Monday: A Day Without Students

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 be honest, I have no idea what will happen today. I know I need to release the country of the month information this morning, but I have nothing else to go by. I will wade through the countless emails that have no relevance to me for the 5 that actually do relate to my work, and I am sure that I will hear about other things later on. All I know is that kids will not be in the music therapy room during this day. I will miss a day with my M/W groups (not a big loss) and one session with the class that has only Mondays in music therapy. I am not terribly upset about that because my M/W groups are the least predictable groups of the week. So, I will see most of my Monday students on Wednesday, and the hour group gets less music therapy during the second half of the year due to the number of Monday holidays. Oh well.

My most major decision will be figuring out what to do with my clients this week. I want to wait for the country until next week so all my students will get the same information. Perhaps we will do some songwriting work this month. I have to look at my list to see what types of things I have done in the past during January. That will inform my strategy for this week and for the rest of the month.

I made a notebook for all of my business things yesterday. I have tabs for the paperwork, for projects, for CBMT stuff, and for brainstorming. I still have a book where I do most of my brainstorming, but I also have to have a place to list project ideas. I found one of my old project lines, so I have an opportunity to update those and get others started. I am starting to get ambitious, and I need to relax about that. Too much, too soon.

I am going to turn the broken piano away from the wall and do an inventory. The tuner that I paid stated that he could not tune the piano and offered to take pay to take it away. I laughed because I work for a non-profit that doesn't have $4000 to put into a broken piano removal. So, the piano has been facing the wall. It is time to see how bad it is and either get rid of it or make it available for use. If it is bad, then I need to figure out how to get it out of the music therapy room. If it is okay, then I need to play it. A keyboard is just not the same when it some to the tactile sensation of it all.

Tangent!

I am starting to get antsy about leaving my house. I still have 28 minutes before I usually leave and an hour before I want to leave this morning (I don't get extra credit for being early on these days). It would be nice to be on-time rather than super early for this day. Time to focus on some YouTube, some breakfast, and some calming exercises before I leave for work.

Hey, have a good day, all! 

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