music, therapy, and me

It is Saturday again, and I have spent the past three hours sitting up at my computer (while my medication dissolves in my stomach and doesn't cause additional issues) writing a silly project of mine. I am enjoying this project, but I'm not going to talk about it much - other than just doing it. I am having fun, and that is the most important part of any creative process. Have you ever had to do something that just absolutely was no fun at all? My thesis topic was that for me. I did not like the project at all, but I went through it because I had a promise that I could do something that I liked for my next project. The entire thing was a misery from beginning to end. I finished it and earned my degree, but I did not have fun. Fun is important when you are creating. If something isn't fun, there isn't much motivation to doing that something. I wonder if that is one of the reasons that my interns don't like writing TME plans. Do they not find it fun to write songs or ...

It is time to be stuck in my office more than I am actually working with clients right now, so I will be taking some time to update my therapeutic music experience (TME) database. I am several interns behind on cataloguing and linking things into my database, so it is way past time to get this finished...well, started. I love the memories that come up when I delve into my TMEs. I get a chance to remember interns who are well-seasoned professionals now. I get to remember clients who are in their late 30's and 40's as well as the ones that are still in their teens. I stroll down memory lane while I am updating ideas and looking through different ideas. I have so many ideas generated by so many music therapists over the past decades that I can never get through them all! I love this type of idea bank to deposit ideas into and to withdraw from whenever I am in need of some inspiration. So, what does this all look like? Well, it has varied greatly over the years, but I now have a sy...

I get half a day off this week, disguised as a full day off because I worked an additional half day last week and will be doing the rest of the half day as a 12-hour day this week. I am not really looking forward to it, but it is a necessary thing, I guess. It was easier when I had my church job on Wednesday evenings and worked the extra hours during the entire week rather than having to sit through mindless and irrelevant meetings with the faculty. Alas, that is no longer the case since my Thursday evening job has turned into a video interaction, so I don't even have that obligation to keep me safe from the mindlessness. Oh well. During this four and a half day work week, I am going to be working on a new series of videos reserved completely for my co-workers' use. Since I cannot expand my services into individual sessions due to COVID restrictions and the schedule that I have for groups, I am facing lots of time just sitting being paid for doing nothing. This does not sit wel...

Yesterday was my birthday, and I got some new instruments! I tried to post some videos, but they were a bit too big for Blogger to process, so here are some pictures of my new instruments for your perusal!! When I first started my life as a music therapy major, my family members asked me what they could give me that would enrich my training and services for my clients. I told them any sort of music or instrument or recording or sheet music that they could find. They were a bit hesitant to start off with, mainly because they didn't want to give me things that I already had. I was fine with getting duplicates, but they didn't want to do that. So, I gave folks some instructions. "Go to the $3 bin at any store and grab a bunch of random CDs. I will use music from all genres and time periods and styles. Don't spend too much money on this type of music - most of the time, the best music comes from the universe through seemingly random manners." "Head down ...

Over these past two weeks (the amount of time that I've been doing a different type of work schedule), I've been thinking about what I'm going to be doing in the future. I am an internship director, and I am contemplating what sorts of things I need to prepare future interns to do in a post-coronavirus world. Before all this started, I didn't focus on the thought of telehealth therapy at all. It wasn't a consideration in my particular job, and I don't like spending tons of time editing and recording videos, so I really just ignored the need for these types of thoughts in my training program. No more. It has become evident that we need to be thinking about this since it has happened and many of us have been scrambling to figure out what this entire type of therapy is and what we can and should be doing. Now, my thoughts are still jumbled together and not really clear yet, but this blog is a place where I work through my thoughts, so here I go. It is ...

The day after Christmas is always one of reflection for me. I do as much as I can to enjoy the actual day itself - not many pictures or rituals other than the ones that my family has always completed - and very little in the way of cataloging or thinking about work stuff. The next day, however, I am usually awake way before any other member of my family - two hour time difference, and I don't acclimatize to sleeping in well - so I spend most of my time thinking about the holiday and about all the things I want to get finished during my break from work. It almost always includes things for work as well as thing for my home - which is currently far away from where I am.  Today's reflection is coming from a place of jet lag. I have five days of being here with my family - loose plans for two of those days - lots of time of shopping with my mom and my sister - we have a deal: I go to two stores without complaining. After two? They can either put up with my crankiness or take me...

I want to take myself out of a writing rut that I'm bumping around in these days. I have found that blog writing seems to be more interesting for me if I have about three days that are dedicated to posts with a common title and the other four days are open to whatever I want to write about. I already have Synthesis Sundays going on and there's Thoughtful Thursday (something that needs to be developed a bit more to make it a true series), but I want a new topic for Tuesdays. Now, I have done Tuesday series posts before. I used to do (Therapeutic Music Experience) TME Tuesdays where I offered up a completely original thing to do with clients. I adjusted that a bit for (New to ME) "NTM" TME Tuesdays - same type of idea. I am now tired of these series, so I am in search of something a bit more interesting to me. Now one of my little rules (that nobody notices except for me) is that my series have to have alliterative titles. Hence Synthesis Sunday and Thoughtful Thurs...