music, therapy, and me

Today is the last day of my workweek. Around work, some of us affectionately call this day "Thursday-Friday" because that encapsulates the feeling of what this day means to us all. I am more than ready for this. It has been a week of insomnia, red eyes, unpredictable students, and rising heat and humidity. Let's finish this week in a strong manner and then just go! "That client" spent three minutes in music therapy before escalating into a screaming tantrum that lasted the entire session. I was singing "that client's" verse of the opening song - which "that client" volunteered for, and I guess "that client" was upset that I dared to sing to them.  My other groups went well, I guess. No one else was incensed by my singing, so I guess that was a good thing. I have finished sixteen groups and have only five to go today. The last group includes another "that client," so it may be a rough afternoon. At my school job, studen...

There are three more weeks of our first summer session before the next break. Does this sound like I am complaining? I'm not - at least, not really. I have never had an entire summer off, and I bet I will not have summers off after I retire from my current job. I am going to take a couple of months off next summer right after I leave my current facility and before I start working again, but I bet I will not have the type of job where I can take summers off. Who knows, though. Maybe I will get that type of job. ANYWAY... Three weeks from today, I will preparing for surgery. I have to have a part of my large intestine removed due to a large polyp/tumor. I have been through this surgery before, but that doesn't really make it any less anxiety-producing for me. I am not very good with medical things and having to go into the hospital is full of complicated situations. My mother is coming out to drive me to and from. She didn't want to come visit this summer, but now has to be h...

Sorry about not publishing my writing for the past couple of days. I have been hot and crabby and nothing that I have written has been something I want out in the world right now. I have entered panic mode about the state of my home and the upcoming visit from my family, but I am also stuck working in a room without ventilation, a broken air conditioner, and clients who are unable to regulate their temperatures. I leave my job everyday absolutely knackered and cannot bear to work when I get home. I have finished the first half of my week and am now entering the second half. This week, we have been doing centers - they get kids close to the floor where it is a little bit cooler, and it offers opportunity for independence and leisure skill development. We have three stations, and I have "must do" and "may do" things at some of the centers. We have a music symbol matching game and a stack of performer pictures to peruse at one center. The second center is a fine motor ...

I am sitting here, at 4:30 am, after my shower, starting to ruminate on what is going on in my life right now. I am struggling with feelings of being overwhelmed, exhausted, anxious about things, and having to catch my breath all the time. I realized that this pattern is one that I have been through before, so I am going to write about it yet again... I woke up this morning at 2:38. Since I was wide awake, I headed to the bathroom and as I was walking to the bathroom, I heard running water. At first, I thought it might be rain, so I moved to the bathroom, did what I had to do, and heard no rain sounds. That was odd, so I veered from my path back to my bed and followed the sound. I found my kitchen faucet going full blast! The scrubber holder that I had hung on the porous tile of my backsplash had fallen down, hitting the toggle knob and starting the water. Fortunately, the drain and sink were clear, so the water was just draining, but I have no idea how long this had been the case. I w...

One of my favorite shows is The Big Bang Theory , and one of my favorite episodes is one where Sheldon makes a statement about no longer wanting to say "I told you so" because that is pretty cliched at this point. He decided to change his smug statement to "I informed you thusly." I happen to like this and have taken it as my own statement of smugness. Yesterday, I went through some of my old blog posts to see how long I have been predicting that AMTA would be going through some audacious changes. It's been a pattern for over three and a half years now. Insert smug statement here. Going back to work is causing me to struggle mightily this week. I am currently sitting at my desk at 5:21 am, struggling to keep my eyes open after increased pain in my back yesterday and complete exhaustion. I cancelled my intern webinar last evening because I just couldn't keep my eyes open. I did not get to sleep as early as I was hoping, but I was able to relax a bit. I am hav...

I am not a fan of summer. Never have been, probably never will be, ESPECIALLY as I live in a humid environment which wreaks havoc on my breathing. My mom likes to tell a story of me as a toddler. Mom asked if I wanted to take a walk (we lived in Temple, Texas at the time). I looked outside the window and said, "Nope, sun's out." I have never really been all that fond of summer. I am currently almost as medicated as I can possibly be for this humid environment. Allergy medications? Check. Inhaler? Check. Nebulizer? Not yet - can't nebulize and drive, so I have to wait until I get to work to do that medicating. Through it all, I am having to sing in a mask in a room that is not being well air conditioned (though the bathrooms and the closet [yep, THAT closet] are plenty cold. This has been an interesting week of music therapy with challenges that are pretty unique to me. Another music therapist would not have these same struggles - that's for sure. So, I am struggli...

