music, therapy, and me

Forgive my interrupted posting schedule. I am simply trying to figure out some things in my life, and this interruption is part of the figuring out part. I am at the end of this figuring out part, and that is a good feeling. I know where I will go in my near future, and that makes me feel happy. Sorry for being so vague, but I cannot talk more about this topic. It is something that involves others besides just me, but there is something nice about being certain in my future, so there you go. For now, I am enjoying an opportunity to turn my attention towards something that I really want to pursue in our field - competency-based clinical training. I spent some time putting together a notebook with each of the AMTA Professional Competencies on a separate page. I intend to use this to parse out the competencies across all clinical training opportunities that music therapy students encounter in their preinternship and internship clinical training. It may sound funny, but I really believe t...

It is officially 2024, and I am in a different state than the one I anticipated I would be in. I am still at home with the cat on the bed curled up next to me. I slept through the transition to the new year - much like I usually do - and woke up at 2:40 am - much like I usually do - to take a look at the new year. It is now 3:20 am, and I am very much awake and ready to get this new year going! Our new year is starting with a bit of uncertainty, but less than we had just a bit ago. My mother has received an official diagnosis after lots and lots of blood work, tests of various kinds, and food deprivation. It seems that she is avoiding surgery right now (thank goodness) and will be doing some antibiotics to fully recover. This is better than the outlook that we had yesterday morning when things were less clear to us all. So, our New Year has started with a parent in the hospital but a parent who is getting better. Hopefully this same parent will remember that she doesn't like being ...

Saturday has finally arrived and is happening right now! I am happy to be in Saturday mode and will be spending some time doing some shopping in various stores that I do not frequent often and then running some errands. It is going to be a leisurely day, but a day full of things that need to be done. I got paid yesterday, so I feel like I can spend a little bit of money to get things that I want instead of only getting what I need. I, of course, have a budget, but it will be nice to go into the world and just look at things. I have some pictures to frame and put on the walls. I have some surfaces to clear and collectible ornaments to display. I'll be creative through some decoration on this day. I bought some wooden plaques at the Dollar Tree a couple of weeks ago, and I did a crayon rub to finish them (cheap way to add a patina to wooden surfaces - color the entire surface and then rub it with a tissue until the wax melts and becomes shiny). I am going to use them as makeshift mem...

I am a bit overly medicated at the moment, so I have to delay my commute for another hour. I am not accustomed to being late to work, but I do have a dispensation from my principal due to my current medical issues, so I am going to take advantage of that dispensation and not leave until the sun has risen completely. I am hoping that my side effects will be gone by that time so I can drive myself the hour to work safely. We shall see... I am tired today, but I am ready to get the last month of school for the 21-22 school year going. We have 32 days left (including weekends) until we have two weeks - TWO WEEKS - off for our first summer break. My facility has an extended school year, so we will work four days a week for most of the month of June and then the same schedule for three weeks of July before our last summer break. The 22-23 school year starts up in August, and my school calendar is finally starting to mirror the school district calendar. We will have less 12-hour days and more...

Oh, dear. This is going to be one of my "less than interesting to anyone except for me" type of posts. I am trying to change my life circumstances from apartment dweller to townhome owner and am in the "Why the heck do I have this much stuff, anyway?" stage. It is disheartening to see the boxes pile up with no appreciable decrease in the amount of things that need to be packed, but I must move forward. Egad! I am getting bogged down in stuff, and it is not good to be bogged down at all! I am going through my old textbooks and am sorting through what I want to keep and what I want to send out into the void of thrift stores. Since I live in a university town that has a music therapy population, I thought that sending my texts to the thrift stores might be one way to get those texts into the hands of people who cannot spend $45 on a text but who would be thrilled to get the text for $1.59. I am trying to figure out what I am going to do with the stuff that I have next ...

Sharks at the GA Aquarium My bereavement leave and vacation time is over, and it is time to head back to work. I spent much of the past week driving places and trying to get some sleep and failing miserably. I am still exhausted and cannot seem to catch up. Time to head back to work to spend time with my intern who will be graduating next week. I am starting to think about this graduation process as it is nearing. Interns are wonderful, and I sincerely miss each one as they move towards their unique futures. This one has had to deal with pandemic weariness and uncertainty placed within the ruse of the "new normal." She will be missed. I will be alone until January, and I am looking forward to it, to be honest. I am ready for some time as therapist and not as supervisor. I want to rearrange my office space a bit to make it a bit more comfortable for me. I want to change how the desk space works to accommodate a couple of lamps so we do not have to work with florescent lights o...

