music, therapy, and me

I figure that it might be time for a reintroduction to music, therapy, and me. If you have been here for a long time, then you know quite a bit about me. If you are a newer reader, then you may not know much about what I do, where I've been, or where I get my ideas. So, allow me to introduce myself. I am a long-term music therapist. I started my music therapy studies back in the last century, and I have been employed as a music therapist for 32 of my 34 years as a professional. For the other two years, I had job descriptions that were not specifically music therapist but in related fields. I have spent 29 years at my current job, working with children, adolescents, and young adults with developmental, intellectual, and psychiatric diagnoses. I work in a school associated with both local school districts and the psychiatric residential treatment facility where the school is housed. In that time, I have been through many policy changes, changes in the types of kids that we serve, and...

I am going to write this blog for one hour, starting now, and try to make something that has relevance for all of my designators in the title of this blog - music, therapy, and me. This is not always an easy task. There are times when the music takes over, others when therapy is foremost on my mind, and I am usually prone to talking about me - one of my favorite topics. So, let's talk about music, therapy, and me this morning. We will get the "me" part over with. I am still tired, very frustrated with a particular client who has decided to target aggression towards me, and happy that today is Thursday rather than yesterday. I wish I had some more stuff to get me energized, but tired seems to be my default lately. I'm going to blame my changing hormones for all of this exhaustion. I am currently feeling inundated by a plethora of phone calls from all sorts of people wanting to give me things or sell me something or to set up appointments. Some of these people know that...

Today's random number generated by the random number generator that I use is 2981. I did the calculations that I have to do to figure out which post is #2981 - June 9, 2022 , and I found that it was a post that I wrote last summer about my version of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. You can find the post here . I am enjoying these trips back into things I have written over the years. This one is an interesting glimpse into situations that I go through every year. As it is winter right now, I am in a pretty good space as far as my depression goes. I do much better in the winter than in the summer. While the humidity happens here at the same levels, the air is easier to get in and out of my lungs. I enjoy the earlier nights, but I do miss the sunrises of the summer. I get to enjoy more sunsets during the winter. I am sitting here, reveling in my arthritic state, but I feel so much happier in the depths of winter than I do in the heat of summer. Reading over this post, I am remind...

I am mentally preparing myself for today's adventures. First of all, I have to spend some of my personal time because I have to leave for my second job. For some reason, my administrator has decided that I cannot use an option offered to many others at the facility. Tonight is parent/teacher conferences which means that I will sit in my room waiting for someone - ANYONE - to show up to talk to the music therapist. Of course, most of the parents of my students do not know that I even exist. They never have. I have been invited to about 7 conferences over the past 26 years of employment at the facility, so I feel like these days are wasted opportunities...AND I get punished for having to leave - even though there is NOTHING for me to do! I am going to take some extra time this morning since I will be penalized for the time that I am having to leave. There is no reason to get there early when I will not get credit for being there. I am not really happy about this situation - can yo...

Over on social media (I know, I know, many of my posts start off this way, but you cannot deny that social media is something that affects us all in some way or another), someone asked a question. "What would it take for music therapy to become mainstream?" Ooooh, boy. I have opinions about this! Now, if you keep reading this post, keep in mind that this is a blog. Specifically, it is MY blog which means that I get to offer my OPINIONS in the way that makes the most sense to me. These OPINIONS are mine and mine alone. I do not have any financial incentives or assistance that might interfere with my opinion development - no one sponsors me or tries to influence me in any way. I am merely a music therapist who loves her choice of profession most of the time. My OPINIONS, though, matter to me - you can take them or leave them, that is up to you. If you want to engage in conversation with me about this topic, I would love to have that discussion. I want to know your OPINIONS abou...

I am sitting here, at 4:30 am, after my shower, starting to ruminate on what is going on in my life right now. I am struggling with feelings of being overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious about things, and having to catch my breath all the time. I realized that this pattern is one that I have been through before, so I am going to write about it yet again... I woke up this morning at 2:38. Since I was wide awake, I headed to the bathroom and as I was walking to the bathroom, I heard running water. At first, I thought it might be rain, so I moved to the bathroom, did what I had to do, and heard no rain sounds. That was odd, so I veered from my path back to my bed and followed the sound. I found my kitchen faucet going full blast! The scrubber holder that I had hung on the porous tile of my backsplash had fallen down, hitting the toggle knob and starting the water. Fortunately, the drain and sink were clear, so the water was just draining, but I have no idea how long this had been the case. I w...

Today, I am thinking about making some comments on the social media that I consume - not what I create. A couple of years ago, I realized that my social media picture was consumed by music therapy and only music therapy. All of my Facebook groups were music therapy groups. All of my Instagram follows were music therapy accounts. Music therapy was the only thing that was represented in my social media accounts, and I remembered that I was more than just a music therapist. So, I made a concerted effort to enrich what I was consuming via different and various platforms. I started with some paper groups. I made a separate Instagram account - one for music therapy and one just about me. I changed who I followed on my personal Instagram account. I still follow and am part of lots of music therapy groups and accounts, but I branch out into things that just plain old interest me. I try to be aware of how much time I spend in mindless social media use. TikTok is the worst for wasting time. It i...

So, I was really excited yesterday morning with the accomplishment that I had on Wednesday. Then, yesterday started up for real. I bought the wrong, unrefundable Groupon for an oil change for my brother trying to get him an early birthday present...that he asked for...and sent the link for. When I clicked on the link, it selected the Groupon that I paid for but that was the wrong one! Okay, small set back, no big deal... Then, I tried to replace my door lock. The handles arrived and then I took everything apart. Well. The faceplate that is in the door did not match the lock that showed up at my door. So, the lock assembly did not work. I ordered another faceplate to go with the old handles to see if I can get that combination to work and arranged to send the other handle, lock, and mortise back to where it came from. Another set back. Handling it okay... My new intern, the one who starts on Monday, had a setback with one of the requirements for the internship that is not a deal breaker...

When I started this blog forever ago, I wanted to find a title that would help me focus on what I really wanted to write about - the complexities of being a music therapist in this world. There are three pieces of this blog, and I find that, for the past year at least, I have been focusing more and more on the last part of this blog title - the me part. I will still be writing about me - that's a part of this entire blog, after all, - but I want to also up my post count on the other two parts of this blog. I already have TME Tuesdays going, but I think I want to go back to what I used to do - offering ideas to you, fellow music therapist! I got away from that because I got sucked into some social media trolling that insisted that it was the responsibility of music therapists to give ideas and intellectual property to other music therapists without the expectation of payment. I find that I miss the opportunity to share ideas here, so I think I will go back to offering ideas - not th...