music, therapy, and me

First of all, I LOVE thesaurus.com. I now have an "S" word for "thought" when I was unable to find one using my own brain. Second, yesterday's park event was not as bad as I thought, and my wish for rain almost manifested! We all huddled around the shelter, wrapped in blankets, while the principal grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for us. After that, we had an egg hunt and were released for self-care. I took a long nap for my version of self-care. It was wonderful! This is the first year since 1998 that I do not have Easter duties. I am up and down about that, but I am feeling much better about not being part of the church right now. I think I dodged a bullet in that situation, and I do feel much happier without Sunday School duties! I miss the ceremony and tradition, but not the people determined to stab my in the back. Okay, for my own health, I am going to stop this train of thought and go with other things. Today is reserved for going to the pharmacy to pick u...

It is almost the end of the calendar year - a convention that humans created to measure time - and that leads me to think... I am thinking lots more these days due to more time to myself and less time running around from music event to music event. I am trying to find ways to keep myself occupied rather than watching television and eating. December has been a month where I flitted from thing to thing, but since I released myself from my church job, I find myself with not much to do. For some reason as well, I am in an anger spiral, so I find myself ruminating on the fact that I don't have as much to do this month as I have had for the past 26 years, but that is part of how my body is primed at the moment. This week is our Holiday Sing. This is the replacement that I had to come up with when my administrators restricted my use of the town community stage and told me that two small bumpouts in the gymnasium was adequate for my needs for a stage. They are not. So, the Holiday Sing was...

Today is Thursday, the day that I usually reserve for thinking about some topic or another.  Today, however, I am stuck in anxiety mode and am trying really hard to break out of it all. I am going to be going to the memorial service of a friend's husband this evening. He died unexpectedly, and it is important to me to be there to support her. I do not expect a viewing or an open casket, but I never know around here what will happen in funeral services. I am taking my fourth COVID test right now to see if I am still testing as positive. Preliminary results seem to indicate that I am still germy, so I will do as much as I can to isolate and, of course, mask at the service. The test is not complete yet, but I can see the C line getting ready to be nice and dark. I'm tired of this. My anxiety has manifested in its typical manner with lack of sleep, difficulty with all sorts of headaches and stress whooshes, and bouts of crying. Now, I am able to make myself sick for various and sun...

These may make sense - they may be really random, but here goes... December Thoughts... I do not like it when the sun goes down so early. I am a sundowner and always have been. It is going to be difficult when I get older to convince me to stay up past 5pm when the sun goes down.  I am practicing better sleep hygiene these days. I have moved the television into the other room upstairs and I am trying to limit my screen access right before bed. (I did not do well with this last night, but all the other nights have been good.) I am also trying to do some reading before bed. I am also trying to avoid going to bed until I am ready to turn things off and start to unwind. I am struggling with the state of people out in the world right now. There is so much egocentricity and selfishness and hate being spewed out there towards strangers who are doing the same thing to other strangers. I have WAY too many books, even after giving fourteen large bags of books away to one of the local small t...

Yesterday, I sat down to try to sort out some of my feelings about things happening in the music therapy world right now, and the post ended up being such a mess that I decided that I was not going to share my thoughts. I am still not going to share what I wrote yesterday. I do this at times. I write and write about a specific topic and then I decide that I just cannot share what I wrote with the rest of the world. My mother is always glad to hear that I have some boundaries when it comes to writing. She is flabbergasted that I write about things and then put those thoughts out into the internet for just anyone to read. She thinks that blogs are where people share their secrets, and she just does not think that writing a blog is a good use of time. I figure that the thirteen of you who read this blog even when I don't publicize it on social media aren't here because I have great gossip to share...if that's what you are looking for, then this is probably not the blog for you...

I am having some revelatory moments this week about some of the feelings that I have been having. For one thing, the behaviors that are happening in music are not just happening there - they are happening in other places as well. This shouldn't (goblin) be such a large surprise, but it really it. When all I see is how a student acts in music therapy, my view of their current state is skewed. It's not helped by comments from staff members like, "He's fine until he comes to music." Well, that's not the entire truth. "He" is struggling everywhere, not just in music. My post from yesterday revealed the "It's almost time for break" struggle that happens in classrooms all over the country and (probably) the world when the end of the school year is approaching. My sister is trying to figure out how to close a year where she didn't actually meet any of her kids in person. She is trying to figure out if she could get a park day organized. We...

I just tried something that I am not sure will work, but that I hope will. I messed with a Zoom series to add another meeting on the same link as before... I've been told that this cannot happen, but it seems to be working on my end. The problem? I won't find out until tonight! I love it when my assumptions are challenged, and I have been told that you cannot use the same Zoom link for more than seven sessions in a row. I think I have figured out that fact is not quite true - but again, I won't know until tonight. If no one shows up, then I'll know that I was wrong and the others were right, but I'm not sure that I am wrong. I am getting ready for Spring Break. It was a year ago (Friday) that we were told that everything was going to be changing. We had one day to get things ready for an uncertain future immediately after break and then were sent into the uncertain world. I had a colonoscopy scheduled for the Monday of break, so my thoughts were much more on prepara...

