music, therapy, and me

I made a bit of progress this week on my current visual aid organization system. I sorted the visual aids into different boxes and brought some rainbow photo card cases that are currently labelled and starting to be filled. I am excited that things are starting to come together the way that I want things to be. I wish I could say the same thing about my house. I am craving order right now, and I am not finding much of it around me. So, the progress that I have made is moving me towards finding that order. I have found a couple of categories for my boxes. I have songs, music things, games, tools, and visuals. I haven't been able to find my large sticker paper, so I have not made my labels for the boxes themselves, but I now have my categories. Progress! My photo card cases are also labelled. I have one for miscellaneous cards. I have one for emotion cards (I have tons of those!). I have one for music cards. Some of them are song cards, some are instrument cards, some are music game ...

I am currently in the "I just want this to be finished" part of my move. I ended up getting about 2/3 of my junk moved over to the house on Wednesday, but that means that there is still 1/3 left. There are some small modular shelving units left over there, one bookshelf, and a whole slew of bath, kitchen, and instrument things that need to be packed up and moved over. Almost everything is portable, but I still have to go over there and get things finished up. I have no motivation to do any of the things that I need to do. I put up most of my crafting storage yesterday during my Thanksgiving. I now have a wall of white modular furniture shelving and my large television. I also have my computer desk set up with my door desktop and the black bookshelves as supports for the desktop. I am starting my zone organization system up. The markers are going on the left side of the storage - the paper is going on the small shoe holders that are under the television. I am going slowly, but...

Psychophysiological Foundations of Music - page 97 of Emotional Processes in Music Therapy , by John Pellitteri. Please forgive me if this is a bit outline-ish rather than discourse. I am trying to get back into the habit of reading these music therapy texts so I can finish this particular one before the end of the year. (Remember my January goal of reading 13 music therapy texts this year??? What a silly MJ that was! If I finish this one, I will be finished with exactly 3 texts!) As a result of being a bit of a reading slacker, I am trying to get things going a bit more. So, I will probably be outlining rather than talking about what I am reading... P. 97 - " In clinical interventions the music therapist intervenes in a manner that impacts one or more of these psychophysiological processes." - yep. By the way, the pp processes that are referred to are physiological, cognitive, social, and behavioral. Changes in the processes bring about changes in emotions that can provide t...

My posts for the past two days have been nothing but complaining about all the stuff happening in my life, so I have been at a loss about what to write that isn't just me being in the throes of grief and constant stress. So, this is me trying to acknowledge what is going on in my life while still trying to present a firm and calm position. It is not going to be easy. The latest stressors that have appeared are broken toilets in my home and my sister's home being in the path of a wildfire. Ugh. We have had enough going on.  Anyway... Let's see if I can come up with something to write about that is not all about me. I'm tired of writing about these things, so it is time to take a step towards finding different content topics. Julie Palmieri over at Serenade Designs often offers suggestions for blog posts and different marketing ploys, and I enjoy reading those suggestions. I do not often write about her ideas or use them in my own posts, but they are out there for anyone ...

This is exactly how much I accomplished yesterday on my Music Therapy Maker project... I looked at the pictures that I have in my clip art collection. Ugh. It's no wonder I never get anything finished. I have little to no follow through! This is very frustrating for me because I love making things and I get so much joy out of it all, but I just don't do any of it! Okay, enough of the self-castigation and shame spiral. Yesterday's book sent out into the world . So, I had big plans but didn't get anywhere on THOSE plans. I did get some of the little things done that I spoke about. There are lights in my closet now and I started taking things out of the closet and folding clothing into summer and winter clothing. I also finished my laundry, made my bed, took my latest book project to the post office, went to the Dollar Tree and remembered one of the things that I wanted to get there, read a couple of YA books for fun, and watched entirely way too much television. So, thing...

I had a better yesterday than the day before, even though I broke a laptop display and then the same computer sat in a puddle of urine for an undetermined amount of time... Ah, the life of a music therapist that people rarely write about. Welcome to MY blog! Even with the destruction of my clinic computer (the one I use to play recorded music for my clients), yesterday was a better day than Tuesday. That happens often in my world - ups and downs all the time. My 2020 visual here needs to be updated a bit to include how 2021 has just taken me down a new track - 2020 is no longer a closed circuit but took a sharp turn into 2021 issues and events. I think this picture illustrates life pretty well - it is a series of loops and twists and turnabouts that just seem to happen without any sort of rhyme or reason. 2021 has continued the pattern here - there was a sharp fall after my father died with lots of bumps and twists in the (almost) three months since he passed away. Today is my parents...

