music, therapy, and me

I did not sleep well last night. These nights of staying awake are becoming more prevalent in my life which is interesting to me. I am more likely to stay awake than I am to go to sleep these days, possibly because my energy output is less than it was when I went to work every day. My life is quiet now, and it is spent mostly in my own company. I am starting to feel an itch to get a job, not just for financial reasons but also for having something to do with myself. There is a reason for this first paragraph - while I was not sleeping, I kept working on my Game Board and first set of game cards. I now have two games in the design phase. The cards are finished, the game board arrangement is ready, and now I just need to make everything into a digital format for posting on TPT. After that is finished, I will print out copies and make the games for a video that I am thinking about. The games that I am designing are based on my usual games. They will use game cards and dice to move around ...

I am currently working on a coping skills song - one that explains a bit about what that catch phrase has come to mean in therapy for folks who do not always understand these things. I have finished the chorus, but the verses are taking a bit more of my time. I want this song to explain something because my students seem to hate the phrase, "use your coping skills" and often escalate into bigger behaviors of concern when that phrase is used during the upward climb of the crisis cycle. I find that we do not explain what we mean with this phrase well enough for our clients to understand what we do when we need to find our patience with daily annoyances. This has made me think about my personal coping skills and how I am frustrated quite a bit by work these days. That is neither here nor there this morning, though. This is a day off, and I am going to focus on my "Next Step" plan today - well, that and the dishes that really need to be washed and the broken dishwasher....

I have ideas.  I have so many ideas for what I want to do as well as for how to do it, but I am stuck in task paralysis and can't find the impetus to start anything. So, here I am. looking at all the stuff to make my ideas come to fruition, but without anything to show for it all. Once I start the process, things go really easily, but getting started can be daunting. For the moment, I am just collecting ideas without getting too nervous about not making them realities. This is a good time of year for me. I do much better in the cool and the cold than I do in the heat and humidity. It is a cozy time of year, and I enjoy that. There is the promise of getting home and being all snuggly in my craft space where I can experiment with paper and laminate visual aids and make new things. I did work on a page in my art journal yesterday. It is not quite finished yet. I have to glue things down and decide if I need more to add or not. I also prepared some prism crystals to add to my current l...

It is day five of break. I have five days left before I head back to our extended school year, summer schedule. Today is going to be a day for sorting out homeowners insurance things, getting my medications refilled, and taking a shower - NOT in that order!!  Yesterday, I spent most of the day crying. I don't know why I was so tearful, but I was just crying and crying at nothing and everything. I ate a good breakfast, watched entirely too much trash social media, and then nearly finished an ugly crochet basket that I have been working on. I have to attach the handles before it is completely finished. I want some baskets for my home, so I am going to make them. I have lots of inherited yarn that I will never really use for other projects, so I am going to use those skeins to make my baskets. I do not need things to look coordinated or even pretty - just finished. So, I am going through the bags and bags of yarn that I have collected to make my baskets. This first one is made up of a...