music, therapy, and me

It is Sunday, so I am taking a glimpse at a random post from past me. Today's post (from the random number generator) was #1797 . I looked at the archives and found that this post was written on March 8, 2018 and was all about taking time to make things work. This same topic comes up again and again for me. Do I rush through something because I have to have some sort of product at the end of the process, or do I take the time to do things with thought and care? One thing that I have found is that rushing often means having to go back and fix things which requires undoing and more time. I think one of the benefits of living through a global pandemic where my job situation changed about every six weeks for about 8 months before going back to the "new normal" was that I learned to let some things go. I no longer want to do everything for everyone all the time. I am better about saying "no" when I need to do so. I was able to find new foci for my time and energy. I...

As you know, I am working on strengthening the communication options that my clients can access during music therapy sessions by reworking my binder system. I made some progress yesterday towards my goal, but found that the ideas that I had about putting together said binders just didn't work, so I am not finished, and I am back to the beginning. Let me tell you a bit more... Yesterday, before I left for work, I printed out seven copies of my binder pages. I put together this project about a year ago when I was part of the Berklee Music Education and Special Needs course, but I haven't made the time to put those binders together. In the past, I have used regular three-ring binders to store my initial communication pages. Each binder tends to last about three months before it is completely ruined by my clients. I have a couple of clients who will walk out of their way when they enter the music therapy room to walk on top of the binders. If the binders are not on the floor when t...