music, therapy, and me

Ah. Today is deadline day, and I did NOT do any composing yesterday. My self-imposed deadline is gonna whoosh on by me unless I get going on it!  That's the problem with having no outside influences working on my deadlines. The only person who knows that I want to release things on the 5th and the 22nd is me -- well, and now you. I picked these dates randomly so there is no reason why I have to stick to those calendar dates other than I like structure to my days and my life. There you go. So, since I did not do my composition work yesterday, it is waiting for me today. I did manage to complete my other priority tasks on my planner entry, but composition just did not occur. I did not just fritter my time away, however. I sorted my permanent markers and put them into color sets into bags. I am feeling good about getting some of my stuff rearranged and sorted. That has freed up a little bit of space down here, and I am looking forward to getting more space to move and relax. Don't...

I have to write several songs today. I have a self-imposed and totally arbitrary deadline of tomorrow for sing about october , and I have a couple of ideas that need songs to go with them. It is time to get to the keyboard and start to write songs. I have the rough ideas started already. I used my project book for brainstorming and came up with several new ideas for the month. Now it is time to put the finishing touches on the edition and release it out into the world. This is the part of being a music therapist that I love the best right now - writing songs and finding things to do with those songs that support typical goals and objectives of clients from all sorts of populations! There is something really satisfying about writing music for clinical application that just fills my cup. I will grab my songwriting kit (more about that kit here ) because my composition process always starts by writing songs using a pencil and paper of some sort. I will sit down with the keyboard and just ...

Oh, dear. It is Friday, and I feel that the week went both fast and slow. Having less than usual numbers of sessions and students makes the week seem unfinished somehow. We get to do that again on the week of 19th for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. That type of schedule is difficult to navigate, especially when you are a creature of habit like me. So, it is now the end of my four-day work week. I have two groups and an individual on the schedule today. That's it. The rest of the time that I am at work needs to be productive, but I have not been actually productive lately. So, I will be using my 30 minutes of work with 30 minutes of something else. I am in between visual aid projects at the moment, so I really don't have anything sitting there waiting to be worked on. I guess one of my work tasks should be to print out more visual aids to work on in the next 22 weeks. Meanwhile, back here at home, things are just piling up around here. My Christmas boxes arrived on Monday, and I h...

Merry Christmas, to those of us who celebrate, and Happy Wednesday to those of us who do not! It is time to start one of my end-of-the year traditions - recaps and reveals for the next year. Today, let's recap this year a bit. I'm not going to sugarcoat it - 2025 was a rough year for me. The major headline is that my doctors found and then cut out my first bout with colon cancer. I am hoping that preventative colonoscopies will keep me from having to lose any more of my bowel (I've already had over 2 feet of large intestine surgically removed), but we will see. My grandmother died of complications with colon cancer and a work acquaintance of mine also recently passed away from the same thing, so this has been on my mind this year. I did not go on any trips this year. This is unusual since we (my Mom, my Sister, and I) are starting to take summer trips as a unit. Instead, due to the aforementioned cancer, my Sister, Mom, and Aunt came to my house to help me through my first ...

It is Sunday again, which means it is time to tell you what I am listening to this week. I can sum that up in two words - Not Much. EEEEEKKK! `Sorry, just had a spider rush me on my desk. It was a lean, leggy one which usually indicates recluse of some sort. I've been seeing things moving out of the corner of my eye all morning - and NOW a SPIDER! Ugh. ANYWAY - I have been ripping CDs again, so I have been going through my books and looking through my collection to see what songs I am going to add to my favorites playlist. I already have about 200 songs, but there is always room for more! I still have my CD burner and lots of CD blanks, so I can make CDs to listen to as I commute to and from work. I know - old school, but that is who I am. Anyway, again... As I am going through these CDs, I am constantly reminded that there are so many songs that are important to me for so many reasons. Some of them are songs that I have shared with special people. Others have meaning only to me. S...

