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So many books and articles to read

I have always wanted to be an avid reader. I introduced An Article Monthly Project months ago, and I did find that making the time to read the articles was satisfying. But, it did not last.

One good book I am reading (in pieces) is The Dynamics of Music Psychotherapy, edited by Kenneth Bruscia. I’m quite sure many music therapists either own it or have heard of it, but it seems to be a good one to go back to whenever I so need.

If there so happens to be someone out there who wants to discuss any of the chapters, I’m all for it. 

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A song share

Yes, the musicality of this song is strange. The singer’s voice doesn’t sound like it should be singing these lyrics. But, I appreciate these lyrics as a music therapist. I was listening to The Current this morning and thought the song, or at least the lyrics, could lend themselves well to a group discussion with high schoolers or middle schoolers.

Any thoughts?

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Coming together for peer supervision

We had a great group for our somewhat-monthly peer supervision meeting last night. I was fortunate to meet for the first time three new music therapists who are practicing in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area, and together all seven of us improvised and shared some songs we’d been using in our clinical work. Coming up on Saturday is the Music Therapy Association of Minnesota conference, entitled “Brain Tuning: Teaching Others to Improve Attention, Memory, and Problem Solving Skills.”

Thanks to those music therapists who came out last night. I will be posting about the next peer supervision group meeting once it’s decided.

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Child Development Club

Happy new year!

We’ve been traveling in the Midwest and in New York City over the past couple of weeks. This is our first full week back at work. There really is comfort in routine.

I am taking this opportunity to guide you to a new website to which I am a contributing blogger. The site is Child Development Club, and it was created by Laura Efinger,  M.A. OT/L, CEIM, who lives and works in Cairo, Egypt. I’m excited to be a part of this community as it has writers of a variety of professions (including one other music therapist) who live all over the world.

Child Development Club’s mission:

The Child Development Club was created to support parents, care providers, educators, administrators, therapists and other professionals by providing relevant child development resources. Our goal is to provide international resources that adults can utilize with children, so children can thrive and be successful in activities of daily living no matter where they live.  Our goal is also to provide a resource network that students can easily access and utilize on their own.

Feel free to find my latest post here.

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Motivation

Working in private practice offers its set of challenges. One such challenge, for me, is finding consistent motivation to KEEP UP ON MY PAPERWORK. I’m actually pretty scheduled and somewhat determined, and definitely goal-oriented. But, my lists and post-its and planners and web-based calendars amass entries much faster than I can strike them (or recycle them, in the case of my post-its).

Today, I figured it out. Today, I felt productive. Today, I drank twice the amount of coffee as usual — and continued drinking it well into the dark of mid-afternoon (I hate these short days) — and today, I see a space in the lineup of paper product piles assigned to to-dos.

Today, there was coffee.

 

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Books in abundance

I was listening to Janice Lindstrom’s latest episode of The Music Therapy Show today, in which she interviewed Barbara Wheeler, PhD, MT-BC, and decided two things:

  1. Maybe I’d read more music therapy research and texts if they were available on an e-reader (and oh hey, at Barcelona Publishers, texts are available in abundance in that format).
  2. Maybe I could do with starting a music therapy book- or text- or research- or novel-reading club. Any interest?