music, therapy, and me

I was just informed of a situation where someone is acting like they are a precious gift to the world of music therapy and is bullying others to allow them to take over a process that is well-regarded and practiced in all parts of the music therapy world. I am so tired of bullies. When did it become a professional practice to send emails that demand changes in another person's way of working? When did it become okay to make veiled threats about never engaging in interaction again? When did the voice of a couple of people become more important than the voices of all? I know when I think it really started to be considered "okay," but that is a bit more political than I want to take this blog, so I will refrain from making any more statements about that thought. I do not like bullies. I never have, and I hope that I never bullied anyone else into doing something that they did not want to do. I am sure that I did at one point, and I am deeply mortified and humbled by any sort...

I have a problem. It's not a major issue as far as life goes, but it is coloring everything I do lately. I'm not interested. Have you ever had a time when you just weren't interested in what you had to do? Now, I'm still interested in my clients, but the other stuff is boring me. I would rather sit and listen to music for my upcoming theme (Future/Dreams/Occupations) than do my documentation. I'm not interested in cleaning my office because I am too busy organizing my sensory closet (it looks BEAUTIFUL!!). I haven't spent much time in my administrative duties because I am too wrapped up in my creation process. This could be a problem. I know that putting off my documentation is something that will get me in the end. Documentation has to be done, so the list of classes that need to be finished is growing rather than shrinking. I will have to tackle that list specifically this morning and tomorrow as well in order to catch up. Since I chose to put off th...

So, you may have noticed that I didn't write anything yesterday. I just couldn't bear it, so I went straight to work without writing. I got to work VERY early, but I also fit in a trip to Walmart where I wandered through the entire store and spent very little money, so the start of the day wasn't too bad. It was a rough week. I would like to make a unilateral decision that we have absolutely NO Monday holidays and switch all those holidays into Friday holidays. It is very difficult to skip an early day and find the schedule and the routine. So, my {sarcasm intended here through word choice and my internal brain inflection as I am writing} WONDERFUL week this week included being yelled at in the hallway about a situation that occurred in a different service that I had nothing to do with, by an administrator, in front of students and staff members. When I went to the administrator to communicate that I felt humiliated and that I had been maltreated, I was told {and I qu...

Alright, alright. I'm already there. I am declaring myself an OMTF - an Old Music Therapy Fogey - right now! Are you an OMTF? Here are some tell-tale signs. a growing feeling that "people today just don't know how to ____." statements like "when I was in school, I had to..." start to bubble up and out of your mouth when you are trying to interact with others a growing nostalgia for the "good old days" I'm telling you, I'm there! As I read through posts on my various social media accounts, I find myself doing the following things more and more: yelling "What do you think Google is for?" at the screen when looking at yet another request for the chords to a song that is readily available to me via Google... yelling "Didn't you go through dictation and ear training in your education?" at the same posts! Why else did we take all of those classes? Are there music therapy programs out there that do not require ...

I had myself a bit of a temper tantrum last night. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't an adult thing to do, but it really seemed necessary at the time.  I am now on a better side of things. Here's what happened. I started the day in a funk. It was a 12-hour day: 8 hours with kids and then 4 hours of inservice time. (I hate inservice days!) My morning groups weren't bad at all. The kids engaged in my TMEs without too much difficulty, and they seemed to like what we were doing. The afternoon group? Utter disaster. Now, I share a wall with this class so I know that they are struggling. They have had a new staff member arrive this week along with a new student. (What school district starts a student in a new school 10 days before the end of school? Makes you wonder...) The group doesn't deal with change well, and now? Bam! Two major changes in a row.  I won't go into all of the details, but kids were in and out of the session all afternoon. We ended up with a l...