music, therapy, and me

This has never happened before, but today's selected post is a Sentimental Sunday post. Post #3360 was written on October 1, 2023 , and it was all about a post I wrote back in 2011 (there is a link in post #3360 to the original post). Rough weeks happen, and they tend to happen quite often at my job. They seem to be happening more often these days, so it is nice to be reminde d that things really haven't changed much - I might just be more attentive to the continuing issues of the people that I work for and with right now than I have been in the past. All of these posts are concerned with figuring out what I need to do to engage my clients in their music therapy treatment process. I still struggle with this with some of my clients, but those clients are the ones that do not engage in any sort of education with any sort of enthusiasm, so I know that music therapy is not the only thing that they hate about school, but it still bores into my brain. I want people to love music and ...

I need to make something today. I am in a bit of a funk about my surgery, heading back to work on Wednesday, negative attitudes on social media, and all sorts of things, so I feel the need to work all that out through creation. So, now the question comes - what should I make? I want things to be functional for me as a music therapist and for others as music therapists as well. So, I want something that I can make, replicate, post on my Teachers Pay Teachers store , and use in music therapy sessions with all sorts of clients. I am starting my sing about february subscription edition this week, so perhaps I'll make something to go along with those ideas. Maybe not. I have two of my mini pizza boxes ready to be decorated and then used for storage. I want to use one of them for my growing stack of decorative sticky notes. I'm not sure how I'll use the other one. I have two more to paint today - blue and green. I'm toying with several ideas about making things f...

This really has been a good week. I have felt happy, calm, and stimulated by my thoughts and ideas. The conference last weekend tired me out, but I think it also reminded me of the parts of this job that I absolutely love. It also gave me an excuse to sleep the rest of the weekend. Maybe that should be part of my self-care plan from now on - intellectual stimulation from people who are somewhat like-minded about things and lots of time to sleep afterwards. I have felt a bunch of calm since I decided not to propose any type of presentation at the national conference this year. I have been trying to come up with presentation ideas that don't bore me to tears, and I've been coming up with absolutely nothing. I realized that I was putting pressure on myself for something that ABSOLUTELY nobody cared about EXCEPT FOR ME! I mean, most of the people who will attend the conference this year will not miss me at all. That's okay, and to be expected. I will probably have some pang...

My beautiful music therapy room - I'm ready to use it! I think it will be a regular day today. I'm saying that with a bit of hesitation since the magic hour of 6am has not arrived yet, but I don't think that we will have to have an inclement weather schedule day today. I'm really hoping that we do not. So, in the past week (as we have had THREE inclement weather days - I attended two of them), my office has become more of a cesspool than usual. There are boxes of things for the store that need to be labeled and repackaged to fit the storage that I have available for me. There are projects to go through. There are things to make, things to toss, things to bring home, and things that just don't need to be there. I have facilitated 17 groups in the past two days - usually I do 10 groups in two days (and my interns do most of those groups these days, so I oversee 10 groups in two days). There is a certain level of exhaustion from being in the spotlight all the tim...

Oh, boy. It's another one of those days where my social media page is covered with indignant comments about yet another person out there who is doing something with clients that involves music. The criticism starts - "Is this person a music therapist?" "Should this person even be allowed to use music in a  nursing home?" "I had a job and someone like this came in and took it from me!" Sigh. I find all of these discussions pretty exhausting, and I don't really like that it happens so much. My opinions (that's what this is entirely - OPINION - which means that I get to think and write about whatever I want, and I get to share it with other people as such - OPINION, not FACT) are pretty set by now, and I feel that we music therapists are the ones that are failing. Okay. I know that some of you just stopped reading at the end of that paragraph right there. If you are still with me, let me start explaining. Here are my opinions: Music d...

I have a case of the grumps - that mood where there just isn't anything that makes me happy and everything just makes me a bit angry. It's silly things, really - my father's ultra conservative posts on Facebook, the fact that the cat wants to cuddle at times when I do not, all the food that I have in the cabinet that just doesn't sound appetizing to me at all, the list just goes on and on. Nothing is really serious, so I'm thinking this is the product of hormones, and I am very grateful that I have another day off before I have to work around others.   It is time to spend some time in my own company. I don't think I'll get an early morning phone call from my father - my family is going to the memorial service for my second cousin once removed today. I'm not going because I am the only one who doesn't live in California. Grump. I have to make a choice - do I let the grumps take over my life? Or do I work through them. I choose to work through t...

The first weekend in February is always a busy one, but now it is over, so the rest of the winter can start. I am starting to think about my February to-do list, and I'm trying to figure out what to do next. My problem? I have too many thoughts and not enough time or money to see them through. So, I prioritize. My not-to-do list is growing pretty significantly. Here's #1 - I'm not going to push myself too hard. Things will get done before they need to get done, but self-care in the form of sleeping, cleaning, and eating right is more important than any task. #2 - I'm not going to work myself into exhaustion. There will be more not-to-do's, I am sure of it! There always are!! At the moment, I am enjoying some quiet time with the cat. We are sitting on the couch - she is on my feet, purring loudly - I am under my childhood comforter - the pink and white gingham one that matched my sister's comforter. This comforter is about 40 years old and is pretty fragile...

I dragged myself to work last Friday, probably before I should have, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I am out of official sick time. Second, it was a non-therapy day where I could hole up in my office and work, and third, I needed to straighten my office area so an intern applicant could fit, stretch out legs, and engage in an interview. It took me all day to work on my office space, what with in between fatigue episodes and other tasks that popped up, but my office looks pretty good right now (well, compared to how it looked before!). I have faced a fact in my life that is pretty much part of everything. I am not a "neat" person. Another fact about is that I like stuff, and I want that stuff near me for when I need it. At the same time, though, I crave minimalism and fantasize about white walls and labelled drawers and cabinets. It's an interesting dichotomy to me and one that I'm not able to achieve because, well, stuff. (Did I mention how much I like s...

