music, therapy, and me

It is Monday, and I am feeling my weekend. You wouldn't think that 13 hours of sitting and making things with paper would wreak havoc on a body, but it does. Also, the change in medication regimen has something to do with this, I am sure. I crashed hard this morning and did not want to get up at all. I have also not been eating well, so there are lots of things happening, but this weekend just coalesced everything into one big energy reset. Boy, I am just one big complaint this morning. Time to reset. I enjoyed my time making things with paper this weekend. I worked on my themed journals on Friday evening, and I putzed around with brainstorming as well as some other paper projects and Zentangling on Saturday. I made lots of plans on Saturday, and I have started to work through those projects.  I am working on passion projects right now. These are things that do not provide me with much financial benefit but that really make me feel satisfied. If I can get some financial support thr...

One of the things that is interesting about this job of music therapy is that there are creative needs that never really end. I just finished my sing about the ocean  packet ( available here, by the way !), and now it is time to finish up the next sing about   songs edition for the month of October. If you are unaware, I try to release my monthly subscription about three months in advance so you have the resources available well before the month arrives. I find that composing music and coming up with ways to use songs in sessions with a variety of clients keeps me engaged and thinking. When I talk with other music therapists, I hear things like "I feel like I'm in a rut with what I do with my clients," and I get that. I understand that and have written about it over and over for many years now. Ruts happen, especially when the rigors of the job demand that the creative process take second place to working on the actual act of therapy. So, one of my projects for this week...

The second ever (and hopefully, the first annual) Creativity Camp by musictherapyworks.com is now finished!! I am exhausted, but I feel good about what we accomplished this weekend. I have a BUNCH of new projects that are finished that I was able to complete in the 8 hours we were together, and the pile is growing as I get more inspiration from the campers' projects. That is the best thing about doing creative professional development workshops with and for music therapists - the expansion of ideas based on a similar format. I have done this type of workshop at regional conferences twice now, and this was the second online version of making things that I have finished. I think this will become a yearly workshop that I run from here at home. I have TONS of ideas that I enjoy sharing as starting points, so why not?? Currently, all of the cleaning that I did in preparation is in shambles. One of the problems that happens when creating is that there are messes that occur. While all of ...

This is the most challenging season for me, and it makes it difficult to get motivated to do ANYTHING! I am getting ready for a large life change (retirement, here I come, kicking and screaming and trying to pretend that I know what I'm doing) that is adding stressor after stressor after stressor. My brain is struggling with all sorts of things, so I am taking out my self-care and brain sparking routines to help me get started on some creative projects. When I find myself in a creativity slump, the only thing that really works to get me feeling inspired or remotely interested in composing or drawing or making things for my music therapy clinic is to create using rules. The rules are arbitrary, made up by me, and something that I can break at any time if inspiration takes hold. I have found that my rules for creating help me break out of a stagnant state. When I am in need of some new songs, I break out my composition kit and my rules. Chance composition is the best technique for me...

 Here you go! A demonstration of my new TMEs by the Numbers file in my TPT store! Available for free!!

I am a music therapist who gets creative blocks at times, and that fact just annoys me. I do not like it when I cannot create something just whenever I want or need to do so, and I have explored many different ways to spur my creativity over my many years as a music therapist. The other day, I grabbed a set of Dungeons and Dragons dice at Five Below. I have followed several people on various social media platforms who use these to make decisions - I especially enjoy Roll for Sandwich - check it out! I thought that this could be a good format for me, and I turned it into a couple of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) already! Now, I have released this as a free resource in my TPT store . (It will not always be free - get it now!!) You have to have an account in TPT to access the information, but signing up is free and there are tons of free resources that music therapists can use and adapt.  Here's how it works. I have determined a criterion for each die value. Each die has a diff...

During the Music for Kiddos symposium on Friday, I started a lapbook template to make the creation of my lapbooks a bit more standardized. It is nothing fancy - it's just blocks at the moment, but it is a place to start. I have to tweak it a bit because my measurements did not quite fit the space available, but it is a start. I am all about working smarter and not harder, and I have found that making templates are easy ways to streamline some of my creative processes. Having a structure to work with helps me work. For the lapbook, I have a template for pieces to put together into the books for different ideas and different themes. To make things easier for me, I also print out things on sticker paper. It takes away the gluing step for the inner portions of the folder which is helpful. So, I am going to keep working on this idea, even through other types of creativity and work. I have made a pledge to myself that I am going to get to work on time this week. So, I have to work throug...

