music, therapy, and me

How it's going! So, something that I know for a fact but that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable is that I have too much music therapy stuff. (Is anyone shocked by this?? Anyone?) I keep finding stashes of visual aids and PECS and things that I have made or accumulated over the years. Each time I find some more, I get a bit more frustrated with myself. This is a never-ending situation I find myself in at the moment. I found another box yesterday - full of baggies of visual aids that are not corralled anywhere, so they are not useful. There is nothing more frustrating to me than non-useful things taking up space - AND, that's ALL that I have around me! Non-useful things taking up space. A long career as a music therapist means that I have lots of things to go through and either find uses for or give away to someone who can use them. I need to get in touch with the local music therapy university programs to arrange for some donations. I wonder if they would take communication...

In yesterday's faculty meeting, I was informed that my music therapy space is once again being taken away from me to accommodate offices. I attempted to ask for clarification, was redirected in front of my co-workers, and then burst into tears in front of the entire faculty. My question was not answered, and now I am humiliated, very upset about not having my music therapy space secure, and ashamed of my response. I am tired of this happening to me. In my time at my facility, this particular situation has happened six different times in my ten moves around the complex. It is always interesting that I get kicked out of a treatment space in favor of giving other people offices. I am taking this very personally at the moment (rational brain is not anywhere to be seen) and did not get an answer to my question in the moment which could have settled this entire situation down if the administrator had just taken the 3 seconds to answer. I am very skittish when it comes to my space, and I ...

I put together a couple of file folder choice systems for an animal theme yesterday, and I enjoyed the process. Of course, I stopped before I started the laminating and cutting things out part, but I still enjoyed making the animal themed choice boards. These come on the heels of the dinosaur choice board that I made a bit ago and are an extension of my major goal of increasing communication opportunities in my music therapy sessions. I am also almost finished with an animal system similar to the one that I have for food choices - several pages of animal pictures with corresponding labels for storage purposes. That file is just about ready to print out and laminate and the cut out again and then put into a binder for use in my clinic. I also need to print out another food item (the one small card that got soaked through with spittle because the client was enjoying being asked to put it back and wanted a reaction. I prompted and ignored and the client just sucked on the picture for the ...