i totally forgot about my blog, i guess life has been busy, i think the last time i wrote it was over 9 months ago….

Well, life’s ok at the minute

So, i got the job at Derbyshire Housing Aid, working as a support worker for homeless people in Derby living in supported housing. I really enjoyed my time there, mainly because I was working with Carly!

I really enjoyed the job too, working with people who are shunned by society, the kind of people who no one wants to work with! In my final year of Uni I read an article on People on margins….or something like that….well basically people who noone wants to work with for whatever reasons including drug addicts, homeless people and ethnic minorities etc….. and i thought….that’s who i wanna work with! Well most of my clients at DHA were class A drug dependant and homeless with a variety of mental health issues (which as you know is my speciality!) and obvious crimminal involvement due to their addiction. anyways I learnt so much there about building a rapour and therapeutic relationships with this client group. Also learnt a lot about addiction and why people take such things as crack and heroin. I tell you what I learnt…that there is ALWAYS a reason why people become addicted and stay addicted to stuff, including alcoholics. I hate how people (society as a whole) are so quick to judge these people on stigma and labelling. It’s so sad when I actually think about it. Most have suffered some kind of abuse in childhood including sexual,  physical or psychological.

I found it such an honour to have some of my clients confide in me, their deepest thoughts, fears and general feelings.  Me and Carly talk about this a lot, that our type of jobs are kind of bizarre, having to work with these often difficult people who are struggling with many issues and not knowing them from adam! It is bizarre, and difficult but so rewarding.

Anyways so i got a call a while ago from a job i applied to around the same time I got job at DHA and went for an interview….and got the job; Headwize project coordinator!

So, i’ve been working at Karibu Foyer now for 3-4 weeks.

Karibu is Swahili for welcome! and Foyer means that it is not just a homeless hostel but they focus mainly on training and educating the young people to help them move on in their lives.

This job is setting up and developing a project called Headwize which has been sponsored by Comic Relief! It’s for 3 years to work specifically with the mental health of the 22 homeless young people who live at Karibu Foyer as well as other young homeless people from Nottingham. Very exciting, very challenging and very good for my career!

One of the hardest things though is missing my friend Carly!! I miss her so much on a day to day basis, it’s so sad that we don’t work together anymore, we were such a good working team!!

Something I’ve learnt recently is that i really don’t appreciate what i’ve got till it’s gone, like working with Carly and now Imo’s gone to live in Milan I miss her soooo much!!

Imo is such a party animal and would always convinse me to go out, get dressed up and party, even if i didn’t feel like it it would always end up being so fun! I miss it. But, I am going to see her in Milan in March so PARTY ON!

Love

Me and luke have now been together for over a year!!!

I am so completely in love with that boy! Honestly, I have never felt like this before. He is my best friend, my play mate, the best kisser ever, so kind, so genuine, makes me laugh, makes me love!

We are planning to get a place together in a coupla months. I’m well excited, I’ve never properly lived with a boy before! So much to learn I’m sure!

Well thats it for today, I’m actually at work now, doing a relief shift at another project, although theres not much to do here, the residents are pretty independant…..

watch out for the next post, i’ll try not leave it as long this time, it’s kinda therapeutic!

so, i was pretty unhappy at work, i was feeling bored and unchallenged. was thinking it was about time i moved on and get on with something else.

i loved the patients i worked with at the hospital, but didn’t agree with pretty much everything else there; the management, the company, the way it was run. do you know they get over £3000 per patient per week?! and they paid the support workers minimum wage, when they are in the most danger; taking the clients out and stuff on there own. patients who have severe and enduring mental health problems with very unpredictable behaviours. mmmmmmmm. anyways i could go on and on but i won’t.

and it’s not that im work shy, i’m not, i just couldn’t continue to work for those people who i disagreed with so much. i know we all have to work within the system etc, and i fucking hate that anyway…but working for someone as manipulative and underhand as that company is, was dulling my soul and making me fucking miserable.

