random thoughts

Well, folks, we’re down to 6.5 weeks, which means we’re almost to 6 weeks out of 26 remaining – 3/13 to be exact.  Exciting indeed.  It’s also the start of Lent tomorrow, which is always an interesting time of year in terms of what people are “giving up”.  It makes me chuckle to think that a few years ago I gave up caffeine…    how did I even do that?  Not sure.  For Lent this year, I am going to do what I attempted to do last year – say the Rosary once per day until Easter.  I learned so much last Lenten season about dedication, about meditation, about self-reflection, and I can’t wait to take the journey again and see where I end up this time.  🙂

One more random thought for tonight: I’ve been interested for two years or so in buying an mbira and learning to play, and I may have found one whose price is low enough to tempt me.  On Sunday I watched many, many Youtube videos of the traditional Shona mbira “student piece” called Kariga Mombe.  Learning so much just by doing some research and taking the time to listen.  It’s a beautiful thing, people.

Okay, off to Fort Collins, CO tomorrow through Sunday – going to Neurologic Music Therapy training to get learned/get inspired.  Enjoy the rest of your week everyone!

Eight weeks…

… until I’m all done with internship!  Hooray!

Paul was here this past weekend… and let us just say that I was extremely THANKFUL for his visit.  We had planned to go to Temecula Valley this past weekend to do some California wine tasting… and then this happened while we were traveling north on the I-15:

Good times!  A car about 30 feet up from us and one lane to the left kicked a sizable piece of wood that was on the freeway right into the passenger side of my front windshield.  Instead of sampling wines (don’t worry, we got that in on Saturday instead), I spent Friday with Paul in a shopping center mulling around waiting for my car to be fixed.  I honestly have to say that I have no idea what I would have done without Paul there.  Probably (aka DEFINTELY) I would have gone crazy/choked the person responsible for fixing my car.

We capped a pretty crappy day with an AMAZING meal at Jake’s del Mar, thus making it actually a pretty good day:

Oh, the pecan-crusted sea bass, rock shrimp couscous and FANTASTIC zinfandel.  I’m getting hungry again just thinking about it.  Anyway, Saturday wine tasting was quite rainy, but AMAZING and delicious:

Anyway, it really sucked to send him off today – I’m trying to focus instead on the knowledge that in less than two months (!!) it’ll be over and I’ll be home.  There’s just something about his presence – I feel less worried about the world, I hold less tension in my body, I stress less about the little things in life.  He truly is a calming presence, and I very much appreciate it.  🙂

Another weekend in the books, I guess.  The times they are a-changin’… I’m beginning to think about jobs… (that’s for another post though) and starting a new, professional life.  Got to get through this first though.  🙂  Night all!

Month 4

Obviously, given the infrequency of my posts lately, there’s a lot of stuff going on that I don’t – and in some cases, can’t – write about in a public forum.  I will share one thing with you, however: Month 4 has been, without a doubt, the hardest month of internship to date.

This is not unexpected – I was told this would happen by people who have been there and know.  January is just close enough to April to be over halfway done, but far enough away that 10 more weeks seems like forever (even though I’ve already done 16 weeks).  February will fly by – only 28 days, plus Paul’s visiting and I’m going to NMT training (a big HOORAY for both of those!!).  I have a feeling that March – the last month – will be a flurry of activity, me frantically trying to tie up loose ends, studying like a madwoman for exams, trying to take in everything I can about San Diego, flying back to Texas for my best friend’s wedding (an actual event, not a movie) … and then BAM! it’s April 2nd and it’s all over.  I’m back to Texas, finding a job, building a life.  Time marches on.

At any rate, right now I am trying desperately not to fall into burn-out.  At times I’ve been more successful than others.  More than ever I find that I need breaks in my day, I can’t go long periods moving from client to client without a lunch break, a coffee break – something.  When I get home at night, I have to fight every fiber in my being to do actual work and not curl up in bed.  I really have to fight my body’s urge to stay in bed in the morning as well – particularly on those mornings that I’ve been getting up to run.  Ahhh, running… currently my main tool against burnout.  That, and Texas athletics.

At the Music Therapy Center of California, a site where I’m currently working (and loving!), they use a “months of the year” song with some of the clients.  The song capitalizes on a technique called MMT (musical mnemonics training), which basically means that people have an easier time encoding memorizable information in their brain (e.g. months of the year) if  it’s set to music.  At any rate, there’s a set of flashcards that accompanies said song, each with the name of one month on it, and while the client is learning the song, the therapist sets out each flashcard in turn as a cue for the client.  What struck me about this the first time I saw it was not how remarkable MMT is (that came later), but actually how fast the months truly do go by.  Someday, when I look back on my time in San Diego, the months are going to go by in my head like six flashcards (“October… November… December… January… February… March”), one by one going on the table, each month the same size and taking up the same amount of space.  And then the song will continue and go on.  And right now, that is the most comforting thing in the world to me.  🙂

