music, therapy, and me

Guess who had to miss the first two hours of work yesterday because she left the overhead lights on in her car and drained her battery? If you guessed me, then you are correct. I had all sorts of plans for those two hours, but I was not able to complete those plans. I started the first day with clients in a fog of frustration. The first session that actually happened (because I was five minutes late for a group that is almost ALWAYS 10 minutes late to the session but not yesterday!) was the one with "that client" and "that other client." They both made it through the session, doing the bare minimum, but NOT engaging in screaming, tantrums, or aggression. WIN!! I then finished the other three sessions on my schedule and poured myself into my car. The battery worked, so I went home. One of my specialists called last night and left a message. I have to call him today. That increases my stress level a bit, but I will do it so I know what is happening.  Anyway... I am go...

Oi. My return to work yesterday was frustrating from beginning to end.  The day started with a smooth trip to work. I traversed the 50 miles from my house to the facility parking lot without difficulty, and I entered the building to find my room pretty much the way I left it. For some reason, the stereo had been removed which negated about 50% of the sub plans that I had left. There were chairs everywhere, but no major holes in walls or things that looked too bad - at first glance. Later investigation revealed that someone had knocked over a soda or a cup of coffee on the top of one of my cabinets that was just left there, so there is now a thick residue there that I will have to figure out how to clean because I just cannot handle that sort of mess in my space. Okay, not a bad way to reenter the work space after a month being gone. I arrived 30 minutes early (of course) because I needed to go through my emails to see what we were going to be doing for the day. The calendar said th...

I was hoping to be writing with all ten fingers by today, but alas, it is not meant to be at this moment. I have another week and a half, at least, before I am released from my splint, and occupational therapy was mentioned at my last appointment. I welcome the idea of OT because I have done it before and it really helped me regain range and strength in my fingers. I hope that it will help me again. What this means for my current state of TME development is that I am not really doing much of anything right now. I am not playing the guitar or the piano. I am still not allowed to pick things up or use my left upper extremity for much of anything. I have to splint during work, but I am allowed a bit more freedom at home. I will try to keep the splint off as much as I can for the next five days, but I will also put it back on if my finger starts to hurt too much. I go back to the doctor on December 1st. In the meantime, I am taking as much time as possible to collect thoughts on my post-it...

Last week, I did not get any sort of TME production accomplished. If you are a first-time reader then you probably don't know that I am working on writing 5 TMEs per week in an experiment. I ask my interns to do the same thing, so I am examining whether I can do that task. I can, when I bother. I, of course, am navigating all sorts of things including a work-related hand injury which stops me from playing both the guitar and the keyboard for the next month, at least. My TME productivity plummeted last week as I was going through adjusting to my new reality of an awkwardly broken finger on my dominant hand that interferes with my ability to write and type and compose. So, I took a week away from TME development, but I started up again yesterday. I am finished with everything except the actual transcription of the music - again, can't play instruments easily right now... can't even do body percussion with my left hand... That is the part that is the most frustrating right now...

I am mentally preparing myself for today's adventures. First of all, I have to spend some of my personal time because I have to leave for my second job. For some reason, my administrator has decided that I cannot use an option offered to many others at the facility. Tonight is parent/teacher conferences which means that I will sit in my room waiting for someone - ANYONE - to show up to talk to the music therapist. Of course, most of the parents of my students do not know that I even exist. They never have. I have been invited to about 7 conferences over the past 26 years of employment at the facility, so I feel like these days are wasted opportunities...AND I get punished for having to leave - even though there is NOTHING for me to do! I am going to take some extra time this morning since I will be penalized for the time that I am having to leave. There is no reason to get there early when I will not get credit for being there. I am not really happy about this situation - can yo...

Whoo-whee, my clients were CRANKY yesterday! The time change has affected us all, and it really shows! Between students taking advantage of the fact that I was the only staff member in the music therapy room and students ignoring every thing I said and then getting angry when I did not hop to get them what they demanded, I was exhausted after the first session! Today is a five group and two individuals type of day, so I am anticipating more cranky feelings from my clients and from myself as well! So, how do I deal with the cranky feelings? First of all, consistency . The rules stay the same no matter what happens - interrupting is not okay; leaving the room is not okay; being unkind to others is not okay. You get the idea. In addition, lots of room for choices and options are important for my clients who do not even get to choose their clothing in the morning. The second aspect of dealing with the cranks is to not take anything personally . It's not personal, it's just business...

