music, therapy, and me

It is Friday again, and lots has happened to my loved ones this week that has affected me a bit. I am separated from the situations since I am far away, but I have engaged in phone support while waiting to hear if I will be called for jury duty here at home. As I wrote about yesterday, I am struggling with the change of routine that I have now. I am trying to figure out how I am going to work both here at home and outside of my home. One of the things that I want to get into doing is professional development on a daily basis. I am a member of Skillshare, so there are many courses available to me, but I have to actually open them up and do the work. I have also signed up for a consulting class that I need to start because my access goes away in four months, and it cost lots of money. I am trying to figure out how to get into the course right now because I only have four months left!! I am trying to get back into a routine that makes sense for me. This has been the most difficult part of...

It is the Music for Kiddos symposium day! I am at home, sitting in front of my computer in my pjs, and getting ready for a day of learning. I do not have to go to work today, so I am taking a leisurely morning. I will have 11 hours of continuing education to get through by the end of today. That's lots of time to sit in front of the computer, so I might not watch everything today. I prefer watching things live, but if my body cannot handle it, then my body cannot handle it. It is always nice when there is an opportunity to watch via recording later on. I wonder if I can get my little laptop to stream while I use my big computer for working on other tasks... Ideally, I would be able to watch the symposium on my television, but I haven't figured out how to screencast things to my older televisions. I know that there has to be a way, but I have started this a bit too late to figure it out right now. A quick search of my Roku has identified some screen mirroring apps, but they requ...

To be completely honest, I am currently just getting through my library books right now. I have finished seven of them, have three more to read, and twelve more days to finish them up before I need to turn them back in. I will finish them before that time, but not until this weekend. It is interesting that when I try to read anything at work, attempting to gain some sunshine and get away from my desk, all I get are condescending and snotty comments. People walk past saying, "Gee, must be nice to have extra time where you can just sit and read." This always rubs me the wrong way because I am taking my 25-minute duty free lunch that is part of the contract that is between myself and my school district. I get to choose when and how I take that time. I don't leave my office much because of the attitude that I get when I leave my space. All I can think is, "Well, ____. If you were as efficient in your job as I am in mine, you would have some time to take lunch as well, an...

I am taking the next two Fridays off for professional development and for collecting some CMTEs for this certification year. I am doing this for several reasons. First, by taking these next two Fridays, I will only miss one clinical session. Second, by taking the second Friday, I will miss having to go to the circus. The circus is a source of trauma for both myself and my mother. I am the reason that my siblings never went to the circus with our family. Neither Mom nor I could handle a repeat of what happened the day we went when I was a toddler! Sorry, siblings, but I'm not all that sorry, if you know what I mean! For some reason, the administrators at my facility are REALLY good at scheduling mandatory participation for my trauma triggers. To avoid the trauma response in myself, I have had to do things like this - take professional time to avoid being placed in situations where my trauma experiences take over my rational mind. I don't share that I am filled with fear when I h...

It is Saturday, and my professional development days are officially over. I didn't write yesterday because I was busy making worship plans for Sunday since I am covering the service for our pastor who has a family situation. I focused on those plans instead of writing on the blog. I have finished all of the planning (and the sermon) up now, so I can get back to what I want to focus on - my professional development days. This time away from work and focused on my professional development has been very valuable. I have organized my space and my mind a bit. I have also spent some time in active self-care and some fun. I am looking forward to doing this again this upcoming week with the holiday coming. There is something more refreshing about five days at home than two weeks off to some other location. I am going to spend time this week on home things - not professional development things, but I am sure that some of the professional stuff will leak in, just like personal stuff happened...

I did not register for the AMTA Symposium which happened this week. I didn't register because I was not interested in the topics presented. While I continue to support the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) with my membership dues and attendance at some events, I have become much more finicky when it comes to paying money for continuing education and conferences. I feel like I have become a crusty old music therapist - someone who has seen it all and feels like there is nothing new out there to learn. Now, I know that is not the case, but I am just tired of hearing the same old things from the same old people. I am tired of spending tons of money to not take anything back with me to my music therapy job. So, I haven't been to an AMTA conference in a long time - even before the pandemic happened. (Wait, that's not true - I "went" to conference either last year or the year before that...) I am in the middle of my professional development days right now. Yeste...

A while back, I decided that it was time to start reading for music therapy enrichment again. Now, I have done this particular thing many times over my career - with varying levels of success, but I feel that this is one way that I can continue to grow as a music therapist even while conferences are being canceled and things are a bit uncertain in the American music therapy world. There are always books - that is one of my personal mantras as well - there are always books. I tend to fall back into books when I need to do so. Right now, family matters are taking over most of my emotional bandwidth, so reading is something that I can do while still engaging in fretful worrying and hypothetical planning. I have decided that I do not have to take notes when I am reading. Before, I insisted on taking notes because "that's what you do when you are reading for research." Then, I realized that I am no longer required to do research. I can just read. So, notes are no longer requir...

