music, therapy, and me

One of my favorite movies is called Bowfinger . It stars Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy (in a dual role), Christine Baranski, Heather Graham, and a bunch of other people. There is time when one of Eddie's characters is experiencing a crisis brought on by the rest of them, and he is talking to his spiritual leader. He has established a mantra of "Keep it together," which becomes an acronym for him and is also his name - easy to remember. "Keep it together, keep it together, K-I-T, keep it together." Since I love this movie, this has become one of my mantras over the years. I love it because it reminds me of something I love as well as gives me something to think about and hold onto during times that challenge me. This is one of those times. I am entering a time of year that is usually pretty difficult for me to navigate. I am not fond of the summer months where I live. I tend to have more depression symptoms during the summer months than the winter months, and this y...

When I was in my undergraduate training, learning how to be a music therapist for the first time, we did all sorts of data collection during our clinical practica. We did time sampling and frequency counts and all sorts of mathematical processes to interpret the data that we took. As a graduate student, I had to delve deeper into data analysis. Data drove everything in those environments, and there is a role in my current job, but it is not as difficult as it was when I was in school. Here are some setting details: I am an educational enrichment therapist. This means that I see every student in the school for an hour a week. I do not do eligibility assessments, formal assessments, or carry any IEP goals. All students have music therapy whether they want it or not. All of the goals and objectives that I carry are internal rather than formal. Most of the music therapy sessions are groups. Individuals are rare these days. Okay. Now that you know where I am coming from, let me explain how ...

I am currently organizing my Creativity Camp packets for Creativity Camp 2026. If you don't know, this is my latest CMTE offering to the music therapy community, especially those who like making things for their music therapy sessions. Part of the CMTE is a digital kit with instructions and all the information needed to make several projects. Right now, I am going through the task analyses of each project and writing them down to include in the digital kit. Task analyses were something that we focused on when I was in my undergraduate education, and it was something that I struggled with at every turn. Some of my peers were able to do them quickly, and I was able to do it when I was simply writing an analysis - we had to do one on taking a shower. That was easy. My difficulty came when I was expected to write these analyses for clinical interventions. I think I was bogged down more on the "what-ifs" than just writing things. This was my major struggle during my clinical ...