In my absence

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you will have noted my absence of late. I haven’t given up on the idea of writing, but I did take a break to try something different, something I had been thinking about for a while. I re-trained as a care assistant, which as a job was both rewarding and exhausting. I regret to say that it’s not for me, but I definitely don’t regret trying, because it’s shown me a different side of me, and highlighted some qualities in me I didn’t know I had.

As a job, being a care assistant is one of the most challenging roles I’ve ever had to do, and yet the tasks are often the most simple. In essence, you are there to help someone to complete tasks which you do without even thinking about it. Often, just raising the arms enough to wash the face is near impossible for these people, and they are so grateful for you to just help them to do these things. Some are almost totally isolated from the outside world, and are happy for you to sit and have a cup of tea and chat for half an hour of the day. Of course, there are the more difficult service users, who are literally dependant on you for everything, and find it difficult to comprehend the world around them, but just knowing that you are trying to communicate with them, to hear their thoughts, is often what brings them peace of mind and contentment.

And after all, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, as writers? Our disability is our lack of presence, our task is to make others understand us through mere words on a page. Yes, it can be frustrating at times, but what a feeling when you just know that someone gets it, that the person reading those words not only understands them but feels them. Isn’t that what makes all this hard work worth it?