My “career” at the agency remains interesting in 2023

The new year continues to be as “interesting” in terms of work as the old year. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have a workplace which I love, adore, where I would love to have dinner, watch an episode of a calming series and then go to bed (if our school had one).

And then I am at an agency – work for the disabled. Once I was asked to deliever CPDs to educators. But long story short:

Today I am sitting in the basement(!). Doing … well “things”. I have neurotypical superiors who tell me how to plan a CPD (that is OK of course, IF the superior had the expirience in advanced education or at least had a degree in education). They of course know everything better, things have to be done the way they have always been done. My superiors themselves do not keep agreements and deadlines when dealing with me or when it comes to deliver their part of an online course for example. BUT they are certified “autism counsellors”.

I have often heard the expression: “I cannot eat as much as I want to etc.”. By now I understand it.

And then there is this special “colleague” who speaks to me as if I were hearing-impaired and heavily von Kapee all at once: “Helloooo, I am Mrs. Muller-Meier. We knooow each other from heeere and there. I am responsible for the meeting here todayyyy.”
That would be considerate and totally sweet of her, if only I hadn’t known her since 2016. That’s how you introduce yourself to a total idiot. Or a dementia patient.
It is not bad in itself, because I used to experience a lot of rough treatment “on the bridge” … and I can “laugh myself sick inside” about such colleagues or “colleagues”. I have a seafaring sense of humour. But nevertheless I was amazed. And in retrospect also shocked: I am neither deaf nor demented. I am an Aspie.

What is terrible is that there is no one to tell. The management brushes it all(!) off, really and literally, with explanations like “You misperceived that.” Sure, I am the disabled one here.

The best “explanation” was: “We have other autistic people here, they’re fine.” Of course, they are also pampered and mothered, they get a nice desk with flowers on it and everything is made to fit and above all they are not in the “field service”.

Well, they are apprenticeship years. After this time, I will certainly carry out job coaching, which I have only done 4-6 times a year with autistic young adults, with a different eye and with a sharper sense of ableist behaviour in the workplace …

Ohne Titel ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Somehow it is always England! Even though I did not make it to England in 2019/2020, I have felt connected since early childhood (Yes, Robin Hood and Sir Ivanhoe, and the stories about Will and Henry Parker on their way to a promised land surrounded by people who have the same mindset, and then out of a sudden a love of my life from London (serendipity it was), Christmas in England, summer in England, autumn in England, walking along Hadrian’s Wall, Liverpool, Southampton and a certain Queen of the Ocean – it all did it for me. Not enough to move over, of course. I would have been tempted by the other kind of school. Well 🙂
And now I am included in an “English” book. With a small and less “pedagogically stimulating” contribution.

I could see the other contributers(?) yesterday.
It was an honour, exhausting but enriching, there was a lot to take in for my brain, so much that I was not in the office in the morning today because I needed to rest.
Many voices are not my thing. And then I also realise: in the end, I do not belong, because to be there virtually somewhere and somehow is not to be present with “skin and hair” (as we say over here), with body and soul (as they say).

Nevertheless, I do not want to miss the time between 2020 and 2022 when I met those voices. There were many people doing something, enriching the world of education, and above all being open to neurodiverse fellow human beings. Great people who are not only on the weather deck when the sun is shining. Seeing them in action, listening to theier ideas, that was beautiful. (Yes, full of beauty.)

But now the sea is quiet again.

The voices have faded away. It is moments like this that make me realise that I have to stomp through the sea alone.

Captain out.

France at Sea: SS Ile de France

Quite a tough ship!

Ocean Liner Blogger

After the Great War, England was awarded German ships as reparations, greatly depleting their fleet. This gave Compagnie Generale Transatlantiqe – CGT (French Line) a chance to make its mark on the Atlantic trade.

In 1912 the only four funneled liner CGT ever operated was the beautiful SS France. The French were not concerned with speed. Luxury was the focus. France had the reputation of being “Versailles at sea” because her interior was gorgeous. When the war was over, CGT decided to take a slightly different approach to ship design. There would be four ships ordered, each one to be unique. The first was SS Paris. The second SS Degrasse. The third was Ile de France.

Ile de France had an interior unlike any ship before her. Art deco was now at sea. Her take on the style was a huge success and would influence ship interior design for over…

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I am tired. And I am frightened.

I’m tired of it.

And I am afraid. In Germany, people are being excluded again – for health reasons and because people are a “burden” and because they cost something.

It is about those people who see neither a real pandemic nor a high mortality in our country, neither a particular danger to children nor an alternative as far as treatment is concerned.

I find this development dangerous, even though I am not affected because I am immunised.

But why should I remain silent? Those excluded are my fellow people as much as those vaccinated are.

Today it is the people who are called “unvaccinated”, tomorrow it will be “the fat people”, “the disabled”, “the mentally ill” and all the others who “cost us too much”.

I’m tired of us over here in Germany constantly saying “Never again!”, but here we have very similar thoughts as “back then”.

I am afraid.

I’m afraid that this exclusion won’t stop with the “unvaccinated” and that at some point your body mass index will be checked or “certain unhealthy behaviour” will be reported to the omnipotent state health insurance and then benefits will be “frozen” / suspended.

It is possible.

And we are in fact several steps closer to such a dystopia than we were four or five years back.

German Speed Queens Europa and Bremen

“During the years leading into the second world war, in 1929, Germany produced two sister ships that would change shipbuilding. Sleek and fast, Europa and Bremen were ships of state. They would be Germany wherever they went. Revolutionary in design, they both won the Blue Riband ….”

Ocean Liner Blogger

During the years leading into the second world war, in 1929, Germany produced two sister ships that would change shipbuilding. Sleek and fast, Europa and Bremen were ships of state. They would be Germany wherever they went. Revolutionary in design, they both won the Blue Riband. They had a bulbous bows underwater, low squat funnels, and a plane catapult to send mail to shore. They looked fast. Breman was completed first as Europa suffered a fire during construction. Both ships were built with high strength steel to make them lighter weight, Bremen easily snatched the speed record from Britain’s Mauretania (held the record from 1907). Germany was back in the game quite seriously. The North German Lloyd sought prestige, and Bremen delivered.
The original design had flaws and the funnels were raised because soot was bothering passengers and making the decks dirty. The sleek look was aesthetically pleasing, but not…

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