Partial Truths

Hello.

For some arguably inexplicable (though equally obvious) reason, I feel the need to justify the addition of this blog to an already cluttered realm.

I recently began work as a care assistant in nursing homes for the elderly. I chose this job for three main reasons: 1) I’m drawn to such work – to the care and company of the old and very old. And the quality of life (or lack of) enjoyed (or suffered) and all that this entails (provision of care, dignity, respect, companionship, abuse, neglect, finances, joy, pain, marginalisation) stirs a passion in me. I don’t attribute this passion to a particular source, but consider it one of life’s gifts to be accepted and attended to, rather than too deeply interrogated.

2) I am a recent graduate in social anthropology and intend to start graduate study next year, aiming towards a PhD in medical anthropology with a focus on cross-cultural experiences of ageing in Britain. This may well be modified in the months to come, but is for the moment broadly accurate. Having practical experience and insight into my area of study can only be a good thing and will, I hope, lend my work a greater degree of credence and deflect any accusations involving ivory tower-related cliches (the majority of which will probably come from myself). Essentially, I will feel a lot happier (and be possessed of greater empathy for the givers as well as the recipients of care) researching an area that I have worked in myself, and will begin my studies in a more advantageous position that I might have otherwise.

3) I need to earn some money for a few months, and prefer to do so in a way that complies with my own ethics. And it’s shift work which gives me a degree of flexibility in dictating my own hours, which allows me to monitor and maintain my own health. Of which more later, perhaps. But perhaps not.

 And so it becomes apparent that this work is both a job and the very early stages of what I hope to be an anthropologically-based academic career. In grand social scientific tradition I have plans to record my experiences/thoughts/reflections/anger as I go along, yet knowing myself as I do, if this consists of me sitting on my bed with pen and paper it’s not likely to last long. Hence the blog, and this lengthy justification. Somehow, the sense that I am writing for a readership (albeit imaginary) other than my future self provides both a greater compulsion to write (it feels like Writing, shall we say, rather than just writing), but more importantly it lessens the sense of impotence that keeping these thoughts in a drawer by my bed engenders. I have so much to say about all this, you see. And I’m so very angry about so much of it. And by shouting at the world, rather than just at myself, I can enjoy a deluded sense that I am at least trying to change things. Or if that’s too grandiloquent, then I can at least know that I am telling the world that things aren’t fine, that I’m not happy - that we are failing in the most painfully poetic manner possible in our treatment of the generations that came before us - even if no one is really listening.