music, therapy, and me

black background with colorful squiggles, the word Think, and the web address of musictherapyworks.com   It is amazing how much time I spend staring at a blank computer screen these days. I used to spend just as much time staring at a blank piece of paper, but my paper use has decreased for things like writing. I do most of my creative writing on the computer these days, and this (almost) daily practice of writing my blog puts me in this exact same space every single morning, staring at the cursor blinking and blinking away, ready to translate any keyboard strokes into letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs. In the more artistic art journaling world of my interests (not as much in the very narrow interpretation of bullet journaling but in more creative journaling circles), the advice is just to put pen to paper and make a mark. Any mark. Just break up the vast emptiness in front of you with the first touch of pen to paper and then see what happens next. I use this same technique...

This has been a long, LOUD week in the music therapy room. Actually, the music therapy room hasn't been all that loud, but my next-door neighbors have been loud. We have very thin walls, so I hear everything that happens next door. It has been very loud. I have had to do some active self-care in the form of leaving my room to find some silence, or at least, more quiet. It's difficult to find a place where there is quiet in a school of busy, active, and impulsive students. Even the administration offices are loud - in a completely different manner. I prefer the school noises to the administration noises - I wonder why that is... I have needed silence this week. When things get loud in my room, I try several different things to keep going on my goals. I try to use the sounds happening to frame some musical creation and composition. I join in (at times and quietly from the other side of the wall). I listen for patterns and ways to find entrainment within the noise. Sometim...