music, therapy, and me

It is Monday, and I have some maker stuff to talk about today. I actually made some things this weekend, so I can discuss them on this Make It Monday!! Hooray! Let's start off by talking about the new TPT (formerly known as Teachers Pay Teachers) file that I uploaded this weekend. I am getting ready to launch my first sing about  theme edition, and this file goes right along with it! Introducing Ocean Rhythm Cards ! I am excited about this resource because it provides me with a bunch of new therapeutic music experience (TME) ideas for use with clients in music therapy sessions. Since I do not have any current clients for music therapy, my brain is going to generic music therapy clients that I might work with in the future. I mean, I don't know who I will work with, but I want to share these ideas with those of you who are working with clients right now. These cards include twenty-seven pictures from Scrappin Doodles that include sea plants, animals, and humans in both color an...

So, I am in a season of change and metamorphosis. There is just no real way to define how I am feeling at this moment because it changes from moment to moment. As a result of the emotional rollercoaster that I am currently on, I am feeling the need for structure and boundaries and routines. So, I am going to be structuring my blogging a bit more than I have recently. Sundays will be for music sharing, thoughts, and therapeutic music experience development using songs that others have composed as well as shared with the world. The problem with this type of blog post is that I am often unsure what songs to use in posts like this. I try to select something that would work with a variety of populations, and I will strive to continue to highlight how you could use these pieces of music with everyone that you do music therapy with during your week of sessions. If you read this blog regularly (and I know that some of you do), then you know that I like having structure and templates are my thi...

I am exhausted. If you don't know (because you're new to this blog), I finished my job of 30 years two days ago, and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything that has happened in the past 72 hours. I was hugged by more people than usual, including the maintenance guy, on Thursday when I was saying goodbye to my clients and coworkers. For someone who does not hug much, it was lots for my body to endure, but hugs were important for others, so I did it! Yesterday, I was wide awake at 2am, and I could not get back to sleep. I have been having trouble both getting to sleep at night and sleeping for my usual 7 hours. Wide awake at 2am meant that I started to panic about everything that I have left behind and not knowing what is coming in the future. Ugh. I ended up going through a webinar and signing up for a continuing education business course by 5:30am. I also put together almost all of my information for the adolescent conference in August so I can submit the CBMT proposal an...

This is it. Today is the last time I commute 52 miles one way for a job that I have both loved and hated over the past 30 years. I have a handful of things to take with me this afternoon after I finish my last round of documentation and get my keys turned into the administrative assistant. I will be finished with this job in less than 10 hours from now, and I am terrified! I am in panic mode right now. I've quit my job, and I don't know what I will be doing as of tomorrow. I don't know if I will be able to do what I want with the money from my pension. In between panic slips (not attacks, but just moments of sheer terror), I am still doing music therapy groups. I am having to say goodbye to everyone who walks in, and that is rough for all of us. I have received several "I know you didn't want a gift, but..." gifts. Things that I will use and enjoy from now on. One last commute. Four more groups. Notes. Taking down my greeting pictures and getting my kleenex ho...

Today is my second to last day at work. So far, I have been given a homemade tote bag, a Michael's gift card, a t-shirt with the words to one of my goodbye songs, and a treble clef keychain. I have been giving out hugs this week since it is the last time I will see so many people. I am almost finished with my toting things home (I have to empty the car before I head out this morning), and the name of the therapist coming in is not the name that I've been preparing my students for during our termination talks. Oops, but that's what happens when information is not widely shared. Oh well... I have six sessions today and five tomorrow before I am officially done. I will be leaving my keys with the administrative assistant before coming home from work for the last time. It is bittersweet to be at this point in my life, but I am going to do my best to navigate my situation from a strong position on what I want from life and how I want to get to that level of existence. For now, t...

Hello, depression, my old nemesis. I see you've brought with you a double dose of allergy symptoms, just in time for a week of tears. I am significantly under normal when it comes to my temperature, and my head aches. I am not sure how much of this is due to leaving my job, my summertime blues, and/or the allergens present in the air. So much humidity tends to gunk up my lungs which makes breathing a challenge. So much happening right now that it is a bit surreal. Four more days. That's all. It is strange to think that I will not be going to work next week. I will no longer have a workplace. I will no longer be employed. My identity changes from fully employed music therapist to self-employed music therapist in four days. Boof. I have been experiencing anticipatory grief all year. This has been the plan for a couple of years now, but now it is here. I have one last session today and three tomorrow. After that, all sessions are last sessions. I am tired of telling people that my...