Happy Spring Forward Day, fellow Americans! If you are living somewhere else in the world, then enjoy your full night of sleep!! We have lost one hour this morning, so it will be interesting to see who makes it to a late morning church service today. There is always someone who comes barreling in at what they think is 30 minutes early to a service to find that we are in the middle of our processes. Fortunately, that hasn't been me... ANYWAY... I feel that I got lots finished yesterday on my first day of setting goals for this next week. I contacted lenders to start the process of moving into a home of my own - that was the biggest chore that I had in front of me. I hate having to talk about finances, but it is a necessary thing when you are trying to buy a home. I now have three appointments to talk to folks tomorrow. I have my cell phone all charged up so I can talk to these folks. I am flying into this situation blindly, not really knowing what is going to be happening in the nex...

I did a bit of playing with paper yesterday. I've been trying out different techniques to see what hurts my fingers and what I can do with recovering tendon issues and a healed fracture, and I completed a project for a SkillShare Class that I signed up for a while ago. Here is the video of my most recent project - a junk journal. I took bits and pieces of paper that I had around the house and made them into a journal of sorts. This project is not finished - the only thing done is the construction of the book itself. True junk journalers then take their books and make them into masterpieces of painting, journaling, ephemera, and memories. I don't usually do that much with the things that I make, but I am going to try with this book. It is WAY out of my comfort zone, but that is what this year is all about for me - deepening my experiences to experience things more. For some reason, actually using a book that I make is difficult, but it was nice to know that I could assemble this...

It is a bit past the halfway part of my new monthly goal setting process. I decided last month that it might be better if I set goals in the midst of my angsty cycle rather than in my energetic cycle. So, I sat down on the 15th to set some goals for this month. I have been working on three different goals - one was to get gifts for my family members to my family members - I'm at about 65% done with that one - 9 days to go to accomplish that goal. My other two goals are not as time bound or as time specific. The first goal is to make Saturdays a true day of rest. I no longer have a day in my schedule where I have no work obligations at all. I am trying to get my part-time job obligations going before Saturday. I am not doing well with this goal. I have not managed to get my video work done before Saturdays yet. The last goal is to declutter. One of my goals will always be to declutter. This goal has actually been helped significantly by the entire other topic of this post - working ...

I am nearing the end of my Thanksgiving break, and I have made a bit of progress on my decluttering goal for the week. I have cleared out enough of the craft room so that the vacuum can move around freely, and I am slowly working on the front room. I have spent some of my time working, but I have spent lots more time resting. In the midst of all my decluttering, I have found many half finished ideas for songs and therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). I need to make a system for how to take these ideas and finish them up...so many ideas that aren't ready for release into the world. I am working on sing about march , my current sing about mini edition for my subscribers. If you are interested in getting 4-6 TMEs, suggested music lists, and related visual aids sent straight to your inbox every month, please consider subscribing. The price is just $9.00USD/month!  I like working three months in advance when designing these packets. I figure that planning this far in advance allows me...

Can you believe it?? The last quarter of this strange year started yesterday, and I've been sitting down with my various journals to plan out some goals and tasks that I want to accomplish. I did not do a good job on those goals in quarter three, but my energy is getting higher (the way it does once summer and the heat and humidity change into different patterns), so I thought it was time to reestablish my thoughts towards evolving into new patterns and practices. I am a planner and a bullet journaler. As I have been delving into the world of "how to be a bullet journaler," I have discovered that what I do is more a combination of bullet journaling as originally designed by Ryder Carroll and decorative planning which tends to be colorful and artistic. I am firmly between those two systems. I do not draw much in my calendars and my books, but I do like using colors and stickers to decorate my to-do lists a bit more than the original guy did. I use a set pattern for my ...