One of my quests for this year is to get back into listening to music again. It has been a long time since I have spent time listening just to listen. Since music has been my job, I go through periods of time when I just cannot listen to anything outside of music therapy sessions. I am missing music at the moment, so I am making an effort to bring music back into my daily way of engaging in life. I am ripping my CD library onto my computer, and I am rediscovering music that I have loved in the past. I loved the era of burning CDs, and I have lots of "favorites" CDs that I have found in my music library. I pulled out a CD case with "all-time favorites," made in 2007-ish. Curious to see what I loved back then, I popped it into my CD player in my car and have been listening during my commutes. One of the things that I can say with certainty is that I love much of the music of Garth Brooks. There you go. The music that I have included of his always makes me smile. so re...

It is the first day of the "regular" school year, so this is my New Year. I tend to be a bit more likely to establish quests and the like at this time of year than I do in January. This may be my last school year start - I know it will be my last at this school - so my quests are a bit more nostalgic than anything else. Here are my quests for the 2025-2026 school year: Bring lunches to work Move more Enjoy the year Read 200 books Make 12 book units Bring my things home from work Rip CDs to the computer I have not counted any reading before this time, so the book I read yesterday does not count, but any other reading from now on does count. I have started the CD project already and have been through one large CD case for about 90+ CDs into my computer. I am using Windows Media Player because iTunes just stopped working. I really do not like iThings, and they do not like me, either. I will make a lunch today, and I intend on getting into a Sunday routine of making lunch parts f...

Part of my identity as a vintage music therapist is my CD and cassette collection. Now, I have purged many of my cassettes, but I cannot seem to get rid of the CDs that I purchased over many years. I use them in my car during commutes because wi-fi and data usage and all that is confusing to me (that's where the vintage label becomes VERY evident), so I prefer my music in tangible form rather than in streaming. So, I have book after book of CDs in my living room. The reason I bring this up is that the songs that I have been listening to lately are from yet another soundtrack - Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.  This is from a sweet movie that discusses grief and creativity and love, and the music is wonderful. It is currently the only CD in my car, so I am listening to it often. I cannot identify a favorite track in the soundtrack. It all blends together nicely. There is only one vocal track, and that one is not my favorite. I enjoy the leitmotivs and the way the music flows. I r...

Today is the last 12 hour day of my school year. It is parent-teacher conference evening for my school, so I will be completely alone despite a recent curiosity about what students do during school from parents involved in a support group. No one will come to the music therapy room to discuss their students, and if they do, they will tell me what instruments they want their students to learn to play. I did hear our school social worker stating to a guest that "one of the differences between other public schools and our school is that our music and art programs are therapies. We have an art therapist and a music therapist instead of teachers." After 29 years, the school social worker FINALLY gets that my job is different from the local music educators! Hooray!! I got an "atta girl" in the hallway on Monday morning when the quality assurance person stopped me by the printer to tell me that he had recently heard that I do more than just play a guitar during music thera...

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...

Yesterday, at this time, I was getting ready to spend the night at my job. About halfway through the day, though, I remembered that my Christmas boxes were supposed to be delivered. I did not want two large boxes to sit on my porch for two days, getting covered by snow, and tempting other people to take them. My father's (and mine as well) cornet was shipped this time around. If I lost that, I would be heart broken as it is something we shared. So, I drove home yesterday afternoon, pulled in the boxes, and decided that I would try to get to work this morning through the storm. I have now decided that I will not be doing that. All of the roads between here and work are completely covered with snow and ice. While I would love the extra sick time, I am not all that willing to risk my life by sliding off roads and into ditches on completely covered roads. It has happened before, and I am determined that it will not happen to me again. So, I now have a day at home without plans. This is...

Today is the day that I have reserved for packing, shipping, and thinking. My mother is currently really focused on giving things away, so I am going to be sending my first cornet, three handmade animal puppets, and my gifts from my sister and my mother back to my house today. I have lots of room in my bag to fill up, so I will start there, but I also have an almost full set of dishes to send back, so my shipping costs will be substantial this time around. I guess it is a good thing that we haven't been shopping this break. I need the money to send things back! This is my usual way of doing things a couple of days before traveling. I pack things up, take them to UPS, and then send them on their merry way. I am always surprised when I open up the boxes because I forget what items are in the boxes in the week that it takes to send them across half of our country. It is almost like another Christmas when my boxes arrive, and I open them up again! So, today's chore is to pack thing...

