A Different Perspective

TIME to get philosophical since I almost lost my web site, my sight remaining pretty much as always.

I love analogies as I have already demonstrated in my motto. I could increase that analogy to say that as I am clinically extraordinarily far sighted so I am philosophically as well. I am clair voyant in the literal sense of clear seeing. I can resolve situations and events into pattern and predict outcome without having to go through the laborious process of thinking it out step by step.

This is a by product of my neurological framework, that what I lack in the conventional three R's and social conventions of politeness and hypocrisy I more than make up for with insight. If you want to know more about this you can look it all up in my learning difference pages.

Truly a one eyed king in a country of the blind.

If I should sing my own praises for once, then so be it, as I have concentrated too much on the negatives in my life, which are a barrier to employment and team work.

Where I am at today, is losing my patience with the world outside. I am seeking the means to get back into regular employment, and facing all the barriers and prejudice of the unfarthinkers being in 1999 a 43 year old who, other than my recent spell of self employment as a photographer has been outside of the conventional job market for 17 years, looking after my mother, but has not neglected his skills base in the meantime.

The voluntary sector though is sadly underrated as an experiential qualifier, because it does not equate in the market economy to paid employment. I have been throughout my own boss, setting my own timetables and priorities within the narrow margins left to me whilst I was a carer and in constant demand for those tasks.

Now I have had to confront the changes in the job market and the fact that a good CV is no longer enough, the applications procedure is hidebound in forms and personality assessments and job related tests that I have had to confront my learning disabilities, which make it difficult for me to compete against anyone younger who does not have these comparative disadvantages.

Employers in my specialist field often ask for an Apple Mac user, never mind that I know an apple mac is a simpler tool than a PC and have followed the vagaries of desk top publishing from the early Gem and Dos days through to windows 95. I am as well able to adapt to any system as any, but that is not what they ask. Have you used a mac, can you demonstrate this? No wonder I am tearing my hair out faster than I am losing it.

Similarly at the most basic level I have not one piece of paper to demonstrate I can even use a computer. There are kids out there with NVQ's in the basics, that have no idea, yet they are favoured over me, because I don't fit the pattern or the grid they have set up to weed out those they are not interested in. I fall through the holes and my skills are missed.

The worst of it is, in Tony Blair's new Britain I cannot get back into higher education without a job sponsor. I try not to blame the education system of my youth for its failings in recognising my different learning styles and problems, but it is that same system that will not now let me have a second bite of the cherry at a time when learning disabilities are better catered for in colleges and universities.

Well at least I am technically capable of designing and printing my own degree certificates and can photograph myself in cap and gown, how many graduates can do that?

"We are all of one mind, one equal mind, and if each of us persists in being the centre of our own existence we are all doomed to suffer at each others hands. I cannot exist on my own without you, neither can you be without me, what is the world wide web about after all?. We are interdependent whether we are aware of the fact or not"