music, therapy, and me

On days like these, I spend quite a bit of time sitting and staring at the cursor blinking and blinking. I look for things to inspire me, and come up short. So, I think about my days at work and my self-care plans and try to find something to write about. I am still searching for something that makes me think about music or therapy or me. This is a place where I sort out things. Over the years that I've been writing this blog, I've used posts to figure out my thoughts about interns and internships, MLE, my own relationship with music therapy, my cat makes lots of appearances, and I spend lots of time just talking about what is happening in my life at any given moment. I've found that writing almost-daily posts is a good exercise for thinking about what music, therapy, and music therapy means to me as a professional and as a human. Writing helps me work through challenges. So, if you've never read this blog before, as you go over the older posts, you'll find so...

I am currently involved in a new project - a collaborative project that takes me a bit out of my comfort zone. I am currently struggling a bit with how to proceed in this new project, and I think it's because I don't really know how to talk in this situation. (Do you hear that?? THAT sound is my father laughing and laughing about the statement, "I don't really know how to talk..." For some reason, he thinks that all I do is talk and talk and talk... Silly Dad!) Now, Dad is right in some respect, I can talk your ear off if you ask me what I do for a living. I can speak the intellectual disability and childhood psychiatric music therapy talk all day long. If you have a general question about music therapy, I'm your best source! This is a language I have been speaking for almost 3 decades (including my schooling), so I know that talk. The problem here seems to be that I am not really sure how to talk about this new idea. The target audience is completely ...

I had a webinar last night. We talked about Time Management and Organization - something that I have a handle on but still have to work on all the time. We discussed the challenges and joys of being music therapy interns (for them, a reality, for me, a distant memory) and how a change of job often means a change in managing time and workloads.  Intern webinars are things that I love to facilitate. I enjoy talking to the future of music therapy. I enjoy being a link between them and the greater music therapy world. I enjoy being able to be the one that lets them know things like "it's normal to be exhausted during your internship." I also enjoy hearing what they think about the future of this profession. During our conversations over the years, music therapy interns have listened to me talk about their rights and responsibilities, time management and organization, the therapeutic triad, and self-care as well as several other topics. Some groups actively engage in the c...

I am approaching an anniversary of sorts - the 500th post on this blog will be the next post... not this one. This one is merely number 499, so I'm going to take this post to review my blog - the good, the bad, the ugly. I started writing this blog in 2006. That first post was the only post for the year. I guess I fell into the pattern that many aspiring bloggers fall into - that of having great ambitions, but not taking advantage of those ambitions. The next years were better, but I really hadn't found my blogger groove. As the years have passed, I have tried to offer a glimpse into my world of music therapy - the professional concepts and issues that have come up, my personal experiences as both human being and music therapist, and some insights into the music therapy reality that I am privileged to share with my clients. Sometimes I am able to complete my goals well - others, not so much, but, heck, it's my blog, and I get to do what I want here. As this annive...

When I logged into blogger today, I found the number 2800 - the number of times my blog has been viewed by others out there in the universe. Seeing this number totally changed my topic for this blog post which was originaly going to be something along the lines of "Pinned and Wriggling Against the Wall." Aren't you glad I changed my mind? It could have been SO much worse! Anyway... This blog is my place to process, vent, analyze, and engage myself in thinking about music, therapy, and me - my place in the world of music therapy. I think of it as my online journal and tend to treat it as such. So, when you look at an entry on this blog, pretty much anything goes! Today, I am thinking about the role that music plays in our lives - not necessarily from a music therapist's point of view, but from the perspective of a human being... One of the people on the Music Therapists Unite Facebook group asked for ideas about demonstrating a music therapy intervention for...

Musings about this blog... Are you there? I have a suspicion that this is a place that I ramble on and on all to myself. That is fine since I treat this site as a place to think about music therapy, not for public consumption, but as a personal place to vent or process information. Then, I attended the inaugural Online Conference for Music Therapy last weekend. I was amazed to see and hear from music therapists who have used their online presences to build their businesses. They all have blogs, websites, accounts on Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter (same as me), but they have also made their online presences something to be viewed with awe. I am learning. I am trying to launch a business online. This business is targeted towards music therapists and music therapy students, offering tools and materials. I have owned the domain name for 15 years, but have never been able to officially launch the site as a business. This is the year! 2011 is the year that my business starts.