music, therapy, and me

Why are Tuesdays more difficult than Mondays in my world? No, seriously. I am struggling this morning more than I did yesterday when I felt horrible. I now have a headache and chills to complicate matters. It is not virus or bacterial, it is all about the headache. Recently, I've been waking up with what I consider a migraine situation - difficulty with temperature regulation (it is interesting having hot flashes and chills simultaneously), headache that moves all around my brain, and light sensitivity. I have not had these types of headaches before - usually my migraine activity happens when I am awake, and I get a visual migraine first. Not with these things. When I woke up this morning, it was when the light turned on. I was not feeling it. I allowed myself to stay in bed until about an hour after that event. Now I am up and not really looking forward to going to work today. I found out yesterday that my second suite mate is leaving in two weeks when the first suite mate is reti...

I dragged my body out of bed this morning at 4:15 am because it has to be done. I have to get into a routine of getting up and getting going during these early morning hours for this week before a week where I do not have to be up this early. I think that this is cruel and unusual punishment. In addition, this is a week with a 12-hour day in it, so that means late night medication, medication side effects, and late arrival at work for a kid-day the next day. There is so much that is wrong with this week, but it all starts with the time change. I woke up with an actual aural alarm this morning. This is unusual for me. Music in my environment tends to be startling, so I use a light to help me get up. I am usually awake before the light turns on, but not always. The change in the light environment helps me wake up. I think my father is responsible for this. He used to tell me it was time to get up by turning on my bedroom light when I was younger. As much as I pleaded that he turn on the ...

It is Wednesday, and I have to face "that" client again. You know the one. The one client that challenges me more than anyone else at the moment. The one who resists every single interaction. The one who would rather not do what others want to do. The one who disrupts the therapeutic process so much that no one in the group gets any benefit from being present. The one who is not able to respond to group therapy due to the extreme behaviors of concern that have become routine. I did some data review yesterday on "that" client. My location is not the only place these behaviors of concern occur. That was good to see, but we have had four significant incidents in the past month that have disrupted instructional time to the point of affecting two classes rather than just one. I am dreading the next two sessions with "that" client because it affects more than just me and "that" client. I do not feel like I can do the job that I want to do when I am hav...

This is a busy month for me. Between my church responsibilities and my holiday work responsibilities and the things that I put upon myself, I am booked pretty much solid for the next four days and then for the two weeks after that. I have to work a 12-hour day at work today, a product release tomorrow (how did it already get to be the 4th??), a CMTE on Saturday (check out the link - it is VERY affordable!!), corralling kids into the semblance of a Christmas program on Sunday morning, and then a Blue Christmas service to help lead on Sunday afternoon. Do you feel sorry for me yet? OF COURSE NOT, because we are ALL in the SAME BOAT!!! Next week, I have another 12 hour work day (ugh!) and a ten hour recording session for a CMTE I am offering through my own business. Oh, and all the other job responsibilities that go on all the time - you know, documentation, session strategizing, and working with clients. I feel like I am pretty well organized, however. I have some lists for some of...

I have a twelve hour day at work today. For some reason, my administrators like to schedule long hours after school for training purposes and to get our monitoring finished for the quarter. For me, as a non-IEP based music therapist who has no monitoring, this type of day is simply full of other stuff to do - including catching up with the notes that I haven't finished (yet) and talking to my intern about various and sundry topics - sometimes our talk is about music therapy things, sometimes it's about the time my brother set fire to the bathroom. It has been a long time since I've attended one of these for the entire time. I used to have a part-time job on Wednesday evenings, but we have changed that job to Thursdays to accommodate one of my faithful choristers who has a Wednesday night class. So, I no longer have an excuse to skip out at 5pm. I have to stay until the bitter end... So, knowing that this is going to be a very long day, I am planning to leave my house la...