I have been offering free intern webinars for about nine years now (I think it's that long...it might only be seven years...hm), and I have never had times when there wasn't someone attending. This series of webinars, though, has been rotten for attendance. My policy is that I wait only 5 minutes. If no one shows up, then I close the webinar and go into my evening routine. This series, I have had two sessions with no show interns. It is very strange to me, but my policy stands. Five minutes. That is all that I am willing to sit and wait for a group of people who are expecting to access my knowledge, wisdom, and experience. That's it. Five minutes. This decision has made me feel a bit guilty lately, but I am working through those feelings. I offer these experiences for free. I give information and knowledge away, and it takes a chunk of time out of my evenings to do this service for interns. If they can't be bothered to show up, then I should (goblin!) not be feeling gui...

I have decreed it to be so, so it shall be so! I started crying this morning when I saw a suicide prevention public announcement encouraging people to engage others in small talk. To be completely honest, this type of crying is not unusual for me at all. My primary emotional outlet is tears and always has been, so having a crying day is not strange. It is normal. Today, however, I think I am going to refrain from some of my "work-from-home" foci to allow myself to be able to burst into tears at any moment without fear of being on video. I think today may be a planning/visual aid/TME development type of day. I can work on music production without having to be filmed, so red, swollen eyes will not be a problem. Why is today declared a "Crying Day?" There is no specific reason, just more of the roller coaster things that are happening in the lives of others at this point. I am physically fine - things are at my normal for this time of year other than the broken fingers...

CAVEAT **** I just want to warn you that this was a bit of a rough end to my day. I don't usually blog at the end of the day, and this is why - I tend to focus on the things that went wrong in the last session of the day rather than remembering the successes that also happened. If you do not want to read about my frustrations at the moment, then I would recommend that you look at another post on this blog. ***** I am looking for positives here, but it's not easy to do at the moment. The last session today was comprised of 4 kids being very disrespectful and outright rude with two students who actually did anything. Two others were absent. I am so tired of the rudeness from this particular group (which had mostly disappeared until this week - thanks, day student in particular), and everything I have tried has backfired. It's been years with this particular kid, and I am so frustrated by his rudeness that I just can't seem to get out of the conflict spiral. He used to be ...

I am spending today at my home...again...due to inclement weather and a strange rental car situation where I don't want to chance going out onto slick roads where I may get into an accident. I usually go into work on these snow days because I work in a residential facility that has to be staffed on days when the school is closed. I get to take time off at any time in the future that I want, so being at work isn't too much of a chore. I actually like snow days, but I'm getting more and more nervous about moving around the slick world these days. Add in the fact that my little car is currently being repaired after it got run into while I was in the hospital for emergency surgery, my trepidation is a bit larger than usual. Also, on Sunday, I slid into a curb at a roundabout on my way to church in my little car, and I watched a 4-wheel drive SUV do the exact same thing. My tires bounced off the curb - no detectable damage - but I was rattled. So, we are now getting ready for ...

Are you ever stuck in a real-life nightmare where all your biggest insecurities are pushed at over and over again? I'm in that sort of situation at work right now, and no matter how I communicate what I need from the people who are part of the situation, I feel like I am ignored. BIGGEST NIGHTMARE FOR ME, EVER!! All of this stuff is leading me into digestion problems, waking up super early, not eating as much as I need to to sustain my best brain power, and constant second-guessing myself.  The good news is that there are good things happening as well. I have a CMTE course coming up this weekend that I am co-leading with a music therapy colleague and co-worker of mine. I am not quite ready to get it all done, but I am doing pretty well with that planning. No one has signed up for the CMTE course that I am offering the next weekend, so I have plans to do all the recordings during the time I've carved out for the live presentation. Music therapy sessions are going well. I w...

My "Well, here we go again" face. Bella-cat is ready for me to go! I am getting ready to go back to work tomorrow. Sigh. I used to get about two weeks at the end of the regular school year to rest and relax and refresh. No longer. We now get a week off at the beginning of July instead of getting a longer break at the beginning and the end of the summer session. I understand why this is so, but I really miss long breaks because I never really get to the point where I feel bored at home any more. We will get 13 days off at the end of the summer session, but that is not quite enough to accomplish boredom for me. It's strange, but that's how I am. I have to have the time to get completely tired of my own company and completely enthralled with the idea of being in the music therapy clinic. Right now, I'm still as tired as I was at the beginning of the break. Well, enough nattering about the past - it's in the past. The new reality is the same amount of ti...

Surprise! I was all ready to go to work yesterday morning when my electricity went kaput. This was on top of the lever that runs from outside the toilet to the flapper inside the toilet that flushes things breaking the night before and an interrupted night of sleep due to body functions (no more details, I promise) and a pretty gnarly thunderstorm. All of a sudden, the socket where I have my modem plugged in, the computer plugged in, and the wall of lights for my living room and kitchen just stopped. That was all. Only the socket and those particular lights. Everything else worked fine, but those things just stopped. I learned a couple of things about myself yesterday. First of all, I have to have internet access to contact my management company. Fortunately, I just moved plugs across the room to different outlets to get the modem up and running again. Second, my home is NEVER drop-in ready. I had to spend some time getting things picked up so that the electrician could acc...

