music, therapy, and me

My school district has closed for the next week for sure and probably for the rest of the school year - well, at least if the governor has anything to say about it. My administrator sent out a copy of an email "sent to all USD staff" (not sent to my email address) that states that we will be extending our break for another week as we come up with a plan. Our school, being a public, special purpose school housed in a residential treatment facility, will not match any of the decisions made by the superintendent. So, I'm not sure if I'll be trying to do teletherapy with my groups or just stay at home. I don't know if I'll have a salary for the next two months or not. I don't think I'll be paid by the church since the church is closed and I'll not be needed during this time. I only have two more months with that paycheck anyway, but every little bit will help these days. Uh-oh. I'm starting to spiral.  Here's what I know for sure. There i...

I admit it. I was not someone who was very knowledgeable about music therapy outside of the United States for much of my professional career. My views on what music therapy was (and, to some extent still, is) is very US-centric. Most of the texts that I have accrued since my undergraduate days are by US authors, and most of the research that I read (when I read anything at all) comes from the US journals that I receive.  In 2010, however, I saw a thought on the Music Therapy listserv. Yes, fellow MTs, WAY back in 2010, our primary way of communicating with one another was a listserv with emails sent out to people who wanted them rather than posting comments on another platform. The email was sent by a music therapist from Canada who was interested in starting an online conference for music therapy. It sounded like something that combined my interests nicely, so I reached out and said that I would be very willing to help, but I didn't really want to have a large role. Bam! I b...

I was introduced to a bunch of new blogger templates this morning, so I thought I would play around with how the blog looks these days. I enjoy the opportunity to change the backgrounds of how things work - it often shakes me up just enough and gets me looking at things a bit differently. Hope you like the changes. I am off to the tax preparation company to get some things done for the Online Conference for Music Therapy . I am helpless when it comes to things like taxes, so I am going to the good folks at H&R Block to help me figure out what is going on. I get so much anxiety from this situation, mainly because I have NO idea what I am supposed to do. I am going to shove that anxiety down deep for the moment and just bring it up again when I am in the appointment. I hope my tax preparation person is someone who knows what to do in this situation. I certainly don't. Okay. Time to shove. I had no revelations about music therapy this week. I did my job as I usually do. We d...

A Return to the Electronic World Approximately 90 minutes after my last post on this blog, my computer had a MAJOR CPU (central processing unit) meltdown and stopped working. This CPU failure led to 5 days of electronic detoxification as the computer had to go to Houston to be repaired, and I wasn't going to go to work simply to use the computer there (it really wasn't worth the gasoline or the time to go there). On Wednesday, I did go back to work for the school year orientation and found that the world went on without me. Today, when I got the repaired computer back, I eagerly went back online. I went to Facebook, reviewed my email accounts, and then started to scroll through my favorite sites. I spent some time trolling through the blogs of music therapists and music therapy interns that are linked to many other blogs. It was an interesting exercise in the history of music therapy professionals. I read the blogs of current music therapy interns (all from Florida State...