I have ideas.  I have so many ideas for what I want to do as well as for how to do it, but I am stuck in task paralysis and can't find the impetus to start anything. So, here I am. looking at all the stuff to make my ideas come to fruition, but without anything to show for it all. Once I start the process, things go really easily, but getting started can be daunting. For the moment, I am just collecting ideas without getting too nervous about not making them realities. This is a good time of year for me. I do much better in the cool and the cold than I do in the heat and humidity. It is a cozy time of year, and I enjoy that. There is the promise of getting home and being all snuggly in my craft space where I can experiment with paper and laminate visual aids and make new things. I did work on a page in my art journal yesterday. It is not quite finished yet. I have to glue things down and decide if I need more to add or not. I also prepared some prism crystals to add to my current l...

I am currently trying to figure out how to release a free file to all of you, but I am getting bogged down in the details of how to get this going. I have the file ready, but I am unsure how to get you to that file. I can do it through a quick website update, but I need some time to do that website update. This is causing me to change some plans, but that is fine. Anyway, is anyone up for a November freebie? I am going to release information about a free resource this week. I am. I just need to get things organized on my side of things. In the meantime, I am getting ready for (ugh) Spirit Week and Halloween at work. I am going to share my Halloween resources with groups this week after we talk about our October Musicians of the Month. I have books, carols, games, and all sorts of Halloween-ish stuff. I am working on the pattern for a Halloween lapbook, but that will probably not be ready to share by Friday. It is spurring my creativity, though. I love lapbooks, but I haven't produc...

I spent much of my Friday afternoon making file folder activities for one of the teachers in my school who needed some large safety sign practice folders. So, I sat down and cut out all sorts of safety signs from Breezy Special Ed . There are twelve different folders in the set that my school uses, so I made a complete copy for the teacher in folder size and am continuing to make smaller versions in half size for some of the other students in my school. As I was making the folders, I was reminded of my thesis where I wrote songs specifically for sight-word recognition purposes. Many of the safety signs were also part of our sight-word list back then, so I already have a bunch of songs written that go along with the file folders. Of course, my sings do not cover all the signs on any of the folders, but that's the way things go. My thesis was uninteresting, especially to me. I got laryngitis during the testing period so I am sure that things were affected by that fact, but it was jus...

Monday has come around again, and it is the last Monday that I have off before the start of the 2025-2026 school year. Next Monday is my first day with kids after being off for over a month due to medical issues that are continuing even after surgery. We now know more about what is happening inside my body, and it doesn't seem all that great. I go to my primary person today to cover some things that are concerning me - high blood pressure, falling, etc., but that is a topic for another day. Today's topic is laminating. I am a big fan of lamination. My clients tend to be juicy, so it is a good idea to cover things in plastic that can withstand some Clorox wiping (or LOTS of Clorox wiping). So, I enjoy covering visual aids in plastic.  When I was an intern, it was often my job to cover visuals in clear Contact paper. Now, I HATE Contact paper because it was my job to cover visuals during my internship. I swear that stuff sees me coming and instantly starts to fold, wrinkle, and s...

I am back to wanting to do thematic blogging for some of the days of the week on this blog. Mondays used to be internship focused but I no longer have an internship, so I have stopped writing on that topic. Since I am not in the internship world anymore, I feel like writing about it is sort of hypocritical. So, I am trying to get back into a routine of writing thematic posts at least three times per week.  These themes have to be things that interest me about the world of music therapy, but I am not really in the world of music therapy at this point. All I can really talk about is what it is like to be a vintage clinician, and I think that would get boring real quick for me and for you. So, let's see what else I know... Therapeutic Music Experience development Group management Being a clinician in a world that favors research Budgeting for a music therapy practice Becoming an entrepreneur Making things for clients Some music therapy history Music therapy systems that work for me Wa...

This is my second attempt at a post for today. There are times when I just can't post what I am writing because it is not conducive to my mental health or the purpose of this blog. So, the first post of the day went into my draft folder. I will not look at it again. It will just sit in that folder forever and ever. Let's talk about something that makes me feel happy - creating art and other craft processes. Yesterday, I sat on my bed and I created some word art. Word art is something I enjoy - I use it as a stream of consciousness tool for myself. I write words in different fonts. The words are sometimes sentences, sometimes just single words, but they always show me something about how I am feeling or what I am struggling with in the moment. Sometimes there are song lyrics involved. Most of the time, though, the words are just that - words without much to link them together. Yesterday's art consisted of emotion words about my near future and covered all of my current emoti...

I made it. This was a rough week for me emotionally. It was up and down with client interactions and engagement, but I did not want to move from my house to work every day this week. This happens to me more often in the summer months, and I know that a big part of my reluctance and negative thoughts are part of my particular version of seasonal affective disorder. Knowing that fact doesn't always make it easier to live through, but I do. We are getting ready for our first round of high heat and humidity this upcoming week. I am considering moving downstairs until my surgery so I can be more comfortable at night in the basement temperature instead of the upstairs temperatures. I have 10 more days before my surgery happens, so there is plenty of time to be comfortable. Anyway... I had a brainstorm yesterday for a theme packet for my sing about songs  series. My sister helped me come up with some things to include in the new packet - look for it soon in my Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) ...

