why this

I am a Social Worker, a sometimes writer, a frustrated one at that and I am in need of sharpening my skills and losing my fears. A blog, yet another, as I have been keeping one from time to time since 2005. They are generally uninspired, somewhat flaky experiments in ideas and projects that I have little time for. Reading and working, as well as sleep, take up much of my time and I find that after those tasks little of it is left for perambulations about what I spend 10 hours a day doing.
However, I find it important to reflect on this thing that I do, vague and yet so present, concrete and yet ethereal.
Much has been written about the role of the social worker and I believe much more will be. I find my input is or can be as valid as the next one and as such, a little discipline and some creativity will help me bring to life a nice little project where I clarify my work, I talk politics and question what must be questioned.
My role in my current job is one of clarification, empathy and co-searching for the whole within the broken.
Clichés are of little use and broken vases break my heart. Nonetheless I find solace in the Japanese art form of kintsugi, where gold is artfully used as a glue to hold the broken shards. Gold is also used to bind relationships as wedding bands all over can attest. Gold is malleable, shiny and a very useful metal. I will eventually explore the politic of dirty gold, but for now, it is of bonds we write.
So I do a little kintsugi, knowing that nobody wants to be broken, and nobody wants to be glued or stapled and much less soldered.
But people are broken and I must glue and solder and staple and do it all with words. I have no fine surgical scalp, nor do I have a metal worker's torch. Not even carpenter's glue.
Yet, I have words that bind and solder and that is my profession. I solder broken souls and spirits and hearts with words, affect and empathy.