music, therapy, and me

... and I am sure that you are wondering? "What?????" Let me explain. Way back, many years ago, the Dollar Tree started selling die-cut collections of large visuals that had a common theme. I bought them all and then laminated them all. I have two file boxes full of laminated die-cuts that I have used over and over again for many years. My Dollar Tree no longer offers those packs of 10 die-cuts for a dollar, and I miss getting new die-cuts when I go to buy things for work. Oh well. Anyway, these die-cuts fit inside file folders, so the boxes that I have contain many themed collections to go with many of the TMEs that I have either created or adopted over the years. I have a folder with farm visuals and another one with continents. Chances are that I have die-cuts that work with just about every TME that I have designed to use visual aids. I also have three other boxes with other types of visuals, tools, and song sheets. I put them all into my car yesterday which opened up lot...

I am a creature of habit. I like structure, I like routine, and I like it when things progress the way I have planned for. I do not do well with surprises or with changes at the last minute - ESPECIALLY when those changes did not have to be last minute at all! For example, I have been told by people moving into my office space that I have to give up that office space, but my supervisor has not told me of this development at all. This is not how I like to operate. One email would confirm that I am moving from that space and consolidating into my other space, but no. That doesn't seem to happen all that often. It amazes me how little people think about the ripples that spread when they make decisions, and it also amazes me that we do not take the time to talk to the people that are caught up in those ripples. I am often stuck in the riptide caused by other people, and I often do not know why I am swirling around. Today, though, I have to put that aside and work on my home environment...

As someone who is constantly thinking about my finances, I have had to learn lots of lessons the hard way. You know that way - you get over enthusiastic and then end up in trouble with money. As someone who has been in that type of situation more than once, I have established some Thrifty Therapist rules when it comes to money, finances, and being able to eat meat at meals rather than cheap macaroni and cheese. Gather 'round, children, as MJ goes into a story of money and woe. As a music therapist who is conditioned towards packratiness (I am making this a word!), I tend to want everything. If I see a cool instrument, I want one. If I see some fun toys, I want them. It is something that I have to fight on a regular basis because I tend to take them all. This is not a good thing. I now have what I call the "Are You Serious?" Rule - When I see something I set a price that I am willing to pay in my head before I look at the price tag. If the price on the tag is at or less th...

It is Friday, again, and I have been to work for an entire week, again. We had a blizzard on Tuesday evening that made for slick roads on Wednesday, but school went on as usual, so I traveled through the ick and the slick in the gusty winds. I didn't get an afternoon off as planned due to the weather on Wednesday, but I did get an extra half hour to plan yesterday before being surprised by an extra client in my last group of the day. Anyway... Today's topic is my collection of collections - some things that give me great joy and that I have incorporated into music therapy at times and that I continue to try to justify (even though justification is not necessary when something gives you joy!). I am a collector of things. It is part of my packrat tendencies and my generational urge to keep things that most people consider to be trash. I have lots of things that fit into different collections. I have my Disney Pop! collection, my mini brands Disney collections, my toy collections,...

I am currently in the middle of cataloging my visual aids. Now, please know that not all music therapists have several cabinets of visuals sitting around their music therapy spaces, but I would venture to say that most music therapists have several cabinets (or bags, or boxes, or rooms) full of other things (sheet music, CDs, instruments) that could always use a good organization system, so I am going to use my visuals as a starting point for my discussion here. Be patient with me. I will eventually get to the point. So, I enjoy making and using visual aids with my clients. I have always enjoyed teacher stores, bulletin board designs, and clip art, and that enjoyment has found a place in my music therapy practice.  NOTE: I do not think that music therapy interventions require visuals - in fact, I want to make sure that the visuals only support the music therapy interventions -- not be the reason for the intervention. There is a distinction in my head, just so you know. I have many ...

How it's going! So, something that I know for a fact but that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable is that I have too much music therapy stuff. (Is anyone shocked by this?? Anyone?) I keep finding stashes of visual aids and PECS and things that I have made or accumulated over the years. Each time I find some more, I get a bit more frustrated with myself. This is a never-ending situation I find myself in at the moment. I found another box yesterday - full of baggies of visual aids that are not corralled anywhere, so they are not useful. There is nothing more frustrating to me than non-useful things taking up space - AND, that's ALL that I have around me! Non-useful things taking up space. A long career as a music therapist means that I have lots of things to go through and either find uses for or give away to someone who can use them. I need to get in touch with the local music therapy university programs to arrange for some donations. I wonder if they would take communication...

