music, therapy, and me

  As I go through my stuff here at home, I am reminded of the things that I have done with various instruments, materials, music. I remember specific clients who loved certain songs or certain instruments. I have the opportunity to find old things that have gone out of style with current clients, and I get to figure out new ways to use familiar objects. It is an interesting thing to revisit what has been important in your therapy life, and this is a season where I am doing just that. I started being interested in the ways we adapt music and musical elements during my graduate studies. In discussions with my fellow students, we determined that we did not often think about how we were changing the music to match our clients - we just did it. It seemed that we were missing out on opportunities by not really thinking about how we were using our primary therapeutic tool - the music. The fellow student that I talked to about this topic focused on the research to demonstrate how the eleme...

Next week, at this time, I will be up early and stressing about hosting my second ever Creativity Camp. This is a passion project of mine - something that I have long wanted to do and FINALLY have the time, energy, and motivation to pursue. Thank goodness for being able to retire with my full pension after 30 years of working as a full-time music therapist!! So, here comes Creativity Camp!! You may be wondering about this entire thing and why this is what I am doing right now, so here comes an explanation... Growing up, my family was comfortable. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was 11. My dad was a plant manager for several plastics companies in the 70s and 80s. We had stable housing and enough to eat, wear, and do. We were not rich, but we were stable.  As kids, we did not get everything that we wanted when we wanted it. We had less "things" than many of our friends, but again, our family was stable. Mom and Dad were together, and it was a safe upbringing. My mother wa...

It is 6:38 am, and there is a bird chirping loudly and repetitively outside my home. We had a thunderstorm this morning, so everything is wet and somewhat cool outside. There may be more storms in the near future, so I guess the bird is just communicating as much as possible before the next round shows up. I am feeling like I am being a slacker right now, not working, and trying my best not to engage in these feelings of uselessness and FOMO. I want to spend some time upstairs today, sorting through and cleaning up my stuff. I have storage items coming tomorrow to help with that process. I want to be able to walk around my upstairs without having to step over things. I also need to spend some time on marketing and printing out materials for Creativity Camp which will happen next weekend. I also need to take a shower and make my bed with clean sheets. Lots of things I need to do. We will see how much I actually get done today. Yesterday was spent mostly in napping. I worked a bit on one...

It is thundering this morning, and I am glad. I like storms as long as they don't come along with tornadoes, and this one seems to be just a regular storm. I am guessing that my mowers won't be coming today, but I will put their check on the door as usual, just in case.  I am experiencing some issues surrounding the fact that I am not at work while all my co-workers are working right now, but I am also enjoying my time alone. This changes from moment to moment. My life has changed significantly in the past two weeks. I no longer sing for adolescents. I sit at a computer and try to make things for music therapists to use and sing with their adolescents. I miss the human interaction, but not enough to consider going back. I felt a creative itch last night. I wanted to make something, but I had some decision fatigue and avoidance coming on, so I asked my mom and sister for some themes. I ended up being challenged to make a winter themed journal and a turtle themed journal. I put...

It is day 13 of my retirement journey, and I looked at job opportunities this morning. I didn't do anything other than look, but I was feeling the itch of "you're not doing anything." I am trying my best to not do much as far as employment goes for the next six weeks before looking seriously. The root of this itch is having to pay for tires yesterday (my car needs EXPENSIVE tires).  I didn't think about my former job until 3pm yesterday, but I woke up thinking about it all. I am curious about who is there now, but I don't want to be creepy about it all. I also am happy to be at home at the moment, but I want to also be around people doing something useful. It is strange being able to do what I want when I want. It is also strange to not be making music in the company of other humans right now. I have found that I am enjoying listening to music a bit more than I did before. I have put my stereo on CD rather than on my Kindle because trips do not take as much ti...

Recently, I have gone into a pattern of not writing ideas or songs down. This is great for my improvisational skills, but it is not great for my therapeutic music experience (TME) compendium. It is time to be a bit more intentional about my composition and TME development. If you have read any of my previous TME Tuesday posts, then you know that I have an organizational system for my ideas. I have a structure that really works well with my brain and my way of doing therapy. This system requires that I think through all sorts of musical and therapeutic elements to coordinate session strategies with specific clients. Now that I do not have clients, I have time to compose and write TMEs down again. My current focus is the two upcoming events through my company, musictherapyworks.com, LLC. One of them is a conference focused on working with adolescents and the other is a creative endeavour that includes making visuals for use in sessions with clients . These are both things that I enjoy c...