music, therapy, and me

If you have been reading for the last couple of months, then you know that I am currently in the throes of moving from an apartment to my new house! I am currently sitting in my new office/craft studio, at 3:16am, after spending the night in the apartment and moving some stuff over at 2:30. My life is so scattered and disorganized right now that I am just unsure what is happening at any given moment. I do not like this feeling! The movers show up on Wednesday to move almost everything over. That means that I have to get all sorts of things packed up and ready before then. I will not be ready. I decided not to completely vacate my apartment until next month, so I have some more time to clean things and move things that I can't get packed before then. There will be lots less pressure to get things over when the big stuff is already here. I can move things as I can over the next month. I went over to the apartment yesterday after church, and I packed up the bathroom, took down the boo...

The author holding a black journal. It is fascinating to me how quickly the end of the year always approaches! I mean, it feels like it was the beginning of the school year about two weeks ago, and here it is, already November 21st! It just does not seem possible that it is late November and time to get things set up for the next calendar year! As you know, I am a bullet journaler (sorta - I use this term mainly because I use a jumble of planning and journaling techniques to keep myself somewhat organized!), and I like to use up my books completely before starting another one, so I will not be starting a new journal in January. I tend to use up my journals in June or July, so I will stay in my yellow, rainbow journal until the end of May 2022. At that point, I will be able to start up a new journal. Waste not, want not, am I right? Anyway, just because I am not starting up a new journal doesn't mean that I am not getting some new things going in the pages! I found my word of the ye...

Anxiety has been showing it's ugly head quite often in the past 36 hours. As I wrote yesterday, I am currently overstimulated, overscheduled, and just plain wishing I could hibernate and that other people would just do things for me and let me wake up to a beautifully maintained home! Alas, those types of wishes are not really all that possible on a music therapist's budget, so I am still packing and getting ready to start moving from my apartment to MY NEW HOME! Yesterday involved having to leave work early to make it to the bank and get a cashier's check and then dash to the doctor to continue to consult about my current partial Achilles tendon rupture, and then heading home for some packing and talking to my Mom and my sister. Earlier in the week, I had an email from my loan processor saying that there were additional fees that I had to cover in my closing costs and I was armed with the exact amount when I went in for my check. I had paid for the check and currently have...

I got some bad news about my move yesterday, and it has thrown me into all sorts of anxiety responses and reactions. I am already wound up extremely tight due to all the changes in my life at the moment, and this last news just threw me completely over the edge. I will be fine, but my financial situation will be extremely tight for the next year because of this news. I am reeling and trying really hard to calm my overactive response to this news. Worst case scenario, I can find yet another part-time job to make this a better deal for me, but I am hoping that I will not have to do that...yet or at all. We will see. I will have to sit down with my budget and then wiggle things around to see how much money I will actually need every month to keep going. For example, I will no longer be paying for home insurance because that will be part of my mortgage payment, but I will have to pay for water and trash because that is not part of my mortgage the way it was part of my rent check each month...

Apologies, if you are looking for any great insight into music, therapy, or me today. I'm not sure I have any. I got my booster shot on Monday, and yesterday just wiped me out! The Tylenol that I took did little to help with symptoms, and I am still a bit in the throes of it all. Today, the pain has moved into my lymph nodes and is lurking in other places as well. I had three Sprites yesterday to help with my upset stomach and my desperate need for sugar-fueled energy (since I cannot tolerate caffeine). I spent about 30 minutes after school walking around my new home for my final walk through, and when I got home, I went immediately to bed and then to sleep. As a result, I have been up for four hours now - just watching bad television and thinking about how sick I feel. I do feel a little bit better than I did yesterday, but I am not back to what is now my "normal." I am dragging around. It has been a long, long week, and it is only Wednesday. I indulged in a little cryin...

This is Orff week in my music therapy room. I am fortunate enough to have a full classroom set of Orff instruments that I received way back in 2008 or 2009 when then President Obama sent out grants to schools to increase technology in our classrooms. Rather than getting a smart board back then, I requested the instruments to enhance my instruction, and my request was allowed under the rules of the grant expenditures. So, the good people at West Music made my school a deal on my set, and I have loved those instruments ever since. Now, when I say that it is Orff week in my room, I do not mean that I am doing any sort of official Orff training with my students. When it comes to musical concepts, my students do not achieve things like steady beats, ostinato patterns, or even the idea of playing a melody line easily. So, my Orff weeks tend to be focused on exploring the instruments, but this week also gives me really good information about how my students process information. My chosen popu...

Whoo, boy! I think this year, more than any, has been overly full of stress and issues. Last year, at this time, we were three days away from going into no contact with clients at all as COVID-19 finally developed in my residential clientele. We went into going into work two days per week (without seeing clients) and three days from home. I had two interns and had to scramble to find things for us to do at home to earn their hours and my salary. We ended up making tons of visual aids, writing lots of Therapeutic Music Experiences (TMEs), and starting our YouTube Channel at that time. This year, the stresses are not as COVID related, but the virus is still wreaking havoc on my small facility and what we can do for our clients and on the staff members who are having to continue to pivot how things are done over and over again. The biggest problem with this situation is that everyone is feeling the same things. You go down the road to the local fast food place, and you will find the same ...