music, therapy, and me

Hello. My social media name is MJ, and I am a middle-aged woman who is also a music therapist. I work with persons with a variety of complex diagnoses, and I have a huge interest in all things music therapy clinical training. I am an internship director as well as a staff music therapist, and I am currently recovering from Influenza A - something that is going through my facility and my communities right now. I am currently feeling very tired, and I have neglected my writing habit woefully for the entire past week - something that is very unusual for me. The title of this blog is music, therapy, and me , so if you are here, I assume that you are interested in one or more of these categories. I know my sister reads the blog occasionally - I assume that she is more interested in the me  part of the blog than the other two categories, but I haven't really asked her about that... Hey, sissa!! I have been writing this blog for the past 17 years, and my writing habits have varied over al...

It is Wednesday again, and I am finding that I need a bit of an attitude check as I head into the busiest day of my week...every week. At the end of today, I will have done more group sessions than are ahead of me. That never feels like a good thing when it is 4:15 am on a Wednesday morning, but it feels great when it is 4 am on Thursday. We have seven groups today - six of the required groups and one that I have added because I wanted to do something more for some of my clients. Seven groups. This is also the day that I do the most group sessions in my clinic. I lead three of the groups, my intern leads three of the groups, and the last group is musical support, so we work together. I have no prospective interns coming in this month or in January, so it looks like I will be returning to full-time therapy in the new year. In some ways, that role is easier than the role I have right now. I am both looking forward to and dreading that switch back into the full time therapist role - mainl...

I am once again sitting in front of my keyboard, staring at the blinking cursor, wondering what I will be writing about in the next hour or so. I don't know if you noticed, but I didn't write much last week. I just couldn't for some reason. Now, this doesn't mean that I didn't do anything last week - I actually composed several songs, figured out several conundrums, and completed lots of things on my task lists. I limited my YouTube watching at work and found some more productive tasks to accomplish. So, overall, it was a good week. I am not sure why blogging went by the wayside, but it did. It is a bit silly, actually, that I have these types of blocks. This blog is not meant to be anything extremely research-based or even all that important to other people, but it is a place for me to write about my journey through life as a music therapist. There are some times when I focus a bit more on the "me" part of "music, therapy, and me" than on the ot...

I am very tired. Some of this is due to the increase of medication that I have had to take due to my seasonal allergies, but I think most of the tired feeling is from frustrations and challenges at work. That's right. Work is affecting everything that is going on in my life. This isn't a big surprise to me, but it may be to a new professional out there. What happens at work can affect what happens at home and the opposite is also true. What happens at home can affect what happens at work. I cannot completely separate my work life from my other life - it is just not completely possible. Trying to deny the effect of work on my non-work hours just leads me to constant stuffing and avoidance behaviors - neither of which are good for me. It is time for active solutions to this problem. I cannot control how my clients react to what I present. All I can do is present my expectations and my requirements to them in a consistent manner each and every time. I will script my re...

My very unhelpful "assistant" I have spent quite a bit of time lately just staring at my computer screen. For the past two days, I've moved away from this forum and have been playing with paper, pencils, pens, and planning. I spent some time thinking through some of the things that I want to accomplish in my life. I sat down with all my books of thoughts and schedules and plans and ideas and then figured out some things to do in the near future. I figured out a way to make what seems like insurmountable tasks into manageable and easy-to-track steps, and I was able to follow through on that idea. I organized some things for this next year, and I settled on my word of the year. I've mind mapped this word into some goal thoughts. I feel so very focused at the moment, and that is something that I haven't experienced for a long time. Now, I'll admit that some of the same old insecurities will be lingering - that always happens - but I at least have some con...