This has been an interesting and long morning already. I woke up a bit after midnight the way I've been waking up lately - at random times during the night - fully awake and thinking about some paperwork that I had forgotten needed to get done. Rather than avoiding that paperwork and then being unable to get back to sleep, I got up and finished the two tasks that I needed to get done and then went back to bed. I had a bit under three hours left before my usual (nope, can't say that) regular (been anything except that recently) desired (that will work, even though I wish I could sleep in a bit more) rising time. I wish I could figure out exactly why I am having interrupted sleep these days. There seem to be inconsistent cues that waken me. A couple of nights ago, one of my neighbors (not the exorcism neighbors, but some other ones) turned on car lights right into my window, played loud music, and then left around 2am. Other times, like last night, I was hot. The window was ope...

I am currently taking a continuing education course on a theory that is related to others I have studied over the years. This course is rooted in a different music therapy tradition than my own experience, so it is a good exercise to observe music therapy from a different philosophical perspective. This is something that I am trying to do this year in an effort to deepen my understanding of what music therapy is and what we do as music therapists. I am looking outside my own philosophy to that of others to see what I see - for better or worse. I am finding that much of what we do is exactly the same but we call things different names and may have different ideas about why these things are happening. Now, I'm not talking about the current push in our national organization to focus on social issues or inclusivity or anything like that - I think those discussions are important, but they are a bit removed from client services. I am talking about client services here - how we do what we...

It is the last work day of the year, and I am more than ready to be on break after today. I am exhausted and am really looking forward to being home without having the pressure to work. I anticipate that I will still be making videos for the YouTube channel, but I will not have an expectation of doing so. That's a nice place to be in. I sat in the sunset yesterday and watched for the planetary conjunction. I never saw anything that I thought was "the brightest object (except the moon)" or "the Christmas Star," but I was able to see both of the planets with my naked eye from just after sunset until full darkness. I talked to my parents - Mom is talking on the phone lots more now that Dad is not doing well - and then sat in relative silence looking at the sky. Kansas skies always disappoint me - clouds happen regularly and ESPECIALLY when there is some sort of special planetary or solar system event that prevents me from seeing the full effect of every little thin...

My sister made an interesting comment last night about my absence from the AMTA conference this year and last year. "You seem happier when you don't go." - my sister, November 20, 2020 Hmmm. That made me stop and think a bit. I used to love being a part of conference but it did wear me completely slick and I would need an entire week afterwards to recuperate. I enjoyed it more when I had a roommate, even though we would often have conflicting schedules due to meetings and the like, so we didn't see each other much. I liked going when I had things to do for the Association. I liked being part of the inner workings and now, all of that has gone. What made conference a valuable experience for this extreme introvert just evaporated. I no longer go to conferences for inspiration. I just can't find it. If I go to a presentation on music therapy with a specific population, I find that I am wanting clinical interventions and not overviews of research that cannot be replic...

When I last wrote, my future was very unclear to me. At this point, my future is still unclear, but I know that I will NOT be having to rearrange all sorts of stuff to accommodate surgery. Turns out that I have a partial tendon rupture in my left middle finger to go along with a fractured left ring finger, but my hand specialist thinks that three months of splinting will heal things up a bit. Now, while I am grateful that I am not trying to juggle two interns and significant time off from work, I am still a bit scared about what this hand injury means for my future, but I am going to try to focus on other things now. Thank you for reading about this. 2020 has really been strange, hunh? So, me and my very strong left-side dominant self are trying to figure out how I am going to do even the most basic of things. My recent self-care practices are on hold because I can't use my left hand to do much of anything. Writing is out, typing is difficult, but I still need to be engaging in sel...

This is where I long to be - not necessarily at this particular place - a part of the Allerton Gardens on Kauai - but in a place where I can be in restful solitude near some water, outside, and enjoying some peace. Alas, this is nowhere near where I am at the moment - not in location, not in environment or ambience, or in attitude. Instead, I am in what feels like a constant swirl of newness and shifting landscapes. One moment, I am clear about what I am going to be doing today and the next moment brings all sorts of change to my door. This is not unique to me and my experience this year. There is some comfort in that thought. You know, the song from High School Musical "We're All In This Together" goes through my mind pretty consistently when I am writing my blog lately. We truly are in this situation all together - the entire world - and it is fascinating to me how people in various places are coping...or not...with what is going on. I will see the last third of my stu...

I completed one of the many, MANY survey requests that have crossed my email address in the past two months (you can tell it's thesis season!!) this morning. It was about longevity as a music therapist and asked some of the questions I want answered, but not all of them. Now, I have been a professional music therapist for almost 27 years now. This is my anniversary month (finished my internship on March 26), and I always get a bit sentimental about my professional choice during the month of March. In the interest of full disclosure, because I try to be completely honest and transparent in my blog, I have not always been at a point where music therapy was clearly the answer for me and my life. There have been good times and there have been completely lousy times in my journey through music therapy. I have always remembered that I am not stuck - I am free to go and do what I need to go and do in this life. It's just been fortunate that music therapy has been what I need to do...

