music, therapy, and me

For my entire career, I have rebelled against the idea of session planning. I struggled with procedure sections in my undergrad training. I've written about this recently - how I would take the example in our practicum handbook, change the details but not the format, and would be told that it "was not right." That was all the feedback that I would get. I would ask how to make those sections "right," and no one could tell me how to do that. I had a revelation in the summer between my junior and senior years (thank all that is good in the universe), and then I was able to figure it all out, but that experience has left me a bit leery of writing session plans. One of the biggest issues that I have with session plans is that there is so much that happens in a session, and it is impossible to foresee every response. Plain old impossible! So, I don't write session plans. I haven't for my entire career because I find the practice to be busywork. Instead, I focu...

It is Sunday, and I have counted all my posts to put into my random number generator and selected today's sentimental post. It popped out post #1094 . I checked my list and found out that I wrote that post on January 28, 2016 .  During this post, I talk about things I talk about constantly - struggling to get things done when there is lots to do. I am in that place right now, of course, because things are piling up as they always do. This is a good reminder that I continue to struggle with these same things. At times, I find this a bit disheartening because I haven't found a way to navigate this particular struggle, but I am also reminded that my struggles are pretty small compared to those of others. My current circles are breathing issues, doctor's appointments, and home struggles. Not home struggles like people at home but how to make my living space more minimalistic for my health while navigating my health issues. My work is a bit of a smaller circle right now - or, at...

I am a non-digital type of person. While I love technology and use it for all sorts of purposes (ahem - music therapy blogger over here), I also strive to maintain healthy boundaries for my digital usage and consumption. I have not been as healthy with mindless consumption lately - and it shows - but one place where I remain firmly away from the digital lifestyle is my project and calendar management. I am a bullet journaler. I am also a decorative planner user as well as a project tracker. I am a journal hoarder. I have a different book and different style for each book that I use on a regular basis. I have many more journals that do not have a use yet - they just sit on a shelf in my office, awaiting their glorious purpose in my organizational quest.  A couple of months ago, I told my boss that I was bored with my job. I asked if I could get some funding to make task boxes for some of the classrooms. I started thinking about the types of projects that I wanted to make, and that l...

I had a big win at work yesterday, and I am engaged in quite a bit of gloating about it! Let me explain... We have to engage in physical behavior management techniques every so often to maintain safety of our clients. These techniques involve placing clients in specific holds and assisting them when their behaviors of concern become severely aggressive in nature and are causing significant harm to themselves or to others. We are trained and engage in refreshers every three months.  We started this form of behavior management 13 years ago. During our initial training, there was one movement that I could not complete safely. This was due to a complex medical diagnosis that I got when I was 16 years old and involves severe vertigo and falling. It is the only movement (out of seventy-some) that I am not able to do, so I do not use that assist...ever. The day before break, we had to go through a certification test where we had to demonstrate all of the skills. When we came to that one m...

Right now, it is 4:12 am, and I am sitting in my almost empty office, watching James Corden's monologue and writing this blog post. I am bone tired and decided to do some more passive music therapy sessions this week than active ones. I traveled into work yesterday, wondering what I was going to do with my three groups that would require less motion from me but that would also fulfill my mission with my clients which is educational enrichment through engagement and therapeutic programming. My quandary continued through sitting at my desk and trying to get things strategized. I started my planning with thinking about getting centers running, but the center ideas that I had needed some work on my part, and my brain is not working well right now. So, I scrapped that idea for later. I wrote that idea down, but I abandoned it for this week. I was almost in tears when I remembered something that I had already put together that was ready to go! Do you remember in August when I stated tha...