a brand new start.
unnamed road (according to the satnav), around brecon beacons national park.
when i was younger, i used to read a lot. canadian classics, from silver birch to red maple award winners (and how quintessentially canadian is that, for literary awards to be grouped under a "forest of reading" program?). i'd walk around with my nose in a book, occasionally running into the vertical support beam between two doors, too absorbed in fictional characters and their real-seeming situations to have seen it coming.
when i was a kid, i promised myself that i'd eventually go into something clinically detached, where i wouldn't have to interact with people all that often -- maybe something related to science or math since i was (and still am) a big huge numbers nerd.
it just seemed easier, that way. at 10 years old, i was already telling myself that i was so hopelessly a bleeding heart that i probably wouldn't be able to survive day after day of doing real work with real people with very real problems in their very real lives, letting it all get to me in a way that dry scientific facts and statistics-related numbers just... wouldn't.
sometime over the past few years, i managed to convince myself that i'd grown up, or at least grown thicker skin. i started immersing myself in trying to understand the human element to things, and seeing if there was anything i could do -- even in tiny, micro ways -- to help.
which is how i ended up here in wales, doing work i was excited about, at a social enterprise and with people i was growing to love in a manner reminiscent of my progressively tipsier aunts and uncles at each holiday dinner -- sometimes problematic things slip out, but at the end of the day, i'm still bonded to them; still family.
but then, last week, my social enterprise closed up shop.
after 47 years of doing important work in a community that needed it, monwel declared insolvency and just like that -- on monday morning, i didn't have anywhere to be.
i've spent the rest of this week thinking about a lot of things, like how i knew monwel was going through financial difficulties as soon as i arrived, but i never knew the actual extent of how close they were teetering on the edge. or how i should have realized that whenever re-branding specialists like my mentor are brought in, it means that the company has reached that final point where it's (re)-make or break.
i thought about how safely i had managed to settle into the environment at monwel, where i could genuinely care about the core values, and work alongside people with disabilities and other barriers to employment, but -- from a safe distance, perched safely away, filling my role as an impermanent summer exchange intern.
the nature of exchanges, and the fleeting temporariness, and the desire to still make an impact during that brief period of time that you're there but in a responsible and sustainable way because you'll just be jetting off soon after -- this has been weighing on my mind a lot.
the multitude of layers of privilege that i have, with all of the personal gain from this experience, in being part of this brilliant pilot program to begin with, in getting to run amok across the UK and the EU over the summer...
in being a student and so sheltered from the realities of not being able to make mortgage payments, or support children, or find another placement willing to support and train a worker with physical disabilities -- the realities of many of my (now former) coworkers --
these are all things that i've been thinking about, a fair bit.
for me, my next steps (while very unexpected and a little unclear) are still infused with hope. i'm still safe in my knowledge that the british council has found me a space to continue independently with my research at their cardiff offices, which is where i'll be starting tomorrow, and i'm still supported in my efforts to learn as much as i can as this all unfolds.
and i'm lucky, to be keeping in regular contact with my former coworkers (and their children!), not least because this way it won't let me -- and i won't let myself -- just move on and forget (as i so easily could do) about all the real people that i've met and gotten to know.
because, i guess, that's the difference between holing up in a circuits lab tinkering with microprocessors, and working at people-oriented, socially-driven enterprises, that can (and do) fail. it really just boils down to being all about the people, and...
22-year-old me is stubbornly going to try to prove to 10-year-old me that this isn't going to get to me, and i can continue to do the work that's important to me. starting with going into the wales offices of the british council tomorrow, and meeting a whole slew of new people.
in the meantime, i think i might have set a record for how long i can stay in my pj's, in between wandering around the neighbourhood looking for my housemate's cat, nero. it's so strange to me that cats here are allowed to roam freely, because nero, who's entirely black and has instilled a terror in me that i might step on him in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom, gets into vicious fights...
...then he gets fitted with a cone of shame and put under house arrest, only the wily little guy managed to dart out as i came in one night. i'd had no idea what was happening, all i saw was this little white cone zooming past me out the door, and then quickly disappearing into the darkness as i ran up and down the street at midnight looking for him.
this week i've also found that travelling is one good way to keep myself out of my own head (or from accidentally letting the cat version of prison break happen). the picture there is the 9th best beach in the world, as selected by people who use tripadvisor, apparently. rhossili bay is super beautiful, and it's literally the atlantic ocean. i waded into the atlantic ocean!