There is nothing better than getting into a creative routine. That being said, it is not something that I have been doing very much of lately. It has been difficult to navigate a world where no one seems happy. I got notice that a music therapy acquaintance of mine is in hospice care, the government seems to be floundering in ways not seen for four years, and it is cloudy here. Very cloudy. More snow is coming. All of these things have had an effect on my creativity. I am somewhat snowed under with emotion, and I am not sure that all of the things that I am feeling are mine. I am a highly sensitive, empathetic introvert, and when things get emotional and unsettled, it is best for me to move into my cocoon until I can navigate the world again. I am trying to emerge at the moment, but who knows... Perhaps I should think of myself as a joey instead of getting into a cocoon. Back into the pocket of nurture rather than a caterpillar/butterfly. I like the idea of having a place to retreat to...

Something happened between my last post and this one - I had to do a last minute presentation to fill up time at the Online Conference for Music Therapy . I selected a presentation that I did a long time ago called, "Been There. Done That. Now What? - From Slump to Career Pivot." I guided participants through a couple of exercises to help clarify future plans, and it helped me as well. I was very honest with attendees about my own struggles - the ones that I was writing about in my post earlier that morning - my continued feelings of inadequacy and "not being good enough" (AKA, imposter syndrome). I went through the exercises with them as we were talking about this situation. I thought about my current future and what my "no boundaries" future look like, and how I can merge them together in small ways. I finished the day in a better mood and with a better outlook for my future than when it started. One of the things that I try to do on this blog is to offe...

Ooh, boy. Songwriting is not for everyone, and that is okay. It is not always easy, but I think it is an essential skill for music therapists to be able to write goal-focused songs for clients. Like every other element of music, this is one that gets better when we practice. And practice. And practice. So, if writing songs is challenging, there are some tasks that you can do to make it easier. Here are the ones that I use, but I would love to hear what you do when you need a new or very specific song to support your clients in achieving their goals. When I get into a situation where the creativity just isn't happening, I take as many elements out of my decision tree as possible. I use dice or pull notes from a hat. I use piggyback songs. I write nonsense songs about strange pictures. I get into a repetitive chord progression and go into some word association strategies. I have figured out things to do that shake me out of my slump and back into composition. These are skills that I ...

Yesterday, I enlisted the assistance of my mom and my sister to start with my new project for the next year - sing about themes . I am planning on releasing these thematic packets every month this year to supplement music therapy programming for clients of all ages and goal foci. These thematic packets will come with 4-6 therapeutic music experiences (TMEs), ideas for adaptations to all TMEs for various populations, and a couple of digital files to make visual aids for clients to use during sessions. The first theme is one that is dear to my heart and will be kept a secret for a bit of time, but rest assured that I will be sharing it as soon as I can. The fun for me comes in collaboration with my creative relatives. We are a force to be reckoned with when it comes to creating. I've told you about my mom's current creative force - Barbie furniture and houses, but my sister is also very creative - she channels her creativity into specific projects one thing at a time rather than ...

My word for this year is "play." I select a word each year that helps me focus on self-improvement. In the past, I have had many words designed to inspire me to do more. Before this year started, I decided that I was tired of self-improvement, and I wanted to spend more time on things that I found fun. So, I decided that "play" was my word back at the end of 2023. As we enter the last quarter of 2024, it is time to start thinking about what I want to be doing this next year. I have enjoyed the focus on finding things that are fun and help me play with things and people. I want to continue this focus, so I will be looking at different words and ideas for what I want to do in 2025. One of the reasons I chose the word "play" as my focus is professional in nature. I was not feeling happy with how things were going in my music therapy practice. I was feeling creatively blocked at a level that is not my normal. I wanted to find my first love again - doing things...

So, I have a problem. My problem is that I love paper. I like writing on it, getting as much of it as I can, and then reading from it. I have two shelves of scrapbooking paper and cardstock that I am trying very hard to use, but there are so many more designs that are out there, just waiting to be purchased... by me! As far as problems go, this isn't the worst one to have, but it can be an expensive one. I have a smaller shelf of finished books that I have made that just sit there. No one has wanted to purchase one, but I continue to make them because the creation brings me joy. Do you want one?? I will send it to you! The more I make, the more I get so I can make more things. This is the fundamental issue with being a creative person, I guess. I am feeling the urge to make another something today. Unfortunately, my living space is not a place where I can spread out my materials quite yet. There is still some work to be done before I can use my glue and my paper and my paper cutter...