music, therapy, and me

Something happened between my last post and this one - I had to do a last minute presentation to fill up time at the Online Conference for Music Therapy . I selected a presentation that I did a long time ago called, "Been There. Done That. Now What? - From Slump to Career Pivot." I guided participants through a couple of exercises to help clarify future plans, and it helped me as well. I was very honest with attendees about my own struggles - the ones that I was writing about in my post earlier that morning - my continued feelings of inadequacy and "not being good enough" (AKA, imposter syndrome). I went through the exercises with them as we were talking about this situation. I thought about my current future and what my "no boundaries" future look like, and how I can merge them together in small ways. I finished the day in a better mood and with a better outlook for my future than when it started. One of the things that I try to do on this blog is to offe...

Last night, I had an insomnia night. This is probably because I went off my allergy medications (I ran out) but these happen every so often even when I am not coming down off my allergy medication side effects. I have learned not to fight these nights. They go much better when I just use my time and don't stress about not sleeping. I will be heading to work with limited sleep, but that's okay. I decided to do a low demand session format. I did not set up my centers. I just did not feel like I could do it this week. I just did not have the interest or the energy after missing two days of work this week and missing a school day last week (the other day I missed last week was an inservice day). To add to the entire situation, I am still having some side effects from my medical procedure last week, and I also have lots of unknowns happening as well as a result of said procedure. So, a full brain, limited sleep, and a low demand session series ahead of me lends itself to an interest...

It is Friday, December 8, 2023, and I am in a self-reflective mode. I have been properly awake for just over an hour now, so I have spent some time thinking and looking around my office area. I can see my current self-employment quests posted on the wall next to pictures of my father. I can see my covered crafting desk where I have not been able to craft for the past several months due to my finger injury. I am rewatching Hilda  on Netflix - a show that I enjoy. I am in a mood at the moment that encourages me to sit and think. It is time. There are many things to think about. I am ignoring as much of the news as I can - it is pretty easy to do. I know that being aware of things is good, but there comes a point where it is not healthy to only hear about the ways humans hurt each other. I reach that point very quickly, so I tend to avoid hearing the news. I read articles, but I do not watch or listen. This helps me think about the things that I can affect. I am thinking about work. I...

Today's Random Number is #894 - a post from July 30, 2015 .  Apparently, that date was the second day of my end-of-summer break, and I was in full-out rest mode. I tend to do very little during my breaks from being a school-based music therapist, and I have become a bit more allowing of that particular trait than I have been in the past. I often feel like I need to fill up my time off with tasks in order to be a good person. It has only been recently that I've changed my definition of what it means to be a good person. I was thinking about self-care on July 30th. Apparently, I held a webinar on the 29th all about the topic, so it was fresh in my mind. I think about self-care often. There are times when it feels selfish but there are other times when it helps me continue to do my job. I know that there are many different perspectives about what self-care is and whether it is something important or necessary. My perspective is that there are things I need to do to keep up my abil...

To do my Sentimental Sunday posts, I use a list of my post dates to count the posts so I can figure out which post has been selected each Sunday morning. It is currently missing from its usual place. I have no clue where I put it - I know it has to be around here somewhere, but I just can't find it. I will probably need to make a new one - that takes a bit of time and some focus and some simple math, so it will not happen this morning... I am enjoying revisiting my past posts. There are times when I wonder what I was thinking, and there are other times when I am really impressed with what I wrote in the past. I find it really interesting to see the things that I have written over the years. So, I will continue this series - just not today. Today is my first day back to my part time, church job. I am feeling the itch to get going, even though I know that I will be shoved into teaching Sunday School three weeks early if I go. I don't get paid for any of the time that I am around ...

Ah. It is Sunday again, which means that I go into my post archives and focus my attention on past me to see what lessons I have learned from past me... Today's post is #2576 . This post was written on November 28, 2020 and was two days before my Dad's last hospital visit and his death six weeks later. I was finishing up my Thanksgiving break and was bemoaning (a bit) my lack of organization and desire to clean my environment - common theme on this blog - I was also advertising my sing about songs  - something I do on an occasional basis.  Poor past me - there were lots of changes coming for her. Lots of things that we have to figure out very quickly in the next six weeks - lots of things that change because Dad will be gone soon. Even two and a half years later, the emotions are always there. Reading through all of these older posts help me identify trends in my current life that are ongoing. The theme of physical decluttering is one that always comes up in this blog - it is...

This morning's post is from July 2013 , selected from the random number generator, and an interesting post because it was right before my very first surgery. I wasn't feeling well, and the topic is all about relaxation.  As I re-read it, I am both taken back to that period of time and struck by how much I write about relaxation. My definition of relaxation is something that seems unattainable and has for a very long time. So, I guess it is time to change my definition of relaxation. July 2013 was an interesting time in my life. I had diverticulitis, a recurring infection (that we found out later was from drinking the water at work - go figure), and eventually had to have 13 inches of my intestine removed - in fact, it was about two weeks after this post that I ended up in surgery. It was an interesting time. I had never had a surgery before, and I was scared spitless. My mom came to help me (and to make sure that I actually went through with it), the water in my apartment becam...

It is that time of year again. It is the time of year when I become a bit more judgmental about my creative efforts and what I think I SHOULD be doing rather than what I am actually doing these days. I do this quite often, and I am always very judgy when it comes to my own performance on my life and my skills. I am not composing these days. I am making birthday bags to celebrate people. I am creating task boxes from scratch for classrooms. I am trying to figure out how to coordinate another department when it comes to laminating (since I guess others cannot be trusted to turn on the machine by themselves - probably with good reason). I am supporting the creative efforts of interns while trying to get myself through the month of September. I am engaging in weekly discussions with music therapy students and interns. I am hosting monthly supervisor discussions as well. I have two part-time jobs that take my time and attention. I am having to navigate the world of contact irritants and al...

