music, therapy, and me

What?? A trip to the library on a Saturday? Yep. I signed up for a seminar about musicians in my local town and have to head out today to meet with other people. This is a HUGE step for me - going to a place where I will not know anyone to do things that are completely out of my wheelhouse. I am already regretting this decision, but it is something that I need to do. Here's the synopsis of what I'm doing later today:  Want to learn how to turn your art into a sustainable career? Join the library for a special session of What Works, a workshop on entrepreneurship for artists from the Mid-America Arts Alliance.…   So, that's what I am going to do - learn how to turn my art into a sustainable career. I hope that it will be something that I can finally accomplish - making some money from my art and my music outside of a full-time job. We will see what happens. I hope that there are lots of people in the auditorium because I don't want to be one of two - too much attentio...

I am doing something that I rarely do during my breaks from my job as a school-based music therapist - I am leaving my house for a craft class! I signed up for this craft class back in June for a July class, but the instructor broke her elbow and had to reschedule. This is the day, so I am looking forward to going to make something new with people (hopefully, more than just me there!) who share some of my interests in paper and making books. I know the business owner makes the types of books that I like to make, but who knows if there will be others?? I certainly hope so. I have two and a half hours before the class starts, and my time anxiety is already starting. I will go get gas for the car, breakfast for me, and then sit in the parking lot until the store actually opens. I will bring a small bag of my personal favorite crafting items, and I will bring some money for shopping as well! The last time I tried something like this, I ended up being the only person who showed up for the c...

It is the first day of the last break of the summer - what I like to call my Fall break even though Autumn is still two months away from officially starting. We get to work from home today, so I am going to spend my time putting together a new tool for my music therapy room - a visual schedule. I have never used a visual schedule for my group sessions because I do not often have a set session strategy for what I do with my clients. I often change my mind when each group walks into the room to accommodate how my clients are interacting with me, with the music I play, and with each other. So, I have never really had a good way of making a visual schedule that covers last minute adaptations. I think I have found a way to do this now. I am going to use generic terms for the types of things we do in music therapy. This will allow me to have a basic structure while still allowing for changes to occur in the moment. I will also use this format in a general manner for most of my groups. Being ...

Happy New Year, everyone! Wherever you are, I am hoping that you are feeling optimistic about what is ahead of you for this year.  There is just something about a new calendar year that gives so many of us so much hope. We plan on changing things. We plan on being better than we were in the past. We often fail, but we keep on trying. About a year ago, I decided that I was no longer going to make goals for myself. Now, don't get me wrong, I write AMAZING goals, but I never work on them. Last year, at this time, I decided to set some quests for myself.  Again, quests are just renamed goals, but by thinking about what I want to accomplish in the amount of time I have left as a quest, I can be a bit more forgiving with myself when I do not get to the finish line. Rather, I can celebrate the progress that I have made on my journey. All steps are forward movement, so I haven't failed in accomplishing my goals, I have made strides toward reaching my destination. It's a subtle dif...

It is TME Tuesday, and, as predicted, I am less happy about being up and getting ready to go. I have been tied to my asthma medication in order to not be coughing all the time and wheezing, so there are things that could be better, but there are things that could be worse, of course! Today's focus is my typical Tuesday focus - therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). There are many ways to come up with ideas, but I find that most of mine either start with a goal or with an object of some sort. Let's focus on how I start with an object and then figure out things I can do with clients and the object. This requires some post-it notes or my Ideas book, a PENCIL, an eraser, and an object. I usually start with brainstorming some sensory information. What can I see? What can I feel? What can I hear? How do I move with or to use the object? What is the payoff for using the object? Other questions come about as I go through this process. I start to fill out my brainstorming post-its or pag...

One of the benefits to having had COVID recently has been the absolute need to stay at home without going anyplace. I have been out of my house twice in the past (almost) two weeks, and I stayed in the car the entire time I was "out." I am getting ready to head out tomorrow evening (fully masked) to go to my friend's husband's celebration of life. I will also be spending some time with the lawn guy today - again, completely and fully masked. I may also go driving just to feel like I've been out. Yesterday, my first post in a long time started me thinking about some possible options for me. I have decided to be an exhibitor at the Midwestern region conference next spring. Right now, it is scheduled to be live, so I think I can pick up where I had to leave off in March 2020 when I was getting ready to have an exhibit for the very first time. I still have some of the products that I made back then, so I can just keep producing things for this upcoming spring event. E...

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...

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,...

Right now, it is 4:12 am, and I am sitting in my almost empty office, watching James Corden's monologue and writing this blog post. I am bone tired and decided to do some more passive music therapy sessions this week than active ones. I traveled into work yesterday, wondering what I was going to do with my three groups that would require less motion from me but that would also fulfill my mission with my clients which is educational enrichment through engagement and therapeutic programming. My quandary continued through sitting at my desk and trying to get things strategized. I started my planning with thinking about getting centers running, but the center ideas that I had needed some work on my part, and my brain is not working well right now. So, I scrapped that idea for later. I wrote that idea down, but I abandoned it for this week. I was almost in tears when I remembered something that I had already put together that was ready to go! Do you remember in August when I stated tha...