I’m back.
Lots has happened. July was gruelling. My beloved went through the interview treadmill without the result we had hoped for. Things were not optimal. We know that all turned around from the previous blog post. I could just go on from there, but since my future self is the primary consumer of this blog, I invested / am investing / will invest in a
time machine so my future self does not to miss out on certain pivotal moments of our journey.
ENTER TIME MACHINE
SEPTEMBER 2016
Supply, Demand, Neurology, and Assistive Technology
Earlier in the year, I reduced my hours in my
acute neurosciences post so I could include working part time in
assistive technology back into my working life. This change had two benefits. One is that I was able to return to a highly specialised field in which I had built up some knowledge and skill that was slowly slipping away from me though atrophy. But more importantly in our current circumstance is benefit two: it pays more.
This assistive technology post is one of those supply-and-demand situations that has people making more money doing a job that is not necessarily more valuable. It is like farmers and house builders. I mean, shouldn’t they be some of the highest paid people? Farmers feed us all. That is pretty much the gift of life, right? And I would not let my wife live in any house I built. If it were just me, that's one thing, but I actually care about what happens to her. Most of us rely on the places we live as a sanctuary and a launching off point for our contributions to society. So in both cases, the food and shelter, the people who bring them to fruition in my mind should make more than the people who live in the houses they build or who eat the food they produce.
I am not berating the value of my knowledge and skill in assistive technology. But providing skilled interventions on an acute neurology / neurosurgery ward is at least as valuable and providing assistive technology interventions. I would even suggest perhaps more valuable, as people just starting to come to grips with life following neurological injury are really at a hugely important and difficult crossroad in their lives, and the presence of the right support, encouragement, and coaching could have huge repercussions for all aspects their future. Of course my assistive technology also has the potential for far reaching implications, but generally, the people who have been referred for specialist assistive technology intervention are much more likely to have come to some sort of appreciation for the challenges they may encounter on the particular life path on which they find themselves. So in my mind, the acute neurosciences job should pay at least as much. Anyway, that very long, convoluted, and somewhat off-topic introduction sets up an otherwise one sentence blog post. I perhaps should partake of the one-sentence blog post more than I do. Oh well, that ship has sailed:
An opportunity came up to go full time at my assistive technology post and I think I am going to grab it considering my situation.
NOVEMBER 2016
Rooms of Requirement
We decided to move to a more affordable part of town. The benefits go beyond placing us in a more secure financial footing considering our current situation. Moving to the south side of town cuts my drive time to work in half. But it has been so much more.
When we moved to the beautiful
North, we were in a hurry and without a
vehicle. Turns out there were several less than ideal features that were not so apparent on they day we poked our heads into the window and decided to lease the
Horsforth flat. One is being on the ground floor, the light from between the buildings carries a certain gloom with it through the windows. Second is the floor is uninsulated, meaning that no matter how warm the flat is in winter, any time your feet are in contact with the floor for more than 30 seconds, you are COLD. This includes sitting at the sofa or dinner table or toilet, washing dishes, cooking, walking anywhere... in short, if you are not in bed., you're cold.
The Morley flat is not only warm by contrast but there is a peace in this space that has settled our souls. The light is here is other worldly. At night, a faint orange glow trickles in from the street lights transporting us out of time and space. In day, the whole sky fills the southern and western walls of the lounge, filling it with enlivening energy. The shower has grey slate walls which grounds it into the earth while the flowing water trickles away the firm energy from that earthen foundation over and into us and then out into the rest of the universe. The very shape of the flat organises the life as we are living it under our particular circumstances. It is in the centre of the town and there are many conveniences as the door of the building opens into a pedestrian zone. It is exactly what we need at this time, and one evening it whispered to me its magical identity, a not-so-distant relation to the
Room of Requirement. As with many magical rooms, it is guarded by a stone sentry, this one in the form of a statue of
Ernie Wise located by the building entrance. The sentry is off centre from his platform and leaning away from its centre. You could mistake this position resulting from a bunch of
yobs trying to pull him over. Really what is happening is you are catching him moving out of the corner of your eye but he instantly freezes in place when you look straight at him. And the space next to him is due to the missing
Morecambe statue lurking behind anyone approaching with intensions to harm the rooms' occupants.