Time marches on…

… My dad used to listen to a lot of country music, and there was this one Tracy Lawrence song with the above title and the fantastic line “The only thing that stays the same is everything changes, everything changes…”  This is so, so true.  For one thing, my brother proposed to his beautiful girlfriend this weekend and I couldn’t be happier for them… 4 years of long-distance = major respect from me.  Two and a half years makes me want to pound my head against a wall sometimes 🙂

Something that I can’t explain happened to me over my all-too-brief holiday trip back to Texas.  I came back here in some ways exactly the same person that left a few days before Christmas, but in some ways I feel more mature now.  This may be because in addition to transitioning from co-leading to mostly leading sessions now, we’re also training two brand new interns!!  While this is fun and I really enjoy this newfound role, it is also stressful – I want to make sure I’m telling the newbies things they need to know,while cautiously leaving out things that will just be overwhelming at this point.  Anyway, every day is a new adventure, and getting used to that fact has made me better able to “just go with it”.  There’s something else though that’s contributing to this new feeling – I think I just became more confident while I was at home, spending time with friends/family… I began to think about all the things I wasn’t trying in my life because they were new or scary (or both), and I decided to (to the best of my ability) banish fear from dictating my life decisions OR my decisions in therapy.  For me, the hardest part of following my instincts is no longer deciding what my instincts are telling me – it’s actually growing a pair and following through.  🙂

At any rate, I’m working on it, and it’s slowly getting better.  I’m also drinking more tea than I used to (generally of the decaf or caffeine free variety at night).  I have fallen deeply in love with The Coffee Bean’s ginseng peppermint looseleaf tea.  It is heaven.  Perfect studying beverage if you don’t want caffeine but like the mental perk-up you get from the ginseng.  Also getting into green tea with kombucha – yum 🙂

Okay – going to bed, night night, have a wonderful week everyone!!  12 weeks to end of internship!

I promise…

… so back in October I wrote a post at the bottom which is a list of promises I made to myself the night before I started internship.  Tonight, on the eve of starting my second half of internship (cannot believe I’m already HALF DONE!?!), I looked at the list and made some changes – some additions, some revisions of pre-existing promises, a few that Idecided to take out.  Anyway, here’s the new list:

I promise…

-to seek out opportunities for growth

-to trust my intuition more often

-to engage in self-care

-to find opportunities for positive change in criticism and praise alike

-not to expect perfection, only improvement

-to reach out to thers confidently (in work and in personal life)

-to “go for it”, even if I’ve never done “it” before

-to see God in every client and in every colleague

And finally…

-not to get angry with myself if I falter in achieving one of my promises for myself.

There you have it!  I’ll update you after internship’s finished with a whole new list of promises.  I am sure there will be many!  Part of the reason my Christmas break was so wonderful was that I got to spend 10 days in the exclusive company of people who support me and who believe in me.  That kind of love is incredibly powerful to receive – it transforms you, makes you believe that you are worth believing in.  It was exactly what I needed.  Trust me, I’m far from “there” yet (whatever “there” means), but every week I get a wee bit closer!

All right kids, time for bed – back to the grind tomorrow (and by the grind I mean leading drum circles, helping people find a sense of relaxation through music and the like).  I love my job!

December post :-)

Hey ya’ll!

I’m sitting here watching the Women’s volleyball national championship that aired yesterday (and feeling a resurgence of my inadequacies from 7th grade athletics, I do have to say…) – I know they lost but I feel like I should watch.  And then I thought “you know what I haven’t done in a while?  BLOG!”

So here I am!

Going home in three days and counting – Monday and Tuesday are workdays (with a healthy serving of holiday party-ing thrown in for good measure) then I’m travelling with hopefully no problems on Wednesday.  I can’t even tell you how long it’s been since I’ve flown during the holidays.  I’m gonna need a healthy dose of patience.  Anyway – I’m so hyped up about seeing everyone that it’s often difficult for me to focus.  One by one I’m checking off things that needed to be done before I headed out – still some things (about 10?) on that list, which isn’t too bad.  Wednesday will be here before I know it.

In other news – I tried to get tickets to the national championship game (ROSE BOWL BABY!!) and failed.  I mean, I really want to go, but all my sources for tickets under $400 or so ran dry (not that there are a lot of those sources to begin with).  It’s looking more and more like I’m going to be watching on the TV, which is okay.  At least  I can say I tried 🙂

At any rate, I hope wherever you are, whatever you’ll be doing for the holidays, that you spend it in the presence of people you love, doing things you love to do.  God bless 🙂

Two posts in one day?

