music, therapy, and me

In a week and a half, I will be the only inhabitant of my therapy suite. One of my suitemates is retiring, and the other accepted a great, new job and will also be leaving. This will mean that I will have that space all to myself again, and I am in a state of anticipatory grief. I have worked with these co-workers for my entire time at my current job, and I am also getting ready to retire, so there are lots of feelings swirling around and in me at the moment. I find that anticipatory grief is the worst state for me. Knowing that something is going to happen and having to get used to the idea is more difficult than being thrown into grief. (Now, please know that this is my opinion rather than a fact, so you are encouraged to form and express your own opinions about what I say - any time or any topic!) Knowing that my co-workers are leaving is hard to process, especially when I still have to see them for the next week and a half. I have not told my clients that I am retiring from this jo...

Me in one of the formal portraits  Today is the last Thursday that I work in the month of November. Next week's Thursday is a day off, and I am looking forward to the break. My focus for my five-day weekend is to organize the music room with some of the things that I am bringing home from work. Other than that, I am expecting some extra napping and many different television shows. After this, there are only three more Thursdays before our winter break and the start of the new year. We have been doing our Musicians of the Month listening (music awareness) and leisure choice options (executive functioning and life-long leisure skill development). My other groups are getting an introduction to guitars and then some leisure choice options. My students do not know how to play. It is interesting to watch them just stare into space instead of trying something new or even get something familiar from the cabinets. I mean, I have just about everything. The most used materials are my hot whee...

Have you ever noticed that most of life is comprised of looking forward to something and then having to wait for others to get their jobs done before anything can happen? I am currently in a "hurry up and wait" situation. I have about fourteen hours before my Spring Break officially starts, and I am so ready for all of this! I am still not entirely sure that this break will happen as it has been scheduled twice with disappointing results each time. I am not entirely sure that I will be convinced that this is actually happening until I am safely buckled into my transportation, and we have started the journey. I just took a COVID test to make sure that I am not taking any unwanted germs with me... I have three groups and two individuals today. It is a late arrival day since I had to wait on my medication until after my work was finished yesterday. While I am excited about getting my day started, I am also aware that I have to stay home until I can be safe on the roads. It is di...

I am going to head out to work today to spend the day mashing potatoes and washing dishes for our annual Holiday Dinner. There will be no music therapy today since the dinner is a big deal and the special support staff are the only ones that do not have kids throughout the day. So, we get to help out. I was kinda hoping to be on a jury at this point, but that didn't happen, so off I go! This is the last Friday of the Calendar year, and it is a non-therapy day. That makes it pretty much a wasted day in my schedule, but that is fine. If this was a regular Friday for us, then I would have three groups, three individual/dyad sessions, and documentation to get done. Today though, all I have to do is the documentation, then the mashing of potatoes... I saw something on Pinterest yesterday that made me smile. It was a Myers-Briggs commentary about one of my two types (you know how I said yesterday that I was in between two Zodiac signs, well I am in between all sorts of personality tests ...