why people blog

I think people blog because they believe they have something to say that the people around them -- and maybe there aren't any people -- don't appreciate. In my present situation, I feel the need for a more appreciative audience than is currently available to me. Actually...this has been the case at other times, and I have resorted to journalling, which is all very well and good. But when I re-read my journals, I often think that there are gems of wisdom that would be useful to people other than myself, as well as to myself.

That said, I also made a promise to myself that when I 'retired' from full-time employment at the ripe age of 63, it was in part because I thought it appropriate to my stage in life to stop doing and start sharing what I had learned from a long time of doing. Because I thought I had amassed some wisdom that warranted sharing, and that the appropriate thing to do at this stage in my life is to teach, to share wisdom.

Performance anxiety kicked in. My lovely partner Michael set up a blog space for me, because he has listened to me over, lemme see, 30-odd years (and I him) and believes I have something to share (as does he). And that it would be good to share it with other than each other. And that I needed to speak to an audience, rather than negotiate with a publisher the value of what I might say were I to say it. We've been down that road before.

Actually, what has jump-started me in this project is that when I 'retired', I sorted my office (first blog, abbreviated form) to create a space to support the next phase of my life. Big job, 10 years of accumulated stuff in piles and file folders that defied recognition. My doctoral work all neatly organized and utterly irrelevant to current cognition. Why did I think this or that was worthy of keeping? Beats me.

So massive spring (although it was February) cleaning ensued. Being the cheapskate (that would have been the way my family of orientation described it, although they would not have thought it a bad thing), I recycled all my rejected paper that was unprinted on one side into a 'junk paper' stack that I could re-use. Because I have not yet got into working entirely on screen; I still need -- I know it's unenlightened, but there it is! -- to read hard copy to edit, pre-sleep time, when I want to adjourn to the deck because the day is lovely. etc.. I can rationalize dedicating ink to this lack of evolution, but paper in addition was a stretch, so I solved the problem by creating a very impressive pile (neat, I might mention) of junk paper.

The hidden gift of junk paper is that when you print off what you're working on in your current life and put it face-down wherever, you tend to look at the back side when you pick it up. And it reminds you of your past life. For better or for worse.

So I have been through a rather prolonged but liesurely reminder of past ventures. Mostly you glance at the minutes of this meeting, the worksheets of that conference, the draft of letters or proposals. But sometimes they draw you in deep to that stage of your life, and you revisit in depth.

Yesterday I went for lunch with Bailey, who worked with me (and others, lots of others) for a couple of years in a residential treatment foster home program (called Around a Child, aka AaC) that I birthed and buried. Her gift to me as a celebration of this shared project was a series of pictures of her work with 'our' two kids. AaC was a kick-ass program that didn't have the time and place it deserved in the sun. It continues without either Bailey or me. When I 'retired', I 'adopted' AaC to another organization that offers a similar organization so that the program that was in place for the one child that remained in AaC would continue uninterrupted. Bailey's life situation had changed so that she could no longer be as generous a partner as she had been, and also the child had grown out of what she had to offer. In large part, I believe, because of what she had offered.

As serendipidy would have it, on the back of something I printed 'round about then was...a summary statement of the attempts I made before Around a Child was serving any children to engage researchers with this model of dealing with children in long-term state care (i.e., those in child welfare who weren't going back home but weren't adoption candidates). The AaC model was entreprenurial, because one of the things I wanted to demonstrate was that good service could be provided within the current funding structure for care of this population. There was, therefore, no development funding. The children's mental health agency of which I was Exec Director agreed that I could indulge this interest in my spare time, as long as my duty to them was not compromised (i.e., I could moonlight without pay). This was a generous gift. There was definitely something for them in it, in that AaC had the potential to contribute to agency's budget, an administrative dribble at first, but later the purchase of professional services which when AaC was full bore (12 families) would have allowed them to expand their professional service by one more therapist.

But it never got that far. Around a Child served a total of four children. It served them well, and I will tell the story in detail in subsequent blogs. One child had an excellent experience but was ripped away because the child welfare system couldn't/wouldn't do battle with a bent but powerful caregiver. Another child was adopted to the foster parents, to their mutual benefit (but lost to the agency). Another had a relatively brief but intense experience, and although she has moved on and is bouncing through the child welfare system in a predictable way, I continue to think that she will eventually (I'm predicting in her mid-twenties) land on her feet, and in some small way I think we can take credit for that, although we made some mis-judgements -- but I don't think we did harm to anyone, even thought the end was technicolour dramatic.

The fourth child remains a member of our community and, approaching 15, is blossoming into his idiosyncratic self, as is his foster father, in the last half of his 60s. This is as a consequence of, first among other things, the contribution of an amazing collection of modestly-paid ($12/hr) community members who welcomed this boy into their hearts and lives. They were the Second Circle, surrounding the First Circle, the foster family, as would an amalgam of friends and family for ordinary families. Because this boy - we'll call him John - was a kindegarten rejectee who at age 10 when he came to us, who had never been successful at school, the Second Circle also developed and delivered an educational program that taught John not only to read, but more importantly to know and love himself and to trust others. We believe he will continue to grow into being a positive member of society, making a positive contribution, even though he has a hundred reasons to not do so.

And that is what is beaming down on me, from this collage of photograghs, as I write. It isn't a miracle, but it is a damn good piece of work, based on solid theory and well-digested experience, a model that could be replicated, were there the will to do so. I feel some obligation to share the learning with others who may share or come to share the need to be competent with kids who don't fit into the regular institutions, be they family or be they school or be they community.

I understand blogs should be no longer than the regular rant, and this episode certainly is, but hey, I'm also dealing with performance anxiety, so cut me some slack!!!!!