 so, a few weeks ago the manager said she was moving to manage another hospital within the company which had gone a bit pear shaped cos they hadn’t had a manager for a while and she was taking me and another nurse with her. there was no “do you want to come with me?” it  was “you’re coming with me”. this other hospital was another half an hour further to travel daily and an older and more severe client group, which i would never have chosen to work with.

so i quit. without having another job.

so i was walking down the street the other day, thinking…what am i going to do? not just for work/money/rent etc but generally in life…right now i feel i have no direction. it’s like, it took me 5 years to become a nurse and to get where i am now but nursing isn’t what it cracked up to be at all…pretty much most of the interactions held with patients is small talk…and you’re supposed to be able to assess their mental state……???!!!

so, i was thinking, what am i going to do with my life…even thought about buggering off to asia when imo goes, just to DO something with my life. Or, was thinking about moving to london, living with paul leach as there are so many more job opportunities down there…..i was completley at a loss.

That morning i had text luke saying something like “i can feel change in the air, today’s going to bring movement and new things, the world is good to us blah blah blah”.

walking down the street, and until later on that day i forgot this and felt lost and didn’t have a clue where i was going. it was really getting to me, cos i usually have a plan…even if it doesn’t happen, a plan’s always good right?! 

So later on i’m sitting in the doctors surgery (again, i’ve had a chest infection and cystitis BAD and been tripping to the docs a lot over the last coupla weeks) and i get a phone call from Carly, it’s friday 6pm and she wants me to come down to work to talk to her boss as she may have a job for me. so i hot foot it to town, have a drink with carly and her boss and discuss job opportunities.

she wants me to join the carly’s team who work with ex convicts and drug abusers (or ex-drug abusers) in supporting them and housing them, kind of rehabilitation stuff. but not only that, she wants me to work specifically with the mental health side of it all…how amazing…i’m so excited!and it’s totally given me direction, at least for the next 6 months. It’s just so crazy, i was starting to think i’d totally fucked up and stopped believing in the power of the world and how everything always works out. i feel so incredibly fortunate and that the world is good to me. real good to me. there is opportunity for working with the clients with different therapies as well which im so excited about….like art therapy, relaxation therapy, music therapy, drama therapy. a way to help the clients express themselves and for me to actually utilise interventions to help them. aaaaaah!

so i’ve been shadowing carly for the last coupla days and love it, it’ll be ace seeing her beautiful face everyday at work! i’m waiting for an official interview and then should be starting work on April 1st!

unbelievable, but believable cos that’s life!!

you can find it at www.katewords.wordpress.com

not abroad

not in the sun

derby city library

oh what fun

……thought i’d write a quick entry before i get thrown off this computer….

 life’s alright at the mo in kate’s world, had a lovely birthday last weekend, bit of an urban family gathering in the flat friday night, biological family time saturday and sunday carly made a roast dinner and we played card games, was lovely…perfect! thanks everyone for the thoughtful prez, really appreciated.

So now im 24, i can love and be loved, yey! have you ever heard the blink 182 lyrics…”nobody loves you when your 23″ , well it’s so true! well for me and moony anyways. but now im 24 the love world is my oyster.

err anyways enough of that soft stuff…. TRAVEL…. something i think about ALL the time. i really need to go, get outta england and see some world. my plans for travel have changed, as they always do (never make plans you can’t change). well since beths not coming barcalona and going to san fransisco for a few months now, im thinking of just heading off and doing some travelling for around a month, or maybe longer. my plan at the mo is to book some flights, over the next few months to go to some of the places i really wanna go…barcalona, amsterdam, rome, florence blah blah blah, planning to hook up with imogen on her interail travels at a few different stages and to see thereeze as well as the music festival, primavera in barcalona. and maybe see luke in turkey too. i just need to start being tight with my money and lay down actual plans, book the tickets then i gota go. im looking forward to a weekend in madrid at the end of march to see imo.

