music, therapy, and me

Today is my first day of winter break for 2023, and I allowed myself to go back to sleep (fortunately, without the nightmares that often happen when I go back to sleep) and lay about in bed for a bit longer than usual. I am now up and ready to start the next two days of at home break time. The first day of winter break is always a time where I make lots of plans for future me to accomplish. I rarely complete any of those plans. I have things that I need to get done, including cleaning the kitchen. I also need to do laundry, pack a bag, and prepare for the rest of my winter break. I am starting my task list and am getting ready to start things off after I post this essay. Lately, my thoughts have been taken over by thoughts about how people learn. I have really been focused on current music therapy students and interns because that is who I work with in my music therapy job. This is probably going to sound a bit preachy or critical, and I am not going to apologize for that tone - mainly...

Over the past two weeks, I have been pretty sick which always leads me into strange thinking based on what I am consuming via television and all that. I have been watching true crime shows lots lately, but I have also consumed American Born Chinese  and Ms. Marvel  over and over again because I know the stories. I don't need any sort of thought process to watch these shows, but they also led me into thinking about bias. Stick with me here. Bias is something that pervades all situations. We all use our biases to structure our living and experiences. Every learning situation I have ever been in has had bias as part of the structure. Also, every work situation, every leisure opportunity, every single thing. While I was watching Ms. Marvel , I was exposed to the partition of India into India and Pakistan. I am sure that we spent about a class period on this time during World History, but the television show really shows the devastation that people felt in that era and illustrates ...

I am currently in a bit of an existential crisis. It's not a huge one, but it is something that I am really thinking about...and have been since this COVID thing started way back. Now, you may be thinking, "Oh, no. Here she goes again," or you may be thinking, "What's this all about??" Of course, you are probably not thinking either of those things. I am projecting my own thoughts onto you - bend to my will - Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Sorry. Let me get back to my point. As I have been going through this COVID pandemic, I have been thinking about the future of many of the institutions that we rely on that have had to change because of the virus. I have been stating since the start of all of this that we will have to change how we learn, how we teach, how we interact, how we do therapy, and how we teach others how to do music therapy. To this end, I have been writing some fiction about music therapy education in various times in the future. I am also preparing a conf...

For many of us, the American Music Therapy Association national conference is now over. For me, it is still going on because I have so many presentations that I want to watch that I was not able to see live because the same thing happens every time I go to conference - all the presentations that I want to see happen at the same time! So, conference continues. In fact, I will listen to the MTex session right now while I am writing this.  **I can't wait for Cathy Knoll's rant!!**   I enjoy hearing about clinical technique. If you look at my most recent posts, there is one about the lack of clinical presentations at AMTA (something that I have noticed happening since I started presenting for AMTA - anyone else remember the days of Clinical Forum presentations?). I am a proud clinician who wants to be able to take ideas back from conference for direct application to my clients. I do not often have those ideas when I am finished up with conference, and I do not like that. I think m...

It is almost time to move from the "teens" into the "twenties" of this century. This fact has been mostly lost to me until the start of this past month when I finally put together that not only is this the end of the year but the decade as well. Mind blown over here! You would think that I would be a bit more on the ball, but I haven't really been thinking much outside my own four walls lately. Now that I'm coming out of my fog, I am noticing those things that others have realized for years now. I digress (but what else is new?). This decade has been an interesting one, hasn't it? It has included all sorts of events and situations both in the bigger societal view and in the microcosm that is music therapy. We have weathered a storm of Master's Level Entry debates and debacles. In my opinion, we are on the verge of a split unless we reconfigure in a way that can sustain us as an organization. We have lots of people who seem to be focusing more o...

I am going to try to avoid going to work really early today since it is yet another 12 hour work day. I am not a fan of these sorts of days, especially since they are often paired with either team-building, cutesy types of activities or long meetings that don't always apply to me. I am not someone who does well in the late afternoon, so having to stay in the evenings already starts me towards the path of crankiness and resentment. If we could do something in the early morning, I would be the only happy person in the room, but that would suit me just fine! I know, however, that morning meetings will NEVER manifest since most of the others are night owls and complain all the time about having to arrive between 7:15 and 8:00! I have a bit of insight into today's 12 hour day. We don't always get information about schedules when I would like to have them, but I asked earlier this week so I could prepare a bit. Today we are going to be doing a basic overview of Positive Behav...

Today will start the American Music Therapy Association's national conference, and for the first time in 25 years, I am not attending. I made this decision back in April when I decided not to submit any presentation proposals and again in July when I decided that I didn't want to spend exorbitant amounts of money to go see the same old people talking about the same old topics - none of which are directly related to me. So, I opted not to go. For the most part, I'm happy about my decision, especially now that I am in recovery from my recent health situation, but I still have some twinges. Instead of going to conference, I am talking to car repair places, am trying to avoid exhaustion, and am scratching around my incision sites. I am very thankful that I am not trying to do these things while roaming around an unfamiliar city and sleeping in a hotel bed. Even so, friends are posting lots of pictures from the conference area and that makes me take notice and experience tho...

