music, therapy, and me

It's the beginning of the month which means little around here except that it is time to get my month in order. If you are familiar with my blog and way of doing things, then you know that I am a pen and paper person rather than a digital calendar person. I have been using an agenda or planner for most of my life, and I enjoy the routine of writing things down. I have two planners that I design and use on a regular basis. The first is my personal planner. I keep track of chores, appointments, celebrations, and all sorts of stuff in that calendar. My current personal planner is a red covered dot grid journal that I bought from Michaels when they had a buy one, get one sale. I tend to stock up on blank books when those types of sales happen. I have a set pattern for setting up this planner - one week per spread with limited changes to the format. My second journal is my work planner. This is the one that has changed the most recently because my work has shifted from an out-of-home jo...

It has been and interesting couple of days around here - I have been trying to find a copy of my birth certificate so I can send in my pension paperwork. I know I have three of them somewhere, but I cannot locate them anywhere. I have since purchased a fire-safe lock box to put these types of things in, but it doesn't arrive until Tuesday. After that, I will put the paperwork I have into that box so they are all contained in the same place. I am frustrated with myself at this point due to this, but I can always order more, if I need to. The thing is that I know I had them when I renewed my passport, and I have the new passport and the old one, so I know that my certificate was returned at some point, but I just cannot find the copy anywhere I thought it would be. Blech. I have, however, found lots of other things in my searches through my boxes of stuff. I need so much more space for all the junk that I have around me, but that isn't going to happen. I need to be downsizing. Th...

... and I am sure that you are wondering? "What?????" Let me explain. Way back, many years ago, the Dollar Tree started selling die-cut collections of large visuals that had a common theme. I bought them all and then laminated them all. I have two file boxes full of laminated die-cuts that I have used over and over again for many years. My Dollar Tree no longer offers those packs of 10 die-cuts for a dollar, and I miss getting new die-cuts when I go to buy things for work. Oh well. Anyway, these die-cuts fit inside file folders, so the boxes that I have contain many themed collections to go with many of the TMEs that I have either created or adopted over the years. I have a folder with farm visuals and another one with continents. Chances are that I have die-cuts that work with just about every TME that I have designed to use visual aids. I also have three other boxes with other types of visuals, tools, and song sheets. I put them all into my car yesterday which opened up lot...

Today is the first, official day of my Fall Break, and the second day of being at home. Since everyone finished their progress reports, we were able to work from home yesterday, and I DID! I started off the day with some blogging (before work hours, of course!), and then followed up with some TPT exploration as I worked on a list of things to include in my next visual aid creation. I started with looking to see what sorts of music schedules are out there, and there aren't many. I remembered that I had purchased one from TPT that merged music education with special education, so I went back into my purchases and found all sorts of things that I already own. That started a marathon printing session, and while printing, I also remembered that I wanted to find some different language "goodbye" phrases to go with my "hello" phrases. I ended up spending $13.30 for four different resources that I will print out when I get to work. After the printing was finished, I sta...

Oh, dear.  My to-do lists are getting longer and longer every moment as I sit in my office and look around all the stuff that is piled in somewhat organized piles waiting to be placed in other places. I am experiencing a bit of overwhelm right now. I have already started a load of dishes, had breakfast, dithered around and around, figured out driving times for an upcoming trip, and am now sitting down to write this post. I tend to get bogged down in planning rather than the doing process - especially when it comes to cleaning and clearing! I want to organize, but I tend to stuff things rather than take the time to organize. So, today will be another experiment. I have nine plastic totes - the bigguns - that I am going to use better. My most recent water accident has shown me that plastic totes are better than the boxes, so things are going into plastic totes. I want to label what is in each tote as I put things in. I have some 4X6 index cards that I will use. I can also scan those ...

It is day five of break. I have five days left before I head back to our extended school year, summer schedule. Today is going to be a day for sorting out homeowners insurance things, getting my medications refilled, and taking a shower - NOT in that order!!  Yesterday, I spent most of the day crying. I don't know why I was so tearful, but I was just crying and crying at nothing and everything. I ate a good breakfast, watched entirely too much trash social media, and then nearly finished an ugly crochet basket that I have been working on. I have to attach the handles before it is completely finished. I want some baskets for my home, so I am going to make them. I have lots of inherited yarn that I will never really use for other projects, so I am going to use those skeins to make my baskets. I do not need things to look coordinated or even pretty - just finished. So, I am going through the bags and bags of yarn that I have collected to make my baskets. This first one is made up of a...

Before we get into today's glimpse into the past, I want to thank you for reading this post. I know that there are times when this blog has nothing to do with anything other than me, but I appreciate the views every single day. My vacation/holiday has ended, so it is time to get back into my work routine. So, let's get back into the routine today with a glimpse back to a post in February 2018 - #1787 . I find it interesting that I have almost doubled the number of posts since back then in 2018. Just something that makes me think about how much this blog works for me.  Focus, MJ. The post from February 15, 2018 was a Thoughtful Thursday post. It was a two-part post - something that I do very rarely. I wrote a bit in the morning and then returned to the post later in the afternoon. It had been one of the days where I was dreading the interactions and the particular group of clients who were coming to see me. Sound familiar? I have these types of days still. Nice to know that som...

