music, therapy, and me

I have not written much lately. No reasons why, just not really in the mood to sit and write about music, therapy, or me in the past week or so. What I have been doing instead is reading books - all sorts of mindless books that just keep my brain occupied but do not really add too much to my knowledge. I will go to the library today because I am at the end of my most recent book. It is a good time to introduce new reading materials into my environment. Lately, I have been watching lots of book journaling content creators. I am not interested in making my own book journal (too much like the book reports that I hated all through school), but I enjoy watching people decorate theirs. I am also making some book journals, but I will not be using them. I find the book journal videos to be simultaneously pretty and ridiculous, but I am drawn to them over and over again. I wonder if I would be more inclined to read music therapy journal articles or texts if I was more into book journaling - mak...

It has been a long time since I have listened to music that is just for me alone.  It has been a long time since I sat down with my keyboard and just played music that I love. I do not seek music out for my leisure time - mainly because I am surrounded with it most of the time. I changed that last night. I turned on my streaming service on my television and let it select music for me for most of my waking hours. My choice parameters were soundtracks and musicals, and the music that was shared was mostly pleasant for me. There were only a couple of songs that I didn't enjoy, but I didn't skip any of them. I listened all the way through all the songs, but I also allowed my attention to go in and out while I was listening. I enjoyed it, and will do more listening in this manner. The shuffle function keeps the music novel and goes like my favorite compilations go - from one extreme to another and back again from one side of the music continuum to another side. Many of my non-musica...

Forgive me as I sink into yet another "Nothing to do with Music Therapy - all about me" post for this Saturday. I am just getting excited about a little thing - my new journal. When I started my current journal two July's ago, I had big plans. I was going to use it to chronicle my re-watch of The Clone Wars, taking notes about the episodes that I watched. That fizzled out after about three months. I have no such plans for this book. I am keeping my Star Wars stickers on the front, and there are lots of galaxy and moon pictures inside, but I am not going to make any predictions or themes for this book. It is just going to be my personal planner. I am a paper/pen kind of planner. I do not like depending on digital sources for my appointments, so I write them down. I like choosing pens for each week and using stickers to decorate. At one point, in my first Star Wars planner, I was drawing different characters, but I am not doing as much of that now. At one point, I was drawi...

It is the second day of my winter break, and I feel like day one went pretty well. While my kitchen isn't entirely clean, it is MUCH better than it was yesterday at this time. Today's tasks are laundry, sheets, and packing while eating up as much of the big meal that I made yesterday as possible. I might also bake some cookies for my organists and the church secretary and the pastor at my church job for tomorrow. Yesterday, I put a chair together that broke several months ago. I had to do some modifications, but it is working at the moment. I will need to take it apart again once I get better mobility in my left hand to finish one little bit, but I can use it again. I also spent some time starting to decorate my "Things I Love" journal. I enjoy making books, but I do not always use the books I make. I like sending them out into the world for others to use. This one, though, I decided I would make into a book about the things that I enjoy and that make me happy. I fini...

It is Saturday again, and I am at home, so I can write about the things that I am making at the moment. Last Saturday was taken up with traveling, so no creativity posts from me on that day! Today, though, I am surrounded by my stuff, so I can spend some time working through my #musictherapymaker thoughts and projects. (Can you tell that I am getting bored with my own company?? Four days after today of break!) I had a crying day yesterday - do you ever get those? It was the type of day where EVERYTHING that I saw or experienced led me into full out sobbing, so I did the bare minimum that I could do in order to continue to remain safe and healthy. When my brain moved from crying to needing something to do, I spent an hour putting pictures in my Vancouver pages in this homemade scrapbook. I made this during my March trip when I was home to celebrate our canceled Christmas (hence the Grogu Christmas wrapping paper). I made it out of a box that some of my gifts came in and the wrapping pap...

The author holding a black journal. It is fascinating to me how quickly the end of the year always approaches! I mean, it feels like it was the beginning of the school year about two weeks ago, and here it is, already November 21st! It just does not seem possible that it is late November and time to get things set up for the next calendar year! As you know, I am a bullet journaler (sorta - I use this term mainly because I use a jumble of planning and journaling techniques to keep myself somewhat organized!), and I like to use up my books completely before starting another one, so I will not be starting a new journal in January. I tend to use up my journals in June or July, so I will stay in my yellow, rainbow journal until the end of May 2022. At that point, I will be able to start up a new journal. Waste not, want not, am I right? Anyway, just because I am not starting up a new journal doesn't mean that I am not getting some new things going in the pages! I found my word of the ye...

