music, therapy, and me

The second ever (and hopefully, the first annual) Creativity Camp by musictherapyworks.com is now finished!! I am exhausted, but I feel good about what we accomplished this weekend. I have a BUNCH of new projects that are finished that I was able to complete in the 8 hours we were together, and the pile is growing as I get more inspiration from the campers' projects. That is the best thing about doing creative professional development workshops with and for music therapists - the expansion of ideas based on a similar format. I have done this type of workshop at regional conferences twice now, and this was the second online version of making things that I have finished. I think this will become a yearly workshop that I run from here at home. I have TONS of ideas that I enjoy sharing as starting points, so why not?? Currently, all of the cleaning that I did in preparation is in shambles. One of the problems that happens when creating is that there are messes that occur. While all of ...

Next week, at this time, I will be up early and stressing about hosting my second ever Creativity Camp. This is a passion project of mine - something that I have long wanted to do and FINALLY have the time, energy, and motivation to pursue. Thank goodness for being able to retire with my full pension after 30 years of working as a full-time music therapist!! So, here comes Creativity Camp!! You may be wondering about this entire thing and why this is what I am doing right now, so here comes an explanation... Growing up, my family was comfortable. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was 11. My dad was a plant manager for several plastics companies in the 70s and 80s. We had stable housing and enough to eat, wear, and do. We were not rich, but we were stable.  As kids, we did not get everything that we wanted when we wanted it. We had less "things" than many of our friends, but again, our family was stable. Mom and Dad were together, and it was a safe upbringing. My mother wa...

It is Monday again, and I am watching a British sewing show as I am sitting here. There is a stack of file folders waiting lamination, but I am not really all that interested in laminating at the moment. I could get through the stack pretty quickly, but I think I will wait until this afternoon to get this part of my project finished. Laminating folders is a good task when my brain and body are tired. I can just sit, watch television, and feed folders through the laminating machine. These folders are not for me. They are not something I will use in my sessions at my current facility. They are for a teacher who has specific goals for these folders. One of the things that I do during my planning/preparation time at work is make these things for others. So, I have a stack of large safety signs that I am making in large and mini versions. When I am making visuals, I always try to make them in file folder size and both larger than that and smaller than that as well. My thinking behind having...

I am sure that I mentioned that I brought back an old closing TME (therapeutic music experience) this week. It occurred to me that I had not sung the song for years due to interns being in charge of sessions and bringing their own music into our music therapy culture. Many of my "standard" TMEs have gone by the wayside. Right now, though, there are no interns at my facility. I closed that program in October after having zero applications for a year. For the next year and three months, I am bringing back the TMEs that I love and that my clients have loved over the years. It is time to rediscover things that are long forgotten and to introduce them to my current clients. This week, as I have been encouraging my clients to select their own music interactions through decision making and exploration of the music room, they have been making requests. I currently have requests for using the parachute, using the traffic cones, and using the bouncy balls. Some of the behavioral health...

It is almost spring here - the temperatures are getting higher and the snow drifts are melting slowly. I know that there will be a return of the ick at some point, but spring is coming. I was speaking to a coworker yesterday about how much I enjoy winter but really like spring and autumn. I am not a fan of summer - especially where I live now. The humidity makes it difficult for me to breathe, walk, and exist without pain, but winter offers some respite to it all. If I have to rank my seasons in order of preference it goes autumn, winter, spring, and summer. With the return of spring-like temperatures, I am starting to get some itches to create routines and systems and get things going. This happens every year. The shift from winter and hibernation urges heads me into energy and planning urges. I completely understand the concept of a Spring Cleaning - I just don't like cleaning. Anyway... I remembered a song that one of my clients helped me write as a closing therapeutic music exp...

One of the things that I have nearby me both here and at work is my songwriting kit. It isn't fancy, but it is something that I have found that I use when I am in a songwriting mood. My kits reside in the pencil bags that I have collected as part of my love of stationery items, and they are small enough to fit into my bag. Inside my kit, you can find post-it notes of various types, pencils (of course), erasers (of course!), index cards, and sheet music. I have decided to make some stickers to go onto my index cards or my idea books to help me keep the music going and flowing.  Making stickers is not something new to me, but making sheet music stickers is. I have stickers for project management, TPT files, and all sorts of things, but I have never made sheet music stickers. This is a bit of a "duh" moment for me. So, how do I do this?? I use labels and my printer. It is really simple to make these types of functional stickers. I use Word or Powerpoint most of the time. It ...

I am the type of therapist who thinks that it is better to save some money and spend some time to make tools rather than paying for something someone else makes. Blame my mom who learned it from her mom who learned it from her mom and so on and so forth. We have always made things that we needed - not just for the therapy space (Mom and I are therapists - the other generations were not) - but for everything. So, back when I had clients who needed pervasive levels of support to accomplish some of our music therapy goals, I was looking for ways to assist my clients in holding and using mallets and handled percussion instruments that did not take all of my budget. Adaptive cuffs were appropriate, but they dissolved quickly - there was something about the glue that put the Velcro onto the foam that just disintegrated quickly when washed and disinfected. I did not have the money to spend $20+ dollars every month for each of the cuffs that I needed, so I went to the design board to see if I ...

