music, therapy, and me

Happy - uh, I want to say - Thursday?  One of the things that is difficult for me right now is telling time - especially what day it is! The hours are not as difficult to feel, but the days are. I do not have lots of things that I have to get done these days, so the days just kinda slip away. Having appointments helps with discerning which day is which. Last night, I met with three others for a discussion about working with people who have a specific type of diagnosis. We had a good conversation about ways to work with this population. The other three music therapists were younger than me by about 15 years at least, so it was interesting to hear them speak about their own music therapy tools and materials and to contrast them with my own. I am a vintage music therapist. I wear that title proudly because I have been a clinician for 33 years now. I have earned the title of "vintage," and I am going to revel in the fact that I am still doing the thing that I love the most even a...

Yesterday, I returned to my office and email after a week of sick time. Buried in my emails was a request from the district office for information about what I will be doing after I retire from my school based music therapy job at the end of June. I am not entirely sure how to respond because I really do not know what I will be doing from July 1 on. To be honest, these types of questions cause me so much angst that I just shut down when asked. I don't know what I am going to do. All I know is that I am going to spend some time just resting and getting my house in order before I go outside of my house to find some employment. I find it a bit funny that the district office (which has completely ignored me for 25 years) now wants to know a bit about me as I am skipping out the door. For now, though, I am starting to get nervous about not having a plan. My financial advisor says that I can take a couple of years without needing outside employment, but I have no idea how that is possibl...

One of the benefits of ripping my CD collection onto my computer is that I have the opportunity to dive back into the music that I have used over my career so far and the music that I have acquired that I love. I am currently working on one of my soundtrack cases - I have a couple of these - and I am reminded of why I purchased specific songs for specific reasons as I look over my collection. I have been taunted lately by a younger colleague (not at work, but a music therapist) for still having my CD collection. I admit, it is easy to stream music these days, but I still enjoy having the music available to hold. There is something more personal with CDs and records and cassettes. The convenience of streaming is wonderful until the wi-fi goes down, and then you feel pretty silly because you do not have alternatives. I will NEVER give up my CD collection!! I love it too much!! So, call me old-fashioned or anachronistic, if you must, but I will continue to use my CDs. I am just going to c...

I am an old music therapist. I am getting ready to retire from my full-time job as a school-based music therapist in a psychiatric treatment facility and associated day school after almost 30 years there. I have been around a long time. My music therapy heroes are starting to pass away. Barbara Wheeler was one of those music therapy heroes who left this world this week. After a long career in academia, she "retired" and started more music therapy programs and acted as a consultant for programs around the world. She seemed to spend more time with other music therapists than she did at home, and that is the type of music therapy life that I am striving for myself. Another music therapy pioneer passed away. Dr. Roy Grant, a music therapist from Georgia, also left our world on January 24th. His music therapy legacy comes in training students and expanding music therapy services for the people in the vicinity of the University of Georgia. Coming to the profession of music therapy ...

Here we go. It is the first day of the second semester of the 2025-2026 school year - AKA, my last semester as a school-based therapist (as far as I know right now). I have five groups today - none of which are the same as the groups that I had on Tuesdays just two weeks ago. I have a vague idea of what I want to do with them (I have to laminate some resources that one student in particular will wrinkle immediately), but nothing is set in stone. I was anything but efficient yesterday. I did put some stuff into my car, but it is still sitting there, waiting for my attention. I received my Christmas boxes yesterday, so all of that stuff is scattered around my living room where I am currently storing the stuff I am bringing home from work, so things are getting to my overload state. Once I am finished with this post, I am heading upstairs to take a shower, get some water, and try my best to figure out what I am going to do with almost all of my students this week. I know what I am doing n...

I am someone who reads science fiction and has always been suspicious of artificial intelligences - HAL, Sonny, David, O.T.T.O., Pat from Smart House - they have always been a bit spooky for me. As a result of my healthy reading and movie watching habits, I do not like the ways that AI is taking over some of the basic things that I love. Even as I write, there is a little icon suggesting that I use a tool to generate my ideas and blog posts. I just don't like it. I was recently encouraged to start using a common tool to help me figure out some of what I want to do with the rest of my life. When I first tried it out, the tool told me to "come back when you have answered these questions." Ugh. I was using the tool to generate the questions. I tried it again yesterday. This round was a bit better, but I still felt the creepiness overtaking me as I was using it. It finally gave me a printable product, so I printed things out and then moved on. I am not going to go back for a ...

As a vintage music therapist who has invested in records, cassettes, CDs, mp3s, and now streaming services, I have lots of music around my house. I have managed to give away most of my cassettes, but I have all of the records of my family as well as my extensive CD collection lurking in bookshelves in corners of my home. I have started the process of ripping my CD collection onto my computer to store that music on the cloud. This is not a process for the faint of heart, and it is taking lots of time. I have a CD drive in my computer - I bought it specifically because it had an integrated CD drive because this is a quest I always have at the back of my mind when I am purchasing things. I want to have my music available to me the next time I get a computer. This is a long introduction to the benefit that I am finding with this task. As I put on the topic line, I am finding old favorite songs again. Part of being a music therapist is a love of music, and I have many pieces that I have lov...