This is the first day of the last week at my current job. On Thursday, I will turn in my keys and head out into the world of uncertainty known as my first retirement. It is currently raining outside with rumors of severe storms on the way. I have tickets to see Disclosure Day  this morning, and I am hoping that the storm activity will not lead us to huddle in the lobby like I had to do during Avengers: Endgame . That was an interesting evening that ended up in a Tornado warning that wiped out houses and trees about a mile away from the theater.  Last night, I was unable to sleep, so I sat down and worked in my home planner/journal thing. It is hard to describe exactly what that book is to me, but it is where I keep track of all the things that I want to keep track of. Since the day of retiring is rapidly approaching, I am getting ready for what life will look like next week at this time. A couple of weeks ago, I set up the pages for the rest of the year. The planner will last ...

I am one exhausted introvert this morning. I spent four hours last night in the company of crafters and scrapbookers. It is always a good time that leads me to doing all sorts of creative things, but it is also tiring. I engaged in small talk conversation with a couple of other people last evening. The craft store owner seems to be an extravert, so she stops by everyone's table to comment on what we were doing. She complimented my coloring last evening. I find that particular type of interaction to be a bit fake, but it tickled my funny bone. I only lasted four hours, but I am heading back in about an hour to do some more stuff. I have the innards of several books ready to be put into currently nonexistent covers. I will take some floss and my bookbinding kit and the pieces that I need to make books for the signatures I put together. I looked for some inspiration for themes for the signatures that I put together, but I didn't find any. I will search a bit more here at home. I h...

After 30 summers of working an extended school year as a music therapist, I can tell you that the best part of having to work all summer is that my school has Fridays off! This was something that came from a need to keep school as part of the daily routine of our students and led to less time away from the classroom, but having three-day weekends all summer long has kept me going during the hot, humid, depressing summer months this entire time. This is my last three-day weekend during the summer. Next weekend will be my first time as a retiree. I am both ready and not ready at the same time. I feel like the Schrödinger's cat experiment is my life right now. My life is the cat in the box where there are possibilities that cannot be known, and people keep asking me for definitive answers about things. Answers that I cannot give because I don't know what the state of the cat is at any given moment. I wish I had more of a plan in place, but I am also needing to rest. I figure that ...

This is the last day of my work week, and it will hold the first "last" session of my current job. I found out yesterday that my first group on Thursdays will be going on a field trip next Thursday, so today is my last group with them. I am not sure if they know that they will be going on the field trip, so I can't really tell them that it is our last group, but I know that it is.  This is difficult. So far, three kids have cried and many more have asked me to stay. I cannot, but I am also feeling the guilt that people can dump onto you when you are choosing to leave a work situation. My facility is famous for trying to guilt people into feeling bad about their decisions to leave, so I have not been very vocal about my retirement plans unless asked.  One group of coworkers noticed that I attended a meeting yesterday afternoon without my work planner. I figured that there was no reason to take notes, so I left my notebook on my desk. I have no more meetings to sit through ...

It is time to finish this all up. I am ready to be on my way into my future, but I have to do the process of saying goodbye to clients and co-workers before I can get started. Kids are crying at the thought of my leaving. Co-workers are stopping me in the hallway to tell me that they will miss me. All of that is fine, but it is more attention than I am comfortable with. At my last job, they forgot that I was leaving on my last day and scrambled to get me some roses (which I am very allergic to) as a good luck token. I kinda prefer that type of departure to having to go through gifts and recognitions. Celebrating myself is not something I am comfortable with in groups of people. I just don't like it. I am steeped in nostalgia this week. I have spent lots of time thinking about old clients as I have been taking things out to my car. Remembering is a good exercise when you are shifting into a new reality, but it can also make it difficult to leave. I am retiring from my current job be...

It is difficult to wake up right now, so this is going to be a short post because I was up at midnight, did not get back to sleep, and now am wanting to get the sleep that I missed. My eyes are bleary, and my brain is not wanting to go to my hot music therapy space to clean, do therapy sessions, and clean some more. I am going to be "late" to work today - I can feel it. I have reached the "I don't care" stage of this termination process. This is not a good place to be, but it is happening now rather than a year ago, so that's good. Everything that is going on is temporary for me. Who cares about the clinical team meeting? Not me. Who cares about whether the thermometer gets fixed? Well, that is something that I care about at the moment, but I only have seven more days of work. I have ten days until I actually am finished. Having a deadline is making me feel frazzled as well as excited, but it is difficult to get up in the mornings. My Seasonal Affective Diso...

I did not make anything yesterday, but I did move my desk to a different orientation in my office/craft basement room. That has resulted in a huge mess, but it has also allowed me to see things and evaluate how things are arranged in my living space. It was worth the strain on my back to have a new orientation for my working space. I am almost finished with the transition. I still need to move things off the desk and into more permanent locations, but I am not finished figuring those places out. I have invested in lots of different types of storage options for all the different things that I have collected, so I am trying to figure out where these things will live from now on. The main problem that I have is that I have to remove things from places so I can fill those places back up with other stuff... As I move things, I often find inspiration in the form of notes or resources that I have collected and then not looked at for a time. I have old ideas that I want to develop further writ...