Tuesday is the day where I spend some time trying to share ideas and tips that have saved me money in my music therapy career in the hope that someone else out there might find my tips valuable. Today, let's talk about making things for your music therapy sessions. Now, I'm not talking about my favorite things - visual aids. This time around, let's talk about things like mallets, instruments, and functional tools for your clients. This may come from my upbringing by an occupational therapist, but I have always preferred making my own things rather than spending money. Call me silly, but if I can make a mallet for about $1.50 USD and with about 45 minutes of my time, I think that is more efficient than spending $15.00 on a pair of mallets. (Which reminds me, I need to make mallets!) I am definitely a process person who gets great pleasure out of making things for my clients to use. By the way, would you like to learn how to make your own mallets?? We could do a Zoom meeting ...

It is the first day of the last break of the summer - what I like to call my Fall break even though Autumn is still two months away from officially starting. We get to work from home today, so I am going to spend my time putting together a new tool for my music therapy room - a visual schedule. I have never used a visual schedule for my group sessions because I do not often have a set session strategy for what I do with my clients. I often change my mind when each group walks into the room to accommodate how my clients are interacting with me, with the music I play, and with each other. So, I have never really had a good way of making a visual schedule that covers last minute adaptations. I think I have found a way to do this now. I am going to use generic terms for the types of things we do in music therapy. This will allow me to have a basic structure while still allowing for changes to occur in the moment. I will also use this format in a general manner for most of my groups. Being ...

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...

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...

Back in January of 2020, I was getting ready for something that I never thought I could do - an exhibition table at the Midwestern Regional Conference. I was producing file folders, small books and keychains, digital links, and several copies of my books to take with me to Lincoln, Nebraska for the conference. I was excited to figure out how to do this part of the job of a music therapy creator when BAM! Well, you know what happened in March of 2020, so I won't dwell. Since that time, I have cooled off with my production habits. I have focused on making things that I could use in my clinic, and those things have not often been original files. I have focused on making things from other creators and have not done as much as I would like on my own. Yesterday, I spent about an hour to two (I didn't really keep track) preparing 80 file folders to use to make visual aids. I trimmed off the flaps on the side so the folders will fit in my laminating pouches, and then I affixed stickers...

It is finally Thursday. I have only six groups left in the week. That means that we have finished fifteen groups by this time every week. It is no wonder that Thursday usually includes some exhaustion. While we only have four groups today, our day is pretty full - in addition to our four groups, we have two individuals scheduled now. I am not the leader of many of these sessions - I do not have primary therapist responsibilities in our individual sessions and I lead half of the group sessions today. I am spending time this week, during my office hours (non-session time in the music therapy room), writing therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). My goal is to have five finished by the end of tomorrow. I have completed two of the five and have the other ideas identified but not in TME format. I established a new Google form to work in to generate a database in a form a bit different from what I usually do, and I am finding the task interesting. I am a creative person. I create all sorts of ...

It is Saturday. We are getting ready for excessive heat for the next five days (at least), and I am going to need something to do to keep me inside and not as depressed as I get when it gets hot. So, I am looking around my overwhelmingly messy craft desk to find something that I want to do. It has been a bit since I made a book, so that may be the project that I work on today. By the end of today, I am hoping that the craft desk looks less cluttered and more functional. Before that point, though, I have an appointment with an allergist for the first time in my life. That's not the point of this post, though. This post is about making things. Yesterday, I spent a long time in my work area making file folders and binder pages for some of my students. I finished twenty and distributed them between the three classes that I had heard from. I have one more stack for the class that I haven't heard from... I cleaned the area and then finished my clinical interactions for the day before...

I am going to try a new series of posts - we will see if it takes off in any way, but here we go... Now, I am really pretty good at making up series titles for things, but I am not as good at keeping up with them, but we will try it anyway. Today's change up in topics is brought to you courtesy of the Dollar Tree where I dropped a cool $60 this morning, buying things for my upcoming trip and spending money on books for kids and all that stuff. It is also brought to you courtesy of Kathy Schumacher over at Tuneful Teaching. ( You can find her on Instagram using this link. ) She recently released a cute visual aid for free, so go check her out!! I realized that I make all sorts of things, but I rarely share them for others to see, so this is the day that I will try to get some of this stuff out into the world for others to enjoy. Of course, I am making this decision with little to no plans or action steps or anything, but you know, that is how I roll these days. (Don't believe me...

I have nine days of break ahead of me and a return of my creative sparks happening right now. This is a good thing because I think it means I am starting to feel better. I have some ideas for things to make and release in my TPT store. I also have some supervision things that I need to work up for a fellow music therapist. I actually feel like doing some of these things for the first time in a long time. One of the things that I really enjoy making for my clinical area and for other music therapists is tools. Now, when I use this word to describe what I mean, I have the thought that I want my visual aids to be things that can be used for more than one clinical interaction. I want a collection of pictures to use every time we sing about food. So, a tool for communication will offer as many options as possible for as many songs and opportunities to express our thoughts in as many ways as possible. There should never be a time when you have a visual aid that only works for one song or one...