I recently posted a presentation on my website for folks who attended my AMTA 2017 talk about writing clinical goals, objectives, and benchmarks. I did my usual routine when posting videos - make a powerpoint presentation, record myself on video, and then transform the presentation to an mp4 and post on YouTube. I then post the link on the website which transforms into a thumbnail with a snapshot of the video. When I saw one of the thumbnails, I just had to laugh. You know, when I think about what I look like, I don't always think about the double chin, the occasional spots on my forehead, or the fact that my hair has a way of just going wherever it wants to go. This thumbnail reminded me of all of those things and more.  I posted it anyway. Hopefully, the folks who are getting the information will be led into watching the last part of the presentation in spite of the picture that I present on social media. If not, well... Really, YouTube? What about the picture that wa...

I admit it. I like getting things in the mail, and I love my subscription to Music Therapy Mailing s . I took a brief break from my subscription, but recently splurged on an annual commitment. I received my first envelope of the new subscription in the mail on Wednesday. This time around, I decided to get the adult version of the mailings. Since I work with children and adolescents, I found that many of the things in the Kid subscription was not really all that applicable to my adolescents, so I decided to go to the Adult version (just to see if I can find more things for my clients). Here's what I got... (Cat tail NOT included in the envelope.) Before I go any further, I feel the need to indicate that I do not get anything from anyone when I talk about products or services. I do not have any affiliate links, so every thing I write is 100% my own opinion and is not motivated by any thing other than me! This month's envelope included 18 hanging jack-o-lanterns, som...

Today is Friday, my catch-up day. It wasn't originally intended to be a catch-up day - it was supposed to be an individual treatment day. Part of the deal of moving to my big, BEAUTIFUL music therapy room was that I would also play host to our student incentive store. So, for four hours today, I will have all of the classes tromp through my room to go shopping in one of the adjoining closets. It is difficult to run therapy sessions with an audience (not to mention, completely unethical!!), so Fridays are my day to get things finished and coordinated. I have to do my documentation from yesterday (I have finished all other documentation from this week - hooray!), but then I am finished with administrative requirements for this week. I have some time to finally make something new for my clients. I'm thinking calm-down bottles. I bought baby oil, clear glue, glitter glue, glitter, and some beads for my bottles. I'll put them together, super glue the lids, and I'll h...

So, you may have noticed that I didn't write anything yesterday. I just couldn't bear it, so I went straight to work without writing. I got to work VERY early, but I also fit in a trip to Walmart where I wandered through the entire store and spent very little money, so the start of the day wasn't too bad. It was a rough week. I would like to make a unilateral decision that we have absolutely NO Monday holidays and switch all those holidays into Friday holidays. It is very difficult to skip an early day and find the schedule and the routine. So, my {sarcasm intended here through word choice and my internal brain inflection as I am writing} WONDERFUL week this week included being yelled at in the hallway about a situation that occurred in a different service that I had nothing to do with, by an administrator, in front of students and staff members. When I went to the administrator to communicate that I felt humiliated and that I had been maltreated, I was told {and I qu...

I admit it, I really don't like Monday holidays. I spent most of yesterday in a fog, trying to remember who I was supposed to see when, and I almost convinced myself that one group of students, sitting in front of me, was not the right group. I didn't say anything, however, because I figured that someone else would come in and correct the situation if I was right (I wasn't). I realized, during the ride home, that I completely forgot one of my pull-out sessions yesterday. Just completely blanked out on that one session. I did do the other seven sessions that I had planned for yesterday, but I feel bad about missing the one session. I much prefer Fridays off to Mondays off. When there are Monday holidays, I spend the rest of the week trying to catch up. With Friday holidays, I can do my regular routine without making changes to what I am doing and who I am seeing. I admit it (and it shouldn't be much of a surprise to folks who read this blog), I am creature of habit...

Every so often, I have to work a 12-hour day in my role as a school-based music therapist. I dread those days with a passion, primarily because I spend most of the day sitting in my small, dark music therapy room with occasional breaks for (shudder) team-building exercises, and then I end up sicker than a dog afterwards. I've been able to avoid most of our 12-hour days this year because administration scheduled them on Wednesdays - I have another job on Wednesday evenings, so I get to work flex time rather than going through the rigor of 12-hour days. We've finished three of our five 12-hour days in the first three months of school - only two more to go. This last day, the one where I did most of the 12-hours (but not all - I left after 11 hours because I felt sick and had already worked overtime that week), left me exhausted. I slept in until 7:30 yesterday morning and 7:00 this morning. My allergies are morphing into something else - at this point, I can't tell if it ...

Every day my news feeds on various social media sites are filled with things about music therapy. There are videos, articles, advocacy reminders and needs, thoughts, books, and connections with other therapists going on those sites day in and day out. Lots of the stuff that I see is good - lots of it is crap, but the thing is that music therapy is growing, becoming more prevalent, and is much more of a household name than it was 10 years ago. So, I think about music, therapy, and my role in this profession.  What are the things tha t you wish you knew about this profession before sta rting the education and training process? About a year and a half ago , I w rote a post about the 7 things I wish I had known about music therapy before I started working as a therapist. These things still run true for me. I still see the need for advocacy , the ory, and a relation ship to music. These days, I see a need for pat ient advocacy - not for patien ts but with patience. There is r...