music, therapy, and me

Wow. It has been a while since I have written anything on this blog - mainly because I have been in the middle of surgery, recovery, and trying my best to get back into something resembling normalcy. I have had good news - the medical issue that has been plaguing me has now been resolved. I have a new specialist to see next week, but that will probably be a formality rather than a continuing relationship. I am now sitting at home, recovering from having my gut cut up, rearranged, and put back together again. My surgeon has dictated (with my mother's support) that I will not be returning to work until the start of the new school year. So, I am sitting at home instead of being at the extended school year session at work.  I went to shop yesterday to get my steps in, and halfway around the store, I felt the exhaustion set in. I leaned on the shopping cart for the rest of the walk and then returned to my home. I am tired today, and my body is not really doing all the things that it sho...

I am currently involved in writing a large, very different project for me, so my blog is being neglected. I will try to post more in the upcoming week here because I am missing the routine of writing about music, therapy, and me.  It is Sentimental Sunday, and the random number generator sent me to post #2327 - November 11, 2019 . At this time, four years ago, I was recovering from emergency surgery and had found that someone had damaged the car that I was getting ready to trade in for a new car. I was hurt and scared and overwhelmed by it all. The accident was never solved. I spent money to repair the car and then traded it in for the car I have now. Looking back on posts like this one really reminds me of trends and situations in my life. I am not always the best person during personal emergencies. I do not handle changes in my schedule well. I also have difficulty focusing on more than one emergency situation at a time, but I always make it through with the long-distance support...

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about the extreme fatigue and feelings of frustration, overwhelmedness, and exhaustion that seem to be overcoming our entire workplace. She said something about this pandemic going on for over 600 days now, and I started wondering about how we were going to be working through the effects of this pandemic once we finally get to the point where it is no longer a big, new thing but is just one of those things that happens to us - like influenza. This led me down a rabbit hole of looking for information on the internet. Now, I did not just go with anything that I saw - I think I am so-so at identifying good sources rather than propaganda, but I learned some things about myself and others during this brief dip into the information pool. First of all, it has been 602 days since January 9, 2020, when the WHO announced the presence of this virus (https://www.ajmc.com/view/a-timeline-of-covid19-developments-in-2020). That is all. It has been 538 days since...

I need to make something today. I am in a bit of a funk about my surgery, heading back to work on Wednesday, negative attitudes on social media, and all sorts of things, so I feel the need to work all that out through creation. So, now the question comes - what should I make? I want things to be functional for me as a music therapist and for others as music therapists as well. So, I want something that I can make, replicate, post on my Teachers Pay Teachers store , and use in music therapy sessions with all sorts of clients. I am starting my sing about february subscription edition this week, so perhaps I'll make something to go along with those ideas. Maybe not. I have two of my mini pizza boxes ready to be decorated and then used for storage. I want to use one of them for my growing stack of decorative sticky notes. I'm not sure how I'll use the other one. I have two more to paint today - blue and green. I'm toying with several ideas about making things f...

It's a good morning for me. I am feeling pretty rested these days - thanks to enforced time away from my job and a body that is craving healing that just stops at random times. I actually feel a bit of energy today, and that is something that hasn't happened for some time now. I have an appointment for lab work and a post-surgery follow-up this afternoon, so I have something to do later that will keep me going throughout the day. I have spent several hours doing some brainstorming about various and sundry things lately. I am narrowing down my word of the year for 2020. In fact, a bit of time with thesaurus.com, and I think I have my word. I'm not going to reveal it until closer to the end of 2019 and the start of 2020, but I feel that this word will be an effective prompt for me for this year. Hmm. I've enjoyed having a word to guide me through this year. I was able to refer to it several times as I was trying new things. I also consider the fact that I took m...

