music, therapy, and me

Oh, goodness. I have remembered to write in the afternoons now two times in a row. My views have gone down significantly, but I think I know ways to get you all to see my posts on various social media accounts... we'll see. Okay. Today is Tuesday (and my brain is working a bit better today than it was yesterday), so that means it is time to talk about therapeutic music experiences (TMEs). So, here we go. This week, the first week in May, is always Star Wars week in my music therapy room. It will always be so - I have decided. We are exploring elements of my favorites stories and some of my toys, and it is music therapy because of the goals behind it all. My groups are getting to spend some time in a galaxy far, far away because I am just a bit of a fan. We have a presentation that introduces some of the music of the series and some of the planets that the creative people behind Star Wars have developed over all these years. We talk about how it would be difficult to take instrument...

So, I figured out how many years, months, and days I have until I am eligible for retirement. Spoiler alert - I intend on retiring from my current job when I am able to do so because my body is getting old, and I want to be able to enjoy my retirement. So, I am going to retire in a bit (we're still talking about years here, folks, but it is less than five...), and I have to figure out when I can accept my last intern for this job. I enjoy being an internship director - I mean, most of it - I hate telling applicants that they will not be at my program for their internships. That part stinks, but the rest is fun. There is something really fun about watching a music therapy student turn into a music therapist, and being an internship director means that I get a front row seat! My next music therapy intern will be starting when our summer schedule starts on June 5th. I am getting some assignments ready for the intern for the week that I will be gond during the last week of our second s...

It is Sunday again. Today's randomly selected post comes to us from May 22, 2015 - the day after my birthday - and is all about music-themed gifts. Do you ever get things that are musical because you are a music therapist? I don't get them very often, so when music-themed gifts arrive for various celebrations, they make an impact. On this birthday, I found a music and cat themed necklace in my gifts. It is still one of my favorite pieces of jewelry because it combined things that I love into one representation. My jewelry is still in a box somewhere - I need to find it and unpack all that stuff so I can wear it again. (Not at work, but when I am not at work... you get it!) Most of the things that I own that are music-themed are things that I have found for myself. Most of the things that I own that are music instruments are from my family members. Most of the music that I own is something that I purchased, but some of it was gifted to me. It is interesting how things arrive in ...

Welcome to the malaise of my mind... I tried my best to start doing some blogging in the afternoons, but, as you can see, this hasn't happened this week. I am not going to give up, though. I think that I will enjoy blogging in the afternoon, once it becomes a habit. I will do better...that's the plan...doing better. This has been a week of pain, exhaustion, and revelations that have challenged my ways of thinking about myself and what I want to be doing. I looked up my retirement eligibility date this week on our Public Employees' Retirement System website and found out that it is June 1, 2026. This has shaken my world a bit because it is a definite date now - not just a thought. I may not retire at that point, but I might retire in 2026 at the end of the contract year, or I might go another year. I'm not sure at this point what my future will hold, but that's okay. That's also a bit of why I was dithering about what I want to do in my future. Here's what I ...

Just in case you missed yesterday's post, I have decided to try changing up my morning routine. As a result of lots of stuff going on, I am allowing myself to sleep later in the mornings. I am now going to try writing this blog in the afternoons. Today is the first day that I have actually been able to do this, so let's see how things go. Today is Tuesday, which is usually the day that I write about therapeutic music experiences or TMEs. This is the terminology that I like best to refer to what I do with my clients in their sessions - others call these same things modules, or interventions, or applications, or even the outdated term, activities. I just like the terminology of therapeutic music experiences, so that's what I call my ideas. More information is called for here. I enjoy writing songs, finding new ways for my clients to experience music, and challenging the same clients to develop their own relationships with music outside of our sessions. I write music for all s...

I am so sorry - in advance - for deviating from my usual posts. If you know, I am having a bit of a struggle with exhaustion. My brain is not waking up easily. I think this is medication side effects, but I am not used to it and it is frustrating. I am having to rely on audible alarms to wake up which is not my typical situation. I hate being startled awake by a sound - any sound, so I am waking before that sound goes off, but I still have that tension present every morning. I am having to use the alarms because I am sleeping through my light, but only sometimes. I am not consistently waking up when the light clicks on - that time is at 3:50am, if you are interested. I am struggling to come up with ideas for this blog at the moment. I am not sure what to write about and how to make things work for me. This is something that has been happening more often lately, and I am wondering if I should just take a break from writing for a bit. I hate doing that because I find that this practice i...

It is Sentimental Sunday, and my brain is not very cooperative, but that is the nice thing about Sentimental Sundays - I get to review my past posts to see what past me was writing about. Today's post comes from 1/25/2021 and is all about my upstairs neighbors and the incident that drove me (finally) into homeownership! January 2021 was a rough time for my family. My father died on my mother's birthday early in the month. We had to navigate life and grief and COVID and new family situations. It was not the easiest of times, but my family was surviving. I was in my apartment, missing my cat who died two weeks before my father, and trying to grieve whilst away from all that I wanted to be near. To add to all the grieving and changes in my family life, my upstairs neighbors were becoming a problem. Here are the details . I don't know much about them, but I do know that they became very much a problem during this time. In fact, this was the last straw for me, and I started loo...