music, therapy, and me

I was scrolling on my Instagram feed, the way that I do, and saw a post from a teacher speaking about using a kite flying analogy to teach a math concept to her high school students. They did not understand, and the teacher finally realized that it was because her students had never flown kites. She bought a bunch of kites and had the students fly them outside to get that experience. This post made me think a bit about experiences. One of the things that all humans do is assume that their lived experiences are similar to the lived experiences of all humans. In fact, there is a developmental process where children start to be aware of similarities and differences between them, their families, and the families of others. It is easy to assume that every person has flown a kite at least once in their lives, and this assumption also applies to us in the music therapy world. As a vintage music therapist, I have been involved in the music therapy world as both a student and professional for 3...

Now, my name is not Alexander, but I did have a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day on Monday. It was a day of ups and downs - I was accepted to present on music therapy futurism at the World Congress of Music Therapy, but I also spent about 45 minutes crying in my office after being asked to be part of a team photo and then watching my "team" not wait for me to get there. I rounded the corner as they snapped the picture and then scattered. I was told that they would try to get everyone back so I could be part of the picture, but by that point, I was in hysterics and just didn't need any further humiliation. The rest of the day was what I was expecting - Halloween in a psychiatric treatment facility is on a level beyond other Halloween experiences I have ever had - but I ended up in the throes of a horrible headache and went to sleep pretty soon after I got home. I hadn't slept much from Sunday to Monday, so I know that was part of my hysteria, but the "tea...

In my college town a couple of days ago, three women decided to take an unsecured scooter from the front of one of the Walmarts. They went in the store, noticed the scooter sitting there, went shopping, came out 30 minutes later, saw the scooter still there, and apparently thought, "Abandoned. Mine," and then scooted off, taking the scooter with them. Well, as you can imagine, this was not an abandoned scooter but was the property of a seven year old kid who was in the store with his mother. The police had camera footage of the three women, and the department posted their pictures all over social media. The little boy got a new scooter and helmet from some donations from concerned community members, and then the women returned the scooter and "apologized." The apology, which the police department also posted on social media at the women's request, included statements such as "If we had known it had belonged to someone, we wouldn't have taken it," ...

Yesterday was another rough day for my session - not for the ones that my intern ran, but MINE! I am starting to feel that this is a personal vendetta from my clients, but I know that is ridiculous. Today, I am heading into a full-moon (don't doubt, scoffers), upcoming winter storm, short-staffed, mess of a job to lead three groups. I am hoping that they will be at least a bit receptive to music therapy today. We have two other groups to go through - my intern will lead one completely and will do as much of the second as possible! In another setting event, I got home to a home without power - on webinar night. I was able to start a communication chain but had to cancel because I was unsure if the power would be on at webinar time. Sigh. At one point during my ONLY group session yesterday, there were two kids in crisis, one kid taking a break, and all sorts of situations happening. We had a new staff member in the session - don't even know the person's name - who did not app...

Rant. I was perfectly fine this morning. I really was. I took a couple more minutes of being in bed this morning. I took a shower and then came down to find a spate of messages that passively blamed me for technological issues that are happening in a particular group. I was named as the reason for not changing things to avoid some of these issues. No one else was named in the message line, and it really tromped up, down, and sideways on my feelings. Now, I am a grown up and I know that I do not have to relate to things in this particular manner, but this happens every year at this time and it is always the worst timing because I am very busy right now - more busy than others in this particular group. Interestingly, when things calm down for me, these same folks have no interest in changing things up. I refuse to participate in the conversations concerning technology because I always feel that I am the one who gets blamed, so I refuse to make the decision. I am not a fan of waffling and...

Today is Saturday, the one day where I choose what I want to do with my time and energy rather than having to do what others structure for me...well, in one sense of the word. I do not go to work for someone else on Saturdays - I get to spend time in my home without having to leave unless I want to! I try to keep my Saturdays reserved for rest and relaxation because I work the other days of the week. Today, though, is an exception. Once per month (or about that often), I meet with the other Board of Directors of the Online Conference for Music Therapy, Inc . We talk about the conferences that we run on a regular basis and we plan for what we have to do to get an online conference going and ready for other music therapists from around the world. It is a wonderful bunch of people, so I do not regret the time spent with these folks on my Saturdays. I enjoy our conversations and our problem solving. The rest of the day will consist of me walking around my house, looking at the boxes that a...