Today's goal is to finish packing up the living room. I have six days until I close on my new house, and I am not ready to go yet. Fortunately, I have 11 days until the movers arrive, and I am only moving a small way down the road, so I can take some things over in between closing and movers. That's the plan, at least. I am almost finished with the dining room shelves. I keep finding additional books on shelves, but I am almost finished and ready to take the shelves down. Once that is done, I will be able to stack boxes against the wall instead of in the middle of everything. I should also be able to move my coffee table and my loveseat to that area so I can pack up the rest of the room.  I have lots of ambition and very little energy, so this should be interesting. There are so many things that go into being someone moving houses. In my original timeline, all of this happened during one of my breaks from my job, but the universe had different ideas, so now I am doing most of t...

The way I figure it, each time I start something, I am making a step forward towards my personal and professional goals. Right now, the personal goals are taking over all things professional, so this post will probably focus more on moving things than on learning things about music therapy. Be forewarned. I have just finished an hour in my craft room, boxing and bagging up stuff and then shoving the boxed stuff to the walls to make some more space in the craft room. I bagged up the old bottles of acrylic paint that I've kept over the years to take to work for my art therapist friend. My students will probably appreciate some different paints, and I know the therapist will use them rather than having them sit in boxes until I need them at my new house. I am looking around to see if there are other things that can be given away. Back to the title of this post - I am trying very hard to make sure that I do some packing every day. This morning went well. I sat on the floor of my craft ...

I am getting ready to toss things out while I am packing. I find this part of moving the most difficult for some reason. I am a packrat daughter of a packrat daughter of a packrat daughter of a woman who lived through the Depression and was a pastor's wife with six kids. I have a suspicion that she was also a packrat due to necessity. I am also the creative daughter of a creative daughter of a creative daughter of a creative daughter and repeat. None of my hobbies are simple, so I have tons of stuff that go along with the things that I like to do. I have difficulty throwing things away. I do not like having to stop in the middle of a project to go get materials, so I keep as much as I can around me at all times. That is a problem because of the stuff accumulation that happens. I still do it, but it isn't all that good for me. My new house should help with some of this stuff accumulation. I have set out stuff and no stuff zones. The upstairs will be a no stuff zone. That will be...

SOME of my mess!! I've been spending some of this morning throwing things away. This is something that I struggle with on a regular basis. You see an envelope, I see pages for my junk journal. You see a very old notebook, and I see all the time I spent in class with classmates learning about music therapy. I have WAY too much stuff that I've justified as having to keep because it sparked memories in me when that's all that it has done - sparked memories. I mean, who needs journal references from 30 years ago? NO ONE!! So, I tossed out my papers from my freshman year of observation - the year when a client fell very loudly in love with me (and ignored EVERYONE else in the room!!). I found some of my first therapeutic music experiences and put them back in the card box where they belonged (I still use many of those TMEs to this day). I'm thinking about what I cherish more - the memories (which I have) or the old notebooks? So, I've taken one load of old pape...

Today, I am spending some time thinking about what I want to have systematically organized in my music therapy life. I have lots of music therapy stuff, and I am constantly trying to corral it into some sort of organizational system. I would love to be able to place my hands on everything that I want to see by just looking up a file in my digital world, but I'm not at that point yet. I have several shelves that are dedicated to one specific type of music therapy tool or the other to help me find materials when I need them. I have a couple of music therapy textbook bookcases. Texts are arranged by topic area so I can easily identify where the general music therapy texts are compared to the technique-specific texts. There is a portion of the shelf dedicated to my copies of the Journal of Music Therapy and another part stores my Music Therapy Perspectives . I also have my copies of the first journal from the National Association for Music Therapy, Music Therapy in that location ...

I received one of my latest frivolous spending item boxes in the mail yesterday. I got a box from Paper Crazed full of little bits of paper that I really don't need, but that I am currently purchasing and then playing with for a long time. I currently subscribe to three different boxes, and I like the one that I received yesterday the best of them all. (I've tried to stop subscribing to one of the boxes, but I got all confused and apparently did not stop it. Ugh. Okay, I've tried unsubscribing again ...we'll see how it works out.) For some reason, two boxes seem fine to get but three seem excessive. Okay. These boxes have inspired me to turn back into something that I love - making paper crafts. I've designed a couple of new products for my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and I've turned those products into actual file folder activities to use with my students. I've also been making books and tags and notebook holders and fancy decorations and other stuff. ...

So, if you are not a regular reader of this blog, you may not know that I am currently engaged in bullet journaling as a form of self-care and scheduling and something creative to do when I am in need of a spark. This engagement in a style of time management is becoming more than just "the way I do things." It is rapidly becoming a big part of my life. I watch planning videos to help me fall asleep at night - watching other people draw and paint is very relaxing to me. I enjoy seeing how people take some watercolors and make beautiful things in their journals. I don't do that. I've finally found a way to do this that works for me - no watercoloring or pretty pictures - just function for me. ANYWAY, one of the other things that has happened recently, bullet journal related of course, is that I now receive three stationery boxes every month. There is a picture of my latest box above. In these boxes, I get fancy pens and pencils, washi tape, cards, notepads, (excit...

