A friend asked me about the hours of the new job and how they might impact us.
It made me reflect on what we give up to work. The personal financial and lifestyle losses. I’m in awe of the people working between the gaps during war.
That conference I went on talked about the normalised dysfunctional state of work, the inflexibility. My privilege is showing as I try to comprehend working in a war zone.
I remember speaking to someone during some HIV training years ago. They’d worked in Gaza and as they laughed about their fear of being being a woman alone stuck on the North circular, comparing it to their experiences of war I couldn’t help but wonder at their humour hiding so much of who’d they’d Nursed and what they’d experienced. A well known coping strategy. Anyway I’m off on a tangent. Where was I.
I think about the support I give to my cousin and how that may be impacted, the support I give and take from my new friends. My cousin can’t be happy for me, she’s worried about how she will be impacted. I try to reassure her, I might not even get the job and they haven’t said anything about hours anyway. I’ll still get to be with you I say.
She asks you will still be able to go to the hairdresser’s with me? It clashes with opening hours so at this point I suspect not but I keep quiet on that. And anyway, I may not get the job. If I do she’ll have to go alone or perhaps she’ll agree to a carer though obviously she said she didn’t want that before. I wonder if I could pay someone? I wonder if financially I’ll be able to, what with fuel bill, the availability of carers, what her preference is. What else to consider?
If I don’t work I’ll lose my registration. It was hard won.
The staff where I did my practice hours took the piss out of my moans. Instead of understanding that we were paying for extra childcare with each additional hour I had to be there. My previous job insisted on 12hr shifts or nothing. I think of a previous crisis with my cousin and the kindness of a colleague and how she stepped in. A woman in fear of her career, juggling a new baby. How the systems are rigged to benefit the patriarchy and assumptions of who will jump when jumping is required.
They laughed at me when I complained about the costs of childcare because it was much less than the childcare they were paying (as I was part-time). Conveniently not noticing that they were being paid and I wasn’t.
Their childcare bills were greater or equivalent to their mortgage or rent. It was crap for all of us.
The childcare available didn’t fit with shifts so other people are impacted with helping out. Not everyone has people that can help.
I’m conscious of the potential disruption of the ecology of support. Balancing the pros and cons. Conscious of the extra carbon footprint of working further away. This a song of privilege, wonder how that might be extended to all.
Proximity bias something that is a marker of the status quo.
New charities have been set up, extending the reach, adding to the machine providing corridors of support I wonder if they’ll reach the women and children far away, providing medicine and shelter. Will they be without the anti black and brown racial and religious bias we’ve seen?
My child was asking me if we could build a nuclear shelter. We talked about the one in Mistley. It’s reminiscent of my childhood. I remember walking home from junior school. The sun was bright and low in the sky. It gave me a fright and I ran home as fast as I could, wondering if I’d ever be with my family again. Like my Mum did as they ran to the Anderson shelter? It beggars belief that we have failed to move to a different way of being in this world. How could life be different?
I’m listening to hope as China uses it’s role in intersession. Turning it’s back on the past and focusing on human rights, a new world order with love at its core? Some will be horrified by my naivety but could we envision a world of peace and negotiation, coproduction without the weaponry that seeks to destroy us?
The world health organisation were calling for help with safety of health care providers, provision of therapeutics corridors of support. Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine wherever, wondering what a world without inflicted terror would look like?
I’m yanked back to reality with the need for support in the here and now, a new diagnosis of leukaemia and all the unknowns flighting through my friends brain and I wonder about safety from covid as they have their chemo, how that might be different. 4385 current people with covid here (Tendring, UK). Not a cold, not flu, a multi system disease. Up 404 from last week (Zoe study 3 March 2022).
Worry only about what you can control we’re advised by mental health teams 🤷
Anyway since I’ve been writing this between jobs. I’d better get on with the job in hand.