Ideas

What are you playing for you? As music therapists, we make a lot of music for other people. It’s what we signed up for and it’s immensely fulfilling. When is the last time you made music for fun? For yourself? For your own expression and well-being? I know that some of you do this regularly. For you it’s necessary. Maybe you play in a band, perform at open mics, or strum your favorite tunes in your office after hours. I just saw two fellow Bay Area musicians rock out at…

In a quaint Thai restaurant, over a meal of tofu and stir-fried vegetables, I had a philosophical conversation with John Rapson, my good friend and former jazz instructor. John brought up the topic of convictions, and what it means to have them and to live accordingly. It really got me thinking, especially as I am preparing to make some big life changes. Sure, moving to California represents a geographical change for me. But I suspect (or hope, at least) that it will also come with intellectual, maybe even spiritual, growth.…

Compassion fatigue. Burnout. These are terms you've heard before, and they commonly apply to people in helping professions. See, the "problem" with us is that we over-empathize, which is probably why we ended up in our professions to begin with. Empathy is one of the characteristics that makes us so good at our jobs, and it's also what makes self-care strategies necessary so we can continue to be effective. Compassion fatigue and burnout are two separate things, though one tends to lead to the other. In short, compassion fatigue is…

It's a Sunday afternoon and I'm working on grad school stuff - statistics - and drinking decaf tea. I've been checking out some music therapy blogs and doing other music therapy-related things. But in a couple hours, I'll have to make a pretty substantial mental shift. I'll be on stage with my band, just like I was last night. It's an interesting shift, and there are many aspects of it that I could talk about here. But today I'm going to talk about what I get out of performing with…