music, therapy, and me

I am horrible with making goals for myself and sticking through with them. I mean, I can write the goals no problem - I do that all the time, but I don't follow through. I am lousy at that particular part of the goal-followed life. So, I try to trick myself into viewing these things as "quests" rather than "goals" to see if it will work better for me. It does, to a point, and then it doesn't anymore. I am currently in one of those times when it doesn't work anymore. Now, I have all sorts of excuses - some good, some not so good. I have a broken finger which makes typing, writing, and composing challenging. I am sick again with the same sort of stuff I had in May which saps my strength and makes me just want to sleep all the time. My brain is stuck in survival mode which means that creativity is pushed to the side in favor of just getting through it all. I am lazy and just don't want to write any sort of therapeutic music experiences right now. I have...

As you know, I am working on strengthening the communication options that my clients can access during music therapy sessions by reworking my binder system. I made some progress yesterday towards my goal, but found that the ideas that I had about putting together said binders just didn't work, so I am not finished, and I am back to the beginning. Let me tell you a bit more... Yesterday, before I left for work, I printed out seven copies of my binder pages. I put together this project about a year ago when I was part of the Berklee Music Education and Special Needs course, but I haven't made the time to put those binders together. In the past, I have used regular three-ring binders to store my initial communication pages. Each binder tends to last about three months before it is completely ruined by my clients. I have a couple of clients who will walk out of their way when they enter the music therapy room to walk on top of the binders. If the binders are not on the floor when t...

I have found that I am great at writing personal and professional goals for myself. They are spectacular, perfect in their composition, and very clear to all who read them.  ...and, that's as far as they go.  Once I have written them, I lose interest, never flip back to that page, and then feel like a failure when I have not done what I wanted to do earlier. So, I have decided that I am not making goals for this upcoming year. I am setting quests for myself! My word of the year is "Explore," and I have come up with five areas of exploration for this year - places, health, ideas, identity, and connection. As you can see in this bullet journal spread, I have a small piece of paper for each area with some ideas of how to complete these quests. I am not setting endings for any of these because I don't know where I will be at any time. These are just the things that I want to think about during the year of 2022. Rather than shaming myself when I do not get to my end goals,...

I failed at everything that I set out to do yesterday. I wanted to write down two "NTM" TMEs. I didn't. I wanted to clean my house last night. I didn't. I wanted to have a full serving of vegetables or fruit yesterday. I managed to get in about a third of a serving.  I wanted to stay up until 9pm. I didn't. I wanted to get my documentation completely done. I didn't. I did manage to interact with students in six different therapeutic encounters without any type of behaviors of concern happening from anyone. I did manage to engage diverse learners into therapeutic interactions, and I did sort bus duty into a process that took it from 40 minutes of mayhem on Monday to 18 minutes of controlled release on Tuesday, so it's not like I failed at everything ever! I did fail at some things, but I succeeded in so many more things. The problem that I have is that I tend to dwell on the failures rather than celebrating the successes.  I have learned tha...

I have a goal of formulating a morning and evening routine for myself. It's one of the things that I want to do for myself this year. I know what I want to have in that routine, but I am having difficulty getting a routine established so far. This is partially a function of my laziness, partially a function of the season (I don't feel good - darn harvest!!), and partially because I haven't found my motivation to get into a new routine. So, what do I do? I'm heading back into my goals and my desired routine to do what I encourage my clients to do - focus on one thing at a time, build up that one thing, and then add the next thing. One thing at a time. Isn't it amazing how much the things we do with our clients transfer into our own lives? Rather than taking on every single blooming thing that I want to do, I should listen to the advice that I give to my kids in crisis and focus on one thing and one thing only. Duh, right? So here goes my original goal of do...

I failed at something last night. I think I know what happened, but that doesn't negate the fact that I experienced a frustrating failure last night. I had a webinar scheduled that did not happen. I think my virus checker interfered with the webinar cast, but I am not entirely sure. Anyway, I wasn't allowed back into my own webinar, so I stopped the entire thing and sent out apology emails to the folks that arrived. This morning, I recorded the webinar and will send it out to the participants later today. Over the years, I've failed lots of times. I hate when it happens, but I have learned to take the situation and try to find the good in it all. Sometimes it takes lots of trying. I can now add "check to make sure that the virus program isn't actively running during the webinar" to the list of things that I need to do when running webinars. There are so many things on that list. Oh, failure. Today, I am going to go into my daily schedule with confi...

I enjoy it when a comment on social media starts my blogging mind going. Yesterday, there was a comment about being an introvert and having some struggles with introducing new therapeutic music experiences to clients. The poster was asking for specific steps to take to be able to teach/lead new interventions in ways that would be comfortable to her and lead to compliance from her clients. I'm not exactly sure if I answered her questions in my response post, but this started me thinking about my own introversion and how it affects my leadership style in the music therapy session. For me, the introversion doesn't really come into play during leading sessions. When I am leading a session, I am not as much of an introvert as in other situations. I know what I am doing, so I am able to complete the session as a leader. What stands in my way is my tendency towards wanting perfection. My "woulda/coulda/shoulda" goblins come out, and I am not willing to risk my perception o...

Today is Tuesday, and I am going into work to go through active shooter training. This is not something I want to do or something that I am looking forward to, but it seems to be the norm these days if you work in a school. Our scenario will include police officers roaming around the building, shooting blanks, and hunting us. I am having anxiety dreams and nothing has happened yet. This is the environment of my worst dreams usually, being chased by people who are out to get me, and today, I get to live it. My rational brain knows the reason behind this training. Schools are vulnerable to attack by people who have several different agendas. It is unfortunate that this is the case, but it is. Schools contain vulnerable and protected people (the future) and have a huge impact on idea development and subsequent actions. School attacks make statements, so we who work in schools have to learn how to keep the children in our care safe and alive. My rational brain knows why we are going to d...

I feel like a failure. Right now, some of my clients are refusing to go to music therapy with me. A couple of others do everything they can do to get out of treatment. There are many more who appear to be motivated by music therapy and who want to be in treatment with me, but the ones that don't are the ones that haunt me. I've thought about this for many, MANY weeks now. Fortunately, I have some validation from others who feel the same way about their treatment areas. There are others who are struggling with many of the same clients in treatment situations. What does this tell me? I am only responsible for my own contributions. I cannot force anyone to engage in therapy - that would not be therapy. I can only keep trying to engage folks and changing that engagement as I can. Even so, I still carry around feelings of failure. I want to reach everyone. I want to be able to interact with all of the people that come my way. I want to (and I shudder to even write this r...