music, therapy, and me

This is my second attempt at a post for today. There are times when I just can't post what I am writing because it is not conducive to my mental health or the purpose of this blog. So, the first post of the day went into my draft folder. I will not look at it again. It will just sit in that folder forever and ever. Let's talk about something that makes me feel happy - creating art and other craft processes. Yesterday, I sat on my bed and I created some word art. Word art is something I enjoy - I use it as a stream of consciousness tool for myself. I write words in different fonts. The words are sometimes sentences, sometimes just single words, but they always show me something about how I am feeling or what I am struggling with in the moment. Sometimes there are song lyrics involved. Most of the time, though, the words are just that - words without much to link them together. Yesterday's art consisted of emotion words about my near future and covered all of my current emoti...

I am getting ready to head back to work after a strange break. I'm not ready to be at work - another week of sleeping would be nice, but I am better than I was two Fridays ago about being a therapist. I am stressed because I have lots to do that I have to hurry up and wait for others to initiate. Sirens stopped at my neighbor's house this morning about 10 minutes ago - not a usual thing in this neighborhood. I can't see what is happening because they are my "over the back fence" neighbors. I am watching Canadian television shows in my time before leaving for work. I can check on my plans for this week's sessions from home, but I am not going to. That is something that can wait for my return to work. Today is one of the days where I find being a therapist is a difficult thing. I am returning to a work situation where we have many new students, many familiar students will have left, and where classroom groups will have changed significantly. I am not sure who wi...

I am really bad at self-promotion. I mean, REALLY bad! I have had a music therapy website based business for the past 29 years, and no one knows about it. I write books of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs), books for interns, forms for music therapists in all sorts of roles. I blog, I do some YouTube content, and I work full and part-time as a music therapist. When it comes to letting people know what I do and what I love to share, it is nearly impossible for me to promote and market to my targeted audience. I wanted to do an exhibit this year, but I did not get organized enough (or produce enough things) to get that done. I am not all that disappointed by this particular situation - after all, I could have done it, but I just wasn't all that interested in working on the project. I still have that on my quest map, but I might wait until next year to get things going. I am getting better at sending people the link to my TPT store which is where I am putting all of my products. So...

It is my season for thinking about what comes next for me. This year has been especially challenging due to leaving the worlds of church and internships within a couple of months of each other. I am faced with less income and more time - things that are both good and not so good. So, my natural period of reflection and planning is laced with thoughts about finding more money and using the time I have from this current iteration of my body and mind. I am not struggling with my current salary, but more money is always nice. I am also going to have to pay quite a bit for some medical procedures this year, so extra money would be good for me. I feel that I have some options, but it will mean breaking a habit of needing to crash as soon as I get home from my 7-3 job. The big question for today is "where do I feel I need to be?" Lately, something that has bothered me for most of my career has been expressed by someone else, so it has come to the forefront of my brain again. It is t...

It is Wednesday, so it is time to talk a bit about what I am reading these days. To start, it is easier to talk about my personal reading than my professional reading because I have not been doing much professional reading lately. I will start with the professional reading, though, because there is not much to talk about. This morning, I walked into my library where I have currently stashed all of my professional textbooks. I selected one from the shelves that I have purchased but not even opened yet. The book that drew my attention was Group Analytic Music Therapy  by Heidi Ahonen-Eerikainen (sorry that I cannot figure out how to do the umlaut over the a on this program).This book was published by Barcelona Publishers in 2007, and it was part of a sale order that I made a couple of years ago. I picked it because it is part of analytical music therapy, a form of music therapy that confuses and intrigues me, but also because it concerns group music therapy which is my primary servic...

Gee whiz. Two weeks ago, I was actually reading some pretty interesting things in the world of music therapy, but I am not reading anything in our field right now. This, of course, doesn't mean that I am not reading - I am just not reading something about the field of music therapy at the moment. This is not unusual for me to not read things about our profession. I do not like to do that very often, but I recognize that it is important to do so on occasion. My problem with reading research articles and the like is that it takes lots of work to make the research relevant to my experience as a clinician. I am naturally suspicious of research results, having done my own and recognizing the limitations present in the process, and I find it hard to justify some of the results with my reality in my clinic.  As a result of my avoidance of research and desire to know more about research, I have developed a research to practice process that works for me. It involves a form - swoon! Perhaps ...