Note: This post is all about my Father's death last year. This may be a trigger for those who are not comfortable with expressions of grief. Today is the first anniversary of my Dad's death. It is also my Mom's 77th birthday. This is a problem for us because we can't NOT recognize Mom, but we are all missing Dad even more on this day since it is the anniversary of his leaving. Mom is not sure how she wants to mark either of these occasions. I am trying really hard to do my own celebration of life - both the life that ended and the life that is going on - today. I am not sure how to do this, though. My Dad's death was the first death in my nuclear family. My grandparents have died, great aunts and uncles have died, but this was the first time that my immediate family changed significantly through death. Our family unit changed. Dad is no longer on the end of the telephone line. He's no longer there to talk me down when I am too caught up in my emotional brain to ...

I have found that I am great at writing personal and professional goals for myself. They are spectacular, perfect in their composition, and very clear to all who read them.  ...and, that's as far as they go.  Once I have written them, I lose interest, never flip back to that page, and then feel like a failure when I have not done what I wanted to do earlier. So, I have decided that I am not making goals for this upcoming year. I am setting quests for myself! My word of the year is "Explore," and I have come up with five areas of exploration for this year - places, health, ideas, identity, and connection. As you can see in this bullet journal spread, I have a small piece of paper for each area with some ideas of how to complete these quests. I am not setting endings for any of these because I don't know where I will be at any time. These are just the things that I want to think about during the year of 2022. Rather than shaming myself when I do not get to my end goals,...

I am going to head out to work today to spend the day mashing potatoes and washing dishes for our annual Holiday Dinner. There will be no music therapy today since the dinner is a big deal and the special support staff are the only ones that do not have kids throughout the day. So, we get to help out. I was kinda hoping to be on a jury at this point, but that didn't happen, so off I go! This is the last Friday of the Calendar year, and it is a non-therapy day. That makes it pretty much a wasted day in my schedule, but that is fine. If this was a regular Friday for us, then I would have three groups, three individual/dyad sessions, and documentation to get done. Today though, all I have to do is the documentation, then the mashing of potatoes... I saw something on Pinterest yesterday that made me smile. It was a Myers-Briggs commentary about one of my two types (you know how I said yesterday that I was in between two Zodiac signs, well I am in between all sorts of personality tests ...

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 start back to work on Thursday this week which means that I have three more days of my first summer break to enjoy and work through. I figured out which houses would be for which note on the staff yesterday, so my planning for my Notation Neighborhood is progressing...slowly. I still have a sink full of dishes - need to get that taken care of immediately! Be right back... Things weren't as bad as I thought they would be with the whole dish situation - I had used almost all of the forks that I owned, but silverware was the only full section of the washer. Things are being washed now, so that chore is off the list. There are smaller things left to do, but the big one - those dishes are started. The end of break always comes too soon. I don't think I would feel that way if I had the entire summer off, but I have never had that experience, so I cannot say for certain. Anyway, I'm in the same old pattern of complaining, and I do not want to be in that sort of mood, so I am goi...

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...

Getting older is no joke. Now, if you aren't of "a certain age," then this post may not make much sense to you now, but it will eventually make a bit of sense when you start to feel that age is a contributing factor in the decisions that you make for yourself and those around you. I have spent the last week in the midst of perimenopausal emotion swings and angst and hysterical sobbing and a complete an utter failure to be able to focus on things outside of myself. My emotions, combined with personal grief, incapacitated me in my role as a therapist. I was not able to engage in therapy and so I spent my session time engaging clients in passive music experiences rather than challenging them in their goal areas. I had to do this due to my own instability and fragility. I took some time away from sessions because I didn't want to cry in front of my clients. I'm not comfortable sharing that part of myself with them. Right or wrong, it was the decision that I made for m...

I am proud to be a music therapist. I am proud of my profession and of what I do on a regular basis. I truly think that this profession is the best fit for me, but there are times when I become so immersed in being a music therapist and making music therapy things and trying to spread my music therapy message in the world where I forget that there is more to life than my profession. At the beginning of all of this COVID stuff, I was feeling constrained by my situation and frustrated at how my life was progressing. This led me into a period of introspection (as such feelings often do), and I realized that my social media footprint was really around music therapy things. I don't have many groups that are not music therapy based on my various feeds. I decided to branch out into other groups that are about things that are not music therapy AT ALL! (Pause here for an audible gasp from the author!) I thought about where I wanted to spend more time, and then I went exploring around the in...

This morning was the first morning in what seems like forever that I have a) woke up at the time I would always like to wake up (4:30 am) and b) felt refreshed after sleeping. It is such a good feeling to be rested and ready for whatever happens today. It is time for more futurist thoughts about music therapy and what things may happen for my hero, Persephone. I wonder where my story will take me today... CHAPTER FIVE Tuesday started very early. The alarm went off at 5 am, and Persephone reached out to silence it before hauling herself out of bed and stumbling to her small bathroom suite. She had three hours before her first class of the day and still needed to work on her assignments from the day before.  The first day of her new course of study had been slightly overwhelming. Persephone had not been around that many people all in one room in, well, ever. Her experience of school and university was only from the perspective of distance learning and virtual interaction...