Hello, all. It has been quite a bit of time since I have blogged, and I am happy to be able to be back at the computer and writing something. I threw my back out and have not been able to sit, stand, walk, or lie down without extreme pain for the past two weeks...or is it three weeks? I am not really all that sure what the timing is, but it has been a long time. I have tried to blog, but I have not been able to sit for long enough to do anything. I have also been saving as much energy as possible for work - I spent an entire week at home because I couldn't drive. It has been quite the adventure in pain and inability to do things - all sorts of things. I now go to physical therapy for my back, and I am waiting for my insurance to deny the ordered lumbar MRI to see what is going on in my lower back. I assume that they will deny it since they have denied every other diagnostic test that my doctors have ordered over the past three years. That, however, is another story. I am getting re...

I took a day off from work yesterday to catch up on some professional development that I have neglected lately. I spent most of the day waiting for the link to the sessions that I wanted - one of the things that happens when you do your development on a day when the other registrant in your party works in a different time zone - but I did get to see some of the sessions that I have highlighted. I have more to watch today, and I am looking forward to it. The best session from yesterday's viewing was a discussion from Jennifer Gonzalez, the editor of the blog Cult of Pedagogy . This is one of the blogs that I have followed in the past - I don't much at the moment because I do not like how the blog is arranged - just me being picky - but the information shared is always thought provoking for me. The presentation from yesterday was exactly what has been floating around in the back of my mind for the last 13 months -  How will we take the lessons that we have learned about what we h...

I am doing it. I am taking two professional development days in the middle of this week to finish up some training that I have signed up for and have not been able to access because I just haven't had the timing right. My intern will be in training this week, so it is the perfect time to take two days off to do some of my own. This is a perk of my job. I get some days every year for professional development beyond the inservice training that the school offers and requires. It is nice to have some flexibility with my training days, and I am going to take Wednesday and Thursday to catch up with my training hours. My facility does not pay any of the fees associated with training access, but they do count my hours as work time, so I get paid for them. This year's professional focus is on telehealth. I am learning about what others can and cannot do as educators so I can enrich my clinical presence in this area. This has little relevance to how my primary job has been going in this ...

My word for this year is "Evolve." I selected the word at the end of last year as a way to focus my energies on the things I think are really important to me - learning, growth, and enjoyment of life. I have done pretty well with this word as a guide, especially considering what has been happening in this 2020 year, so I am continuing to make it a focus for myself. This word has led me to do some things that I would have been scared to do if I didn't have this inspiration prodding me along. Now, many of these things did not work out the way I thought they would (again, 2020), but I put myself out there and tried to grow!! I feel like I am doing my part to keep this word a part of my focus. I have been thinking about my professional evolution lately. I feel a bit stagnant in how I am doing my job lately. I feel like I am wasting time, and that is a feeling that I do not like in myself. I need a professional goal and something to challenge me while I'm at work. Now, don...

Things are getting done. I am pleased to see that my to-do list is shrinking a bit as things are being crossed off and other things are being placed on the list.  I managed to finish my first Sunday School video yesterday (the BIG task I was putting off due to my feelings that I might fail...). There are things that need to improve, but I think it wasn't all that bad for a first attempt and for making something up from scratch. We will see if anyone actually looks at it. I already have ideas for the next round. I have one big thing on my list for today - finish my sing about mini edition for January 2021. It gets released tomorrow, so I need to finish it up. That is added to today's list along with laundry and dishes and getting more done in the craft room. My goal is to get enough of the room picked up so I can start up my robot vacuum, Huey, and get him going again.  I like lists, mainly because (I think) I am a visual person. I enjoy seeing my to-dos getting smaller and th...

It is time to start my summer music therapy reading list. I have a new notebook for taking notes (I filled up the first one!), and I am looking at some more time with my modified work schedule, so I want to do something productive for my professional development. I go to my music therapy bookshelf to find something to read and think about... I think I will start with information from the Neurologic Music Therapy training by Michael Thaut. I took this course a long time ago, but I know that some of the information offered then will still be relevant. I would like to purchase some of the more recent texts that Thaut has produced, but I'm not going to spend the capital at the moment. I will start with the information that I have at hand. My first foray into professional development reading will be the Training Manual for Neurologic Music Therapy. Time to get my supplies ready. Five different types of post-it notes (I have LOTS of cute ones because of my stationery subscriptions). I th...