Welcome to day two of this new year. I am preparing myself for a day of training and being trained as my faculty friends and I return to our school year today. I wonder what will happen next year when January 1 is on a Friday. Will we have one or two of these ridiculous inservice days next year, or will we just dive back into teaching?? I wonder. ANYWAY. I am trying really hard to get excited about the second half of this school year, but I am finding it difficult at the moment. I arrived home from a visit home yesterday - is that sentence confusing?? I arrived at about 3pm my time, which is significantly earlier than I usually arrive home from this type of trip, and I was greeted by the cat. I then went through a bit of a routine and then fell asleep around 7:30pm. The cat woke me up very early and did not allow me to get back to sleep, so I've been up for a long time now. It is currently 5:17am, and I have unpacked the materials that I want to take to work with me today, am...

This is not a good sign - I am not interested in blogging this morning. Usually I get out of bed and look forward to writing something to post, but I am not finding things to be interesting right now. This may be a side effect of my recent illness, but it is not something that happens to me regularly, so I am a bit concerned... I've had one of those strange virus type things that are going around out here. It was not pretty, and I spent two and a half days at home from work last week because I could not get away from the bathroom for more than 5 minutes. I've eaten very little since Tuesday, and now I am trying to head back to work. I have to be there this week, but my stomach and gut are still iffy and I want to be careful not to get sick again. I have things to do this week and next, and I want to be healthy for those things. So, I am working on my self-awareness and self-care. One of the things that I try to think about often is my "self." This sounds a bit sel...

It is Sunday again, and that means that I will take a song, randomly chosen from my shelves of sheet music books and single copies of music, to analyze and make into something that has a therapeutic purpose for my music therapy practice. This process jumpstarts my creative interpretation of music in general by making me think about something out there in the world that doesn't have any therapeutic meaning for me to begin with and then finding that meaning through contemplation, study, and thought. This month's song is from a book called, Musically Speaking . It was written by Roberta Wilson Dolana, published by Word Making Productions located in Salt Lake City, Utah. I can find very little information about the company or the author/composer, so I'm thinking it is a very obscure book. Now, I got this book from the discard pile at my facility when they disbanded the employee resource library many years ago. I'm sure that I picked it up because it had music in ...

Continuing in a vein of self-care, as I am wont to do, I'm going to tell you about my weekend. It was a good weekend for me. I had an opportunity to do some chores, made some plans, and created a new file folder idea complete with song to share pretty soon. I've finished the concept for another TME as well. I had enough leftovers in the freezer that I didn't have to cook anything, and I spent time reading for fun as well as reading for professional enrichment. It was a good weekend. I've found that self-care is something that is both difficult and easy to accomplish. For me, self-care comes in finding my balance between the things I have to do to stay happy and healthy and the things I want to do for my own peace of mind. This was a well-balanced weekend, and that helped me accomplish things and have some relaxation time as well. Sometimes, self-care is something that I struggle with and other times, it comes easily. I try my best to get things done, but I often e...

I am currently sitting in a morass of self-pity and exhaustion as I am recovering from a bout of pneumonia. I've tried to write over the past 48 hours, but everything has turned into Theme and Variations on the same thought - "poor me, poor me." Since that is what comes out, I haven't wanted to bother anyone with the thoughts. Today, though, I feel that I need to post something, just to get myself into the routine again. I am trying really hard not to slump into self-pity, so this may be a short post. So, let's think about making this a bit more music therapy related and less of the self-pity stuff. I am having to figure out some session strategies that simultaneously provide my clients with therapeutic interventions and conserve my energy. Singing exhausts me right now, so I have to figure out ways to get back into doing music therapy without doing too much singing. I think we'll play games next week - instrument games, Jeopardy, other games. I'll s...

I'm so very tired at the moment, trying to figure out how to break a stubborn fever along with pneumonia of some sort as well as not sleeping since I started my medications. I've spent more time at home than at work this week, so I'm getting pretty tired of my own company as well. The cat leaves rooms when I enter them, so my interpretation of her behavior is that she is tired of my presence as well. When this happens, I tend to binge-watch crime shows and sit with an idea book nearby. I felt some ideas coming, so I scrounged up an old spiral notebook and watched NCIS (LOVE MARK HARMON!). I did some drawing earlier this week and later, I just let my mind wander all over the paper. I fixated on the word "jumpy" for a time. The cat seemed pretty jumpy, so I doodled the word over and over using different fonts. I enjoy lettering so I just focused on that for a bit of time. As I was sitting there, my mind started to wander towards music therapy things. I was ref...