It is the first day of the 2023-2024 regular school year at my job. Depending on how the temperature situation is in my room, I will be doing some clearing and cleaning and organizing my schedule today. When I left my job the week before our extended school year session was over, today was supposed to be an uninterrupted work day. I am hoping that we will not have any sort of meeting or professional development scheduled for today because I really need some time to work in my space to get ready for music therapy sessions this year. Usually, at this time of year, I have thought about specific goals and objectives or quests for my school year, but that isn't happening this year, for some reason. I think it is part of my entire "meh" attitude. I am not as excited about the start of the school year this year as I have been in other years. Who knows why I am feeling this way right now, but I am, so I am allowing myself to wallow for a little bit before rolling up my metaphoric...

'Tis the season of watching classroom set-ups on social media. Do you know the videos I'm talking about? The ones where teachers set up their super cute classroom themes and bulletin boards in a fast-forward type video? My sister, who is an elementary school teacher, is currently in the process of getting her classroom theme put together. I always love watching the creativity of others in setting up their environments, and I am always jealous of their space and ability to keep things up on the wall with their students. My students and my space are not conducive to cute themes and color-coded, coordinated wall decorations. The things that I have up on the walls of my music therapy room are functional rather than coordinated. My room is already decorated with lots of paintings from various murals, so things are already as busy as I want them to be. These facts don't stop me from wanting a classroom where I could make my own cute theme happen though. As I am a week away from t...

It is Tuesday, so it is time to write a bit about therapeutic music experiences (TMEs - which is what I call the things I do with clients in our music therapy sessions), and today's topic is things that I have forgotten that I was reminded of during the World Congress of Music Therapy. Let me explain. Okay, I have transitioned into the stage of life as a music therapist where I am considered either "vintage" or "seasoned." This means that I have become a music therapy crone which is simultaneously frightening and satisfactory. So, from the perspective of being an older music therapist, I have found several things that have happened in my way of viewing this profession. For one, I no longer really find presentations all that inspiring. They no longer really share new information in presentations - I am finding that presentations just serve to remind me of concepts and vocabulary that I have forgotten. Even the research seems to be repetitive - we seem to be looki...

Happy New Year, everyone! Wherever you are, I am hoping that you are feeling optimistic about what is ahead of you for this year.  There is just something about a new calendar year that gives so many of us so much hope. We plan on changing things. We plan on being better than we were in the past. We often fail, but we keep on trying. About a year ago, I decided that I was no longer going to make goals for myself. Now, don't get me wrong, I write AMAZING goals, but I never work on them. Last year, at this time, I decided to set some quests for myself.  Again, quests are just renamed goals, but by thinking about what I want to accomplish in the amount of time I have left as a quest, I can be a bit more forgiving with myself when I do not get to the finish line. Rather, I can celebrate the progress that I have made on my journey. All steps are forward movement, so I haven't failed in accomplishing my goals, I have made strides toward reaching my destination. It's a subtle dif...

It is the last day of 2022, and I am ready to finish this year. I was talking to my mother last night about our traditional New Year's Eve traditions. We fall into bed and trust that the calendar year will change without us. We, occasionally, stay up until the new year has reached our continent, but we don't do that very often. A wild New Year's Eve at my house includes some ginger ale and watching movies until 9pm! 2022 brought lots of physical changes to my body and lots of new challenges for me. I now have slipped discs, sciatica, mild sleep apnea, lots of new medications, and physical therapy exercises - I really should be doing those more often... I found some renewed creativity and interest in things that I had eschewed. I have shifted some things around in my priority list. I have contemplated my future - lots and lots - and I have decided what no longer works for me, and I am releasing those things into the universe. There you go. My word for this year was "dee...

This was another rough year. It was a year of physical pain, grieving, loss of familial connections, gain of different familial connections, medication regimes, lots of feelings, and lots of questions.  Three family friends lost their husbands in unforeseen situations which plunged me into secondary and primary grief. My work didn't change much, but since I was having so many musculoskeletal issues, I was on medical leave for much of three months, so I did not earn as much as I was supposed to during the 21-22 school year. I had to cancel a trip to see Mom and Kelly in July because I had COVID in June - thankfully, it was a light case, but it did interrupt my travel plans. I cancelled another trip to CA just three days ago when my flight disappeared from Delta's travel routes. I have been refunded my money and given a credit as well for that disappointment.  Other things have happened that have been a bit more pleasant is acceptance to two conferences to talk about music thera...