Why do I do this to myself?
I offered to proofread a friend’s essay for a subject that I got recognition of prior learning and so didn’t need to do. It’s due at midnight and it’s now quarter past ten. All done now.
Tonight I left work at 5pm, drove to the supermarket near our house, did some shopping, picked up some Indian food that A had already ordered, picked up Dexie and got home at 6.30pm. I’m not a big fan of late nights, after a bit of play, reading books and a bath it was 8.30pm before the children finally got to sleep.
We had a good-bye lunch for two colleagues today. One is moving to a different program and the other is taking un-paid leave, which may turn into an early retirement. I was sad to see both of them go, they really are lovely and it is a great loss to the program to continue without them. The lunch was enjoyable though, I had a Cajun Chicken Salad and managed to have quite an interesting conversation. It was ridiculously hot today, the temperature in my car was 45c when I got in to go back to work. By late afternoon it was windy, then little spits of rain fell on the windscreen as I popped out to see another client.
My client wasn’t home again. He’s a young man who is difficult to engage, but he knows what service providers want to hear. I have another young male client and through talking to them both individually, I’ve seen some things from their perspective. My feminist upbringing taught me that women can do anything but they have to fight to do this, but the converse of that is that men have power. What I’m seeing through the eyes of these two young men is that they may be seen to have a certain amount of power (not very much really) but that leaves them vulnerable to attacks from other young men.
They would each tell me about other young men propositioning them for a fight. This confused me – no-one ever approaches me for a fight. Then I realised that a mild mannered, 30 something woman like me, who often has two children with her and hangs around in the places I do, rarely looks like she wants a fight.