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 ...

I am really getting tired of not having my regular schedule happen. I have interns who are not getting to do their roles because of all of the interruptions. I have tons of documentation to do because I am seeing 64 students daily and have to keep up with notes (which reminds me, I have to do Friday's notes this morning - I'll have to leave extra early to get to work so I can get all the notes done and get ready for today's sessions as well). I haven't been able to do the consultations with my interns that we need to do because there aren't enough hours in the day. I am tired, I am cranky, and I am not at all happy that we have to do this yet again. To add to all of this, I now have to figure out when I can take off 72 hours in the next 4 months without depriving my junior intern of the supervision/consultation and need for oversight that she deserves. I won't get paid for those 72 hours, so I have to take them at some point. I already have plans for 32 hours,...

I have had one of my strange encounters with technology this week. Does anyone else have days where everything electrical that you touch freaks out? No? Just me? Hmmm. This was one of those weeks. I had several streetlights explode their bulbs as I passed under the them - different times, different cities. That's usually my first indication that something is happening. Computers stop working for me, and last night, I broke YouTube! Seriously. The video I was trying to put up would not process if I was sitting at the computer. I had to leave it completely alone, move into the other room, and go to sleep before YouTube would process my little 45 second video! Then, this morning, when I went to check and see if it was ready, YouTube wouldn't let me publish the video. I tried all my electronic tricks, and nothing worked! I recorded a completely new video and, voila! No more problems. I enjoy technology, and I use it on a pretty regular basis, but I have learned that there are t...

I am not happy about the following statement.  Today is the beginning of the second part of our Extended School Year. I am not refreshed after my week off. I have not accomplished all that I need to accomplish (even though I did get lots done!). I am not ready for another three weeks of summer session. I am simply going through the motions because I have the promise of two weeks completely off after these three weeks of work. These transitions used to be better. We used to have an entire school staff that was on break at the same time. All of us would be gone during this time, but now most of our classroom staff members have to work during these breaks. We no longer have staff cohesion and opportunities to refresh together. Now the teachers get time off, and the classroom aides have to work double shifts because administration cannot find anyone to work direct care. When the teachers come back from time off, the classroom aides are not in good moods. It makes it diff...

I often wonder, during my reading about things trauma related, what happens when trauma is denied - when people do not remember trauma or like to pretend that it never happened. A bit of antecedent information. I have a family member who has never had a stable home life. His mother and father were together when he was born, lived together until he was 3, and then split up. They were never married, so he did not go through the "trauma of divorce," but the only thing that was different was the legal aspect of that type of separation - everything else was the same. Neither of his parents is very stable. His father has continuing health issues, a new family (which is breaking up), and he has recently moved away from this family member - to the other side of the world, to be near the little son who is also living on the other side of the world. The family member is staying with his mother who bounces from relationship to relationship, often having more than one at a time. She ha...

I struggled with the same four clients yesterday that challenged me last week. The problem? Giggling, running around the room, and doing things expressly asked not to do is SO much more reinforcing than anything I have to offer that nothing gets accomplished except for lots of chaos and mayhem. Now, I've been through situations and classes like this before, but none of us were prepared for this type of response from these students. It is all because we have a new student in the class. This student was originally in a classroom where no one would respond when he got squirrely. Now he is in a class where EVERYONE responds when he gets goofy. They all join in! It goes from engagement to out-of-control in an instant. There are very few indicators that the kingpin of this particular response has any signs of approaching overstimulation - it just happens! BAM! So, yesterday's session included having assigned seats, but students could see each other, so I was not really able to ...

I am very frustrated right now, so thought this would be a perfect time to share a specific therapeutic music experience (TME) again. The original post was shared on May 13, 2014, but it is VERY appropriate for my feelings right now... Here is a TME that I use with my students who have very low frustration tolerances. We discuss our ways of handling frustration. Therapeutic Music Experience Frustration Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC Purpose : To provide outlet for emotional awareness; to increase emotional awareness in others; to encourage self-examination regarding emotions; to acknowledge emotion of frustration; to problem-solve appropriate responses to feelings of frustration; entrainment to steady beat; social interaction Source : Original song by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC. © May 8, 2012 by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC. Materials : None required; OPTIONAL: dry-erase board and marker to assist in songwriting and problem solving or Frustration Son...