I am a therapist. I am a guide. I am a sounding board. I am a companion. I am a musician. I am creative. I listen to others. I try to help others accomplish their personal goals. I strive to embrace my imperfections to help others feel comfortable within their own. I try to be strong when strength is important and vulnerable when that is needed. I strive to connect with every person who enters my sessions. I am who I am - trying not to apologize for that, but still finding the authentic me as a human, as a musician, as a therapist. I am a music therapist.

On days like these, I spend quite a bit of time sitting and staring at the cursor blinking and blinking. I look for things to inspire me, and come up short. So, I think about my days at work and my self-care plans and try to find something to write about. I am still searching for something that makes me think about music or therapy or me. This is a place where I sort out things. Over the years that I've been writing this blog, I've used posts to figure out my thoughts about interns and internships, MLE, my own relationship with music therapy, my cat makes lots of appearances, and I spend lots of time just talking about what is happening in my life at any given moment. I've found that writing almost-daily posts is a good exercise for thinking about what music, therapy, and music therapy means to me as a professional and as a human. Writing helps me work through challenges. So, if you've never read this blog before, as you go over the older posts, you'll find so...

One of my tasks this day is to rip music to my iTunes account from the CDs that I own. I'm doing this because I am always and forever screwing up my music library in iTunes and because I found that lots of my music disappeared again. So, I am sitting in front of the computer, putting CDs into the disc drive, and revisiting the music as I encounter it yet again. There's the CD that I bought for a client who communicated through Wiggles songs. There's one that the folks asked me to purchase to assist clients in falling asleep. Once folks learned that they would have to listen to the same music every single night to assist clients in falling asleep, they were no longer interested. The music was "boring" they said. THAT'S THE POINT, PEOPLE! Relaxation and conditioning - same thing, consistency, etc. Well, I now have a very relaxing CD to listen to when I need to be bored into sleep. I love the fact that music exposure leads to extra-musical associations. I lov...

I bought some new music this weekend. It is almost the end of my fiscal month, and I had some money left over, so I went spending on iTunes. I bought some music for kids - specific requests that I did not have already - and some music for me. I also bought the most recent Now! That's What I Call Music compilation and was reminded that I already have some other music to hear during my music listening moments.   You know, I don't listen to music just to listen very often anymore. I used to, back before I was immersed in all of this music therapy stuff. Almost everything I listen to these days is something either requested by students or background music to the talk I am hearing. I rarely take time to just listen to music. I did a bit of that last week, and I enjoyed it, but I didn't really listen. The music became a background figure to my thoughts and verbal practicing (I admit it, I talk to myself in the car during my commute). I anticipate that this same thing will ha...

It is my last full day of visiting home, and I am not handling the end very well. I love this place and these people, and now I am the only one who isn't living here, so I am the oddball now. I don't want to be leaving, but my job is elsewhere, so I have to go...back...to bitter temperatures and a job where I don't feel all that valued... (Please note that most of the comments that I am making here are colored by the fact that I have only one more day to be in this wonderland, and I DON'T WANT TO GO!) The end of a visit almost always makes me wonder if there are things I can do in order to stay, but I just can't see possibilities beyond what I know. I do know this - I will be returning home for good at some point. (I got to start buying lottery tickets!)  My sister has arranged my last day here. I am going to stay at her house tonight. We will be going to her neighborhood block party (I'm her excuse for not staying for very long), and we may go to see Star...

I'm thinking about retirement. Let me start this conversation by saying that my mother and father recently retired, and their new lives are looking really good to me right now. (This is a side effect of visiting - I actually get to witness what is happening rather than just hearing about it.) My sister has decided that We (notice the use of the Royal We) will be retiring in 9 years when she is eligible to take her pensions and run from her elementary school job. In addition, I will be retiring then as well, and We will travel (again, that Royal We!). I'm telling you. This idea is not hard to contemplate at all. My father's twin, my Aunt, is having to retire this year. She tried retiring last year, but ended up driving herself crazy with inactivity and went back to teaching high school math this year, but it is past time for her to retire and do other things. In direct contrast to my parents (who are finding retirement really enjoyable), she is dreading this transition...

It is 4:17am, and I have already blown through three different blog topic starts that just didn't work this morning. Everything turns out to be a "poor me" topic when I start to develop it a bit more, so I'm giving up on writing about these things. So, instead of writing about my own current gripes, I am going to focus on solving a problem that is happening with my work environment. Some background information - Every other year, our current principal finds an "inspirational" book for the entire faculty to read. This year's book is " The Energy Bus ," by Jon Gordon. If you haven't read it, I found it to be quite interesting and an easy read. It took me an hour to read (and take notes), and we are starting to put the rules of the book into place at my facility. Enter the difficulty. We've been invited to "get on the bus" with a set of nebulous goals that are framed similar to "we want to do better." We've ...