Well, everyone. My Wednesday was better than I thought it would be - the student who is giving me the most challenge was absent. The rest of the class was fine except for the BHT who spent the entire session on a cellphone with a client rather than encouraging the client to engage in music therapy. I have to talk to the principal about this... ugh. So, Wednesday went well. We have three groups today and three individuals, so it is a light session day. This means that I can finish the binder page activities that I am making for our classrooms. I can also keep working on the file folder activity innards (our post-graduate program is working on the file folder laminating - I have lots of pieces to cut out and add Velcro to before those folders come back to me - 75 folders worth! I have been busy with these things. I am currently contemplating how to distribute these binder pages and activities to the four classrooms that seem to need them. There are some things that will not really work f...

Today is the day that I write about the systems that I have in my life that help me do the job of being a music therapist. I have written many posts about various things that I do as a music therapist, but I am always interested in how others organize their stuff and their ways of doing things as music therapists. My primary ways to organize things - anything - include color-coding and thematic groupings. I use color to indicate some of these groupings so I can find things easily (or more easily, I guess). I also like to put things together based on how I use them. It is not usually evident to others why I have a classroom set of shaker eggs along with rhythm sticks and wrist bells grouped together in one box. For me, it makes sense because I use those instruments more than others. Other people do not always understand my logic, but my organization does not have to make sense to anyone other me. My current project (AKA, putting the storage room back together before 10:20 this morning) ...

As I am rooting through all of my stuff - break is almost over and things are a mess here - I have found that my organizational style is that of grouping or organizing by category. I tend to think of function or when and where I use things as my categories, so I have everything that I need when I am doing a particular thing or am in a particular situation. My categories do not always make sense to other people (as evidenced by how my sister set up my kitchen versus how I am changing what she has done into what I want to do), but they make logical sense to me, so I continue. The cabinets in my music therapy space are a perfect example of how I organize things. I have four large cabinets in my music therapy room. Each cabinet has a function. One cabinet stores all the string instruments that I have in my practice. The guitars, ukuleles, and violins live in one place so I can access them when I need them but can contain them the rest of the time. The second cabinet stores all of my manipu...

My latest system revamp, my visual aid system, has stalled over the past several weeks. One of those weeks was a break from work, so I get some credit for not working during that week. One of the other weeks, I was alone in the music therapy clinic - my intern was sick, so I had to do my ENTIRE job and had less time to sit and move visuals around. This week, I have wrenched my back and cannot pick things up. I know, excuses, excuses, excuses. It is time to get back into this quest - the quest to have my visual aids arranged a bit more than they have ever been before!! I anticipate that I will be spending more time in my office starting next week, so it is time to plan the next steps in my journey to better organization. First, though, it is important to see what I have already accomplished. I have filled up the boxes with visual aids that used to be in my cabinet. I am slowly finding card sets and am putting them in the card boxes with labels! I have decided how I am storing materials ...

I am currently in the middle of cataloging my visual aids. Now, please know that not all music therapists have several cabinets of visuals sitting around their music therapy spaces, but I would venture to say that most music therapists have several cabinets (or bags, or boxes, or rooms) full of other things (sheet music, CDs, instruments) that could always use a good organization system, so I am going to use my visuals as a starting point for my discussion here. Be patient with me. I will eventually get to the point. So, I enjoy making and using visual aids with my clients. I have always enjoyed teacher stores, bulletin board designs, and clip art, and that enjoyment has found a place in my music therapy practice.  NOTE: I do not think that music therapy interventions require visuals - in fact, I want to make sure that the visuals only support the music therapy interventions -- not be the reason for the intervention. There is a distinction in my head, just so you know. I have many ...

One of my (currently) empty cabinets If you read my blog on a regular basis, then you know that I am constantly and continuously challenged by my Pretty Pinterest Province goal. I have just decided that I will call this quest this particular phrase from now on. You see, I crave an environment where everything has a place and it all looks neat and coordinated. My problem? Lack of follow through and less money than I would like to devote to this particular Pretty Pinterest Province of mine. This new house of mine is an opportunity to create the type of world that I crave. I am starting by creating zones in my new house (which I should be getting keys for in [gulp] five days!!) for various types of things that I want to do. There are four bedrooms. Bedroom #1 is mine, and it will be for dressing and sleeping. I want this bedroom to be a place without a screen (we will see how long that lasts) and for relaxing. So, bedroom #1 will be a relaxation zone. Bedroom #2 will be a guest room and s...

I am frustrated. This probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to those of you who have been reading my posts lately, but it might surprise new readers (Hi, there, new reader!) that I am frustrated with the world of music therapy in general these days. Now, my own job is fine (just got carpet in my room), but I am extremely frustrated with things happening in our professional organization, the American Music Therapy Association. I am tired of people who decide not to be members of the organization making demands on what my organization does.  I do not have the right to demand that the Canadian Music Therapy Association do anything.  The reason? I am not a member of the Canadian Music Therapy Association ! Why do we feel that we have to cater to the demands of people who do not pay money to be members? Why do we feel that we have to change everything to accommodate the demands of those who have chosen NOT to be part of our group? Is this an example of being a therapist getti...

Last week, I wrote a bit about my latest quest to organize myself and my ideas. This has come out of many years of using different systems and finding that I didn't keep going with any of them. I turned to what I do well - planning in my planners - and adapted that idea into a new system. It's been happening for two weeks now, so I'm feeling pretty good about this particular system. (If you are interested in reading the original post, click here .)  So, it has been another week of brainstorming and figuring things out on paper in my little book. I keep it in my backpack so I can transport it from work to home and back again due to the fact that ideas come to me at all times. I have found several song post-its that have made their ways into the TME book for storage until I transcribe them into my TME database. My ideas book has several thoughts about upcoming uses for my new technology. My calendar book is the most unused part of the book so far, but I anticipate it will be ...