I am striving for myself. Another music therapy pioneer passed away. Dr. Roy Grant, a music therapist from Georgia, also left our world on January 24th. His music therapy legacy comes in training students and expanding music therapy services for the people in the vicinity of the University of Georgia. Coming to the profession of music therapy ...

Y'all, I FINALLY got to see my Monday groups, and they were not having it!  I forgot that my Monday groups are usually ones who struggle with being in music therapy - the "I'm too cool for everything" adolescents. You know the ones - they just sit and stare. No active interaction, slouching in their chairs, and not wanting to work or play or do anything that might ruin their reputations. I can usually con them into interaction in one way or another, and yesterday was no exception. By the end of the session, they were playing instruments and making some noise as part of a dragon parade.  That session led into two others back-to-back that were also not really feeling the whole Monday thing. No one was engaging in behaviors of concern, but no one was really engaged in what I was dishing out either. I do not think that today's groups will be any different. I am in a strange place in my life that I have never been before. I am on the cusp of leaving the daily interacti...

It's back - the reason why I no longer participate so much in the greater music therapy community - people squawking about things that are outside what I feel is the purview of music therapy and then shaming anyone who dares to present a different viewpoint. I view this as the Politicization of music therapy, and it is something that I do not appreciate from the greater music therapy population in general. There are so many bullies out there on social media, and when you try to call them out, they go into devastation mode bringing their bully buddies into the conversation. Currently, it seems the bullies are calling out anyone who dares to provide any sort of commentary that contradicts or asks for clarification about the current bully trends. As far as I can tell, the current issue seems to have started with someone who objected to the use of profanity in a specific post and now has morphed into a criticism of anyone who objects to assertions about politics and therapy. I am tryin...

'Tis the season for MJ to be a bit scattered and overwhelmed! This is the week before the Online Conference for Music Therapy , and I am the treasurer and continuing education director for the conference. Right now, I am getting emails sent out to people from all over the world, and I am fielding questions from all sorts of folks about all sorts of situations! In addition, I just saw a position that I would enjoy doing, so I am thinking about applying. The worst case scenario is that I would not get the job, so why not try?? I have some time to get things together, but I would have to become a member again of an organization that I have stepped away from. Ugh. I have some time to think about this situation, but not much. This tends to be my busiest time of year - OCMT and everything else just seems to show up at this time. If I need to do something in an urgent manner, it will happen during OCMT week. It is pretty funny to note that there are 51 other weeks in the year, but I end u...

Today will be the last bit of my Paid Time Off due to the need to get some CT scans done to see what is going on with my liver and my kidneys. This is not my favorite thing to do, but that's okay. It has to be done. So, I am sitting here, awash in medical anxiety, and entering my "nothing by mouth" phase of all of this. I have some errands that I need to do in town before and after my tests, and I am not sure if I will be going to work at all today - that will depend on my reaction after the test. The last time I had a CT scan, I fell in the waiting room - just toppled over - thanks, balance disorder! I may not make the window of my realistic time for driving an hour to work before driving another hour home for just working an hour or so. We will see what happens later. I only have one therapy group, one leisure group, and one individual session on Fridays. The rest of the time is my dedicated planning/preparation time. I usually make file folder activities for our classr...

I forgot to take my medications last night until about 2 hours later than usual. These are my big, pain relief, nerve dulling medications that affect my sleep, awareness, and response time, so it is a pretty big deal when I forget them. I opened my eyes when the alarm light turned on at 4am, but I also did not get out of bed until almost 5am. My brain is still fuzzy, and my eyes don't focus right until the medication starts to wear off. So, that means that today will be an even later day. Today is a four-group day. Three of my four groups have already been with me this week, so I have to come up with something new for them to do when they are in the music therapy session. The other group is my once-per-week group, so they haven't explored any of the things that I have available right now - yet. So, the first thing that I have to do is to figure out what I am going to do with my clients. They went through a series of silly songs with me on Tuesday, so I am thinking I will bring ...