 My plan is to put on here my itinery for my travels and invite whoever wants to to come and join me at any stage of my travels…. that would be so ace. so watch this space….

anyways gotta run, 1 minute left…..aaaaah!

it appears i´m only writing this blog when i´m outta the country.

right, i´ll give a quick update on my life then for anyone who´s interested… well i´ve been a (psychiatric) nurse now for just over 3 months and it feels like about 3 years! i enjoy my job and definately enjoy the money but it´s not enough….i want more! oh i don´t mean the money, i mean i want more out of life….it´s wierd it took me 5 years (starting uni, quiting uni and starting uni again) to get here and university seems like a distant memory already. it´s strange how life just progresses and moves on so fast.

 me and ruth were planning to move to london in summer 2008 after saving money etc but when i was in prague i thought, why are we going to london when we could go somehwere abroad, more exciting and cultural?…so we´ve decided, along with a few others to move to Barcalona in the summer for 3 months to live and work….and i´m really looking forward to it. i think a few of us could really do with some care free living for a while, doing jobs that don´t really matter and to have some sunshine in our lives!! exciting. 

so that´s that. I don´t know when london will happen for me, at some stage i think but not yet, i´ve got debts and stuff to sort before moving to one of the most expensive places to live in europe! 

so, anything else? i´ve been living with adel and ash for about 6 months i think now in the sex shop flat and i love them both loads. we had a bit of a mad party about a month ago, seriously, there were easily 100 people in our little flat, half of whome we didn´t even know! our friend kraig set up a sound system in my bedroom and the rave began….no sleep for me that night then! good times though, as per.

Oh, we also took an impromtue trip to skegness the other night which was fun, well, until we got chased by some rude boys and well, the whole place was closed for winter…but we had fun. It was ace to just hang out (me, luke, ash and adel) on the streets, haven´t done that for years! we must have looked like proper bums…but we enjoyed it.

 I´ve also met a boy….i´m not going to say much but i´ll say he´s one of the most amazing people i´ve ever met and that´s not just cos i think he´s really hot….which he is! ha. it´s been a wierd but fun ride with him so far, we kinda met through other friends and hung out loads for months. I´ve been so uninterested in meeting anyone for so long i didn´t really notice him. but then something changed…..and well we´ll have to see what happens with that one.

i´ve just finished reading a really good book ruth lent me, elenour rigby by douglas coupland….i really enjoyed it! he´s an amazing writer, i need to get more of his books.

so yeah, back to the orig….me and carly have come to spain for a week, it´s at the south coast (costa del sol). we booked it about 8 hours before flying from manchester airport….was so exciting! so we´ve got away from it all and chilled out loads….without the use of substances. it´s totally different to prague, not much culture round here, we´ve just spent loads of time by the pool reading and i´ve also done some writing which i love! really need to find time in everyday life to be creative as i have so much i want to do! carly suggests creative hour, to lock myself in my room for an hour a day, put music on and get doing some stuff; painting, writing, songwriting, singing etc. i went for a lovely walk along the beach today, (it´s about 50 metres from the apartment comlex) as the sun was setting and collected some beautiful shells and stones. have you ever noticed when you start to do that, you can get so easily carried away cos they´re always amazing! so i had to stop myself or i think i would have taken the whole beach home!

anyways betts go, carly awaits……

 So, today I have been accross the Charles Bridge to prague castle – the best bit was the toy museum with a huge barbie collection, i am now more in love with barbie than ever! she’s amazing. I went for some lunch, after some shopping and ordered veg goulash (which, in heinsight i don’t think even exsists) Goulash is the czech national dish, just kinda meat and dumplings in gravy…. so it came, and they’d simply given me the bloody gravy and left out the meat! well, i had to eat it. it tasted of meat…not so enjoyable. So, now im sat on a boat on the river vltava awaiting a river cruise! Drinking mulled wine, as i am now completely addicted! The sun is just about to set which should be nice.

oooh, something else i made a decision about is that i’m going to go to Melbourne, Australia for 6 months to work and travel in 2009. I’ve wanted to go for so long and i reckon if i give myself a goal i’m more likely to plan it and stuff. how exciting! anyways i’ll write more laters…..

