By Jenett, on August 29th, 2010%
Hello, dear fearless readers of this blog. I realise I haven’t updated here since May. It’s been a complicated summer, as I’m job hunting again. (Which thus far has involved two trips out of state for interviews, plus all the ordinary stuff like resumes and cover letters and so on. If you know people hiring librarians passionate about connecting people with information they care about in either the Upper Midwest or New England, feel free to drop me a note. )
The other part is something I talked about back in March, which is health issues. And reminded by a letter of introduction from someone potentially interested in group work with me, I thought I’d take a moment to lay out some of my thoughts about the intersection of health and Craft work. This part deals with the personal bit, and my internal observations, part 2 will deal with how I think this impacts group work more broadly.
Continue reading Health and Craft – the personal bit
By Jenett, on September 22nd, 2009%
Today, I am thirty-four.
Today, some celebrate Mabon, the second harvest festival. So do I, though I prefer the name Harvest Home, these days. A day of bringing in the fruit of our work, of celebrating our labor.
Today is also the second in my personal string of new years. There is the beginning of school: the beginning of a cycle every year of my life since I was born in some way: as the child of a professor, as a student myself, or as someone working in education.
Today is my birthday: the day when night and day balance, when the days truly seem shorter, when my desire to come home and nest and reflect in the quiet competes with the growing work of the school year. They are both good, both necessary, and they continue to dance in their own helix until June. And following that, there comes Samhain (the pause before the dawning sun of Midwinter and a new cycle of potential) and the calendar’s New Year.
And I am reminded, always, of my birthday’s place, falling as it sometimes does between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Neither are my celebrations, but they were the celebrations of some of my ancestors, in the not too distant past. A time to reflect on the things I’ve regretted, as well as walking forward into the new year of blessing and potential.
Continue reading Today
By Jenett, on August 24th, 2009%
I’m back at work for the school year.
Working for a school definitely has its own yearly cycles and festival days: last night I was at the back to school barbecue for staff and their partners, this morning we had our fall all-employee meeting, book discussion, and then time to get things done in our teaching spaces.
(I . . . → Read More: Integrating my life
By Jenett, on July 24th, 2009%
I’ve had a couple of people, on hearing about what I’m doing for my friend who recently had surgery (currently in a transitional care/rehab center, and steadily improving), who say “I could never do that.”
And I point out that it’s not everyone’s gift to do the specific things I’m doing. (Scheduling and coordinating are tasks that . . . → Read More: On taking time to tend
By Jenett, on July 14th, 2009%
One of my dear friends is currently at the hospital for hip replacement surgery. And so I wanted to quickly post a note to something I wrote (and she reviewed before I posted it) that’s about what I’m doing for her during her recovery. We refer to what I do as being her External Brain. I . . . → Read More: Being an external brain
