annalee

Thank goodness for books and music to recharge your soul at the end of boring work days. I had such a dull time at work today. I have a new job which entails doing virtually nothing and I can't stand it. I really need some kind of stimulation or after a couple of hours I begin to feel like my brain is dissolving to mush. On my short lunch break I try to cram a few pages of beautiful poetry or literature and to listen to a couple of nice songs. It's a shame because it could be a really nice job if it was arranged in a different way, it's in an interesting institution full of fascinating things but instead of incorporating different areas of work necessary for the organisation, there is this unfortunate job, the one that I have, which involves nothing more than wandering round for hours waiting until someone might need to ask you a question. This great event usually happens about 10 times in a whole 8 hour day and most of the time I'm able to answer the question and complete the task in less than a minute. Sometimes I feel like I'm floating above my body watching myself banging my head against the marble floor. I tried practicing my times tables in my head today to keep my brain moving.

Of course I know that all things in life are what you make them. As Rilke says If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. But it's so hard sometimes! I can look at the nice things in the building, I can try to make conversations with visitors but there are only so many times you can look at the same things and most of the time people just want to be left alone and I respect that. But I shouldn't complain, I'm grateful to have a job and it's taken me a long time to get this one after resigning from my last one. So many people are unemployed at the moment so one just has to be grateful and make the best of things. I try to remember that but I keep wishing that one day I will be able use all my skills, qualifications and experience and feel satisfied and fulfilled by my work and also be able to sustain myself but this may never actually happen. That shouldn't be too much to ask for but it seems to be. I feel that we shouldn't have to get as good at compromising as we have to for the work part of our lives.

I realised recently that around this time last year I left my last job. I had been working as a nursing assistant in the stroke rehabilitation ward for two years since graduating from university. Times moves so quickly. Now it's three years since I finished university and I'm in a very similar place physically and financially. I suppose there are changes inside and I like to tell myself those are the important changes but I don't know for sure if that's true sometimes! I remember when I got my masters degree, which was in Fine Art, and how I felt like I had lost my reason and desire for creating and that art world and networking and money and all that stuff was completely abhorrent to me. All I wanted to do was find out what that 'most useful' thing was that I could do with my life. So I went to work in the hospital.

After the initial shock of being so close to other humans I felt I had found the best job one could do. I really loved it in it's most fundamental sense, just being with people, being useful, helping when people needed it. I learned so much about humans, illness, death, the human body, myself. I always think about how we give up so much of our time for the work part of lives so I desperately want whatever I do to be worthwhile though how we all judge worthwhile can be so different. I think in my head it is just to be 'good' but what is that? I can only feel that it is kindness and compassion, being positive, making things more beautiful, making them 'better'. I know that everyones 'good' and 'better' are different though. It's frustrating to think that I am earning the same now, doing so little, as I was while having peoples lives in my hands and working to the point of exhaustion. Thinking about work is an endless stream of imbalance.

Of course while working in the hospital, being in an aesthetically cold environment and working in a position that left very little room for creativity, imagination, individual input or personal decisions I realised again how important art was to me and that I shouldn't ignore that. After about a year of nursing, when the adrenaline had started to die down and I had come to a point where I had perfected the day to day duties of my job I did become a little frustrated. I tried to do things to make the place more positive like making a garden for the patients on our little patio because there wasn't anything for them to do outside having physiotherapy and speech therapy. Even to do a small thing like that was a great battle because of the immense bureaucracy and no one else being all that interested. I don't blame people for not being interested in changing things though., when you are under-appreciated and underpaid doing an exhausting job and have your own life to deal with too then it's rare that anyone is going to have the desire or energy. I think that some of the things that I think are essential for a happy life are just frivolous and unnecessary to others. Though I do thing, even if making things more beautiful doesn't make things 'better' for everyone it's certainly not going to make things worse. I'm sure a lovely environment at least has subconscious positive effects on everyone.

Gosh I've been thinking about what to 'do next' since I graduated three years ago. I always feel quite confused about what to try to be a part of. I know it's a fantasy that I could live in some idyllic place away from everything and find magical ways to sustain myself but there is such a thing as alternative ways to live, that I can save the world or make everyone happy. I wonder if those people who do find real alternative ways of living do feel more free. Or I wonder if it's more satisfying to be part of something larger and to try to improve it even if you cant ever. I see all the great benefits of being part of a society but I so often wonder if the benefits are really greater than the things which you have to lose and the things you start to need because of it. All the imbalance, all the greed and stupidity. I suppose it's easy to want to give to everyone when you have nothing. I would like to find a way to work and sustain myself in which I can be good, I want to give what is the best of me to someone or something else but I want also to feel stimulated and pleasantly challenged, to use my creativity and for my mind, body and soul to feel ok. I know it's probably too much to ask for in this society but I don't think it should be too much. I do know that if we want to reap the benefits of our society then we have to compromise, be positive about all the awkward things and try to make things work for us as much as we can.

If I could just choose one path and head down it then I might find satisfaction sooner but I'm paralysed by indecision and an equal love of many many different things, all of which are extremely unlucrative pursuits may I add! I sigh.

Well that was a very dull journal, I'm sorry about that but maybe if I keep thinking things through I will eventually come to some kind of sensible decision. Maybe one of you by some great fortune knows exactly what I should do with my life?!

Anyway, this is far more interesting, at least I hope so.... I will have a new set in member review on the 29th. It was shot by Sean last winter so I'm really glad it is finally going to see the light of day. Here is a little preview.



I hope you are all well. Thank you very much for sharing your favorite sonnets with me. I discovered so many that I hadn't read before and really love. It's autumn here now and getting colder. I hope you're all cosy and well x