music, therapy, and me

I tried very hard to write something yesterday, but I hit an exhaustion wall and crashed against it, hard. I kept staring at the screen, trying to jumpstart my brain into thinking anything other than "I am so tired." So, no post yesterday. We will see if today will be any better. I am still tired, but not as bone weary as I was yesterday. It is Friday of the first week of school and the first week that I am back doing music therapy things. Today is my least busy session day. I only have two groups, but that is one more group than I had last year on Fridays. I hope that the new teacher in that group realizes that the schedule changed and didn't try to come in yesterday while I was sleeping. I would actually be find if we changed the schedule  to what it is during the summer, but I also figured that it was a good idea to follow the schedule as written for a bit. Today is payday, which means that my salary will make a quick stop in my account before heading back out into the...

Today is the first day in my first three-day weekend of the extended school year. I am ready. "That client" performed as expected and had a 30 minute tantrum because I dared to allow peers to play instruments. We have new students who are having absolutely NO honeymoon adjustment period. Every class has either new peers or new staff or both. It has been a difficult week. That week is over. I now have the luxury of a three-day weekend, and I am enjoying the thought of not having to go to work. There are plenty of things to do here - laundry, dishes, clearing out space, making Mom's bed up for her upcoming trip. Plenty to do. I also have the opportunity to stay in my pjs as long as possible, take long showers, go see a movie, and sleep in. All of these things are good for me, as is the time away from other people. I am an introvert - as high on the continuum of personality as it is possible to get. I enjoy time away from others. I am not likely to be heading out to events a...

I am happy that it is finally Friday. This has been a week in the music therapy room, and I think I am getting to some solutions for "that" student who I do not have to see until Monday and then not for two weeks after that. Knowing that I have some things to try is a good feeling. I spent this morning stressing about making sure to get the payment for the gardener on the back window - thinking it was Saturday instead of Friday. I was disappointed when I realized it was Friday. That's nothing new, but it disappoints me every time. Today is my preparation day. I have decided that I will be working on my treasure hunt today while moving things from one storage room to my office space. I have to give that up - of course, my supervisor has not told me this yet - despite many different opportunities to do so - but it is better to move my own things than it is to find that someone else has done it. They never put things where I want them to go. Yesterday, I put things away in m...

My intern is getting ready to graduate from my program, and I will be a solo therapist starting next week. I am looking forward to it. I am always happy to see my interns go - this isn't because of them, but because I got into music therapy to be a music therapist not an observer of music therapy. When I am supervising, I am not doing music therapy as much as I want, and that is difficult. I am getting my topic plans finished for this month. We are going to do the country of the month next week (it's Australia), my intern graduates in the middle of the week, and then I will continue with the country for the last two groups that will not see it before my intern graduates. After that, I will get back into my rotation of country, music education concept, instrument, and musician of the month. When there is a fifth week or a partial week, I focus on a technology/career concept. In addition to these general categories for my rotation, I also have monthly themes to incorporate. The c...

I woke up very early this morning (about two and a half hours ago - it is now 4:30 am), and was unable to get back to sleep. I took myself into the world of social media and wasted about an hour and a half checking up on things. I am now sitting at the computer. writing this post, and watching the fourth Indiana Jones movie. This has been a long week. Fortunately, it hasn't been a hugely challenging week for my clients in music therapy, but it has been a long week nonetheless. I have had to physically intervene with aggressive clients even though I am on light duty and should not be doing any sort of physical intervention. Today is my plan/prep day, so I will have only two groups to be part of - one is just oversight and the other is mine to lead. After bus duty this afternoon, I have to get out of the town as quickly as possible so I can get to my Workers Comp doctor for a useless appointment where I will sit and wait for the doctor to say, "I don't know why the referral ...

This has been a long week and a long month all at the same time. We even had Monday off, and it has still be a very long, LONG span of time. Between client concerns and gas leaks and dangerous air outside, it has been rough. I am looking forward to a quiet day today since my only scheduled morning group is for a classroom that is empty. We have two afternoon groups and that is all. Today is my planning and preparation time, and I have lots to plan and prepare for... Well... lots of things that I want to plan and prepare for... I am behind with my documentation for Wednesday, so that is first on the list - get documentation finished. After that, I will engage in my strategy for sessions for next week. It is an instrument week next, and I think that we are down to focusing on ensembles because we have covered most of the instrument families. This might be marching band month - I have to see. Administrative tasks, like session strategizing, finding and developing TME concepts, and repairi...

It is Friday, and I need to get myself going. It is not an easy task this morning as I really am not enjoying my usual waking time these days. I just want to recline and sleep rather than get up and get going. I have about 15 minutes to make it to work 30 minutes early, 45 minutes to make it to work on-time, and and hour to make it to work at the last possible on-time moment. Today is my easiest professional day in regards to doing the music therapy things. We have two groups and an individual session today. We have consultation/supervision and then planning/preparation/office task time. I am hoping that our Adult program will come by to vacuum, but we will see. They came at a strange hour last week - we were ready at 10:30, they arrived at 1. It was a bit odd. Hopefully, they will be there at 10:30 so they can actually vacuum. We have a group at 1 so the room isn't available. ANYWAY... Today's primary tasks include getting resources ready for our Country of the Month. I didn...

