It's 17.07. Which means it's 6 hours and 53 minutes to midnight. Which means it's 6 hours 53 minutes to 2011.
I've been in a pretty thoughtful mood today, so have spent more than a fleeting second trying to figure out what this means to me. If someone were to ask me what 2010 was like, what would I say? If they were to ask what I want from 2011, what would I say? I guess both answers are pretty dependant on the mood I'm in when I'm thinking about them. When asked yesterday (?) as to my new years resolution, my snap response was 'survive'...
I'm really trying to write this with a vaguely upbeat, positive angle - new year/new start and all that jazz. It's a bit hard though, today my default position seems to be very definitely positioned at depressed.
This year's been rubbish in the love stakes - I fell for someone so utterly unobtainable it's beyond a joke. It's wonderful feeling, falling for someone, but hurts like hell knowing it's unrequited. The other news is that tomorrow the only person I've ever felt (however fleetingly) that I could love forever is getting married. I've been over him and everything that came along with him for years now. It's just odd, that's all.
Workwise, I've broken free from the shackles of Hampshire County Council. Whilst I look back very fondly at the memories I made with my fellow FABettes, I don't miss being there for one second. My dream job has had its ups and downs. I think in many ways I'm still getting used to doing a job that stretches me. It's draining, exhausting mentally, heartbreaking, frustrating as hell and I love it.
I've managed to juggle my time to get counselling back into my life. I've got a placement in a school working with 11 to 14 year olds which has been an amazing learning curve. It's relighted my passion, particularly for gestalt counselling. Taking time figuring out how to adapt the experiments and interventions I use with older young people has been very rewarding. One person I'm working with told someone at school his first session with me was like he was really listened to for the first time in his life. That's exactly why I do what I do.
I've also gone back to uni, topping up my counselling diploma to a degree. It's dizzyingly fast and furious. It's overwhelming at times, and I have felt it's taking over my life. But I feel now that I have more of a balance going on, and feel more stable about it. Little bit frightened that the future looks likely to include a masters and a PhD but I'll worry about that another day.
Gigs have been awesome, in particular the phenomenal Manic Street Preachers. Just thinking about that gig makes my skin tingle.
Family life has been up and down. Nobody's died this year. I am aware that this may sound like a peculiar thing to say. But if you knew my family death track record, you'd be impressed with this too! Mum's retired and seems more relaxed and to be enjoying life. Dad's been poorly, and to be honest the doctors still don't seem to know what's wrong with him. They do know it's not any of those scary things though. Things with my sister seem to have pottered on in the same familiar vein - I get upset over missing her and wishing she wanted me in her life more. I get angry about her and ignore her. She seems blissfully ignorant to both of these things.
The only other thing of note to mention really is that as ever, I wouldn't be here without my amazing and gorgeous friends. In particular I'm referring to Jenn and to Omar - they're both truly life savers and I owe them more that I can every possibly repay. Quite simply you're both awesome.
As for 2011... what does it bring?
It brings my gig night. It brings me tracking down a bass guitar teacher to make good use of the gorgeous guitar Omar has entrusted into my care. It brings me surviving and doing well (hopefully) in my degree. It brings me finding the courage and self confidence to join a rugby club. It brings continuing my quest to freedom through slimming world.
It's also set to include tattoo's, music, laughter and tears.
What else? Who the fuck knows? My only resolution is to go into it as positively as I can and to keep fighting that self-destructive part of my soul that wants to drag me down.
As part of my job I'm faced everyday with safeguarding the vulnerable young people I work with. The difficulty with it though, is that sometimes they don't want to be safeguarded. An outsider would probably initially think that those young people weren't quite 'right', and be wondering why that person would ever not want to be helped out of a bad situation. Today I had one of those incidents... We were duty bound to break confidentiality in order to safeguard this particular young person which was against their wishes. For them the situation they are currently in is the perceived less of two evils.
At what point do we decide we know what's best for someone? I mean this as a general question as opposed to being just about this incident. Why do we feel we know what is the right thing to do because we've placed ourselves in a position of assumed authority, or because we're older, or even because we work for the government? Where did all the empowerment and autonomy go?
At what point do we decide we know what's best for someone? I mean this as a general question as opposed to being just about this incident. Why do we feel we know what is the right thing to do because we've placed ourselves in a position of assumed authority, or because we're older, or even because we work for the government? Where did all the empowerment and autonomy go?
I'm largely immersed at the moment in a myriad of different medium to learn as much as I can about the world of Transgender in attempts to learn and understand as much as possible before putting pen to paper for my dissertation. Tonight I've been reading about the Gender Recognition Panel that was set up in 2005 in response to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act. I'm genuinely at a loss to decide whether I think it's great that the government have set this up, or saddened that it's had to be set up in the first place...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)