music, therapy, and me

My Niec-at So, my sister reads my blog and sent me her ideas about what my themes should be for each day of the week. I got a text last night (after I was asleep) about what she wants to see as my themes. Here it is - Maker Monday - Tune In Tuesday - Website Wednesday - Thinking Thursday - Fact or Fiction Friday I am still navigating the ideas for each of these themes, but I will start some of them. Since today is Tuesday, let's investigate a bit more about what Tune In Tuesday could be about. It could be about music, music videos, musicians, therapists, or educators that are part of my life or that I've noticed. I'm not sure I could sustain that for long. It could be something about things to pay attention to as a therapist.  I just don't know. I am kinda dithering these days. I have little to no focus for anything other than medical appointments and reading books. I want to do more, but I just can't get going on any project. I have one more step to go through befo...

For those of you not in the "School-Based Therapist" know, ESY stands for "Extended School Year" and means that I have to work summer school whether I want to or not. Today is the last day of our ESY session, and I am more than ready. After tomorrow's  "progress note" day, we have 12 days before we have to report back to start the regular school year. I have one medical appointment, but that is the only obligation that I have for break. Other than that, I plan on working on my library and that is about it other than my usual self-care stuff. I have three groups today because there is an all-school movie during the last group time. Someone walked into my room yesterday to actually test the temperature and to tell me that there was someone else showing up to evaluate the computer system that controls the temperature. They interrupted a group session, but I am happy that someone is actually acting like they are doing something. Only three groups to run in...

I am home from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and the World Congress for Music Therapy. I am recuperating from some pretty severe jet lag caused by my trip back home from the western side of the continent to the eastern side of the continent and then back to the middle of this continent - all in 24 hours. Vancouver was a beautiful city, with many beautiful things, but it was also a city that had lots of unhoused people who were shooting up on the streets. I have never seen heroin users shooting up before, and they were there, all over parts of the city. Apparently there are no prohibitions to using drugs as long as you only possess enough for personal use. As a result, there are many people who are using drugs and unhoused and with mental illness wherever you go. My therapist nature kicked in and wanted to problem-solve, but my attentions would be better focused here than there. It was interesting to see and experience. One of the things that struck me about the things that we did...

This has been an interesting month. I have run the gamut of emotion in the past 30 days, and it is wearing on me. It has also been full of affirmations from unexpected places, opportunities to think differently than before, and creative surges. It often happens this way in my life - the most challenging things spur on the best things. I have been spending quite a bit of time on TikTok lately. It fills the space. I enjoy watching cats do catty things and I get easily sucked in. I am working on decreasing my access, but I really enjoy watching. My page has been full of predictions lately. You know the ones - "I didn't put any labels on this, so if you are seeing it, it is meant for you." They are all promising prosperity. Should I buy a lottery ticket? The point of this particular post is to realize (for myself) that there is often good that comes from going through the not so happy parts of life. This realization, which happens every year about this time, helps me to remem...

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...

I finally got over my drilling anxiety and finished the toilet paper holder project that I had set as a quest for this break! As I was feeling really good about myself, I decided to go outside to my backyard, twisted the door lock, and then found myself staring at the lock which disintegrated into my hand. So, I watched a video on how to change sliding door locks, ordered a new lock set, and am ready to replace that done for lock as my adulting quest for today. I am finding that this home ownership thing is not for the weak. Halfway through my toilet paper anxiety, I told myself that the stress and anxiety was not worth it and that I needed to find a handy person of some sort to pay so I did not have to do this anymore. The next day, I finished the project on my own. I know that I can change a lock - I've done it more than once - but now I am wondering what will be the next home quest... I am liking the way that I am working through quests rather than working towards my goals. Just...