I am getting ready to head to work for the first Friday of the new school year. Since we do not have two classes, I have an entire morning of planning, preparation, and task box time to fill. My intern is not expected back this week, so I will not have supervision time today. When we are sick, our work responsibilities stop so we can focus on getting better. So, we will postpone our supervision session until the intern returns to work. That means that I have an early release time today. I also have the entire morning to work on my stuff, two groups and one individual in the afternoon. I have most of a stack of laminating to work with today. I have a stack of file folder activities that I have neglected this summer because my Fridays were days off rather than work days. So, I have plenty to do but little to no motivation at this particular moment. I will find that motivation. I still have the movies that I brought in for my work days to play on the ancient television and DVD/karaoke pla...

It is Friday. I have to remind myself of this because the work week started yesterday and things are a bit scrambled around here. My dependence on schedules is never more plain than when my schedule gets scrambled. Yesterday was a work day in our rooms and today is a training day. I am excused from most of the training because it is all about writing IEPs, and I am not an IEP-related service therapist. I am an educational enrichment therapist who does not carry formal IEP goals on any clients. As a result, I do not need to sit through four hours of software training, so I get to use that time to do some things that I have not been able to do yet - like laminate 97+ pieces of paper and get my binders ready.  Yesterday did not go as planned. I was hoping to clean out my office space, and I got some of that done, but not as much as I wanted. The temperature was a bit cold, but not so much as to make me feel a need to complain. I would rather have a room where the temperature is about ...

I am a non-digital type of person. While I love technology and use it for all sorts of purposes (ahem - music therapy blogger over here), I also strive to maintain healthy boundaries for my digital usage and consumption. I have not been as healthy with mindless consumption lately - and it shows - but one place where I remain firmly away from the digital lifestyle is my project and calendar management. I am a bullet journaler. I am also a decorative planner user as well as a project tracker. I am a journal hoarder. I have a different book and different style for each book that I use on a regular basis. I have many more journals that do not have a use yet - they just sit on a shelf in my office, awaiting their glorious purpose in my organizational quest.  A couple of months ago, I told my boss that I was bored with my job. I asked if I could get some funding to make task boxes for some of the classrooms. I started thinking about the types of projects that I wanted to make, and that l...

Actually, that's not really true. I woke up at 3:40ish and remained awake. I wasted time on social media and have been puttering at home since then. It's been almost 6 hours since I woke up, and I have cleared off my sewing table, emptied two big boxes, and emptied nine little boxes into different storage. I also hung up a Star Wars poster in my hallway, and I intend on hanging another one by the end of the day. I have neglected the blog until now because I just didn't think about it. Isn't it Friday? If so, then it is time to talk about systems in music therapy. I am creating a new system in my home. It's an immense undertaking because I have so much junk and things that I have collected, so it will be a huge undertaking, to be sure. Here's what I'm trying to do... I want one of my bedrooms to be my music therapy room. It will be the place where I store my instruments, file folder activities, and extra music therapy things. Right now, I am collecting things...

It is Friday, and this is a late post because I FINALLY GOT SOME SLEEP! I fell asleep around 7:30 last night and slept until 3am, got up and used the bathroom, watched some videos until 5 and then flipped over and slept again until 7:45. I have a little less than an hour to get ready for an eye examination and blog and all that. I am still exhausted, but at least I was able to sleep for an extended amount of time. Having the occasional night where I do not get much sleep is not completely unusual for me, but two nights in a row is VERY unusual. I blame my depression (appears that I do this every summer with high temperatures and soggy air) and my current emotional state for all of this. Yesterday, I had a couple of wins. I was able to change a system where I really was getting screwed over as well as acknowledgement of a service delivery system that I organized for our new vocational program. I'm not sure that anyone other than the two of us who discussed this know that it is my sy...

I had my first in-person internship applicant interview since late 2019 yesterday. This is the type of internship interview that I really prefer because it gives me an opportunity to see the applicant interact with my students. It also gives the applicant an opportunity to see how I work and what my students and facility are actually like before they commit to a seven-month stint as my intern. I know that my insistence on such a visit is something that is financially difficult for some applicants. I may not get as many intern applicants because of this requirement, but I feel that it is better to know exactly what you are getting into with my facility and my students and, well, ME, than it would be to be completely surprised and find that my facility and program are not AT ALL what the intern wanted. Could you imagine? I clearly spell out the expectation of an on-site interview and audition in my fact sheet, but that requirement has still surprised applicants over the years. I can'...