DECEMBER 2016
Visiting a place called home
As our future is uncertain and I have lowest seniority in my new job, late November has presented itself as the perfect time to going back to
Massachusetts . We had to cancel our trip last year due to illness, and summer is out of bounds because it is interview season. Things are a bit in flux as we have only been in the new flat for a couple weeks. I finished my acute neurosurgery post before the trip and am switching to full-time in my assistive technology post when I return. This will give us a chance to settle in the run up for a nice quiet Christmas, and my beloved is looking forward to having time to finish her book. There were many highlights of the trip but meeting my nephew for the first time sticks out.
ADVENT 2016
Permanent Job
The illusive permanent post that my wife has been chasing has come to fruition. Our trip home ended with my beloved doing a 4am interview by
Skype. My brother-in-law volunteered his
man cave as a location. Our life was in many ways on hold until this moment and now that it is here, there is something almost slightly disturbing to be in a life in which we are no longer pursuing this fickle
sprite.
My wife’s new job starts in early January. You may recall that we just moved and I just changed jobs and we just returned from a trip. So things have been on the go. Now in the
Advent to Christmas, we have to find a place to live 200 miles away and get moved in with enough time so my wife has time to prepare for the job. It is a tight timetable. Added to that, since we just moved, we are locked into our current lease until at least March. We looked at several scenarios but the only realistic one is to separate so I can keep my job over the double rent period, and I can start looking for a job down south once we get her moved in.
JANUARY 2017
Dartford
So we settled on a place in
Dartford. My beloved can get into work directly on the railway line and the rents are more reasonable because it is further from the
Big Smoke. You cannot go 200 metres without encountering an enlarged image of or something named after
Mick Jagger. So there's that. It is quite suburban, a bit in transition: some areas with new buildings and other more dodgy areas waiting for demolition. We live in a neighbourhood that is quite nice and the shortest path to the railway station manages to keep to mostly inhabited areas.
FEBRUARY 2017
Driving
So with my beloved in Dartford and me in Morley, the principle activity of every weekend is
driving. Since my workplace is a half hours drive closer to her, there is a certain logic to driving to / from my wife straight from / to work. So Friday evening I drive to her after work and I am using up my remaining
annual leave to take the first two hours of every Monday off so I can leave at a reasonable hour (6am) and drive to work for a 10am start. The first one was fantastic. The second was great. Each week drawing a little more energy. Eventually, the feeling is whittling down to fatigue. I am so looking forward to not driving 400 miles every weekend.
MARCH 2017
The perfect job
Just before we finished setting up my wife in the new flat, a former colleague of mine, who I happened to run into so she knew I was moving back south, emailed me a job posting she thought was perfect for me. I was going to start my job search in earnest the next week but the closing date for
this job was in a few days so I had to get to work on it straight away. It is perfect in many ways, not least of which is it is in assistive technology, the pay is decent, and it ended up starting right after the Rooms of Requirement are about to vanish into the
aether. Yet another nearly impossible confluence of cascading events unfolding for me to occupy. It's getting to the point that I am afraid to tell anyone because I am starting to sound delusional even to myself.
EXIT TIME MACHINE
Photo Credits
Primer discovery:
www.kevinmuldoon.com
Supply & Demand:
www.paulcraigroberts.org
Ernie Wise statue:
ixquick-proxy.com
Morley flat: us
Nephew: his mum
University of Greenwich:
commons.wikimedia.org
Queen Elizabeth II Bridge (Dartford):
en.wikipedia.org
A1:
en.wikipedia.org
The Children’s Trust:
www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk
Primer box:
www.youmightfindyourself.com
I went to Canterbury for this year's Good Friday devotion. The cathedral there was founded in 597 and is the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the primary bishop in England and the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, which currently boasts 85 million members worldwide. In 1170, Thomas Becket, the 41st Archbishop of Canterbury was assassinated in the cathedral by royal four knights owing to an ongoing political row. Becket was canonised in 1173. His shrine in the cathedral, built in 1220, was the focus of a popular mediaeval pilgrimage, memorialised in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400). The shrine was destroyed in 1540 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. An interesting connecting aside, Holy Trinity Parish Church, Dartford had a chapel dedicated to Becket used by pilgrims travelling from London via Rochester. My trip was not so much a day’s pilgrimage along pilgrims’ way as much as it was an hour’s drive down the A2. Considering the content of Chaucer's tales and where the participants were headed, I cannot help but marvelling at how easily the sacred and profane intermingle in a way that seems to contradict many current representations of authentic humanity.