Impossible but true!  I felt the need to post on my new blog because I just spent the past two hours (off and on, mostly on) reading my OLD blog: so impossible — and WOW, let me sum it up for you with two words: TEENAGE ANGST.  Five years of teenage angst in one location.  It’s really quite overwhelming.  (Don’t really know why I gave the link – trust me, you don’t want to read it.)  🙂

It’s not that what I had to say about life back then wasn’t valid – it absolutely was.  It’s really interesting to read if only because my life was a little more turbulent back then than it is now, and my frontal lobe was a little less developed than it is now (not that I’m fully there yet, but I’m a heckuva lot closer!)  It’s also interesting because I wrote a lot a poetry in my late HS/early college years, and I haven’t written any poetry in years now.  I wonder where all my poetic imagination went.  It’s really weird.  Oh well, I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, and I think one of these days I’m going to save all the entries as PDF files so I have them for eternity – something tells me that if I think they’re funny now, they’re going to be HILARIOUS in another ten or twenty years…

Just another gratitude post

My first Thanksgiving away from home was really, really wonderful.  The food was delicious – a veritable potluck spread of your typical Thanksgiving staples, my contribution being a sweet potato casserole with pecan and brown sugar topping.  The company was fantastic – a combination of MW interns, former MW interns, and friends/family of former MW interns.  (Hence the jam session that took place after dinner)  The scenery was amazing – an outside feast with the sunset in the background.  And, rather unexpectedly, I got to watch most of the UT/A&M game, which is always nice!  But yeah… suffice it to say that I need to add #31 to the previous list: I am SO THANKFUL for my San Diego family!

It’s been a fairly lonely weekend, though, to be honest.  I’ve really, really missed Paul – at one point we thought he might come visit this weekend but that didn’t pan out (flying on Thanksgiving? no thanks) and right now the 25 days separating the two of us seem like an eternity.  I’ve gotten a lot of work done, to be sure – as well as a good running start on my Christmas shopping/Christmas crafting – but it’s just… I don’t know.  I just miss him.  Plus I think I may have tinged my right calf AGAIN (third time in two months?) so I’m not getting that endorphin release from my weekend long run and… ugh.  Okay, moving on.

At least there’s football.  Man, has there been a lot of football on this weekend.  I’m lovin’ it 🙂

One more thing I am grateful for: Muppets!

Hype.

One month from right now… I will have arrived in Texas, I will be with Paul, I will be celebrating Christmas with my family.  🙂

I love it here, I really do.  I’m having a blast.  But beginning the countdown makes me very, very excited.  Especially since I think the month of December -with the ever-growing list of things to do that accompanies it – will absolutely FLY by.  MAJOR hype.  I can’t wait!!

30 things I am grateful for

So I am reading a book as a part of my internship entitled Smart Women Finish Rich, which – as indicated by the title – the author (David Bach) tells the reader (myself) the information they need to know to handle money as well as making the reader believe they are worth self-investing in their own futures.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have had much of this information before (thanks to my wonderfully financial-minded parents), but it’s always a good reminder, plus it also has some things I didn’t know.  One of the final exercises in the book is to list 30 things that we are grateful for (which seems incredibly appropriate because here comes Thanksgiving!!) and to share that list with family and friends.  I’ve done these sorts of exercises before, but here’s my 2009 version of 30 things I am incredibly thankful for in my life (in no particular order, just how they come to me)…

1. My parents, who never forget to tell me they are proud of me.

2. My morning drive which follows the ocean for a mile or so north of Torrey Pines State Park.  Truly a moment of bliss every morning.

3. Paul – my best friend, my other half, my soulmate. 🙂

4. The few precious moments before my alarm goes off each morning when I can lay in my warm bed and meditate on the rest of the day.

5. The perfect cup of coffee.

6. My lilbro – one of my closest friends and a blessing!

7. Music – the effects of which form not only the basis for my entire career but the cornerstone of me and my sanity.

8. My faith – the spiritual journey I’ve been on through the years that has brought me to where I stand today.

9.Red wine.

10. Smiles from strangers that always seem to come when I least expect them (and most need them).

11. Beautiful, wonderful friends – whom I am all quite far away from at the moment but I feel our hearts connected by one really long thread 🙂

12. All my memories from Longhorn band – it was an incredible ride, folks.

13. Any time I get to spend at a piano – I rediscover my first love more and more every day!

14. Letters and cards sent by family and friend at home.  It truly makes my day and I love you all!

15. The fact that I will never be enough by myself to tackle the big challenges in life – that God is there to help me.

16. Having dogs to play with when I come home currently. 🙂

17. The movie “Anchorman”.  San Diego jokes never get old!

18. All the mentors and teachers I have had over the years – I took a part of what each person gave me and am trying to make it into who I am today.

19. Donuts from that killer shop in Denton.  Can’t remember the name right now but geez, it is good!

20. My patients, who teach me more and more about life each day.

21. Watching the sunrise/sunset.

22. The most perfect weather ever imaginable.  It hasn’t rained once in the going on two months since I’ve been here 🙂

23. Trader Joe’s and their amazing food.

24. Being a Texan (to whom the phrase ” I wasn’t born in TX but got here as fast as I could” applies!)

25. Good health for myself and those around me.

26. College football season!

27. The Internet – it is truly amazing nowadays how easy it is to find infofmation.

28. Yellow cake w/chocolate frosting.

29.Laughter – it helps me get through each day!

30. Perhaps the biggest blessing of all – waking up and being alive at the dawning of each new day!