It is the week before Spring Break, and I am already ready for some time off. I only have five more days before a week off, but I want more time off right now! I didn't have to go do my church job yesterday so I had two entire weekend days off and to myself. A taste of break before break happens, and I am now ready for more! Unfortunately, I still have those five more days before I get some time to myself. I have absolutely no good reason for taking time off. I feel well. I am not running anything near a fever, and I have nothing to plan for music therapy sessions today. (Maybe that's part of the problem - I have nothing to plan for today.) I just really enjoyed being at home yesterday for my church day that wasn't and want to be at home today for a work day that isn't. I won't do that, though. There are times in the lives of every person where going to work seems like a whole bunch of... well, WORK! This feeling doesn't come over me very often, but when...

How many of you have never experienced the repetition and predictability of a record album with a scratch on it? Actually, don't tell me if you haven't had that particular experience. I think it would just make me feel old. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, back in the olden days, we had these things called "records." After use, they occasionally got scratched and if the scratch changed the grooves on the records, the needle that translated the grooves into sounds would skip grooves or return to one place on the record. If you didn't jog the needle out of the scratch into a complete groove, the same part of the music would repeat over and over again. February feels like a scratched record to me. It always has, ever since I moved to Kansas. I never really felt this way about February when I lived in California, but Kansas and February wear on me in a way that March and Kansas do not.  February is the month where we have the most inclement weather ...

It's day 3 of my new school year, and I am not interested in going to work today. Now, don't get me wrong - this has absolutely NOTHING to do with my clients, my intern, or my co-workers today. This has absolutely EVERYTHING to do with me! I just don't want to have to get up and get going. Now, in the interest of full authenticity and disclosure, I am dressed in my uniform, I will leave my house when I need to leave, and I will be going to work where I will have a good day, but at the moment, I just don't want to HAVE to work. Does that make sense? This happens to me every summer. I'd like to have the option of taking time off during summer school because I don't want to have to work, but I still want to be able to work if I get too bored with being at home. I think I would go stir crazy if I had to stay at my home during the entire summer - I would probably go home to California to keep myself entertained - but I would really like to have the option to f...

It is already 5:20 and I am just now sitting down to write this blog. I am usually trying to finish up things by this time, but my routine has become out of order due to illness and fatigue, doctor's appointments and antibiotics, and lots of other things. My nurse practitioner looked at me during my appointment on Friday and said, "You're never an easy one to figure out, are you?" My answer? "Nope."  Welcome to the health challenges of my entire family. None of us do things in a normal way. My latest health challenge? Despite being on a heavy antibiotic, my throat is starting to hurt. I go for yet another set of chest x-rays this afternoon after work - I am hoping to be at work for the entire day today - and then we'll talk about other options for treatment. All of this while I have no more sick time left to me and only a couple of non-paid days off left to use. I wanted to use them for another Spring Break, but that isn't happening now. Well now...

Today is the day that I go towards one of the best and most challenging events of my year - the AMTA National Conference. At one time, my conference time was full of meetings and deep thinking and actively helping others. Now, not so much, and that has been an interesting challenge in itself. I seriously contemplated not going to conference this year, but I was accepted to present, so I decided to go. I waver between being glad that I am going and anxiety episodes about the entire experience. One of my fondest memories of my undergraduate education is sitting around a table with my music therapy cohort, banging our fists, and yelling, "It just doesn't matter!" over and over again. We did this to help us relieve the stress that came along with senior classes and the internship uncertainty. For me, however, it became a mantra to remember. This will be my quest for this conference - to remember that events that seem huge to me really are not that huge - in fact, most of ...

Yesterday morning, I woke up (like I do most months about this time) with some severe intestinal difficulties and an inability to move very far from my bed without significant problems. What did that mean? Self-care day. I've had this problem and pattern for quite some time, and I finally realized what the pattern was yesterday about halfway through my day. I know what precedes this situation which will help me predict it. Now that I know, I think I can start to prepare myself better for this episode next month. I am hoping that I do not have to take another self-care day next month because I need to be at work. Being at work with this situation, though, means not being able to focus on my clients and their needs because my own needs take precedence in my attention. So, self-care day. Isn't it amazing how much our body does? Isn't it amazing how it gets into patterns that we don't really realize? Isn't is amazing how a bit of prevention can help our bodies d...