It is almost over...Star Wars week, that is. Oh, also, Teacher Appreciation Week is almost over as well, but that's almost secondary to the first celebration in my life! I love all things Star Wars, so this has been a good week for me. I started a new thing in my favorite system of all time - my bullet journal! I tend to use my books until I fill almost all the pages, and it was time to change from my current book to a new one this week. I have filled up my yellow book with weekly planning calendar spreads and notes and things that I feel are important to know about, and I decided to start up my new book for the month of May because...well, it is Star Wars week, and my new journal is a Star Wars themed journal. I am focusing on a different character each week. I found a list of characters from the Star Wars universe, used a random number generator, and now have a different character to research every week. I am trying to work on my drawing and lettering and just making time for doi...

I am going into work on a regular Friday!! I am going to work a regular Friday!! Today is a regular Friday! Why all this enthusiasm for going to work?? Why am I emphasizing a regular Friday? Well, readers, for the past two weeks, our Fridays have been inclement weather days which means that I have had to do extra music therapy groups for our residents. They still have to come to school on snow days because we only have the school staff available to coordinate their care on those days. So, I trudge through the ice and snow (when I can) to go down and do music therapy on those days - sessions that are completely different from our regular therapy - these sessions are more geared towards energy expression and fun than our usual sessions because, hello, SNOW DAY! Most of my students live at the facility full time. It is not something that they choose - they have to be there. Since they don't get much choice in whether they come to school when the rest of the world gets to stay ...

I am starting the end of the first week with two interns! I haven't done this is in a long time, and I am having to change up lots of the things that have become a pattern with me. This is a good opportunity for me to evaluate what works and to try new things, so I'm going to do just that. My bullet journaling set-up is changing because my senior intern is running her own groups right now. I no longer have to strategize for every group and individual session that happens. That changes the space that I need in my book. I've decided to try more creativity in my journal and to actually use color in that book as well. Before now, I've stuck with pencil so I can erase. I'm trying to be bolder right now...color is where I'm starting. I'm finding that I need more things to do while I'm watching and listening to my intern running her groups. I'm doing lots of sitting rather than running groups, and that may be some of my exhaustion. I'm not doing wha...

The BEST thing about summer is that I get three-day weekends (almost) every weekend! I am starting my first three-day weekend right now - after an hour long Windows update. I laminated some projects and read my Bible (seven Psalms this morning!) while I waited for Microsoft to finish up the things they wanted to change about my computer... Anyway, all that is finished now, and I am getting started with my morning routine. I updated my bullet journal, took my daily medications, laminated my projects that were awaiting lamination, watched some fun television (I love The Good Place and Legends of the Monkey King at the moment), and am now contemplating some breakfast. Today is going to be a day where I do what I want to do and not necessarily what I need to do. There is a big difference between those two (in my mind, at least). At some point during the weekend, I need to upload new music to my iPod, solidify my session strategies for next week (it's CENTERS week), do a load of ...

I received some news yesterday that kinda threw me into a tizzy. The news is good, but is along the lines of "that thing you thought you had four more months to coordinate? Yeah, maybe only a month now." I can't share any more details, but I can tell you that I am going to be spending some time today trying to see if I can figure out what has to be done immediately. This is actually a good thing for me. In the past seven days, I've had the "I'm feeling like I need a challenge" thoughts as one project wrapped up, and I was trying to come up with another one. I'm sure that this happened partially to get me going on something.  So, thank you, Universe, I appreciate the challenge. As a result of this new challenge, my plans for Friday have changed a bit. I really need to put things back where they belong in my music therapy clinic. I've either been sick or isolated in my office for the last two weeks, so things have piled up inside the cabinet...

I didn't do any of my clinical notes yesterday. For some reason, my brain just wouldn't work and couldn't get going on the notes. As a result, I have double the notes to write this morning. Fortunately, I have lots of time today to get those notes finished. Yesterday ended with a student who started shredding my room - one piece of furniture at a time. The student returned to the room and assisted with the clean-up - something that I felt was crucial to the process. We picked up pieces of bulletin board border (shredded), the client pushed the cabinets back into place and replaced the posters that were torn off the Velcro dots. (I've found that my clients get less satisfaction ripping things off the wall when pieces of paper are attached with Velcro than with tape. I Velcro EVERYTHING these days!! Maybe it is something to do with the ease of replacing the materials that makes it just that much less satisfying...whatever, I'm using it!) Today will include a sessi...

This has been a long, LOUD week in the music therapy room. Actually, the music therapy room hasn't been all that loud, but my next-door neighbors have been loud. We have very thin walls, so I hear everything that happens next door. It has been very loud. I have had to do some active self-care in the form of leaving my room to find some silence, or at least, more quiet. It's difficult to find a place where there is quiet in a school of busy, active, and impulsive students. Even the administration offices are loud - in a completely different manner. I prefer the school noises to the administration noises - I wonder why that is... I have needed silence this week. When things get loud in my room, I try several different things to keep going on my goals. I try to use the sounds happening to frame some musical creation and composition. I join in (at times and quietly from the other side of the wall). I listen for patterns and ways to find entrainment within the noise. Sometim...