Responsibility, what's that? Responsibility, not quite yet.

I went to a meeting last night about a homeless project that we are helping with at our church. The simple formula is: over the cold winter months 7 churches each open their doors on a different night of the week to allow a specially selected group of rough sleepers a roof over their head for the night and a hot dinner and breakfast. I am co-organising this with another 'girl' from church.

Towards the end of the meeting the lady sitting next to me, lent in, in a confidence inspiring way, to tell me that i should mention to my manager my involvement in this project. She stated that then my manager would recognise that i am developing my leadership skills and might make me a manager one day. For some odd reason this blatant (yet accidental) undermining of my own existing abilities made me want to cry so as i focused on that i squeeked out a 'yes', before scuttling away.

There are many 'come backs' i thought of on my drive home, (yes i am old enough to drive) about my current responsibilities- kids, house, work etc. I also tried to reinforce that she was complementing me on how young (or stupid?) i look. But the reality of the matter is, most of the world thinks that promotion is the end goal at work.

Wrong.

This frustrates me so much. What is wrong with being happy in your job? Of accepting your pay and you role? I don't want to be a manager. I don't really want a different job, unless i get bored.

This kind of attitude is ridiculous. I'm not sure about other industries but in social work, getting good at it means promotion and moving away from social work into managing social workers. No more speaking with vulnerable people, no more leaving the office, no more social work, really.

It should not be assumed that the whole world should aspire to be something better than they are currently. Perhaps some people do, but a culture of this creates a vacum of people not feeling good enough when they are happy with who they are and what they do.

 Here is a picture i took of a dinosaur, whilst not wanting a promotion.

Here is me cutting a homemade cake whilst not wanting a promotion

 

 Wearing a baby and still not caring.

When i was playing with these Happyland people guess what? I didn't want a promotion.

No. I'm not a feminist.

Normally when someone says, 'I'm not being racist but,......' Someone is trying to interject a racist opinion into your life whilst maintaining you as a comrade.

I know that often when people first meet me they assume I have very feminist views. I can only attribute this to my hatred for pink (denying my genders first love), I am not hot on maintaining my armpit smoothness I tend to go for it-saw-a-razor-this-sometime-this-week-stuble and most annoyingly to some people, my disregard for dressing to impress (which includes make up). Scruffy is my style.

*[the bible says in 1 Peter 3:3-4 'Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit', which I last piously thought of how free I was by only wearing make up for very special occasions and alternating between my micro wardrobe of jeans and vest tops, whilst dying my hair a more fetching blonde colour! Also I have not incidentally progressed from the not dressing nicely to actually working on having inner beauty. Anywho.]

Sorry. Side track.

So Starbucks has experienced her first discrimination. Misjustice done to her makes me mad inside knowing that her whole future awaits. Her first discriminatory comment was, 'girls cannot drive boats'; trivial but also somewhat significant. Following that a boy threw a straw away in disgust saying, 'It's a girls colour!'.  In my opinion it's pretty much irrelevant who these children's parents are as these are societal issues, did they pick this up at home or through nursery or TV? Why is a girls colour worse than a boys? Why does gender relate to driving? How am I going to explain to Starbucks why people are making assumptions about her despite not knowing her?

It's tempting to make an easy comment 'retaliating' and saying that boys colours are yucky or that women are actually better drivers as proven by car insurance records, etc, but this only perpetuates the point. 

I guess for me part of the solution is to work harder to make sure that I don't continue this trend. I'm careful to vary my labels of Starbucks and not call her pretty too often, but do I try as hard with the boys and expect them to cry less?

Sky garden review

If you go to the sky garden on top of the walkie talkie, don't expect it to look like a garden. It looks disproportionately like.... sky. I was really disappointed with my day of fun with my girls. I'd heard of long ago that when they were building the place they had to provide public access to the roof garden. It looks like token effort has been put in to make it a nice environment. Its more like a Debenhams cafe in an atrium with a balcony of great views of London.

The fern bed looks bigger than it is. Think shopping centre with an echo but no shops.

The views, which had to contend with the cafe scene.

 It was more fun running around on the paving outside the tower of London.