music, therapy, and me

I would really like to have some dedicated time to work on my songwriting, but I just don't do it. This is a situation where my brain thinks something that my heart just isn't interested in. My brain has many of these types of thoughts. Writing songs, even the types of songs that I write, takes time. There is no way around that. To get a song from concept to print, it takes time. I need at least an hour to take an idea from concept all the way to publication every time I sit down to write TMEs or just to write songs. Now, my songs are not complicated. They tend to be no more than 30-36 measures, they have lots of replicated elements, and my music is not extremely sophisticated. That is what my clients respond to the most, so that's what I write. Easy songs for my clients to understand and to sing. So, if my songs take at least an hour, imagine what the songwriting experience is like for longer, more complex songs. One of the things that I have learned through my songwriting...

I have forty-five minutes to go until I leave for work. I am tired. There is one more week until the time change, Spring Break, and a week of sleeping. I hope that I will feel less exhausted once break is over, but history tells me that I won't. Forty minutes to go until I leave for work. I decided not to stress about putting together a job application that is officially due today. I will work on it this weekend. I didn't get the invitation until 3 days ago, so I don't think that things I've written in three days are as put together as things I write with six days worth of contemplation and review. So, I will continue to work on things this weekend. If I don't get considered for the job, that's okay with me because I didn't plan on applying - it was an invited application... Thirty-eight minutes to go until I leave for work. I am hoping that I will finish my documentation for this week this morning because I have not done much on that task this week. This is...

So, let's just start off by saying that I really do not have a thought about what I will end up writing about this morning. I just need to kill some time because I will have to stay after school to finish up some things with my last intern, so I want to get to work on-time rather than early. I also have an additional hour of preparation time since we are still down one classroom space, so I have the time to take. Since I will be staying after my official 8 hours of time, I can justify the staying home a bit longer. Anyway, I do not really have anything in mind to write about, so here goes nothing! For session time fillers this week, I have gone deep into my TME compendium (database) for some inspiration. The thing is, TMEs come and go in the life of a music therapist. There are times when all I sing is one specific song and then it goes back into the vault until a later date. I have so many of my own songs in that state right now that I am enjoying the opportunity to bring them bac...

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 ...

Today's goal is to finish packing up the living room. I have six days until I close on my new house, and I am not ready to go yet. Fortunately, I have 11 days until the movers arrive, and I am only moving a small way down the road, so I can take some things over in between closing and movers. That's the plan, at least. I am almost finished with the dining room shelves. I keep finding additional books on shelves, but I am almost finished and ready to take the shelves down. Once that is done, I will be able to stack boxes against the wall instead of in the middle of everything. I should also be able to move my coffee table and my loveseat to that area so I can pack up the rest of the room.  I have lots of ambition and very little energy, so this should be interesting. There are so many things that go into being someone moving houses. In my original timeline, all of this happened during one of my breaks from my job, but the universe had different ideas, so now I am doing most of t...

Whoo-whee, my clients were CRANKY yesterday! The time change has affected us all, and it really shows! Between students taking advantage of the fact that I was the only staff member in the music therapy room and students ignoring every thing I said and then getting angry when I did not hop to get them what they demanded, I was exhausted after the first session! Today is a five group and two individuals type of day, so I am anticipating more cranky feelings from my clients and from myself as well! So, how do I deal with the cranky feelings? First of all, consistency . The rules stay the same no matter what happens - interrupting is not okay; leaving the room is not okay; being unkind to others is not okay. You get the idea. In addition, lots of room for choices and options are important for my clients who do not even get to choose their clothing in the morning. The second aspect of dealing with the cranks is to not take anything personally . It's not personal, it's just business...

I have nothing new to talk about. Nothing new to look forward to or to try or get going. I keep waking up early, resisting the opportunity to get up and out of bed, and I still don't want to get to work. I am wiped out...and, I just remembered that it is a 44 hour work week. I have to work a 12-hour day on Wednesday. I am not looking forward to that at all. So, I am stuck in a time loop - at least, that's how it feels - doomed to repeat the same day over and over again until something new happens, or something like that. It is pretty funny that this is how I am at the moment - complaining about how static things are right now - I get up, I go to work, I come home - when I have spent most of the past year complaining about how much change has happened in my work situation. Perhaps this is the result of cumulative stress on me at the moment. We were talking about trauma and one of my co-workers popped off with, "This won't cause a trauma unless you let it." I hearti...

I was able to accomplish yesterday's goal of arriving at work exactly on time - I was on the property, parking the car at 7:14 am! I did not allow any sort of anxiety reaction take over - I had to tell myself quite frequently that it would be fine (especially when I got stuck behind one slow school bus) if I was a couple of minutes late. I always stay later than I have to, so there is no reason why I should be feeling any sort of guilt that I am not at work enough for what they pay me. I am, and more than! I am repeating the process today. I have less responsibilities than usual today because we have closed a classroom due to a COVID outbreak. So, my third class of the day has been cancelled because we have no new students. I have almost an entire afternoon to work on my digital resources for my students. I need to buckle down on that project for October - I've decided to do a presentation about bullying. We spend lots of time with kids on how to identify bullies, and not as mu...

Today, I want to talk about the amount of time that it takes to write a Therapeutic Music Experience (TME) in my system. It is not something that is easy to do, but the amount of time is worth it when I have to justify some of my ideas to others because I have put in the thought and effort to get things firmly designed... I am a bit rambly today, so please forgive me. My system is not the easiest system to do. It is not something that just happens without some thought and work. When I time how long it takes for me to "write" a TME, the duration is pretty long from initial idea to a set format on paper. In some cases, music sits in my file in the post-it note format for years before I get everything finalized, but I am not going to count those examples here. As soon as an idea comes into my head, I try to set the basic idea down on paper. Yesterday, I was sitting on the floor, coordinating my session strategy, when inspiration struck for another True/False song came into my he...