music, therapy, and me

It is 6:10 am, and I am sitting in my office area, listening to Ms. Marvel on the television, and writing something on this blog. It is a bit later than I usually leave, mainly because I am not able to take my medication at 5 pm on Wednesdays because of my choir job. As a result, I have some side effects for a bit longer on Thursday mornings that make it difficult to drive. I go into work an hour later on Thursdays. This is the last day of the work week, so tonight's late dose (after my job as worship leader for Maundy Thursday) will not affect my Friday arrival. I have to go to the dentist tomorrow to get the second half of my teeth scraped and treated, so there's that. One of the things that happens with my medication is that my brain takes some time to wake up. I can feel when I am starting to come out of it. There is just a shift in my consciousness - almost a click - that happens when I am ready to wake up. This morning, my eyes opened (initially) at 5 am. My brain click ...

It is just now 4 am, and I've been awake for about an hour and a half now. I've finished all of my morning electronic chores, and now I am sitting down to start blogging and get ready for my work day. Last week at this time, I had a variant of the flu and just gave up when it came to trying to get things together. This week, I'm not feeling really peppy, but I am better than I was. I started the chill, headache, fatigue cycle again yesterday morning. I am hoping that this doesn't morph into more flu stuff. I don't have the time. Today is the blue, eclipse, full moon. It's starting here pretty quickly. We won't be able to see the entire eclipse, but all these things happening at the same time is pretty interesting. It will be interesting to see if anything happens at work that is out of the ordinary. When I was a baby, my mother used lullabies to soothe me to sleep. She did this with all three of us, and we all had different lullabies that worked. My lull...

Ever have one of those days where everything and anything just rubs you the WRONG way? Here we go. I'm going to blame the moon. I mean, after all, why not? Right? It's just there, waning away, every night. The moon doesn't care if I blame it for everything that is going on in my life right now. On Monday, a client walked into the music therapy room and rudely questioned, "Why aren't you absent? I don't want to do anything YOU say." Great. LOVE the attitude. That one interaction colored my day. Never mind the 62 other students that I seemed to connect with - that one student took my power to feel good about the work I was doing. Why do I allow others' opinions to affect me and what I do? I am human. I've developed a rather thick shell over the years (you have to when you work with adolescents!), but there are chinks in the shell where my emotions ooze out. Zip - right into the chink. My rational brain says things like, "Now, you don...

I finished my post yesterday, packed up everything I needed for work, and went out to see an absolutely gorgeous full moon lighting up the sky. I almost wept because so much suddenly made sense to me. There are moon skeptics out there. I've worked with many of them over the years, but I can definitively state that I am affected by moon cycles. Whether it is true or not that incidents increase during a full moon, I know that I cycle with the moon. I always have. I waited three extra weeks so I could be born on the night of the full moon. My poor mother was absolutely miserable, but I was determined to stay until the moon pulled me out. Ever since then, my moods have cycled with the phases of the moon - Mom could always tell when it was a new moon time versus a full moon time. So, I was very relieved to see that big old moon up there in the sky. I had lost track of the moon because our mornings lately have been foggy and overcast, but yesterday was clear as a bell and full of m...

I had a very productive day yesterday. I washed dishes, organized all of the papers in my desk sorter, and cleaned the bedroom. I also rearranged some of the bookshelves, wrote a blog post, made chicken teriyaki in the crock pot, watched lots of Psych and Star Wars , finished one book and started another, and vacuumed. I split up hours into 30 minutes for me and 30 minutes for my home. It really worked wonders for me and my environment. As I was getting ready for sleep yesterday, I happened to see the moon and found that it was getting close to full. This explained quite a bit for me - I tend to cycle with the moon. I looked it up, and the moon will be full tomorrow. This should help me figure out how to cram more stuff to do into my afternoon and early evening. I have worked with those who swear that there is no full moon effect on others. I have to scoff because I am a person who has ups and downs associated with the phases of the moon. My poor mother had to wait an extra three ...

Today is a full moon day. According to Space.com, it is called the Flower Moon and will actually turn completely full at 7:15pm this evening, but it is almost full now. I can tell. I have always been drawn to the full moon. I waited to be born on the full moon on this day. It took me three weeks of extra waiting past my due-date, but I arrived on the full moon day. I was one of 30 babies born that day. There were lots of us who wanted to arrive at that time. My mother says that I have always cycled in my behavior. She would notice changes in my mood, attention, and activity level and then see the moon phase. She continues to say that my cycles were attributable to what was happening with the moon, even when I was an infant. I have worked with people who dismiss the effect of the moon as poppycock. I can't do that. Those people felt that there was no upswing in behaviors, in changes in patterns, or responses to stimuli. They dismissed my cyclic behavior as something that jus...

I had to apologize to several teachers this week. I am going to take about 55% of the responsibility for these apologies, and I am going to blame the full moon for the 45%. (I love when I can blame SOMETHING on moon phases!) My session contour was really poor this week. I tried to find an arc to my sessions, but my students went up and up and up and did not come down again, no matter what I tried with them! I first heard the concept of "session contour" from one of my music therapy professors. If I wanted to do so, I could probably figure out who first used the term, but I don't really want to delve into layers and layers of research at 5:14 in the morning, so I am just going to stop with the person who first told me about the concept. "Session contour" refers to how a therapist organizes the musical elements of his/her therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) to move clients from one emotional/behavioral/energy/arousal level to others during the session time.  ...