Today will be a day of conference preparation and continuing education thoughts and work. I had originally arranged for this day off significantly before all this happened, and I decided to continue to take this day as a preparation day yesterday when I realized that I had lots to do to get myself ready for conference. Most of what I will be doing on this day involves continuing education in one form or another, so I think it definitely falls under the category of professional development. If you haven't heard yet, the AMTA national conference is going to be online this year. I am actually pretty excited about this. Nothing will change the excitement of being completely surrounded by living, breathing music therapists, but AMTA is FINALLY joining The Online Conference for Music Therapy, inc. in the 21st century! Welcome!! I am going to spend some time sending in presentation proposals to AMTA today. I have a couple of ideas (finally) rattling around my brain that I can easily ...

The view from my sister's school. It is that time of year. It is time for me to start thinking about the past year and how I want to change things in the upcoming year. The fact that this year (in my opinion) starts a new decade of my life and development is starting to weigh heavily on my thoughts about who I am and what I want to do and where I want to go. So...here it is...my review of 2019. Most of this year was a good one for me. My word of the year, COURAGE, led me to taking courses that I would never have considered before. I took two business-oriented courses that challenged me to look at what I have already done and see what I want to do in a more clear manner. I have pushed myself to identify what I want to do and how I want to do it. I have developed plans that seem to be working, and I have followed through on all of my goals. I took a REAL vacation, and I did not go to a conference that has bored me in the past several years. My year was interrupted by health c...

It is almost time to move from the "teens" into the "twenties" of this century. This fact has been mostly lost to me until the start of this past month when I finally put together that not only is this the end of the year but the decade as well. Mind blown over here! You would think that I would be a bit more on the ball, but I haven't really been thinking much outside my own four walls lately. Now that I'm coming out of my fog, I am noticing those things that others have realized for years now. I digress (but what else is new?). This decade has been an interesting one, hasn't it? It has included all sorts of events and situations both in the bigger societal view and in the microcosm that is music therapy. We have weathered a storm of Master's Level Entry debates and debacles. In my opinion, we are on the verge of a split unless we reconfigure in a way that can sustain us as an organization. We have lots of people who seem to be focusing more o...

As you know, I am an opinionated music therapist who doesn't (really) hold back when it comes to writing this blog, so it should come as little to no surprise to you that I have written quite a bit about being a research-informed (my term) clinician. I often use this forum as a place to think through some of the ideas that I have and to figure out my positions on music therapy relevant topics. If you are interested in the system that I have developed for myself to help me figure out if the research I read has any direct relevance to my clinical situation, then feel free to read any of the posts listed below. I've been writing about this for about three years now, so there are lots of things to read. Most of this information is what is usually on my blog when I am trying to figure out things - my thought process as I developed this system, but the system does work for me, so it is something that has lasted for the past several years. It works for me. http://musictxandme.bl...

For a time now, I have been striving to increase my clinical creativity through developing new therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). I have been trying to find some "New to Me" TMEs to bring into my clinical practice to help me increase my repertoire for the benefit of my clients. This practice has been something that I come back to on a regular basis, and it seems to be helping me find some new ideas. My self-imposed rules are pretty arbitrary, but seem to work. The major rule is that I have to include some sort of therapeutic music experience that is something I haven't done before. It can be a TME written by someone else or it can be something that I've come up with on my own. The proviso that I can use something that someone else came up with has been the best decision I have made for this particular goal. I have tons of materials and resources, and it is fun to bring a new song, written by someone else, into my therapy setting to see what will happen. Many tim...

Today is the last day of my Fall Break, and I am getting ready to reveal my 2019-2020 professional goals to the world of this blog tomorrow, but today, I am focusing on what types of things I want to learn about this year. I try to expand my knowledge of music therapy as much as I can, but I tend to do better if I think through it all. Since I have decided not to go to the National Conference this year, I have decided to spend the money that I usually devote to that particular event on other forms of professional development. I've already spent about half of that money on a CMTE course for business development, so I have about half of that money for other pursuits. When I finish the business course and submit my CMTEs for being an internship supervisor, my 20 CMTEs for the year will be complete, but I will still be on the lookout for more educational opportunities. One of the things that I like to do is to delve into my library to enrich my knowledge of all things music thera...

It is a new month, and I am focusing on two things this month - eating fruits and vegetables daily and getting into an evening routine that includes making progress on my business goals. I am going to try these things because they are things that I didn't really get going during this past year. The veggie thing is because I want to eat better than I usually do, and the routine thing is because I don't want to be falling asleep at 7:00 any more. I'm thinking that 9:00 is a more respectable, grown-up type of bedtime, so I'm shooting for that! Like the good behaviorist I was trained to be, I have set up some objectives and rewards for myself as I strive to develop these habits. The first one, eating better, is something that will take lots of encouragement because it is not something I do easily. I like convenience and buying something quick is so much more convenient than making something every night. I usually cook lots on my day off and then freeze things into small...