jmgoyder

Well my autumn hiatus didn’t last long did it! Neither did my ambitiousness haha! I had another look at the full-time behaviour consultant job description and realised that although it seemed a perfect fit for me, there is no way I could do it and keep my job at the nursing home. More importantly, there is no way I could do it and spend enough time with Ants. I did email the association asking if it might be possible to job-share the position but I haven’t heard back yet. There was a public speaking/teaching component to the job but there were also a lot of administrative duties (of people and paperwork and policies) and the latter does not appeal to me in the least! I’m much better at being bossed than being a boss.

So that’s that for the time being – maybe down the track I will do something like that but in the meantime it’s back to writing, including blogging, for me. And I discovered a wonderful program yesterday that will convert your blog into a PDF document and it’s called blog2print. In just an hour or so and for less than $100 I was able to convert 2000 pages of blogging, from 2011 to now, into seven PDF documents inclusive of photos. For more money the program will also convert your blog into a hard cover book, or books, but I didn’t want that because I want to be able to edit and revise and rewrite all those blog entries into a book about our personal experience with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. I had already begun the tedious job of copy/pasting bits into a word document but it was taking forever partly because of having to read the blog backwards and getting confused with dates etc. It wasn’t until I googled “how to turn a blog into a book” that I discovered blog2print and other programs that will do what would take hours and hours manually in just a few clicks – extraordinary!

Anyway this discovery also reminded me of how much blogging has become a part of my life. Not only is the camaraderie between bloggers a fantastic source of joy, but if I hadn’t written all of those posts I never would have remembered the chain of events of the past few years. I guess what I’ll do now is to print it out in 50-page sections and do the hand-written editing in the nursing home with Ants, then come home and finish the job on the computer. That way I can add material retrospectively.

Also, in anticipation of a blog break, I suddenly felt quite bereft! It is such a great way of keeping a record of things that can easily be forgotten – especially conversations both with Anthony, the women in the dementia house, and with the Ming.

For example, he rather reluctantly came to find me at work the other day and I let him into the dementia house and introduced him to the ten women who he proceeded to charm easily, simply because he is a male, and young! Oh I am so relieved not to be going for that behaviour consultant job. I work this afternoon and I can’t wait! I have never felt like this about any other job and I am very much ‘at home’ in my OT role now. Even though none of the women remember me, I am greeted with welcome smiles and the oft-repeated “Oh you look so familiar. Have we met before?”

Anthony doesn’t remember who any of the staff are either and the other day introduced me to one of the carers by saying to her: “Have you met my wife?” She and I exchanged a grin and a ‘yes’; after all, we have known each other now for over three years.

Blogging helps me to remember and record these tidbit gems, these moments of pleasure and humour in amongst the pain of illness and age. And autumn is a good time to write and be because it is too rainy to go for a bike ride, Mr Tootlepedal!

It might also be a good time to convince Ming to get himself some new shoes.