I am working really hard on not working very much during this break. I tend to overestimate the things I will get done during my breaks, so I tend to spend my entire time away from work engaged in criticism of myself and getting into a downward spiral of coulds, woulds, and shoulds. To avoid this miasma of feeling this time around, I have set one goal for myself - to get a toilet paper roll holder and two towel bars installed in my house. That's it. If I can get these things finished, I will be happy with how I have spent my break. At the moment, I have overcome (mostly) my anxiety about drilling holes in my walls. I have drilled two holes for the toilet paper holder thing - neither of them is big enough for the screw holder thingies yet, but I have drilled into the walls. I have one drill bit that is bigger than the others that I have tried, so I will drill once more. If I cannot get the screw holder thingies into the larger holes, then I will give up and call someone to come into...

It is Saturday morning - 4:40 am - and I am in the first day of my Spring Break time. I am surrounded by the mess that is my house, and I am not sure where to start as I look at a bit of time to fill up with home things and various appointments. I am reading through a dissertation written by a friend of mine (Hi, there, FRIEND) and am greatly enjoying this original and valuable contribution to our profession!! It meshes very well with things that I write about quite often about our profession of music therapy, so it is an absolute pleasure to read! I am going to do lots more reading in that document over the next two days. Other than my reading, I have little that I have to get done this upcoming week. I have two appointments, three instances of church obligations, and the need for a day in my music therapy room to finish up some organization. That is all. Here at home, I have lots of things that I can be doing, but my goal is to install a toilet paper holder in the upstairs bathroom (...

Well, the doctor did not mention surgery yesterday. I now get to wear a compression glove on my hand pretty much all the time to try to get my left hand to be less swollen. My Occupational Therapist wants me to get the trigger finger going so that surgery will be recommended and accomplished before I am released from care. So, my job is to use my putty as much as possible to activate that trigger finger situation so I can get it fixed. I really wanted to have some conclusion to all of this, but I got more cloudy future. The good news is that I can debate what I want to do with my next break. I am debating a trip home at the end of this month because I have not been home for over a year, and I need to see my Mom and my siblings and get used to home without my Dad. I think I will wait for my July break to go home - that would get me away from having to hurry right now and would also let me do things that I need to get done here without having to stress about driving back to Kansas with a...

Breaks are always guilt-ridden times for me. I sit in my house thinking about all the things I should be doing, and I tend to fall into a pattern of self-defeat because I see all the things that need to be done, but I don't do them. Maybe a better way of doing all that I want to get done is to list the things that I have actually done during the first four days of this break. I went through all my fiction books and took out the books that I no longer want. Some of these are silly romance novels, some are science fiction/fantasy that are just parts of entire series, some are the duplicates that my Mom has collected and shared with me, and many of them are silly books from the Dollar Tree that I picked up because I can't seem to walk past a book shelf without getting something... The dishes are almost finished. I have about a quarter of a dishwasher load left to go. This has freed up much of my counter space, so I've done some work on my kitchen surfaces. I've start...

Heading Into the Future - Planning and Resting I am having some interesting (at least, to me) thoughts this morning. Lots of them are centered around this week and how I will be spending my self-care time later this week. You see, I'm taking this Thursday and next Monday off. I already have Friday off on the school schedule, so I am using some snow day time to extend this holiday weekend into a five-day weekend. This will allow me to skip the Luau (my own special kind of agitation - everyone else seems to love the event. I do not and never have, so I decided to skip it entirely!) and have a day after Easter to relax before getting back into the world of music therapy. I have plans. I have something that I really want to do, but I'm not sure if I'll get it finished. I am going to try my best this time around to do this task from beginning to end, while still finding time to sleep. It will be interesting to see if I can get this done. Originally, I was going to try to...

For some reason, I've spent lots of time this week backspacing here on this blog. Nothing I've written has been interesting, even to me. I haven't bothered to advertise anything on social media because all of these posts have been pretty self-centered and not really all that important in the live of a music therapist. The most interesting music therapy post that I wrote this week did not ever really coalesce into anything that made sense to even me, so it is sitting in my draft folder. My music therapy brain is obviously in break mode and it is not wanting to even think about music therapy. I have to spend time putting together a couple of presentations for three weeks from now. I have those presentations started, but I do need to refine them and update some of the information. I also want to figure out some more presentation ideas for a couple of conferences later this year. I may be going to California in October to present at a conference that is NOT a music therapy co...