My home is full of stuff. Music Therapy stuff that I have collected, curated, and used over my career of 33 years as a music therapist. Thirty of those years were at a facility where I worked with school-aged clients in a residential and school setting, so I have lots of materials that are meant to spark the most uninterested of people into some sort of interaction. Add into that all the years of textbook purchases, intern training information, and several decades as a church musician, and I have lots of music and music therapy stuff around, and it is piling up. Right now, my focus is on getting things from work to home. I am almost finished with that process. Once everything is home, I will be ready to organize into my piles - give, sell, toss, and keep. Fortunately, once everything is home in two weeks, I will have all sorts of time to engage in organizing, but I am starting to do some of that right now. I am looking around my space and am trying to envision how I will need to access...

Today is my busiest music therapy day during the summer. I have five music therapy groups and one leisure skill group to get through in a hot, humid room where I cannot change the air conditioning level. After today, I have only five more sessions to get through before a three day weekend. Last week, one of my afternoon groups arrived 30 minutes early and then got miffed when I asked them to leave and return when they were scheduled. "But it was at noon on the board in the classroom." "The schedule says 12:30. I'll see you all again in 30 minutes." "Hmph." (That was the staff member.) I thought I was losing my mind. Let's hope that doesn't happen again today. We are exploring my decrepit piano this week. It keeps breaking and then breaking more, but it is time to use it before I leave. Many of my students do not realize that the instrument is in the music therapy room all the time. They act like they have never seen the instrument before despit...

For my entire career, I have rebelled against the idea of session planning. I struggled with procedure sections in my undergrad training. I've written about this recently - how I would take the example in our practicum handbook, change the details but not the format, and would be told that it "was not right." That was all the feedback that I would get. I would ask how to make those sections "right," and no one could tell me how to do that. I had a revelation in the summer between my junior and senior years (thank all that is good in the universe), and then I was able to figure it all out, but that experience has left me a bit leery of writing session plans. One of the biggest issues that I have with session plans is that there is so much that happens in a session, and it is impossible to foresee every response. Plain old impossible! So, I don't write session plans. I haven't for my entire career because I find the practice to be busywork. Instead, I focu...

Not many words today - lots of pictures!! Join us at 2026 Creativity Camp - link to registration and all the details here . 

Today is a lazy Sunday. I spent my Friday engaged in music therapy resource creation, my Saturday in actively avoiding anything other than sorting materials and clearing carpet, and now it is Sunday. Today's plans include a shower, washing bedding, a movie at the local theater, and spending some more time with music therapy stuff. I have to arrange my first-ever full conference scheduled for the second weekend in August. That is something that is zapping my energy right now. I have cleared some spaces in my home which has helped a bit with my attitude. Basically, I shifted piles from here to there, but I also went through those piles and started the sorting process. I want to get materials sorted into zones in my house. Instruments in one location, visuals in another, books in yet another. You know what I mean. This morning is something that I treasure. After working as a church music director for 26 years, it has only taken me 2 years to start to treasure my Sunday mornings. No mo...

I spent a good part of yesterday putting together three projects as well as the task analyses for those projects in preparation for Creativity Camp 2026 . It was fun to create things to share with others, and I have three more projects to complete to get ready for Camp. I like it when I feel that I have made some progress towards reaching the end of my quests. Today's quest is to make a difference in the upstairs portion of my home. There is laundry to put away, dishes to wash, carpets to vacuum, and all of that cannot be started until some of the music therapy materials are stacked and sorted. Before all of that can happen, though, I have to go pick up my grocery order and get the food put away. I will also need to eat as I keep moving through my to-do list. I am feeling kinda jumpy and twitchy today. I don't know why, but my back itches, and I just keep having muscle twinges in my arms. I don't know if this is a reaction to my summer SAD or if I am just overwhelmed and th...

This is the most challenging season for me, and it makes it difficult to get motivated to do ANYTHING! I am getting ready for a large life change (retirement, here I come, kicking and screaming and trying to pretend that I know what I'm doing) that is adding stressor after stressor after stressor. My brain is struggling with all sorts of things, so I am taking out my self-care and brain sparking routines to help me get started on some creative projects. When I find myself in a creativity slump, the only thing that really works to get me feeling inspired or remotely interested in composing or drawing or making things for my music therapy clinic is to create using rules. The rules are arbitrary, made up by me, and something that I can break at any time if inspiration takes hold. I have found that my rules for creating help me break out of a stagnant state. When I am in need of some new songs, I break out my composition kit and my rules. Chance composition is the best technique for me...