music, therapy, and me

For the first time in a long time, the new year has corresponded with the start of my new journal. I spent over a year in the last one, so this is somewhat of a surprise to me that I FINALLY filled the 200 page book and am getting to start another one. We will see how long this one lasts me before I can start another one, but there is something pretty fun and satisfying about transferring from one book to the next one. I am really taking my 2026 word of the year to heart right now. Metamorphosis is coming. I am heading towards a new phase of existence, and while it is a bit scary, it is also exhilarating. I am getting ready to become something else in my profession, and I am both excited and terrified of the transition! I took some steps towards my new existence on Friday by opening my business accounts with the seed money I have saved over the years. New accounts and a new bank. I have had a bill that will be covered by the business next year (I am hoping), and that is something that ...

Today is a day off, and other than some online shopping with my Mom and Sister later, I do not intend on leaving my house at all for any sort of consumer action. Black Friday deals are not for me! Instead, I am making small books for my co-workers that share the music therapy space at work. One is a recipe book and the other is a future adventures book. I hope they will like them, and it will give me a chance to explore my creativity through making something that I love to make - small journals and books. One of the things that has really sustained my music therapy professional journey is cultivating hobbies that are not related to music at all!  I love making journals, and I make them out of all sorts of things. Right now, I am in the design phase of my thinking about all of this. I have to figure out how to make a recipe book. It will be easier to set up the future adventures book, but there are other considerations for that book than the recipe book. It will be a good challenge!...

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 Saturday, and I am only interested in sleeping ... and eating right now. I feel guilty when I just nap and eat on my Saturdays, so I try to make something happen on these days. I am getting ready for the start of my #100DayChallenge tomorrow. I may get a jumpstart on that by making a card today, but I might not. I am not really all that inspired to do anything right now. That might change after a nap, but it probably will not. I want to make some journals today. I have been collecting the outer packaging to blu-rays that I purchase, and I want to laminate the packaging and make journals out of those disc covers. I have about eight covers that I have been putting off laminating because I haven't set up the laminating area that I envision, but it is time. I want to get these projects going so I can add them to my Etsy store and, hopefully, sell a couple of them to people out there in the world. Okay. Now I have some direction. I want to get some paper signatures ready to put in...

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...

Today is my first day of winter break for 2023, and I allowed myself to go back to sleep (fortunately, without the nightmares that often happen when I go back to sleep) and lay about in bed for a bit longer than usual. I am now up and ready to start the next two days of at home break time. The first day of winter break is always a time where I make lots of plans for future me to accomplish. I rarely complete any of those plans. I have things that I need to get done, including cleaning the kitchen. I also need to do laundry, pack a bag, and prepare for the rest of my winter break. I am starting my task list and am getting ready to start things off after I post this essay. Lately, my thoughts have been taken over by thoughts about how people learn. I have really been focused on current music therapy students and interns because that is who I work with in my music therapy job. This is probably going to sound a bit preachy or critical, and I am not going to apologize for that tone - mainly...

I have just had an epiphany about something that has been churning around in the back of my mind for a long time. I want to make myself a junk journal to use. Now, if you read this blog regularly, you know that one of the things that I love doing (that is not music therapy) is making books from scratch. I have made a bunch of books and have either sent them out to friends (let me know if you want one!) or listed them on Etsy (where they do not sell). I like making books, but I don't really use them as my planners or things like that. I made one last March when I was at home with my Mom and my Sister, and I am using that one as a trip journal. It has been really fun to add things to that book, so I am thinking about making another one for me to use. I just came up with the theme for this junk journal about three minutes ago and just before I started to write this post. I decided I would make this journal on the theme of "Things I Love." So, something else that you probably...

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...

I am a non-digital type of person. While I love technology and use it for all sorts of purposes (ahem - music therapy blogger over here), I also strive to maintain healthy boundaries for my digital usage and consumption. I have not been as healthy with mindless consumption lately - and it shows - but one place where I remain firmly away from the digital lifestyle is my project and calendar management. I am a bullet journaler. I am also a decorative planner user as well as a project tracker. I am a journal hoarder. I have a different book and different style for each book that I use on a regular basis. I have many more journals that do not have a use yet - they just sit on a shelf in my office, awaiting their glorious purpose in my organizational quest.  A couple of months ago, I told my boss that I was bored with my job. I asked if I could get some funding to make task boxes for some of the classrooms. I started thinking about the types of projects that I wanted to make, and that l...

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 spent a couple of insomnia hours this morning reading through my selected Synthesis Sunday article which comes to us from the most recent edition of Music Therapy Perspectives . I took my color-coded post-its and spent some time reading the article for the first time. I used my post-its and then collated them based on color (and on theme, of COURSE!). I am now ready to get started organizing the things that I found on this first read-through. Here we go... My system includes selecting four or five stacks of post-it notes (different colors) from my ever growing box o' post-its. I then assign a color to different aspects - the first is citations that are relevant; the second is quotations; the third is for thoughts or words I need to define; and the last is for takeaways from the study into my direct practice as a music therapist. Once I assign colors to each element of my reading, I start in, reading, taking notes, and using up those post-its. So, here is the content-relev...

Yesterday, the most recent issue of Music Therapy Perspectives was stuffed into my mailbox. I got it this morning, and decided to look inside on this blog post. I open up the plastic covering and look at the table of contents. I tend to find MTP a bit more relevant to my life as a clinician than the Journal of Music Therapy , but it still doesn't have too much to do with my role in the world of music therapy. This edition includes an article about adolescents' experiences of MT in inpatient treatment - this may have some sort of relevance to my students, but probably not - my students have chronic issues rather than need for stabilization in acute care. There is another one about adolescents and identity formation. That may be more relevant and more easily transferred into my particular clinical setting. We will see. When I get into the mood to read research (and, to be completely honest with you, it doesn't happen often), I have a system! I'll talk about it mor...

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...