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 year, after both of the time changes, my body revolts. (I am a HUGE proponent of not changing times anymore - I don't see a reason for it. The farmers don't like it - I know, I ask them. Others may, but really? Why do we still need to do this?)  ANYWAY - I get into a pattern of not sleeping until the time I want to sleep to and then going to sleep in front of the television at unsuitable hours - therefore spurring on my waking time at earlier and earlier hours. It's a defeating cycle which leads me into stress that is unnecessary and, ultimately, not something I want to do. I always seem to forget how to make this work in my favor. At this point, I wake up around 1-2am and can't go back to sleep. I get up, start my day, and then end up going to work REALLY early because I've finished my daily stuff that I can do, living in an apartment complex - can't vacuum or do laundry because of the noise. So, I end up at work, doing my daily work at hours when I...

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 ...

I am sitting in my bed after waking at 5am, trying to figure out what to write about. There are some more advocacy situations brewing (and I find that I have some relatively unpopular views on these particular situations), so I could continue in the trend of yesterday, but I don't want to do so. I get tired of being in the minority (and being the one jumping up and down in the corner screaming "Don't do this! It just makes us seem like music-owning viragoes who have no common sense"), so I say my piece and then try to move on. I would rather keep my advocacy efforts for others instead of wasting them on my fellow professionals. (I'm thinking I may need to take a break from Facebook groups for a time.) Anyway, I don't want to dwell, so I am looking around for other relevant topics for this music therapist to write about. I am on the second Friday of my recuperation and leave from work, and I have not had client contact since the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I...

The one big thing on my calendar that has made everything else shift and move is now over. The AMTA Conference in Kansas City was wonderful and profession-affirming, but I missed all of the socializing that I usually do when I am in the hotel. It is now over. So, now I have to do all of the things I was putting off until after AMTA. I have two weeks to get myself organized for Christmas. You may be thinking, there are five weeks before Christmas, but I have surgery on my ACL on December 1, so I have to get all of the things that need to be mailed to various places in the world out before then. After December 1, all gifts will be sent directly from the retailers to the recipients. I still have some questions about how the entire thing will happen including how I will get money for living and the like, but I am confident that everything will come together. Before then, I need to crochet four pairs of slippers, clean my entire house, send packages, talk to the medical folks, stop list...

I hit the fatigue wall today. I overextended yesterday and actually went to both of my jobs. I didn't get into bed until late (for me), and then had to call my parents and my sister. My sister was in a bit of a tizzy about a decision that someone made about her role at her school, so I stayed awake until she had something figured out what to say and an idea of how to approach the people involved. Once she found her way, we hung up, and I fell asleep immediately. This morning I awoke right before my "alarm" light turned on. I flipped over and went back to sleep for another hour - again, not at all like me. I had to force myself to actually get up and get my morning routine started. I really want to stay at home, but I am running out of sick time and don't know for sure if my worker's comp claim will kick in to pay me while I am considered "Temporarily Totally Disabled." I certainly don't want to owe my school district part of my salary due to an i...

The other day, my intern, my Art Therapy co-worker, and I indulged in an afternoon of complaining. Now, this was something that was arranged - my interns write on reflective journal topics these days and the one about pet peeves was selected (by me, but it was time to get some of the mood out). It was a general discussion. We didn't spend any time talking about specific people - just about general things that annoy us - but it really was a fun exercise. Fun exercise? You may be thinking. Yep. It was just plain old fun to spend some time talking about what makes me cringe, weep, and rage in the behavior of others. Some of my pet peeves are using the word "soft" as the opposite of "loud," people who talk on their cell phones instead of their children, people who are VERY loud where others have to work (an introvert peeve, I'm sure), and people who are unable to accede that others may have opinions which differ from their own. We spent about an hour talking a...