so, the river cruise was interesting, and beautiful as the sun was setting over pretty prague, all pink sky and stuff. it was however, freeeezing! but i soon warmed up with more mulled wine, i did more shopping and stocked up on alcohol and cigarettes for people bak home. i’m starting to miss them now, and my bed, with it’s heated underblanket. i have a bloody cosy life. i’ve just eaten at a retaurant on the old town square, and yes, drinking mulled wine and smoking! i’ve really enjoyed reading whilst away, i need to so this more and make more time for it, as well as writing and playing guitar.

so, this is my last night in beautiful prague and i’ve had a really nice time. it’s mad me appreciate time on my own and enjoying my own company, although it’s made me also appreciate my life back home, my friends and how they’re always around and how amazing they are! i’m glad ive got all my christmas presents too – as was the plan. I much preferred christmas shopping here, to back home. i’m looking forward to giving them to people at christmas which is only a month away, god im so organised! so it’s back to the hotel, bath and bed for me. x

mmmmmmmmm…what have i done today? well i woke up after a glorious sleep – i only slept about 3 hours the night before and my eyes were well tired yesterday. I was late for breakfast at the hotel and the waiter wasn’t too happy! I had 10 minutes to go until 10.30, in my book that aint late! anyways breakfast was ok, then i went shopping around stare mesto (old town) which is where my hotel is. Got some goodsy prez for peeps for christmas. walked around and figured, everywhere’s so close! so now i’m in a pub called hany bany where i can’t stop drinking mulled wine and smoking! i ate too, a very carbo meal of potato cakes and cheese, with garlic bread…fat bastard! must get back to the gym. i am also going to make mulled wine a plenty when i return home it’s the best! the mulled wine here is less than £1 bargain! oh i also went to Mucha museum today. Mucha is an artist who’s work i really like, i bought some posters, they’ll look ace in the flat. anyways, so then i found the river again and attempted to go on a boat trip but they’d ceased for the day, i will do this tomororow as well as the museum of cubism i think. I also need to buy more prez for the family. i’m getting used to being in bars and restaurants alone, i thought i’d prefer it when they’re quiet but this one’s pretty bustling and i like it. they’re playing good music like blur and the verve, nice. My pragian is improving a little which is good. although a lot of people here speak some english i feel bad when i don’t even attempt to speak czech. So, i’ve been doing a little self discovery, being alone gives way to much thinking. I’ve decided a few things; I am going to get guitar lessons, i’m going to start designing my next tattoo and i’ve decided what i’m going to write about in the new derby zine, me and ruth are working on at the moment. oh, i also stopped off at this tiny little cafe place whilst shopping, it had only 3 tables and i had THE nicest hot chocolate ever, in fact it was more like melted nutella, amazing! I’ve also decided to put this little 3 day diary on my web blog so people can see what i got up to in prague -if they so wish. I’de like to include my photos which are a bit wierd cos i have to take them of myself in front of stuff which doesn’t always work but it’s quite funny i guess. so now it’s 5.45pm and im unsure what to do with my evening….i may have another epic bath – what luxury!