I did not want to get up. This seems to be a recurring theme on this blog at the moment, so forgive me when I try to pick this apart right now. I did not want to get up. I wanted to sleep as much as I could, but the clock and the alarm light insisted that it was 4am, and time to get going. So I did. Wasn't happy about it, but I got up. I played some phone games while in bed first, but I did eventually rise from my warm, cozy bed to sit at my computer and compose some of my thoughts. We had a snow day on Monday, but that day started with early morning panic and anxiety rather than coziness. I got up just fine yesterday and got to work 30 minutes before my report for duty time. Today is a different story. This is my typical Tuesday feeling, and it came right on time for yet another 4 day work week. I haven't seen one of my groups for six weeks now, and I find that I am missing them. I see all of my other Monday groups on Wednesdays, so I am not missing those clients - we are stil...

It is the 27th day of January, 2026, and I am finding a need to be more rooted in myself and my thinking than I have accomplished recently. Hence, the return of my word of the year - metamorphosis.  This is my selected word because I am facing significant changes in my daily life coming up pretty soon. In fact, I have about five months left before I no longer work at the facility where I have been for the past (almost) 30 years. This upcoming change both exhilarates and terrifies me, but I am more than ready to move into my next state of being. I woke up just after midnight this morning needing to use the bathroom. I was able to go back to sleep for another three hours before my brain refused to sleep anymore. So, I have now been up for about an hour, going through my email accounts and other social media accounts. It is 4:35 am. I am really resenting the fact that I have to wake up and get going these days. I keep reminding myself that I will not have to get up in five months to g...

Here we are, again, at the end of another writing/blogging hiatus at musictxandme.blogspot.com. I just have not felt much like writing lately, so I haven't. I have spent more time in my bed, stretching my body, and getting bogged down in the happenings of the world to focus on writing much about music, therapy, and me. Today, though, I am sitting at home on our first snow day, and I am feeling the need to write something today. I am not exactly sure what I will end up writing, but something will show up in my brain, I am sure. First, let's catch up. I am currently sitting in my living room, waiting for a dump cake to finish baking, and enjoying the prospect of spaghetti casserole. There are morning rainbows scattered all over my living room from the crystal capybara and crystal Cinderella coach that I received as gifts for my last birthday. They reside on the window sill in my living room and offer these rainbows that move across the gray walls. I have a prism downstairs in my ...

It is Wednesday in the Midwest, and we are preparing for a polar vortex to happen on Friday. All this means for us is that it will be very cold - significantly below freezing and also below zero. It is time to get my Dad's puffy coat off the hook because my usual swing coat doesn't cut it when these vortices arrive. Other than that, it is business as usual. Music therapy sessions continue in my cold music therapy room. Students are involved in their own dramas as well as the staff members navigating their personal and professional situations. I am trying not to cough much as I share a bit about Australian music. The cough is left over from my recent flu, and it is not really getting better. I know it will eventually, but it hasn't happened yet. This weekend is my first adolescent symposium. We are going to be talking about age and developmental appropriateness in music selections, the ethics of music censorship, and then developing ideas and experiences to use with adolesce...

The past week has been rough, all. Not just the immense issues with our current leadership in this country, but also on a personal level. I had the flu last week - three days of high temperature and a nasty cough that is lingering. It was not the best time, but I am hoping that is over. Turns out, many people at work had the flu last week. It wasn't just me who was out. Last week was a lost week. I am exhausted right now. I am not really looking forward to going to work, but I will. I am still coughing quite a bit, which frustrates me because it makes it difficult to sing and make music. I am not entirely sure what I am going to do with my students this week. Last week's strategies will not work because we had a day off this week (darn Monday holidays). At the same time, having a week of country of the month videos would be good for my breathing and cough situation. I will probably just do the country of the month videos so I can rest a bit more. I finished the presentations fo...