Stuff is threatening to take over my life - yet again. I try to fight it back every so often, think that I've found something to help me in this journey, and then watch as the stuff just takes over. I know why the stuff is so overwhelming, and I know the habits that I have that are contributing to this situation, but I seem to prefer stuff to order and maybe I just like to organize...hm. I had an internship applicant come into my office on Monday. Now, I had arrived early at work, cleared off my desk, and tried to straighten up as much as I could before that applicant arrived. By the time we were doing the official interview, however, the desk had stuff on it and things had crept out of their spots. I tell all applicants that my office is always cluttered and is sometimes VERY cluttered. I used to work for a principal who said that she only told one lie during interviews. That lie was that her desk never looked like it did during interviews - it was always much cleaner than the p...

I am currently sitting here, stewing in guilt about vacation plans that my family is pressuring me to take that I don't want to do at all, looking at a big mess - my living area. This is part of why I don't want to do the things that my parents are trying to arrange for my next break, but not all of it. Oh dear, can't get bogged down in those thoughts. Anyway, I am surrounded by too much stuff for the square footage that I have, and I have to get rid of some of it...today. At this point, I am too overwhelmed to be doing much good, but I have to just knuckle down and do it. It is time. I am going to start with the hallway closet. There are things in there that haven't been out of that closet since I moved in. Time to toss them and donate them. I want to put most of my musical instruments and music therapy materials in that closet, but I have to clean it completely out first. Once that is finished, I'll have space on bookshelves for other things. That's the pl...

I went on an early evening shopping spree yesterday while I was waiting to go to my movie. I went to both Michaels (birthday coupon) and to Five Below (new store in my area). I also dropped by Hobby Lobby, but I didn't purchase anything at that store (HIGHLY unusual!). I don't often go on spontaneous shopping sprees (except at the Dollar Tree - I go there all the time on whims). This was unusual for me, but somehow very satisfying at the same time. (For the record, I only spent about $60 on my spree, but that's lots when you are used to pinching pennies!) My spree haul included a new paper cutting board, some blades for the cutting board, rolls of Washi tape, some small star boxes, four Melodicas, two electric guitar toys, and four small word sentiment stamps. I have some plans for these things, and I am getting ready to start working on these plans. First, though, I need to purge. I thinned out my former intern files yesterday. I threw away everything from my tenure in...

As someone who collects things (I call it being a pack rat, others call it hoarding), I often find stuff that I have no recollection of actually receiving. This is such an example. I have absolutely no idea where I got this stack of post-it notes. I don't think it came from a music therapy conference. I doubt that they were handing these out at the educational technology conferences that my sister attends and grabs stuff at, but I just don't know where this came from. None of my family members are currently taking Xanax (as far as I know), and I don't make a practice of grabbing things at the doctor's office. So, I have absolutely no idea where this came from. Fun. I wonder how it showed up in my stack of post-it notes. Yes, I do have a box of post-it notes for when I need to restock the various places that I keep post-it notes (my office, my car, next to my bed, and where I am reading music therapy texts and journals). I am trying to use the post-it stash befor...

I am going to participate in a city-wide garage sale on Friday and Saturday this weekend. I am taking this as a motivational moment in order to keep myself going and moving towards clearing out some stuff from my home. My cabinets at work It's no secret that I'm a packrat. I've mentioned it a time or two on this blog, and I acknowledge that it is a problem for me. I dream about minimalist living, but I can't really seem to get to that point. My dream house has big, open spaces, wall-to-wall cabinetry and bookshelves, and a place for everything and everything in its place. I don't have that now and probably will never have that, but a girl can dream, right? All I have to do is win the lottery - it may help if I buy a ticket now and then. Hmmm... Part of my home - after organizing! It is time to get started. Today's focus will be books and toys. I have to start boxing up stuff and then drag those boxes to the doorway. Before I start to load up the car,...

I am a borderline hoarder. I have lots of stuff and have difficulty throwing things out, but you can still see carpet and flooring in my home, so I feel pretty good about my borderline status. The only reason that this is relevant is that I want to write about inspiration and my home contains most of my materials. One question I get asked lots is, "Where do you get your ideas?" The answer to that question is difficult as I do not have any one place or technique that I use to find ideas. I engage in some mindless wandering, directed brainstorming, and feverish writing to get all the ideas down. So, my house becomes my inspirational starting point. As you can see, I have lots of stuff. I have poetry books, stuffed animals, and instruments within reach of my desk. There are pockets of instruments scattered around the front room. I have random bits of whimsy on the shelves, the walls, hanging from the ceiling. I use all of these things to help me find inspiration when I a...