music, therapy, and me

Lately, I've been kinda disgusted with some of the things that I've been experiencing in my job, reading on social media, and watching develop in the music therapy professional forums that I've decided to be part of. Every thing is just converging upon me along with my annual descent into Seasonal Affective Disorder (yep, mine happens in the summer), so I'm feeling more and more of the negativity that's in the air. It's somewhat hard for me to release all of this emotion because it seems to be permeating every single cell in my body. Wow. That sounds a bit dark. I am okay, but I am a bit disappointed in what I am exposed to right now. I am considering getting off a specific Facebook group where people seem to less considerate than what is expected of therapists (in my opinion, of course!). It is getting so that you cannot post an opinion without being ridiculed for your language or told that the system that you are a part of is illegal or discounted becaus...

While I've been very tired and dragging along somewhat in the high humidity and time zone lag position that I'm in at the moment, I have managed to come up with some "New To Me" Therapeutic Music Experience (my "NTM" TME ) challenge. Before I left for vacation, I made a coping skills calendar, identifying a specific skill to focus on each month. This month is emotion identification. Next month is Journaling. September is counting, and we're going to count in different languages as well as in our native languages. This is one way that I am going to use themes to organize a portion of my music therapy strategizing in the 2019-2020 academic school year. This week's "NTM" TMEs included a "Play An Emotion" experience and a newly, completely composed song, "If I'm Walking Down the Hall, and My Face Looks Like This." I also took out a song that I haven't sung in years because it was the favorite song of a client o...

I am the type of person who tends to stick pretty close to home when I have time off from my job, and I have been forcefully reminded of why this happens this way this week. I am exhausted! I took the last two weeks for a trip to see my parents in Southern California and then a week in Kauai with my Mom and my sister and then a day back in California (just in time for the first big earthquake) and then had to drive back to my midwestern state just in time for a heat advisory. I arrived home early evening on Saturday and had Sunday to rest and get ready for returning to work on Monday. I am still not recovered from my recent experience, and it reminds me why most of my vacations turn into "staycations" rather than extravagant trips. Being in the company of others for that long wears me out. I need time to myself, and that is getting to be more and more important to me as I'm getting older. Don't get me wrong, the trips were lovely, but I spent more time ...

Well, last night I did it! I took a step outside of my comfort zone and tried something that I rarely ever do - I attended a webinar that was not a music therapy webinar, but was more music education-based. I found it through a music therapy source, but it was not something that I would have ever found on my own, and the link arrived, and I just thought, "why not?" As a result, I spent an hour last night listening to two presenters talk about some humanistic principles and how they relate to musicking. (I love that word - musicking!) It was refreshing in a way that many things haven't been refreshing lately, and that was a great outcome for me! My word for this year is "Courage." I am doing things this year that I have never been brave enough to do before, and going to webinars that are outside of my comfort zone are part of those things. It's kinda silly to think that attending webinars can be a courageous act, but I'm finding that courage is no...

I made a decision NOT to go to the American Music Therapy Association national conference this year. This decision has nothing to do with the money involved (unlike many folks on social media) and has everything to do with me and my involvement in AMTA as an organization. This is the first year that I haven't made national conference a priority in my life. In the past 26 years, I have presented or served on committees or boards and have attended the conference. I have attended each and every conference, but this year is the year that I'm going to break my personal record. Here are the reasons why I am NOT going to the AMTA conference this year: I did not have any ideas for presentations this time around. I usually have lots of ideas for presenting information to the music therapy community, but this year I came up dry. Rather than recycle some old ideas or send off half-baked concepts, I decided not to push myself. As a result, I know that I am not presenting this year...

Vacation is over. It was a good time of "not being at work." and I am not ready to get going into the world of music therapy tomorrow, but that is the price of vacationing and then having to work right after vacation. I have three more weeks before my fall break starts - 13 days of solitude and getting things done around here.  I am, however, starting to think about how to do things around my various music therapy practices. It is absolutely fascinating how the brain will do things to keep itself entertained when there is nothing else to distract it. 29 hours of driving down the amazing interstate system of this country is a great way to get creative thoughts flowing. My dashboard has started to look like a bulletin board - there are color-coded (of course) post-it notes (of course) stuck to it. There are lots of ideas and thoughts and half-formed concepts that require a bit more work before they are finished up and ready to go.  This is the thing that I like about going ...

I am going to take a blogging break. For the next several weeks, I am going to purposefully vacate my current state and take a break from most things social media. I may still post the occasional thought on Facebook, but I am not going to spend any time posting blog posts or doing anything other than sitting on a beach and eating chocolate. (Seriously, that's what I'm going to be doing...well, that and driving in the car.) So, if you read this blog in the near future and are wondering where I am, it is easy to answer - I'm on vacation. Feel free to search through all the posts that I've written over the years. Some of them are interesting, some are pure dreck, but there are many, MANY years of thoughts about music, therapy, and me! Thanks, all. See you next month sometime!