I figure that it might be time for a reintroduction to music, therapy, and me. If you have been here for a long time, then you know quite a bit about me. If you are a newer reader, then you may not know much about what I do, where I've been, or where I get my ideas. So, allow me to introduce myself. I am a long-term music therapist. I started my music therapy studies back in the last century, and I have been employed as a music therapist for 32 of my 34 years as a professional. For the other two years, I had job descriptions that were not specifically music therapist but in related fields. I have spent 29 years at my current job, working with children, adolescents, and young adults with developmental, intellectual, and psychiatric diagnoses. I work in a school associated with both local school districts and the psychiatric residential treatment facility where the school is housed. In that time, I have been through many policy changes, changes in the types of kids that we serve, and...

I am a proudly vintage music therapist. I have been practicing music therapy for over 30 years now, and it has been an interesting journey. As I am getting ready to transition from a full-time school employee to retiring from that job to something new, I am thinking about all the things that I know now that I wish someone had told me earlier... One of the things that I wish I had been required to do was a introduction to business course. I am starting that process now, but I really wish I had been in the know for my entire career. I am now trying to learn about being a small business owner as I am trying to figure out my next steps. I knew, from the very beginning of my career, that I would never escape the question, "so, what is musical therapy, anyway?" I have had many different ways of explaining what I do, but it has always been interesting to see how people respond and what they ask about our profession. I should keep a tally of the times that I explain my job. That woul...

I feel my age this week. This is not a usual situation for me. I usually either feel younger than my age or older than my age - not exactly my age. This week, though, I feel my age. I have been figuring out that there are some things that I used to do without a thought that I can no longer do easily. I used to spend most of my Fridays engaged in running games. Not anymore. Same with sitting on the floor and hopping up when I needed to get going. Rather than dwell on what I can no longer do the way I used to do things, I am trying to think about the things that I can do now that I was unable to do then. With age comes wisdom, right? Right?? I think I have gained lots of knowledge and practice experience in my 31 years of professional work, including learning about what type of therapist I do not want to be. This has been a good thing to learn - I know what I do not want, but knowing what I want is still a bit elusive. I think that is a good state to be in. So, what is it that I want out...

I recently saw a request for s specific type of song for a specific goal, and I did not respond to the request because my response would have been rather snarky. I wonder why people do not make up their own songs in these types of situations. I really do. Why do you need to ask for songs when you could write your own? Were these music therapists not taught to write music as students? Are they laboring under some imposter syndrome symptoms that tell them that they cannot write their own songs? Is it easier to ask for others to give them something than it is to spend some time making their own thing? After I abstained from responding in a vein similar to the paragraph above, I started wondering if I just do this because I haven't always had the ability to ask others for their work.  Gather 'round, children, as I tell you a tale from the 20th Century...   In the days afore email, social media, and home computers, we music therapists had to create our own songs, take them to confe...

Today is the 31st anniversary of an important day in my life - the day I finished my internship and became a professional music therapist. I am proud of my career as a music therapist. I have been employed for my entire life except for about three months after my internship finished up. I have not been a music therapist for all of that time, but I have had the title of music therapist for the past 28 years. Before I became a "music therapist" in title, I was an activity director for children, a "QMRP" for adults, and a "Rehabilitation Therapist - Music" for adults. In the first and third of these jobs, I was able to do some music therapy, but music was not my primary way of doing my job. In the "QMRP" job, I was an administrator of three group homes and did not do any music therapy at all. My first two jobs did not last long, but they taught me some valuable lessons about myself as a music therapist and as a human being. I learned that I enjoy wo...

I am a vintage music therapist. This is something that I take some pride in because it takes grit and guts and a love for this profession to be able to claim 31 years in this role. It really does. In my career, I have not been able to find a music therapy job in the place I wanted to work, I have had to move for schooling and for work, I have taken pay cuts to move into a music therapy role, I have lived paycheck to paycheck, and I have finally become financially stable and successful. I have lived through significant changes in education and clinical training with our professional organization, and I have volunteered many ideas and hours for that same organization. I am a vintage music therapist. Being an older music therapist has perks and benefits, but it also has drawbacks. I am a member of Gen X - those latchkey kids who had moms who worked and who had lots of independent hours to fill. We are not easily defined as a group, and that's okay with me. I am also an oldest child of...

I just realized that I haven't written a post for the last two days. Here I am today, sitting here a bit later than usual, waiting for my head to clear from my late night medication routine, and trying to figure out what I am going to write about. My head is a bit foggy but is starting to clear out, so I have some thoughts about different things. I was interviewed for the Canadian Music Therapy Podcast on Monday. I had a good time answering questions and talking about my perspectives as a music therapist with some history behind me but still more music therapy practice in my future. I enjoy being able to share my opinions about things with folks who are interested in listening. I also enjoy hearing the opinions of others who don't agree with me! I feel that we, as a profession, need to become more tolerant of the fact that everyone has opinions that are relevant for them - your opinion is just as valuable to you as mine is to me. Neither opinion is wrong, but mine might be wro...