music, therapy, and me

Yesterday, the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) released a short statement indicating that, instead of our annual conference, there will be an "Inaugural Symposium." No other information than date and that this will be completely virtual. So. Many. Questions. I am glad to see that AMTA is making plans for something to happen this November. Cancelling the in-person conference was a big deal, but I wasn't planning on attending in person. It has been a long time since I have felt that the AMTA conference has given me any benefit by attending in-person. I will probably sign up for the Symposium, but it will depend on how much it costs. I have questions right now, though, that haven't been answered. Where are the speakers coming from? Are they going to use the proposals sent in by some of us when a conference was a possibility back in April? Are they going to select specific people to speak? How do you get on that list? What types of things are we going to be able...

Actually, that's not really true. I woke up at 3:40ish and remained awake. I wasted time on social media and have been puttering at home since then. It's been almost 6 hours since I woke up, and I have cleared off my sewing table, emptied two big boxes, and emptied nine little boxes into different storage. I also hung up a Star Wars poster in my hallway, and I intend on hanging another one by the end of the day. I have neglected the blog until now because I just didn't think about it. Isn't it Friday? If so, then it is time to talk about systems in music therapy. I am creating a new system in my home. It's an immense undertaking because I have so much junk and things that I have collected, so it will be a huge undertaking, to be sure. Here's what I'm trying to do... I want one of my bedrooms to be my music therapy room. It will be the place where I store my instruments, file folder activities, and extra music therapy things. Right now, I am collecting things...

This post started off very differently, but I need to go in a different way this morning. It is day seven of my break before the 2022-2023 school year, and I am trying to figure out what to talk about today.  I was thanked for offering information to a couple of music therapy students on Tuesday evenings. I always feel a bit uncomfortable when I am thanked about things, especially when I get as much or more than the participants get from the experience. Anyway, that started my under stimulated and rested brain into contemplating why I like to share information with music therapy students, interns, and professionals. This is the thread that is currently spinning around in my brain and will not let go. So, let's use this post to work through several of these strings... First, I share information because I have found that I can't find what I want or need as a music therapy clinician. I also don't have the money to pay for all the various communities that other music therapists...

I woke up late this morning - well, late for me anyway - and then goofed off for a couple of hours before actually starting my morning. It was thundering and we got a bit of rain, so things were nice and relaxed. I woke to find that voters in my state supported something that I also support. It was interesting to look over the county by county results to see that the measure only passed in counties where there were bigger populations. Most of the smaller, more rural counties did not vote against the measure. Most of those counties only registered about 2,000 votes as well. I am curious about who voted and who did not. I go back to work next Thursday, but I have a week still until everything starts to happen again. The new school year will bring changes, but I think I am ready. There are many things that are unknown at this point, but I am going to try to relax about stepping into the unknown and not knowing that I have secured the safety net personally.  Yesterday was a good day. I...

One of the things that I find when I speak to interns and music therapy students is that there isn't much classroom time devoted to learning about how to put together a therapeutic music experience (TME). [Just so you know, this is the term I use to refer to what I do with my clients in their sessions - I was first introduced to this term by a music therapy intern from Western Michigan University and it resonated with me as a way to think about what to call what I do.] So, here is what I do and how I think about each piece of my TME file as I am developing the things we do. Purpose :       This is where you identify all of the therapeutic skills and elements that you will be addressing. (e. g., To increase eye contact; name recognition; peer identification; fine motor control; entrainment; impulse control) This needs to be a complete list. Follow the brainstorming process explained in consultation. Source :       This is where ...

Three days ago, I said, "Farewell" to intern #33 and now I am getting ready for intern #35 who will start in 10 days. Intern #34 is still going strong at the facility and will be around until October, but now is a perfect time to review #33's time with me and make some changes for #35. #34 is stuck with the revisions that I made after #32 - that's just the way this goes. So, it is time to sit down and make some revisions to all of my internship documents. I will start with the Internship Handbook - this is facility-specifc, though I guess I could make a more general version to share with others...hmm. Tangent - need to focus. The first part that I look at is the assignment list. These assignments have changed pretty significantly over the years that I have been an internship director, but I feel that the changes reflect things that I need to know about in my professional role. I am sure that there are other things I could include in my assignments - for example, I do ...

I just remembered that I have a small room carpet in the back of my car that needs to be removed from said car to be cleaned and so I can stuff my car full of groceries and, hopefully, some bookshelves or chairs for my home as I go out and about. I think I will dump the carpet in the garage for steam cleaning and park in my driveway for a bit until it dries and is ready to head back to my new (old) office space. I haven't had a carpet in that space before, but I am looking forward to getting it. If the rug doesn't clean up the way I think it will, I will just dump it into a local dumpster and be done with it. That thought, though, just popped into my head as I was debating whether I should order a big breakfast from a local restaurant before going to get my grocery order. Then, I remembered the rug. Over the past day, I managed to spend money on food and medications as well as on a bunch of poly storage folders for my communication binder system. I need to print those pages out...