music, therapy, and me

Today is the 32nd anniversary of starting my life as a music therapy professional. On this date back in 1993 (in the late part of the 20th century), I finished my internship at the Center for Neurodevelopmental Studies in Phoenix, Arizona and officially became a music therapist! It has been an interesting life, being a music therapist for over three decades. I am glad that I am still able to do something that I love. I hope to continue to do this work for another couple of decades. I have had four full-time jobs and many, MANY part-time jobs in the last 32 years. I have worked as an administrator (didn't like it back then), a recreation programmer, a rehabilitation (music) therapist, a recreation specialist, and a music therapist. I have been a church music director, a part-time temp doing filing work for an ambulance company, a music therapy contractor, part of a not-for-profit board of directors, a content creator, an author, a professional supervisor, and lots of other small job...

Forgive my interrupted posting schedule. I am simply trying to figure out some things in my life, and this interruption is part of the figuring out part. I am at the end of this figuring out part, and that is a good feeling. I know where I will go in my near future, and that makes me feel happy. Sorry for being so vague, but I cannot talk more about this topic. It is something that involves others besides just me, but there is something nice about being certain in my future, so there you go. For now, I am enjoying an opportunity to turn my attention towards something that I really want to pursue in our field - competency-based clinical training. I spent some time putting together a notebook with each of the AMTA Professional Competencies on a separate page. I intend to use this to parse out the competencies across all clinical training opportunities that music therapy students encounter in their preinternship and internship clinical training. It may sound funny, but I really believe t...

Today is the 31st anniversary of an important day in my life - the day I finished my internship and became a professional music therapist. I am proud of my career as a music therapist. I have been employed for my entire life except for about three months after my internship finished up. I have not been a music therapist for all of that time, but I have had the title of music therapist for the past 28 years. Before I became a "music therapist" in title, I was an activity director for children, a "QMRP" for adults, and a "Rehabilitation Therapist - Music" for adults. In the first and third of these jobs, I was able to do some music therapy, but music was not my primary way of doing my job. In the "QMRP" job, I was an administrator of three group homes and did not do any music therapy at all. My first two jobs did not last long, but they taught me some valuable lessons about myself as a music therapist and as a human being. I learned that I enjoy wo...

This is my second attempt at writing a blog post this morning. The first one ended up being a bit too personal for publication, so let's see how this one goes, shall we? Since returning home, I have gone through my usual pattern of post-vacation and summer-induced depression. While it has only been three days since I've returned, I am fully immersed in my feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and depression that usually happen to me during summertime. Throw in some wicked jet lag, and I am really just a mess at the moment. Since this is something that is usual for me (minus the jet lag) in the hot, humid weather of the summer, I am accustomed to working with and through all of these emotions, feelings, and symptoms. Being used to it, though, doesn't make it easier. Right now, I am in the middle of my break from work. My home is a mess, and I feel like I cannot get things going because things are such a mess. I spent a little bit of time cleaning the space under my office desk...

So, I figured out how many years, months, and days I have until I am eligible for retirement. Spoiler alert - I intend on retiring from my current job when I am able to do so because my body is getting old, and I want to be able to enjoy my retirement. So, I am going to retire in a bit (we're still talking about years here, folks, but it is less than five...), and I have to figure out when I can accept my last intern for this job. I enjoy being an internship director - I mean, most of it - I hate telling applicants that they will not be at my program for their internships. That part stinks, but the rest is fun. There is something really fun about watching a music therapy student turn into a music therapist, and being an internship director means that I get a front row seat! My next music therapy intern will be starting when our summer schedule starts on June 5th. I am getting some assignments ready for the intern for the week that I will be gond during the last week of our second s...

My sleep schedule is so messed up at the moment that I am spending inordinate amounts of time awake when I am usually sleeping. I tend to wake up and just be awake. It is rare that I go back to sleep once I am awake, and last night, I woke up twice to use the bathroom. This is also pretty unusual. I was able to go back to sleep the first time (it was only about 11ish), but when I got up the second time this morning, I was up. So, I wasted some time on TikTok, and now I'm up and thinking. One of my social media forays this morning was a post about trying to hire brand new music therapists and there being a significant disconnect between what new music therapists with zero professional experience want to be paid and what the market allows. This is a significant issue in the world of music therapy. Sure, I would LOVE to be paid $100K to be a music therapist, but that is not the reality of life at this time. Let me preface this with some background information here. I am a music therap...

In the recent Tuesday posts, I have shifted my attention away from just writing therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) into exploring TME development from a different perspective. This series of posts is coming from the perspective of someone who talks to music therapy students and interns from many different areas of the world and something that seems to surprise just about everyone that I talk to... You can do more than one thing with any material/object/song. Seems like a "duh" thing to me, but then I remember back to my development as a music therapist, and I know that I was in a similar space when I was a student. I wrote a song for shaking the tambourine, so we cannot even fathom using that same song for shaking the shaker eggs. "This is my tambourine song." but there is absolutely NO reason why it can't be a shaker egg song or a rhythm stick song or a move your hands song. All it takes is a slight alteration and the song becomes something that you can use a...

I spent my Friday afternoon commute thinking about philosophy statements. Not my usual way of thinking on the way home after an extremely challenging week in the music therapy spaces that I inhibit, but I embraced it anyway. My current way of being includes going where my interests lead me, so I thought about philosophy all the way home. I did not come to ONE decision or a SET philosophy, but I explored a bit about what having a philosophy meant to me. That's what I am going to talk about in this post - the importance of finding your philosophy and then basing your professional practice and demeanor on that philosophy. I also thought about how a philosophy can and should change over the years and experiences that you gather, so there will be a bit about that as well in the ensuing sentences. If you haven't written a personal, professional philosophy, then you might consider doing something like this. It is interesting to sit down and really think about what you believe and what...

It is almost the end of the regular school year for me. We have one more week to work before two weeks of time off. We will see groups today, tomorrow afternoon, and Wednesday. That's it. That is all the therapy that we have before us between now and the end of the school year. Tomorrow morning is taken up with graduation and Thursday is the carnival. We have an inservice day on Friday, so no contact with students on that day. It will be an interesting week, to say the least, but we are all ready. My interns are running the show now. I am doing very little therapy - in fact, I won't be doing any therapy this week. My group is scheduled for Thursdays and Fridays during the regular school schedule, so no therapy leading for me. This is the most difficult time for me as a music therapist and supervising music therapist. This is the time when I watch someone else do the job that I love rather than being in there myself. This is the time where I have to remove myself from therapeuti...

...and spent money that I didn't have to spend on Amazon Day last week...my stuff is starting to arrive now, and I am still pleased with my choices... I bought some spoons - my students seem to LOVE these, but the best part about them is that they bend. I don't love that as much, so I buy new ones every so often. That way, when they get so bent that I can no longer straighten them to a semblance of their former selves, I can replace them. I also bought a pair of mini kalimbas. I could not resist. They are in the picture above with the musical spoons for reference. They sound really good, and I like that they came in such cute packaging. Those things, a striker for my singing bowl, a drum set cover, and some paper things made up my order. Then...Thursday arrived and with it, Throw Back Thursday posts from my friends. One friend (actually, my middle and high school crush) has a dad who spent all of my friend's band life taking pictures of what was happening. Since I was in ba...