It's been a long time since I've felt like bursting into song at any moment. I've missed that need to express myself in music, but it's starting to come back. You have no idea what that means to me. I am a music therapist. To me, that statement means that I am immersed in music. It is something that follows me everywhere I go. It is something that I do. When it is absent, I miss it. I spent most of the past several years with music being a job instead of something that just happened. I spent most of my days doing music with my clients, but my own musical voice was pretty silent. I wrote songs for therapeutic music experiences (TMEs), but the songs were tasks rather than spontaneous expressions. I hated it because an important piece of my life was gone. I am relieved that I am starting to interact with my world through music again.  The cat? Not so happy that I am bursting into song at any and all possible moments. Fortunately, she hasn't got to the point w...

I took a day off yesterday to celebrate something that's been a long time coming - my release from care for a work-related injury. Eighteen months ago, I ripped my left Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) completely. This was during a behavior management situation with a client where I twisted the wrong way after being pushed. As a result, I've had 18 months of braces to support the knee, surgery, pain medications, crutches, therapy, and now, release from care. My knee doesn't feel exactly like it did before it got broken, but it is SO much better than it was before surgery (which occurred exactly one year from this day). The recovery process was tedious and at times excruciating, but the therapy worked and I am able to walk with confidence now. I am still hesitant about jumping and running, but I am going to work on those movements to decrease my anxiety. I am guessing that eventually my knee will feel normal to me, but it doesn't quite feel that way now. Anyway. I to...

So, I did something that I don't usually do when it comes to blogging - I skipped two days in a row! I try to blog every day, but there are times when I just cannot sit down and write. I had two of those days in a row this weekend. Strange. I did try to write something, but it didn't happen. I was a bit angsty because I hadn't heard anything about my AMTA presentation proposals, but that's since passed. Now, I am getting back into the routine of writing about something therapy-like on a daily basis. Today, I return to work after a week away. I have three group sessions and (I think) three individual sessions as well. That's right. I have some individual sessions to do today. Finally. 361 days after being injured, I get to go back to what I consider an adequate music therapy schedule. Individual sessions! To be completely honest, I am a bit scared of moving on. I know that I can do this - after all, I've been doing this for 23 years - but it's going to be...

In my professional life, I work with many clients who have difficulty with impulsiveness. Some flit from place to place, topic to topic, activity to activity in mere seconds. Some move from positive interactions with others to negative interactions with others in the blink of an eye. My clients often don't have much awareness of the consequences of their behaviors until they have gone through the behaviors. After the fact, they can process through the ramifications of their actions, but they have no future thought when it comes to decisions that they face. I was impulsive yesterday. I was driving home after an okay Wednesday (hooray!!), and I became very homesick. I haven't been home in 18 months which is an extremely long time for me. I didn't have a choice about traveling because I had to go to surgery, recover, and find some financial footing after dealing with Worker's Compensation and salary implications. ANYWAY... The wave of homesickness just plain old took...

I am starting to fill up the gaps in my music therapy schedule with individual music therapy treatment times. This is a great feeling. I'll start individual treatment on July 11th when we come back for our second session of our Extended School Year. I'll get things going for three weeks, reevaluate, and then start up again when the regular school session starts. I am excited about getting back into this type of therapy. I've missed it, but there's something else going on. I'm a bit scared. You would think that my 23+ years of being a therapist would make things lots easier for me to jump back into this type of therapy interaction, but I am a bit scared still. I think most of these feelings have to do with forced light duty and almost a year of being out of my comfortable routine. I know that some of these feelings are rooted in fears of being hurt again. I don't want to be hurt again. I know that many of these feelings are somewhat irrational, but they sti...

The brain is starting to work (I think) after three days of heavy duty medications that made me a bit loopy. I switched medications at 3 am this morning when I woke up, and then fell back asleep immediately. When I woke up again, I was able to focus my eyes, think a bit, and make a plan for the day. Chemistry is quite amazing, especially when you are the beneficiary. So, I spent the day watching television, trolling social media, and doing some stretching. I changed my dressing all by myself a bit ago. I am now back in bed, elevating the new ACL, and am waiting the nightly phone calls from my family members. The cat is grooming - she's been smack up against me most of the time and hasn't walked too far away from me since I came home from the surgery center. She's not very good at fetching things, but she's excellent at lowering the blood pressure - she's got a wonderful purr! So now it is time to start working again. I don't spend lots of time just sitting a...