Whoo, boy! I think this year, more than any, has been overly full of stress and issues. Last year, at this time, we were three days away from going into no contact with clients at all as COVID-19 finally developed in my residential clientele. We went into going into work two days per week (without seeing clients) and three days from home. I had two interns and had to scramble to find things for us to do at home to earn their hours and my salary. We ended up making tons of visual aids, writing lots of Therapeutic Music Experiences (TMEs), and starting our YouTube Channel at that time. This year, the stresses are not as COVID related, but the virus is still wreaking havoc on my small facility and what we can do for our clients and on the staff members who are having to continue to pivot how things are done over and over again. The biggest problem with this situation is that everyone is feeling the same things. You go down the road to the local fast food place, and you will find the same ...

I did not want to get up this morning, so I laid in bed for an extra hour and thought about sleeping all day. It was a nice thought, but the reality is that sleeping in all day is not realistic when you have a week of bereavement leave coming up at the beginning of the contract year. I am going to blow through my entire stash of days off to go to the East Coast for a memorial service for my cousin. We are also going to spend some time with other family members, so it will be a combination of mourning and visiting. So, the time off will be well spent, but it is happening, so I can't really take days off to just sleep.  I was talking to an Introduction to Music Therapy student last night about the life of a music therapist. One of the questions this student asked was how I avoided burnout. I liked that question because it is something I think about...lots of the time! My answer included many of the things that I talk about on this blog - things like knowing yourself, finding a suppor...

As I was leaving yesterday, I ended up walking through a situation that made me grieve. It was all a matter of timing, but I heard one of our very good direct service staff quit immediately. I didn't stay to hear the entire conversation since it wasn't my place or privilege, but I sensed the frustration and pain in the voice of this staff member as I walked through the doorways where the conversation was taking place. I mourned all the way home and well into the evening as well. Being a direct care health worker is not an easy job at the best of times, but in these times, the stressors must be enormous. My situation is a bit different now, but I started my career as a direct care staff member for persons very similar to those I work with now, so I have a bit of room to sympathize. I can also empathize with the emotions displayed in the 3 seconds that it took me to walk through the doorway. I am feeling and observing so much grief in these days. For me, I am grieving the loss of...

My school district has closed for the next week for sure and probably for the rest of the school year - well, at least if the governor has anything to say about it. My administrator sent out a copy of an email "sent to all USD staff" (not sent to my email address) that states that we will be extending our break for another week as we come up with a plan. Our school, being a public, special purpose school housed in a residential treatment facility, will not match any of the decisions made by the superintendent. So, I'm not sure if I'll be trying to do teletherapy with my groups or just stay at home. I don't know if I'll have a salary for the next two months or not. I don't think I'll be paid by the church since the church is closed and I'll not be needed during this time. I only have two more months with that paycheck anyway, but every little bit will help these days. Uh-oh. I'm starting to spiral.  Here's what I know for sure. There i...

Are you ever stuck in a real-life nightmare where all your biggest insecurities are pushed at over and over again? I'm in that sort of situation at work right now, and no matter how I communicate what I need from the people who are part of the situation, I feel like I am ignored. BIGGEST NIGHTMARE FOR ME, EVER!! All of this stuff is leading me into digestion problems, waking up super early, not eating as much as I need to to sustain my best brain power, and constant second-guessing myself.  The good news is that there are good things happening as well. I have a CMTE course coming up this weekend that I am co-leading with a music therapy colleague and co-worker of mine. I am not quite ready to get it all done, but I am doing pretty well with that planning. No one has signed up for the CMTE course that I am offering the next weekend, so I have plans to do all the recordings during the time I've carved out for the live presentation. Music therapy sessions are going well. I w...

So, I went to pick up my car from the emergency room parking lot where it had remained since Wednesday evening when I had to go to the emergency room until the day that I could get a taxi and brake without significant amounts of pain. Then, I found this... Doesn't look like much, does it? This little tear in the back of my car sent me into full hysterics for quite some time. Someone decided to back into my car and not leave any information about insurance and the such. I now have scrapes, a dent, and this tear in the back of my car - one that I am going to be trading in in a couple of weeks, of course! The new car has been ordered and is on its way from its country of origin as we speak. The police officer who took my report stated that the damage was a crime since the person responsible didn't try to contact me about the incident. We have about five days of security footage to look through - if the cameras even worked - to see if there is any sort of identifying informa...

NOTE: this is another rant where I tell you just what I'm thinking. I have not named any names, but you may be able to tell who the parties are based on contextual clues and access to the same social media feeds that I access. I will NOT publish any comments left on this post, so please feel free to comment below. There is a trend happening on one of my social media groups that is really angering me. It is a trend of shaming. There are a couple of people who consistently get onto other posts and engage in language that is often irrelevant to the post and shame the original poster into doing something that is completely different from the first post. I am torn about what to do about it all. I think that the motivation behind the several other people is a genuine effort to promote a specific point of view into our profession. I believe that they have decided that this is the way to go forward but do not have the experience or ability to moderate their responses to the conve...