I have always been someone who sees a problem and then strives to make it less of a problem. I've identified a problem with myself and research, and I'm now stuck in solving mode. If I'm not getting what I need from our publications, then what can I do to get what I need elsewhere?? This is the type of question that will take over my mind for a while, especially now that I have six more days of enforced rest away from my job. I don't have many clinical issues to think about, so my mind is capturing the most intriguing problem and is working away at it. One of the most frustrating things for me is to identify something that I don't like without having an idea what can fix it. I get very frustrated with other people who just seem to complain and complain but who do not make any effort to make their situations less difficult for themselves. So, I am going to talk a bit more about what I need as a clinician from the research that is available out there. This is ...

I've started this post two other times already, written about three paragraphs, and then deleted everything that I've written because it just hasn't felt right to me. Let's see if version #3 makes it to the final posting stage. There are lots of thoughts in this post - things that affect me as a music therapist at this moment right now. I'm not exactly sure if this is the type of post that you all will like, but this blog is called music, therapy, and me, so today you get mostly me. You can certainly stop reading now, if you don't want to know what is going on in my brain. I need to get it out of my brain in a way that allows me to acknowledge what is going on and how I think about it all...there you go. Anyway... I have made it to the half-point of my time off, and I am starting to have some twinges of boredom and guilt and shame and all that. I am managing to get lots of rest, and my sleep patterns are all screwed up, but I am feeling a bit better tha...

In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like you to know some things right off the bat. First of all, I was an intern in the last century, so it's been some time since I was an undergraduate getting my initial degree in music therapy. Secondly, I am an internship director and supervising music therapist, so what I write about is from the perspective of someone who deeply cares about music therapy clinical training but who is firmly entrenched in how things are run. Lastly, I have been a clinical trainer for long enough to be able to see some generational shifts in how music therapy students complete specific tasks. Everything that I write about here on this blog is my opinion, based on years of observation and experience. There you go. I am a person who feels that you never really know how to do a job until you actually do it. I am a big fan of an immersive experience in music therapy, supervised by a music therapist, before becoming one yourself. I know that my internship ...

Several people have noted on posts lately that their well-intentioned comments have been taken to an entirely different level by people who are reading things from their own perspective and are commenting from that perspective rather than from the perspective of the original poster. Boy, do I understand the frustrations of someone taking your post and making it into something other. I don't do much posting on social media sites about my thoughts or products because of a situation which happened many years ago. I posted some thoughts that I shared on this blog, and I got yelled at by someone who (I think) didn't read the piece that I wrote. This person took offense that I would write about internships and interns and started to accuse me of acting illegally because internships in music therapy are (mostly) unpaid. I engaged with this person for about 10 exchanges and then I disconnected from the conversation. The person involved was not interested in what I had to say and ju...

I am amazed at how quickly people move from hearing something - a name, a decision made by someone else, an opinion - and go straight into an emotional response based on very little other than emotion. Now, I am not immune to this type of response, but I have become a bit more aware of when it is happening to me. When I start to make decisions based in and on my feelings about something with very little regard for thought, fact, or research, I call this being taken over by my emotional brain. On the other side of things is being taken over by my rational brain. That side is the part of me that takes time to make a decision. It is the brain that wants facts, opinions with commentary, and sound research to make the case for whatever I am trying to decide. I tend to be more in my rational brain when it comes to making large decisions, but my emotional brain does take over, on occasion. I have learned to recognize when I am responding in a purely emotional manner, and I continue to l...

I got a new version of an old gadget yesterday, and I am getting it set up and ready to go. I enjoy a bit of technology, but I am not extremely experimental when it comes to tech in my life. I do not go out and purchase every single thing that I can get my hands on - I am extremely picky about technological things, so I find something I like and then stick with it. The only reason I have a new example of this old gadget is that my old one is several years old and is starting to act like it. In addition, I got a REALLY good trade-in offer and my new device cost about the same as the old device, but with significantly expanded storage!! I am now getting the old device ready to go back to the company so I can cash in my trade-in offer and get started with the new thing sitting on my desk. This is something that I get from my father - the interest in things technological - but he is one of the people who has to get the brand-new smart phone two weeks after it is released (I am definitely...

I'm currently pretty brain fogged in, getting ready for work about 45 later than usual, and somehow managing to lose every single thing about 2 seconds after I put it down, but I'm also here, ready to write something for the blog. I decided that I need to get my brain in gear, so I went searching for a quotation that is directly important to me as a music therapist. Plato to the rescue!! "I would teach children music, physicas and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning." - Plato When I was in graduate school, learning about music philosophy, it struck me that music was recognized by so many of the great learners and teachers of the field. Music seemed to be popping up in almost every philosopher's writings as something that was inherently important to the act of being human. Being a musician myself and someone dedicated to using music with those who feel that it is not for them, I found th...