I had a bit of an adventurous day yesterday. I sat down with my journal to think about my current way of setting goals and not setting goals and wanting a bit more guidance than what I currently have available and realizing that my past ways of establishing goals have not helped me out at all and just generally thinking about lots of existential stuff. I think I have decided to do a different type of goal system - more task oriented and focused because I tend to do these types of things a bit more consistently than aspirational goals. So, I fell back into my habit of writing some goals, but I am hoping that I will be a bit more motivated to do some of these things with a different type of system and focus. We will see in three months... After I finished the journal work, I went out into the world to see another house. As I was waiting for my realtor to get the key out of the key box, I felt a sharp pain on my left upper arm. I whipped my head around to see a wasp-type thing flying off ...

black background with colorful squiggles, the word Think, and the web address of musictherapyworks.com   It is amazing how much time I spend staring at a blank computer screen these days. I used to spend just as much time staring at a blank piece of paper, but my paper use has decreased for things like writing. I do most of my creative writing on the computer these days, and this (almost) daily practice of writing my blog puts me in this exact same space every single morning, staring at the cursor blinking and blinking away, ready to translate any keyboard strokes into letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. In the more artistic art journaling world of my interests (not as much in the very narrow interpretation of bullet journaling but in more creative journaling circles), the advice is just to put pen to paper and make a mark. Any mark. Just break up the vast emptiness in front of you with the first touch of pen to paper and then see what happens next. I use this same technique...

I set up another Zoom meeting this morning. This one is focused on music therapy students and is all about finding an internship for each one of those students. I have a week to coordinate it, but this is a topic that I have presented on for many years, so I feel confident that I can get this coordinated pretty quickly. As I was putting this together, I realized that my website is pretty out-of-date, so revising that goes on the to-do list. This task joins several other tasks that I have neglected, so the list is growing and embiggening (word courtesy of Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess!) in leaps and bounds. Most of the things that I have on the list are things that I enjoy doing, so neglecting them is pretty silly. The only reason that I have not accomplished those things is because other things became a bit more important in the moment. I spent some creative time yesterday putting together a digital kit for theme-based communication boards for music therapy sessions. My goal is to have a ...

I did a bit of playing with paper yesterday. I've been trying out different techniques to see what hurts my fingers and what I can do with recovering tendon issues and a healed fracture, and I completed a project for a SkillShare Class that I signed up for a while ago. Here is the video of my most recent project - a junk journal. I took bits and pieces of paper that I had around the house and made them into a journal of sorts. This project is not finished - the only thing done is the construction of the book itself. True junk journalers then take their books and make them into masterpieces of painting, journaling, ephemera, and memories. I don't usually do that much with the things that I make, but I am going to try with this book. It is WAY out of my comfort zone, but that is what this year is all about for me - deepening my experiences to experience things more. For some reason, actually using a book that I make is difficult, but it was nice to know that I could assemble this...

I am an off-an-on-again journaler. I have always liked the idea of writing my thoughts down, but I have never really been all that consistent with the writing thing. I am much better now than I used to be, and I think that it's because I found blogging and now have a place to type my ideas rather than writing them in a book that I have to keep track of, etc. etc. I have bullet journals, idea journals, personal journals, supervising journals, and this blog where I write. Of all of these things, I am most faithful about writing on my blog because that is where I work out thoughts and ideas. The other journals happen as they happen, and I like that system. It takes the pressure off of me in ways that I didn't know even existed. I can pick up any of my journals and work in them for a bit and then walk away from them for a long stretch of time. It is the system that works for me. One of my favorite features of Facebook is the Memories feed. I enjoy looking at what I was thinking...

One week in the Bullet Journal I am getting into something (that I've always done, but now it's a trend and has a name). Bullet Journaling! If you don't know what this is, I recommend that you don't go on Pinterest to find out. It gets kinda overwhelming when you start to see what people do with their bullet journals - they are so creative and make very pretty journals. Mine are not as cool, but they do the same thing. Basically, a bullet journal is a to-do list system; a way of being organized (Hooray!! I love organization!). Lots of people use their journals to keep track of more than just their daily to-do lists. They have all sorts of tracking pages and stuff. They track what they read, progress towards goals, and use lots of colors. I'm not there yet. September's Monthly Page My bullet journal is pretty basic right now. I actually have two of them - one for work and one for home stuff. They are set up the same way, in the back of some half-f...

Are you your own worst critic? I am. There is no one harder on me than me. When I fail at something, I cannot let it go. I feel guilty and disappointed in myself and it comes back in a flood of emotion every single time I start to get a bit anxious or overly tired. Does anyone else get this way, or is it just me? All of this is precipitated by a missed meeting yesterday. I didn't get a clue that I had missed the meeting until right before leaving for PT and my part-time job, and when I did, I was absolutely set back. The person I was supposed to meet with called me, but didn't leave a message, so I didn't even know that she was waiting for me to hook up the computer. I was supremely angry with myself and then felt guilty when I realized that I had let two other people down. I am a perfectionist. I expect perfection in myself, but allow for imperfection in others without any issues. I expect that others will not be perfect, but I insist on striving for personal perfectio...

Does anyone else ever get the "Ughs?" These are the feelings when you are not really looking forward to your day for one reason or another. Lately, mine have been landing solidly on Wednesdays, and I know exactly why. My Wednesdays are made up of songwriting lessons, three groups, two individual sessions, two meetings (ugh), and the group that causes most of my "Ughs." Unfortunately, that group is my last group of the day and then I go into an individual session (that usually brightens my mood for a bit), but then I have to go into meetings. After that, I leave to go to my part-time job which usually assists me in getting over the "Ughs." You may be asking, "Why do you put up with the 'Ughs?'" In my experience, the "Ughs" are what happens when something isn't quite right with the therapeutic process. My therapeutic process right now is scattered with this group of clients. There is one client who screams no matter what h...