It is Saturday. This is my favorite day of the week these days because it is the one day that I devote entirely to my "other than my primary job" pursuits. I have a list of things that I have to get finished before the end of the weekend, so I am working on tasks as I can. I haven't been able to check off anything except for computer-centric tasks so far, but I have many other things to do. One of the things that I do every other Saturday is a bit of peer supervision. It is nice to talk to a fellow music therapist about small business and internship stuff. So, we meet together every other week to talk about what is going on in our lives. That's on the to-do list. Other things are clearing my crafting space so I can host a symposium in two weeks without showing everyone my messy work space. I need to make food to eat this week - I already have hamburger cooked, so I am thinking about making a mass batch of chili and spaghetti sauce to eat on each night. I also have som...

Oh, dear. It is Friday, and I feel that the week went both fast and slow. Having less than usual numbers of sessions and students makes the week seem unfinished somehow. We get to do that again on the week of 19th for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. That type of schedule is difficult to navigate, especially when you are a creature of habit like me. So, it is now the end of my four-day work week. I have two groups and an individual on the schedule today. That's it. The rest of the time that I am at work needs to be productive, but I have not been actually productive lately. So, I will be using my 30 minutes of work with 30 minutes of something else. I am in between visual aid projects at the moment, so I really don't have anything sitting there waiting to be worked on. I guess one of my work tasks should be to print out more visual aids to work on in the next 22 weeks. Meanwhile, back here at home, things are just piling up around here. My Christmas boxes arrived on Monday, and I h...

Complain, complain, complain. I am sitting here, trying to remember what day it is. I have this issue when I am on breaks because there are no outside pressures, but I REALLY have this issue when I find my typical daily schedule interrupted - like with a Monday at work without music therapy sessions. I am at odds with my expectations, mainly because I didn't have as many sessions as I have on my schedule. It is Thursday, right? This means that I have my Tuesday groups again and my Monday groups are finished for the week. Everything is a bit discombobulated in my brain, so I am having to remind myself over and over that this is the way it is this week, not next week, but will replicate the week after when we have Monday off for MLK, Jr. Day. I don't like having Mondays off or away from students. It just messes with my mind too much. Things are going well with other tasks. I have felt pretty good about my upcoming events as well as my own quests for musictherapyworks.com. I have ...

Let's talk about music therapy with adolescent clients on Saturday, January 24, 2026 - Three CMTEs for $30 USD. Topics include age and developmental considerations, the ethics of music censoring, and a group discussion about things we can do with our clients! Get ideas for therapeutic interventions to take back with you and use on Monday! More details here: http://www.musictherapyworks.com/morethanlyricanalysis.html Have you seen this graphic on music therapy social media feeds? I really hope so. I am getting ready to start this symposium for the music therapy community who, like me, work with adolescents and find little to no resources available. Let's work together to make this happen!! I hope that you will join me for this discussion in (gulp) 17 days!

Here we go. It is the first day of the second semester of the 2025-2026 school year - AKA, my last semester as a school-based therapist (as far as I know right now). I have five groups today - none of which are the same as the groups that I had on Tuesdays just two weeks ago. I have a vague idea of what I want to do with them (I have to laminate some resources that one student in particular will wrinkle immediately), but nothing is set in stone. I was anything but efficient yesterday. I did put some stuff into my car, but it is still sitting there, waiting for my attention. I received my Christmas boxes yesterday, so all of that stuff is scattered around my living room where I am currently storing the stuff I am bringing home from work, so things are getting to my overload state. Once I am finished with this post, I am heading upstairs to take a shower, get some water, and try my best to figure out what I am going to do with almost all of my students this week. I know what I am doing n...

Hello from my desk at home. I am currently about 90 minutes away from heading out to work for the first time this year. I am in denial about having to leave my home to go to work, but that's life. I have six months left at this job, so I am ready to get closer to my next transition, but I am also not ready for break to stop. This is my typical state of being at this point every year. Today will be a day without students - a professional development day where nothing has been revealed to any of us. I am anticipating a faculty meeting of some sort followed by some room time. I need to move out the crates of visual aids that I have collected and made over the past 30 years - there are many. Once those boxes are in my car, I will probably drive them around for a week before taking them out to the living room. That is currently the resting place for my work materials because I have not cleared the closet and rearranged the resource room. Should that be January's retirement quest? To...