{"id":2112,"date":"2014-08-26T01:16:01","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T00:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heartshapedpeg.wordpress.com\/2014\/08\/26\/real-life-gets-in-the-way\/"},"modified":"2014-08-26T01:16:01","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T00:16:01","slug":"real-life-gets-in-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/2014\/08\/real-life-gets-in-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Life Gets in the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

So a year ago, I decided I ought to have a blog. I did a bit of reading, looked at other people\u2019s blogs and fussed for a while about exactly how I should set mine up. In the end the chose the name Heart Shaped Peg (because I\u2019m much harder to fit into a standard round hole than even a square peg) and to use WordPress, played with themes a bit, (actually quite a lot) wrote one entry for last year\u2019s Bi Visibility Day and promptly got distracted by other things. It happens to a lot of blogs \u2013 you see links to their long forgotten remains all over their friend\u2019s social media and in the second and third pages of Google searches.\u2026<\/p>\n

I did mean to come back and write more here \u2013 but I was busy for a bit, and then in the winter the shape of my life changed rather dramatically.<\/p>\n

It was the sort of avalanche of change that starts with a few pebbles falling. My Mum has had health problems for years. In November her diagnosis of \u201cmild cognitive impairment\u201d got upgraded (or downgraded, I\u2019m not sure) to full-on dementia. And then in December, her long-standing chronic knee problem suddenly flared-up and became acutely disabling \u2013 so she started using a wheelchair. We went on Family Christmas Holiday as planned (my brother and his families live in Eastern Europe) and while we were there Dad hurt his back and also had impaired mobility. It took him several months to get better (or as close to better as he\u2019s going to get \u2013 he still gets some pain but is back to riding his bike and holding down several part-time jobs). And so I became a part-time carer.<\/p>\n

My parents live in London, I live on the south coast, so I\u2019ve spent a lot of time on trains. Which was particularly fun after New Year when there was extensive flooding causing delays and cancellations. I\u2019ve been travelling up there for a day or two or three almost every week since Christmas. It\u2019s eaten most of my spoons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s left me feeling like a bit of a failure as an activist. I\u2019ve had to step back from co-chairing BothWays. I\u2019m saying for now that I\u2019m taking a year out but that\u2019s just a guess \u2013 I don\u2019t actually know what the shape of my life is going to be like in a year\u2019s time. And of course we don\u2019t know what the shape BothWays will be like in a year\u2019s time either \u2013 maybe the current co-chairs and committee will be so successful that they won\u2019t need, or want, me to come back. I\u2019m currently working on hand-over \u2013which turns out to be a surprising amount of work (well, it\u2019s a moderate amount of work spread over a surprisingly long time). It feels very strange to let things go and am trying very hard not to fall into the trap of going \u201cooooo but I wouldn\u2019t do it exactly like that\u201d. It\u2019s good that things evolve and I\u2019m really pleased to be watching the group building on the strengths of its current committee.<\/p>\n

As a carer, even \u201cjust\u201d a part-time one, I felt that my sexuality and relationships \u2013 and my own disabilities \u2013 have often been invisible. It\u2019s easy for my biological family, social services, medical staff and others to see me as \u201cthe spinster daughter\u201d who doesn\u2019t have a paid job and not see my complex web of Poly relationships and responsibilities \u2013 and all the unpaid activist-y work that I do. Also in the same way that\u00a0older people are generally assumed to be straight<\/a> so are their carers (it seems like thinking about carers\u2019 sexuality is far too close to thinking about the sexuality of the people they care for and apparently that\u2019s icky and nobody wants to think about it\u2026)<\/p>\n

I know there are plenty of other Bi and Poly and disabled carers out there but it\u2019s not something that gets discussed very much (probably because we\u2019re too busy actually being carers). So I decided to facilitate a carers\u2019 meet-up at this year\u2019s BiCon \u2013 which was fascinating, and painful and affirming. And I\u2019m going to try and write about it here\u2026 well, I\u2019ll try to do it sometimes, whenever I\u2019ve got the time and spoons at the same time as having something to say\u2026<\/p>\n

And who knows what other adventures and activism I\u2019ll find myself caught up in now that I\u2019m not focused on running a local Bi group\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So a year ago, I decided I ought to have a blog. I did a bit of reading, looked at other people’s blogs and fussed for a while about exactly how I should set mine up. In the end the chose the name Heart Shaped Peg (because I’m much harder to fit into a standard […]\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":1211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216,369,3,368,101,374,375],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","category-assumptions","category-bi","category-caring","category-family","category-poly","category-spoons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2112"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8731,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112\/revisions\/8731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bimedia.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}