music, therapy, and me

Making time is something that I struggle with on a regular basis. Making time to practice or to write things down or compose stuff for my clinical interactions with my students or...well, you get it. It's not that I don't have time, it's just that I don't always use my time wisely. My brain stops functioning well about 2pm, and that's when I have the time to sit down and do these types of tasks. It's a quandary, so I try my best to push thoughts into and through my head. I am currently in a TME type of creative slump. I stopped doing some monthly creation and have slipped out of the habit of writing my TMEs down. I haven't been trying to change this as of late, but I think that it is time to get back into the habit of writing TMEs and designing stuff for my clinic again. I wrote two TMEs last week. One was inspired by my intern's TME and the other was an idea that I started a long time ago and I was finally able to finish up. I had such a feeling of acco...

It is a new month, and I am focusing on two things this month - eating fruits and vegetables daily and getting into an evening routine that includes making progress on my business goals. I am going to try these things because they are things that I didn't really get going during this past year. The veggie thing is because I want to eat better than I usually do, and the routine thing is because I don't want to be falling asleep at 7:00 any more. I'm thinking that 9:00 is a more respectable, grown-up type of bedtime, so I'm shooting for that! Like the good behaviorist I was trained to be, I have set up some objectives and rewards for myself as I strive to develop these habits. The first one, eating better, is something that will take lots of encouragement because it is not something I do easily. I like convenience and buying something quick is so much more convenient than making something every night. I usually cook lots on my day off and then freeze things into small...

I am heading back to work this week after a week off for Spring Break. Not much happened this past week - things were all about resting - and now it is time to get back into the morning routine that I started in February...that was interrupted many times in February due to inclement weather days...and that seems to serve me well, so I want to reestablish that particular routine. Here's the deal. I am an early riser and once I am up, I am ready to get going. There is very little sleeping in or snoozing in my home because my eyes pop open and off I go. I am one of those annoying morning people who just do best in the early morning hours. I tend to wake up about 4am most mornings. Lately, I've been waking up at about 2am no matter when I go to sleep. I would like to get back into the routine of waking up at 4am rather than at 2am. My evening routine tends to have little to no effect on my morning routine - if I go to sleep at midnight, I still wake up at 4am (or 2am) - I am ju...

I am starting the second week of a new habit, and I am feeling a bit anxious about what I want to get done at work versus what I know I need to do with my schedule and my self. My anxiety talk is running around my head - "You won't have time to do what you want to do if you go in on time. You NEED to go in early." Those types of whispers are exacerbated by the infection running through my body at the moment as well. Fortunately, I know that these thoughts are my anxiety thoughts rather than an actual fact, so I can work through them. Oh, rational brain, how I love thee! My habit tracker for leaving and arriving... One of the things that I am doing to help myself remember that I really do not have to work so many hours at work is keep track of when I leave and when I arrive each morning. Some of my anxiety comes from the erroneous idea that I will not arrive on time. I am writing down the minute that I enter my home, I track whether or not I run an errand before le...

I gave myself a gift today - an extra hour of time at home. I am going to stay at my home until after the sunrise. I have already enjoyed an extra hour in bed, and now I still have two hours before I have to leave for work. I am taking some of my valuable personal time to allow myself a bit of time to just be me at the best time of day for me - early morning. I have been extremely tired this week. I've been falling asleep way before it was time to sleep, and I've been waking up at random times during the night - not like me, but because I've been falling asleep before I've completed my evening routine, I'm waking up to get things done. I'm on allergy medication and that's making me drowsy, but this is more. Hence the extra hour at home today. This is a self-care technique that I've used a bit more recently over the past couple of years. When I get to this type of feeling, I find that an extra hour of time in the morning refreshes me more than anyth...

I constantly work to improve myself. I work to increase my effectiveness and my creativity. I work to improve my knowledge of music as a therapeutic medium. I try my best to work on things that enrich my life rather than complicating it. There are times, though, when my penchant for self-improvement becomes onerous rather than productive. I am someone who has always used a calendar and journal. I have always used to-do lists and self-reflection as a part of my personal and professional lives. Right now, though, I have become a bit overwhelmed with thoughts about what I "should" be doing as part of my life rather than what I "am" doing. The preceding statement is the reason that I have three words that I call my "goblins" - would, could, and should.  I have a list of self-improvement habits that I want to get started. They include daily exercise (I have NO excuse except that I just don't like exercising), eating better (again, no excuse), being purp...