Last year, I was here... For the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to switch my blogging routine to the early evening hours with limited success. I find that my brain is more adept at thinking of topics and things to say in the mornings than in the evenings. I also like sleeping in the evenings, so I am not as prolific with this new routine. That may be a good thing or maybe not. Time will tell. I can tell you that I feel like something is missing from my morning when I don't blog a bit. It is my mid-summer break right now. I have a webinar in about 45 minutes for students about chord progressions, and I think I missed my medications this morning (nothing life altering, but it would explain my lack of interest in things today...hmmm). I have spent the day in feeling less than. Less than what? Less than EVERYTHING! Summer is a hard season for me. Most folks have seasonal affective disorder in the winter months, but I tend to have it in the summer months. This is something t...

It is time to start my summer music therapy reading list. I have a new notebook for taking notes (I filled up the first one!), and I am looking at some more time with my modified work schedule, so I want to do something productive for my professional development. I go to my music therapy bookshelf to find something to read and think about... I think I will start with information from the Neurologic Music Therapy training by Michael Thaut. I took this course a long time ago, but I know that some of the information offered then will still be relevant. I would like to purchase some of the more recent texts that Thaut has produced, but I'm not going to spend the capital at the moment. I will start with the information that I have at hand. My first foray into professional development reading will be the Training Manual for Neurologic Music Therapy. Time to get my supplies ready. Five different types of post-it notes (I have LOTS of cute ones because of my stationery subscriptions). I th...

Happy Monday, all. It is a holiday here in the States, so I get an opportunity to stay in my pajamas as long as I want (or until Tuesday morning, whichever comes first) and watch reruns of television shows. Today, I am watching The Office as the cat is lounging across my legs. We have both been up since really early this morning, and we've already watched a movie that made me cry and made her just stare at me in disgust. That's a typical response from her, by the way. I do have some plans for today. I want to go to my part-time job and get some stuff organized. I will be spending some time cleaning out the Sunday School Craft closet so I can use some of the shelving for the Prayer Shawl ministry that I inherited and for the new Sunday School program that I now have to do. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with both of those programs, and I need to spend some time organizing my thoughts and my workspace to make things work. I'll have my tablet for entertainme...

I'm really sorry if you arrived at this blog, looking for something about trauma-informed care today. I cannot do it. Not this week. There is so much trauma being inflicted on innocent people these days that it seems to permeate every bit of my existence. Being prone to depression during these hot, humid, sunny days of summer, I am having to be more proactive about my moods than usual. I find myself in complete exhaustion all the time these days - some of that due to allergy reactions, some of that because it is difficult to feel motivated, some of that because I seem inherently lazy. As much as I try, I cannot seem to escape the headlines of separation, trauma, and nasty interactions between people these days. Does it seem to anyone else that we are just turning mean and egocentric? Who cares if we hurt someone else as long as #1 is taken care of?? "I'm right and will always be right. There is no need for facts - my opinions are all that there is! If you disagree, the...

The first week of our Extended School Year (ESY) is three-fourths of the way finished. We are going into the last work day of the week, and it has been quite the week. There have been lots of new things thrown at me at the last minute, lots of gaps in communication revealed and (hopefully) fixed, and then getting back into the routine of music therapy groups. The heat and humidity is building, and my body is indicating that it really doesn't like either of those two things! I am getting back into the routine of music therapy and being a supervisor again.  I am exhausted. One of the things that I am prone to is summer Seasonal Affective Disorder. I tend to become a bit more likely to be depressed during the hot summer months than the cold, dark, winter months. Because of this, I am being as proactive as possible to combat some of my usual tendencies. This started way back when I was just a little kid. My mom asked me if I wanted to take a walk (I was probably between 18 mont...

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 that time of year - the time of year when school music therapists (like me) are either getting ready to close their jobs for the summer or are getting ready for their extended school year sessions (ESY - like me). Either way, there is a focus on summer as a theme idea. A couple of years back, I wrote a FREE resource for music therapists called sing about summer . This is a collection of therapeutic music experiences (TMEs) that have to do with summer. Now, some of them are typical TMEs for music therapists - lyric scrambles, conducting the beat - but others are my original work. It is my hope that this collection of TMEs will offer ideas and inspiration for other music therapists to develop summer-themed sessions. If you are interested in downloading this TME collection (for free), comment below or on our Facebook page - look for musictherapyworks.com. I'll send it to you. UPDATE: Hey - if you do want this resource, make sure to add your email to the comment. A...

Happy Independence Day!! It is also World Music Therapy Day - I'll write more about my opinions about that tomorrow. Here's the therapeutic music experience (TME) for today!! July! Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC Therapeutic Music Experience Purpose : To stimulate reality awareness; to encourage reminiscence about summer and Independence Day holiday; reality orientation; calendar concepts Source : Original song. © 2000 by Mary Jane Landaker, MME, MT-BC. All rights reserved. Materials : Accompanying instrument; OPTIONAL: calendar, month header or name of the month Environment : Group members within earshot of therapist Song/Chant/Words : I                                                     ...