music, therapy, and me

La st night, I spent some time talking to other therapists abo ut time manag ement and orga nization, something that continuou sly challenges me, but that I strive for at the same time. I consider myself an expert in what "not to do" in this field due to the challenges that I 've been t hrough and the solutions that I have found that make the mantra of "work smarter, NOT harder" possible for me.   As I talk to other therapists about how to arrange their time and environment, I am al ways str uck b y how others approach the world. Th ings that seem to be common sense to me in my sma ll life a re apparently not that comm on to others. This simultan eously makes me laugh and despair and marvel at th e h uman race as a whole. As someone who st r uggles with time management at times, I have found that deadlines are very important to me. In my life, I pl ay many roles, but one of the most interesting ( to me , at least) is that of C ontinuing Education D irec...

Alright, alright. I'm already there. I am declaring myself an OMTF - an Old Music Therapy Fogey - right now! Are you an OMTF? Here are some tell-tale signs. a growing feeling that "people today just don't know how to ____." statements like "when I was in school, I had to..." start to bubble up and out of your mouth when you are trying to interact with others a growing nostalgia for the "good old days" I'm telling you, I'm there! As I read through posts on my various social media accounts, I find myself doing the following things more and more: yelling "What do you think Google is for?" at the screen when looking at yet another request for the chords to a song that is readily available to me via Google... yelling "Didn't you go through dictation and ear training in your education?" at the same posts! Why else did we take all of those classes? Are there music therapy programs out there that do not require ...

I am starting to fill up the gaps in my music therapy schedule with individual music therapy treatment times. This is a great feeling. I'll start individual treatment on July 11th when we come back for our second session of our Extended School Year. I'll get things going for three weeks, reevaluate, and then start up again when the regular school session starts. I am excited about getting back into this type of therapy. I've missed it, but there's something else going on. I'm a bit scared. You would think that my 23+ years of being a therapist would make things lots easier for me to jump back into this type of therapy interaction, but I am a bit scared still. I think most of these feelings have to do with forced light duty and almost a year of being out of my comfortable routine. I know that some of these feelings are rooted in fears of being hurt again. I don't want to be hurt again. I know that many of these feelings are somewhat irrational, but they sti...

Do you ever sit back, watch the people around you, and wonder, "Where has common sense gone?" My sister has a saying, "Common sense is not that common," and I can see it on a regular basis. It absolutely amazes me when people can't seem to see what is right in front of them. Example? Let's move a bunch of kids with developmental and psychiatric concerns not once, not twice, but three times in a two-week period. Um. Most people who understand some of the common challenges that these kids face on a daily basis would think that it might be better to make all the changes once rather than making them go through this again and again, but I guess that would be the easy way to go. Sorry, I'm ranting. It makes me seek sense - logical thinking, information, and decisions made based on the facts in front of me - and I cannot find it. This stems from a recent spate of decisions made in a 24-hour period that contradicted themselves over and over again. Decision...