So, i’m in prague, alone! this is my first night of three in this capital city. I’m sitting in a traditional czech restaurante sipping red wine, smoking cheap cigarettes (you have to smoke when in europe) and listening to live jazz ; a beautiful picking guitarist with a smooth sax player. To my left are two couples, i presume – sitting together. They sound scottish which is making this feel less european. It’s been a funny old day. There were the ineviatable nerves versus excitement as the plane took off and landed – but no problems, thankfully. I then proceeded to take a bus, the right one, of which i am proud abd when i got off, started walking, which i soon learnt was a mistake as i should have got the metro into the centre. I got lost. Once i found my way onto the metro I got lost again, but luckily stumbled accross a reggae ‘cafe’ which i hoped served food, i was very hungry by this point. They didn’t serve food, but what they did offer me in this cafe was cannabis – it was everywhere! I refused, although I really fancied it as i had gotten a little stressed and tense from all the getting lost! But after I finished my beer, i had a mission, to find a hotel so thus i refused and stayed focussed. I met a kind man calle CJ. He spoke English as je was origionally from Nigeria. I sat with him and his friends, drank my pint and smoked my first cheeky cigarette. CJ spoke very wisely about a number of different issues, including telling me to watch my belongings as i was being a bit scatty. He also spoke about having children and how amazing it is to have your own, as I said I may adopt in the future. He told me a story about losing his 1 & 1/2 year old daughter the other day and how amazing it was when he found her because as soon as she saw him, she grabbed him and held him tight. …and how the police knew she was his as they had the same face and the same hair!CJ gave me his number in case i didn’t find a place to stay, he had offered me several apartments to stay in, but i refused…wisely i feel. I won’t be able to call him as seemingly my phone doesn’t work here. although i think i shall return to the reggae cafe, i liked the atmosphere and the people were friendly -if not a bit too much at times! So, I proceeded on my mission, and alas! found a hotel…and it’s lovely, with a bath like i’d hoped for. I bathed for about two hours and came out looking and feeling like a prune! So, i got dressed, put my make up on and went out! It was snowing, which was nice to look at, but not so nice to walk in, my feet are soaking wet. I went to the nearest cafe called: Art Cafe. It was lovely, warm and cosy with a cute bar man andfriendly people. The walls were covered in chalked writing and drawings, it was like nowhere I’d been before. These two girls, sat at the counter spoke very good english and suggested a hot alcoholic drink, to which I agreed. I partially enjoyed it as it was a bit strange. I found out afterwards that is was czech rum, made out of potatoes, with hot water (grog, i think). It did the job of warming me up, but it was very strong! I left and walked around, found the river with a spectacular view of prague over charles bridge. I walked for a whie and returned to the jazz restaurant i noted earlier, and here i stay drinking wine and smoking cigarettes, reading and writing…bliss!   

so life’s changed a lot for me recently. imo’s moved out and is training to teach english in thailand. adele and ash have moved in. the flats changed a lot, not only how it looks but how it generally feels and is. it’s nice, really chilled. ash is becoming like a little brother type figure which is nice.

 watched an amazing film the other day which i’ve been ranting about ever since…. “number 23″. with jim carey…it’s not often you watch such a good film that you tell everyone you see subsequently to rent it out and watch it! anyways, just watch it!

I’m continuing to read my book i found in a charity shop a while ago ”women who love to much” which is written by some american psychologist or psychotherapist or something. it’s really interesting, about when you start seeing a guy on the basis that he ‘has so much potential’ or that ‘you can change him’. from my past experience, this does not work. men, or people for that matter do not change because someone else wants them to, or thinks they should. I think we’ve all probably loved too much at some time or another. i know i have…. and it’s when you put their needs, way above your own. in order to feel useful or needed you try and make them as better person and neglect your own needs. anyways it’s very interesting and the psychology behind peoples behaviours is facinating.

 but then i get confused and it kinda puts me (even more) off relationships! like, there’s a boy….and i think he’s hot and stuff, oh and really nice, and funny and blah blah blah, but i don’t want a relationship…i’m really happy right now doing my own thing….so what’s the point in pursuing this? friendship? but i want more than that…..so a relationship…but i don’t want that! god it’s so confusing!!!! i think this book has made me analyse things toooo much!

 Ben and marylou had a rememberance picnic to mark a year since baby amy’s birth and death on the weekend in manchester. it was really nice to see all their close friends and family supporting them and showing them that we haven’t forgotton amy….we never will. i can’t believe it’s a year ago.

soooo, what shall i do with the rest of my day? i’ve been to the job centre and made a claim for benefits, caught up with someone i haven’t seen for ages, been to the library and with my lack of funds presently there’s not much else i can do! i’m enjoying more time to read and watch films which is nice. gonna go aerobics laters as me and mum have made a pact to sort ourselves out, in time for christmas. we’re gonna encourage each other to eat healthily and exercise. it’s already helping knowing that she’s doing it too.

Anyways rant over.