I have a place on my weekly task list that encourages me to complete specific tasks. In the bullet journal world, this type of place is called a habit tracker. Mine is not really as complex as those I see on YouTube and Pinterest, but it is working for me, and that is what matters most of all.   It is color-coded (of course - my entire life is color-coded!), and is also task-specific so I can keep track easily. I have eight habits that I am working on - some are easy to do daily - others are reminders of what I should (goblin!) be doing with my life. These are also my goals for this year - to exercise more, eat better, focus on happiness, make things, clear things out, and save some money. Every morning, I fill out the column for the day before, and it is interesting to see what happens when. This is something I am doing just for me, but I find that it is helping me to organize my time as well as remind me of my ideal way of doing things here at home. So, how does this transl...

I am a bullet journaler, and I use one for both work and for home - well, kinda. It's been an interesting journey through the world of bullet journaling for myself, and I'm still finding my way to do things. Reasons Why I Like Bullet Journaling as a Time Management Technique (for me!): My to-do lists (which I HAVE to have) are in one place. My journal is my own - no one else has to see it. I can change it up to accommodate things and situations in my life. I'm using up all the journals that I seem to be compelled to collect in my life. I get to use my fancy markers to write, draw, and record stuff. I have a record of things - especially in my work journal - so I can track the use of certain TMEs or instruments or songs. Reasons Why I Don't Like Bullet Journaling: I haven't really found what works for me the best way...yet. I compare my stuff to that of others - and I always come up short of my expectations for myself. I can see what I have failed to d...

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...

Today is the day. The 2018-2019 school year starts for me today. In about two and a half hours, I am going to be heading into a new school year. There are 201 work days left of this contract year (my actual contract starts on July 1, but this is really the start of the new school year - it's confusing, but makes total sense to my brain, really...I'm trying to convince myself of this...). As is my tradition for the new school year, it is time to set my resolutions and get started on my program of self-awareness for this new year. I've been thinking about my intentions this year, and I think I've come up with some good ones. The best resolutions are the ones that you can stick with, so I've been trying to focus on getting things finished. I made a list (no surprise there!), and I've attached it to my bullet journal. It has a convenient flip-out feature so I can see these goals when I am trying to figure out what to do every day. I even had a chance to color...

I've really turned away from the habit of reading for professional enrichment lately. I got a bit too sucked in by the stories of trauma in my current reading, so I've been avoiding all professional reading. This is ridiculous, so I am going to stop beating myself up over it, and find something else to read that I'll be able to process a bit more easily (i.e., without secondary trauma or compassion fatigue). This is a process that I took up a couple of years ago to enrich my understanding of research in my field. I chose Sunday (merely because of the alliteration!) to be my day of pulling together the things that I read about into my practice of music therapy. It is a labor, at times, but it is a labor of love. See, I believe that a good music therapist is one who knows what is happening in the research world and strives to enrich his or her comprehension of that world through reading, writing, and integrating what is appropriate into practice. In my opinion, it is that...

I am going to try to arrive at work when I am supposed to be at work today. This is not something that is easy for me. I tend to be way too early most of the time, and I need to get into a bit later routine because my time after work is going to be extended as soon as my new intern starts. I ask my interns to work an 8.5 hour day, from 7:30 to 4:00, so I also work until 4:00. The problem? I often arrive at work at 6:45. I don't want to do that anymore, so I am going to try to start the process of arriving when I am supposed to arrive. Theoretically, if I leave my house at 6:30, I should arrive at 7:15 - the time I am supposed to arrive. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But this act of being on time makes me more anxious than anything else in my life. I'm not really sure where this particular brand of anxiety comes from, but I know that my parents share it. It was probably learned from them. For us, on time means late and late is inexcusable. My sister and I share this trait, my...