music, therapy, and me

It is raining outside and is supposed to rain most of today. After today, we will be heading back into a heat warning time for four days which means sticking around my home since I react strongly to the humidity. So, I have some time to do something by myself and in the relative quiet of my home. I currently have five unfinished journals sitting in various places around my craft/office space. I have some ideas of how to finish them, but I also see the piles of things that are around my home and feel the "you SHOULD [goblin] be cleaning" guilt pulling me away from those projects. I am getting better with actually moving things, but there is much to be done...still. It has been a month since I retired from my full-time job as a music therapist working in a psychiatric residential treatment facility and day school. I still have a month left on my self-imposed work break, and I am starting to panic about not having a steady job. I am looking at job announcements and am finding lo...

I am exhausted. If you don't know (because you're new to this blog), I finished my job of 30 years two days ago, and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything that has happened in the past 72 hours. I was hugged by more people than usual, including the maintenance guy, on Thursday when I was saying goodbye to my clients and coworkers. For someone who does not hug much, it was lots for my body to endure, but hugs were important for others, so I did it! Yesterday, I was wide awake at 2am, and I could not get back to sleep. I have been having trouble both getting to sleep at night and sleeping for my usual 7 hours. Wide awake at 2am meant that I started to panic about everything that I have left behind and not knowing what is coming in the future. Ugh. I ended up going through a webinar and signing up for a continuing education business course by 5:30am. I also put together almost all of my information for the adolescent conference in August so I can submit the CBMT proposal an...

I am tired. This probably doesn't surprise you as it appears to be a recurring theme on this blog, but I am. We have seventeen days before kids start their summer break. Thirteen days of work between now and week off and then I have sixteen more days of work before I am finished. I received my exit paperwork in the mail yesterday. I have information about my final paycheck and an exit interview survey as well as some information about Cobra. I have an interview with an insurance broker to see if I can get health insurance from the government site starting on July 1, There are all sorts of things that are now on my to-do list that weren't there two days ago, so I have lots to get done. My students are exhausting right now. There isn't a day when everyone is content and happy to be in music therapy. I have had to sing over screaming for a long time now, and it is so difficult to navigate loud students. Most of the issues that have happened started outside of music therapy and...

It is the 27th day of January, 2026, and I am finding a need to be more rooted in myself and my thinking than I have accomplished recently. Hence, the return of my word of the year - metamorphosis.  This is my selected word because I am facing significant changes in my daily life coming up pretty soon. In fact, I have about five months left before I no longer work at the facility where I have been for the past (almost) 30 years. This upcoming change both exhilarates and terrifies me, but I am more than ready to move into my next state of being. I woke up just after midnight this morning needing to use the bathroom. I was able to go back to sleep for another three hours before my brain refused to sleep anymore. So, I have now been up for about an hour, going through my email accounts and other social media accounts. It is 4:35 am. I am really resenting the fact that I have to wake up and get going these days. I keep reminding myself that I will not have to get up in five months to g...

It is the time of year when I tend to do some reflection on the past 12 months. It is easy to do this now because I am away from the demands of my regular life, so I spend time in the early morning hours waiting for others to wake up and get going. It really bites when my internal clock is set two hours ahead of everyone else's clock, but it provides me with time to think. I am finishing up a planning journal that I started back in September 2024. It lasted 15 months, so I think I got my money's worth out of this one! This book of mine will be completely full once I return to my home. The new journal will start on January 4th, and I have been designing elements of it for the past two months. I love having these books, and I am thinking of new ways to use them in the next year. This year has been a difficult one for me as a human but not as a music therapist. I went through my first round of cancer - everything is fine now, at least, that's what they tell me! This health stu...