I fell yesterday. I tripped on a bag that contained cans as I was trying to toss my shoes into the washer, and I twisted my ankle pretty severely. In addition, I sprained the pinky and ring finger of my left hand and banged up my right knee and right shoulder. I avoided splitting my head open on the door of my brand new dryer (I don't know how I avoided that), and then I laid on the floor for about three minutes as the pain crested through my various body parts. After the pain started to subside, I did my head to toe check (learned in First Aid training) and determined that I hadn't broken anything. I then stood on my feet, hobbled over to the couch, and cried for a bit. In my family, I am known as the klutz. I am the one who spent her entire life encased in ace bandages because I never really broke anything, but I sprained everything - over and over and over again. I was the one who tripped at the skating rink and jammed both of my elbows so severely that I was unable to e...

I failed at everything that I set out to do yesterday. I wanted to write down two "NTM" TMEs. I didn't. I wanted to clean my house last night. I didn't. I wanted to have a full serving of vegetables or fruit yesterday. I managed to get in about a third of a serving.  I wanted to stay up until 9pm. I didn't. I wanted to get my documentation completely done. I didn't. I did manage to interact with students in six different therapeutic encounters without any type of behaviors of concern happening from anyone. I did manage to engage diverse learners into therapeutic interactions, and I did sort bus duty into a process that took it from 40 minutes of mayhem on Monday to 18 minutes of controlled release on Tuesday, so it's not like I failed at everything ever! I did fail at some things, but I succeeded in so many more things. The problem that I have is that I tend to dwell on the failures rather than celebrating the successes.  I have learned tha...

Draft #4 of this blog post... I am in a complaining mood, and I am frustrated by all sorts of things - by how my administration negates the work that I do at every opportunity, by drips on the bottom of the oven that smoke furiously when I try to cook, by kids who do not do what is asked of them (my mind goes automatically to ending that phrase with the words - ON PURPOSE), and many other things. I know the reasons behind all this, but that doesn't make it any easier to live through at the moment. I am trying my best to remember that it is not effective to spew my bad mood over everyone else. I do not have to bring other people down to my level. In fact, I don't want to make others wallow in my bad mood. That is not an appropriate response to the general cranky nature of me at the moment. I am also trying to remember that what I am reacting to is not always the actual situation - I am reacting through a layer of crank that is not a universal reality...it is just in my own...

Everything under the sun is piling up on me right now. The cat's not eating as much as usual, I have a hang nail that's bothering me, I can't seem to type a sentence without having to go back and backspace, my mouse stopped working and the replacement isn't here yet, I am exhausted and can't seem to get less exhausted, it is a long day at work today (class work time - something I really need), but I have to go to my other job so I don't get the work time, I've started this blog post about 10 times and haven't found a theme to go with, I'm feeling like other people are trying to force me into doing things that I don't want to do, I'm tired of being the punching bag of a particular client who will be coming back to the music therapy room today, and the list goes on and on and on. Now, not all of these things are important. In fact, outside of my own brain, most of these things aren't important at all, but they do add up to a overall way o...

I am starting the second week of a new habit, and I am feeling a bit anxious about what I want to get done at work versus what I know I need to do with my schedule and my self. My anxiety talk is running around my head - "You won't have time to do what you want to do if you go in on time. You NEED to go in early." Those types of whispers are exacerbated by the infection running through my body at the moment as well. Fortunately, I know that these thoughts are my anxiety thoughts rather than an actual fact, so I can work through them. Oh, rational brain, how I love thee! My habit tracker for leaving and arriving... One of the things that I am doing to help myself remember that I really do not have to work so many hours at work is keep track of when I leave and when I arrive each morning. Some of my anxiety comes from the erroneous idea that I will not arrive on time. I am writing down the minute that I enter my home, I track whether or not I run an errand before le...

It's that time of year again. The television shows constant weight-loss program advertisements, fitness centers are advertising New Year's specials, and all work-out apparel and equipment are on ridiculous sales!! Many people are thinking about their New Year's resolutions, and I've decided to check up on my New (School) Year resolutions. These are my personal resolutions. I have another list of professional resolutions, but they are pretty boring - continue to develop the internship program, continue to provide music therapy services, etc. Yawn! So, here are my personal resolutions and intentions. I always start my intentions at the beginning of the new school year because that is my major checkpoint. January is simply the middle of the school year for me, so I've found that resolutions made in January are not nearly as effective for me as the ones that I make in August. So, here is an update on my goals from August. The original text is in black type and the ...