This is my last (for now, at least) week of our adjusted schedule. If everything goes as planned, we will be welcoming back our day students and going back to our regular work schedule next Monday. I admit to some feelings that are coming up that surprise me. First, I am ready to get back to "normal" type work and sleep schedules, but I am also scared that this is temporary. Second, I am going to miss working for four hours a day and then getting home in the early afternoon. I will need to get back to a full-day's schedule attitude and routine. I hope that it will be the last change to how we do things at my job, but my gut tells me that it will not. I will miss being more rested than usual during the summer (when I tend to get Seasonal Affective Disorder). I will also miss the smaller class size and caseload. I am happy about this upcoming return for several reasons as well - my interns are back! I have had a chance to do music therapy for a sustained amount of time with...

May has flown by, hasn't it? March and April seemed to drag along, but May has just whooshed past me in a blur. I wonder if this indicates that I have become used to my new routine and it is now just what I do rather than something different. Hmm. I am sitting down with my bullet journal to do some planning for the next three months. My performance on my last quarter's goals was abysmal. This past quarter included lots of changes and panic and shifting from one thought to a completely different one in the blink of an eye, so I did not really move forward on many of my goals and objectives. As I look at my progress and my failings, I have to remind myself that global pandemics happen and can change everything. I have done some of the things that I set out to do three months ago. I have maintained my sing about mini edition subscriptions. I have been engaged in being the music therapist as my intern has been in quarantine (facility requirements). I have been saving money and...

I often find myself writing a post titled this at about this time every year. It is almost the end of the regular school year - we have three more days - and I usually start my reflection process a little before all of this stuff happens, but this is not a usual type of year, so I'm a bit late. One of the things that always goes through my head at this point of the school year is how much my teachers must have been happy to see the end of me and my classmates every year. Until I started to work in a school, I did not realize that teachers looked forward to the same things that I looked forward to - the start of school, breaks, the end of every year. Now, my students have a little bit of a different type of situation since we don't really have grades or the end of anything, but I still feel those same feelings of excitement and closure every year that I am a school-based music therapist. This year is a little bit different but only a little bit because I am still working i...

My word for 2020 is "evolve." I spent a long time thinking and brainstorming and dreaming and thinking some more about what word I wanted to use to guide me into the new year, decade, and personal age decade. After many different thoughts, I finally decided that this word encompassed everything that I wanted from myself. So, I selected the word "evolve" as my guiding word for the year. I also decided that the word "evolve" was a purple type of word. I'm not sure why, but it felt right. This interests me because I have never had a word/color association happen so strongly, but this is a purple word. Everything that has to do with my word of the year will be in purple. Purple is my sister's favorite color and the color of my alma mater's biggest local rival so using this color is a bit of a difficult thing for me, but "evolve" is purple. End of story. I am currently sitting in my home, watching the snow fall, and thinking abou...

My to-do list is getting smaller. I like to cross things off my list of things that I need to, have to, should finish up, and this morning, I can cross off the biggest task that I had in front of me. That makes me feel so wonderful! This is one of the reasons that I use a planner to organize my things to do and things done. I can see when I've made progress on a project or task, and I can also see what I need to do next. This visual representation is the way I can organize my self and my progress best. For some reason, electronic tracking systems are not good for me. I need paper and pens to keep track of what I am doing. It is time for a goal check. This is something that I do every so often to keep myself on track for things that I want to do and for things that I have done. My most immediate goal for today - that of finishing a project for my business - is finished for this month, but it is not over. This is an on-going type of project. Now that this month's contribu...

On my desk, I have a shelf where I put my laptop so I can see things on the screen and so I can have the camera at eye level for filming things that all that stuff. The shelf itself is something I rigged from the extra shelf from a old bookshelf and empty Pringles cans that I will eventually cover with decorative elements or something but that just sit on the desk, keeping the shelf up high. All that just to tell you that I have a post-it note that is on the far right side of that shelf. The note has (in my sloppy handwriting reserved for writing things quickly) the following statement - "slow progress is STILL progress." I'm not sure where I saw this first, but it really has been a good thought for me in the past several months. I often find myself looking at it when I am sitting in front of the computer, wondering if I will ever find something to write about on my blog or as I am trying to think about my future. (Expect lots of these types of thinking posts this yea...

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...