One of the things that I know about myself is that I put things off until I have time to do them and then I don't want to do them so I don't. Then, I figure out that I wasted time and start the cycle over again - putting things off and then planning to do them later on - you get the picture. I am going to focus on today. Today I need to go to the grocery store and get ingredients for my favorite cookies of all time, and I need to go to the Dollar Tree to get some notepads for my current project. Before I get to those errands, however, I feel the urge to organize something, and I can see the first place that needs some attention - the bookshelves. I have lots of bookshelves in my home. I am a tad overwhelmed with books. I have a basic organization system, and I'd like to make it a bit more purposeful. I have shelves for sheet music, for music therapy textbooks, for non-music therapy textbooks, and for projects. I also have fiction bookshelves lining my hallway and in m...

I am ready to start heading towards the AMTA National Conference! This has been a long week of anticipation, making lists, and getting myself ready for interactions with lots of music therapists, but I think I have everything I need (once I shut down the laptop and put it in my bag). I have the addresses of TWO In-N-Out Burger locations (I can taste that goodness already). I am ready to go. Conference is always a good vacation from my job. It is also one of the most stressful times of the year for me, but I continue to go. Lots of people talk about the cost and the inconvenience, but I have always made this interactive time a priority in my life, so I don't see it as an inconvenience. I guess perspective has lots to do with perception. I don't go on fancy vacations. This is it for traveling to new places for me on a pretty regular basis. In fact, other than going home every so often, I haven't taken a "real" vacation in about 13 years. Now, don't get m...

I have a weekend left before our Extended School Year (ESY) begins. This is always a bittersweet time for me - the end of time away from work and the beginning of my structured time. It's good and bad. I would love more time off, but I need more structure to my time than I currently give myself. It's a good thing that I don't ever have more than two weeks off at a time, I think! I am about halfway through my office conversion. The desks are in and are becoming functional, and I have gone through about half of my books and papers. I threw out old intern files and old paperwork from my tenure on the Association Internship Approval Committee - all of that information is in the box of confidential paperwork to be recycled at the UPS store. I have WAY too many books and things left to go through, but I have made progress and will be able to finish up in the next two days. This time around, the end of summer break means that I get to work with an intern again. I am simultaneo...

It is "vacation" time for me - the first week off of the summer. There will be another week off at the end of June and beginning of July and there will be two weeks (bliss!) at the end of July and the beginning of August. I don't do very well with stretches of time without structure. I make all sorts of audacious plans and then I don't do any of those things during my time. This time off is no different, but I am trying. I am a person who uses structure to organize, and a lack of structure leads me to turning around in circles, wondering where to go next. As a result, I am structuring my time a bit more than usual. My bullet journal/task list is helping with this. I'm writing down what needs to be done, I'm prioritizing each task, and then I'm working on the tasks so I can cross them off the list. I'm also using my 30 minutes at a time structure to frame my tasks. Today, after I finish blogging, I'm going to start deconstructing my desk stora...

Today is the start of my staycation for Spring Break 2018. I am not planning on going too far from home, but who knows what will happen later this week. I like staying home as part of my self-care routine. I love to travel, but I don't often have the funds to do so. I REALLY love free trips, so if you need anyone to travel to your place to talk about something music therapy-related, let me know! I'll be there as soon as possible!! Anyway, I will be spending my Spring Break the way I spend most breaks - at home with the cat, making lots of plans that just don't seem very important when it comes down to it. I must clean. I must throw things out. I want to be able to buy a new bed at the end of this week, so I have to organize and clean out enough to get the old bed out and the new bed in. I also have my new bullet journal routine (see yesterday's post) to continue to establish into a habit. I also need to do some grocery shopping, cooking, and eating. So, what does al...