Here endeth the Blog
I can't be arsed with this any more. Whether I do any more in the future will depend on if I feel any less exhausted during my free time than I have done over the last however many months.
I feel low quite often, especially during the winter months. The reason I do the job that I do, a job that most people tell me they would be unable to do and don't know how I manage it, is that I can identify closely with feeling vulnerable, lost, depressed and many of the other feelings associated with my client group. I am not trained in counselling, housing support, or any of the other skills I need to do the job. Counsellors and shrinks have their own counsellors and shrinks. I don't. My employers probably feel it would be too much of a financial burden to actually look after their staff. Our training budget, per head, for the whole of 2005 was £60. That's one-third of a day of training in total.
I was using the blog as a forum to try and write about and explore my state-of-mind whilst engaging in quite a head-fuck job. To get home from work feeling like I really need to hit something quite hard and then have to sift through needlessly rude comments to my posts. Well. I just don't need the added stress.
I think that most people don't want to know about life's under-belly anyway. The council pay me and my colleagues, not to help the homeless down-and-outs, but to keep their 'visible numbers' at 10 or less. 10 or less. For fuck's sake. You should see how many people use the day centre during the week. What it's really all about is Joe public not wanting to be bothered by them whilst out shopping. Selfish, consumer cunts. The gulf between the haves and have-nots widens every day, and most people couldn't give a fuck so long as they are in the 'have' category. You think the street homeless are scum? How many have you actually spoken to? How much of the picture are you actually seeing? One of my most recent new contacts used to make up to £1000 per week as a manager of various hospital departments. He got attached to a girl with a habit, which he helped her feed until he lost his family, his job, and everything else. I'm trying to help him rebuild his life, starting with a roof over his head. It could be you next. Try to remember that from time to time.
I feel low quite often, especially during the winter months. The reason I do the job that I do, a job that most people tell me they would be unable to do and don't know how I manage it, is that I can identify closely with feeling vulnerable, lost, depressed and many of the other feelings associated with my client group. I am not trained in counselling, housing support, or any of the other skills I need to do the job. Counsellors and shrinks have their own counsellors and shrinks. I don't. My employers probably feel it would be too much of a financial burden to actually look after their staff. Our training budget, per head, for the whole of 2005 was £60. That's one-third of a day of training in total.
I was using the blog as a forum to try and write about and explore my state-of-mind whilst engaging in quite a head-fuck job. To get home from work feeling like I really need to hit something quite hard and then have to sift through needlessly rude comments to my posts. Well. I just don't need the added stress.
I think that most people don't want to know about life's under-belly anyway. The council pay me and my colleagues, not to help the homeless down-and-outs, but to keep their 'visible numbers' at 10 or less. 10 or less. For fuck's sake. You should see how many people use the day centre during the week. What it's really all about is Joe public not wanting to be bothered by them whilst out shopping. Selfish, consumer cunts. The gulf between the haves and have-nots widens every day, and most people couldn't give a fuck so long as they are in the 'have' category. You think the street homeless are scum? How many have you actually spoken to? How much of the picture are you actually seeing? One of my most recent new contacts used to make up to £1000 per week as a manager of various hospital departments. He got attached to a girl with a habit, which he helped her feed until he lost his family, his job, and everything else. I'm trying to help him rebuild his life, starting with a roof over his head. It could be you next. Try to remember that from time to time.
posted by bulabula at 1/14/2006 11:42:00 pm
4 Comments:
Maybe the problem needs articulating.
Probably, but I'm not sure my blog is the place to do it. I think I'll leave blogging until I'm in a better place to do it from (mentally). You and Tom manage to find a whole dearth of interesting things to Blog about. I'm probably treading on thin ice employment-wise with some of my posts. People have lost jobs over blogs. I'd rather be doing some more interesting things and blogging about them as well.
I can't speak for Chris but it took me a good long while to get used to the blogging thing. The gaps between my early posts were often 3 to 4 months. I eventually found that I started making mental notes and actual physical notes about things I wanted to write about.
Many people without tough jobs that involve the really hard aspects of life and people that honestly need help maintain blogs. This guy is an ambulance paramedic and regularly writes about the physical and verbal abuse he and his colleagues suffer in their job and the feeling that he is not saving people's lives but giving the relatives of the people he breathes life back into time to say goodbye before they die. It is very hard but very illuminating reading that genuinely allows you into someone else's world. This is something you have too.
I dont want to be condescending or patronising but I will: you can choose not to write about your clients individually or to render them anonymous to preserve confidentiality by generalising. You can also turn off the comments or allow them only on specific posts which is a matter of personal choice and not a soft option.
Rather selfishly I am trying to persuade you to continue writing as I would miss the online presence of a friend, the voice of a human being with a finely tuned perception and a writer with clarity and a unique and very personal perspective. I am being deliberately manipulative I know, feel free to tell me to get stuffed.
Tom, get stuffed :)
No, thanks for your support mate. I had a good chat with my boss today and my stress levels have dropped a good few notches. I still feel exhausted, but I'll see the quack at the end of the week if I'm still suffering by then.
I did have a bit of an AAAARRRGGGHHHH moment there, but it has inspired me to look into and try to understand stress a bit more. It's a very nasty thing to have to deal with, and can seriously affect judgment, disposition, etc. The whole insult-banter thing isn't quite so easy to brush off or ignore when it feels like the entire cosmos is burrowing a hole in the top of your head. I'm dealing with a constant rolling client group, seeing around five new people each morning, and then dealing with stuff for already established clients in the afternoon.
The boss has helped me out with guidelines to manage it, but up to this point I've been slowly caving in. Hence the toys being fired out of the pram-based howitzer.
There will still be a gap betwen entries, but I now have more stuff to write about. Like stress management...
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