I often feel rushed. I feel like I never have enough hours in the day to get the things that I want to do done, and I want to do it all! Of course, I can't, but I still want to and sometimes feel inadequate when I am not able to live up to my own expectations. This is usually a signal that I'm heading towards illness or burnout. So, I take time to rest, reflect, and rejuvenate my body and my brain. (Just for the record, I don't really feel that way at this point, but I am getting ready for a break, so I am making audacious plans that I will never get accomplished during the week I have to do them. I know there is a break coming!) I guess, as I sit here, trying to make sense of what I am writing and what I want to convey, is that nothing comes to us without time and effort. If I do n't spend the time to do what I need to do, then things won't get done. If I rush through my session planning and documentation, those things really reflect that lack of time and enga...

This is going to be a very short post this morning as I woke up an hour late and am trying really hard to get out of the door so I can get to Walmart and buy some half price chocolate boxes to use for storage boxes for new interns as they start to arrive at my facility to finish their educational experience with me and my students who have been absolutely nasty to each other lately but who haven't really done lots and lots of that nastiness towards me for some reason which makes me feel much better about the fact that I want to bring interns into our music therapy sessions. It's Thursday, right? Off I go.  I'll probably write more after work...  UPDATED at 5:05 pm... So, let me explain some of what I wrote this morning.  Last Tuesday was a difficult day for my afternoon groups. Kids were just cranky as all get out, and they took out the crankiness on each other rather than using their coping skills. They took me aback, and I just stared in utter disbelief at t...

It is my last full day of visiting home, and I am not handling the end very well. I love this place and these people, and now I am the only one who isn't living here, so I am the oddball now. I don't want to be leaving, but my job is elsewhere, so I have to go...back...to bitter temperatures and a job where I don't feel all that valued... (Please note that most of the comments that I am making here are colored by the fact that I have only one more day to be in this wonderland, and I DON'T WANT TO GO!) The end of a visit almost always makes me wonder if there are things I can do in order to stay, but I just can't see possibilities beyond what I know. I do know this - I will be returning home for good at some point. (I got to start buying lottery tickets!)  My sister has arranged my last day here. I am going to stay at her house tonight. We will be going to her neighborhood block party (I'm her excuse for not staying for very long), and we may go to see Star...

Today and next week will just have regular posts. I'm not going to pack my current book and will have various obligations on these Sundays, so I'm taking a break from all things deep thinking (courtesy of Mercedes Pavlicevic). Posts from the next several days may be a bit spotty since I will be hovering over this country of mine and in places where the wi-fi is turned off when Dad goes to bed or with a sister that does not have the same relationship with technology that I do. Just wanted folks to know. So, what is happening on this Sunday and Christmas Eve? My to-do list is growing - taking care of the cat for her vacation from me, moving and watering my lone plant, finishing my packing, going to Walmart for some extra yarn, finding the travel backpack, organizing the electronics and the cords that go along with them, checking in for the flight, leading worship services (one in the morning and one at night - just had a thought - I don't have to play piano at all today!!...

Looking back over the school year at this point, I realize that I've tried several new things. I've found a bullet journal format that works for me for session strategizing, and I've also worked through including centers in some of my music therapy sessions. I've also included a "daily happiness" routine and attended some presentations and training about topics that are not part of my regular way of doing things. All of these things were challenging and fruitful. None of them were easy to find my way, but that's what life is - if it offers a challenge, I enjoy it. If it is too easy, I find it boring and not worth talking about. Here are updates of where I am in my list of things that I do on a daily basis: Bullet Journal Schedule Strategizing - On a weekly basis (usually on Friday afternoons), I sit down with my bullet journal and strategize for upcoming sessions. Right now, I am able to plan about 2-3 weeks out from the current session. I sit down, l...

I didn't do any of my clinical notes yesterday. For some reason, my brain just wouldn't work and couldn't get going on the notes. As a result, I have double the notes to write this morning. Fortunately, I have lots of time today to get those notes finished. Yesterday ended with a student who started shredding my room - one piece of furniture at a time. The student returned to the room and assisted with the clean-up - something that I felt was crucial to the process. We picked up pieces of bulletin board border (shredded), the client pushed the cabinets back into place and replaced the posters that were torn off the Velcro dots. (I've found that my clients get less satisfaction ripping things off the wall when pieces of paper are attached with Velcro than with tape. I Velcro EVERYTHING these days!! Maybe it is something to do with the ease of replacing the materials that makes it just that much less satisfying...whatever, I'm using it!) Today will include a sessi...

As someone who collects things (I call it being a pack rat, others call it hoarding), I often find stuff that I have no recollection of actually receiving. This is such an example. I have absolutely no idea where I got this stack of post-it notes. I don't think it came from a music therapy conference. I doubt that they were handing these out at the educational technology conferences that my sister attends and grabs stuff at, but I just don't know where this came from. None of my family members are currently taking Xanax (as far as I know), and I don't make a practice of grabbing things at the doctor's office. So, I have absolutely no idea where this came from. Fun. I wonder how it showed up in my stack of post-it notes. Yes, I do have a box of post-it notes for when I need to restock the various places that I keep post-it notes (my office, my car, next to my bed, and where I am reading music therapy texts and journals). I am trying to use the post-it stash befor...