I have been told that I need a hobby - this will (apparently) help me stop obsessing.
With apologies to philatelists everywhere, stamp collecting has little appeal. I had a model railway as a child and somewhere some cousins that spend their weekends playing with real trains (preserved steam engines) – Nah.
Fishing once held appeal but I became a vegetarian.
I’ve done Post Grad Uni.
What hobby can a balding, aging, unfit fat man take up?
For some time this question has occupied my mind and last night (at approximately 2am) the answer hit me like a steam train - Develop my skill and knowledge about this disability employment thing!
It was my birthday last week (50+ish) and I came to the realisation that it’s time to do a George Bush* (Senior)
I want to learn more about this disability employment thing and when I am at work I don’t do much of that because NOVA these days is a pretty full on business that requires considerable time in the day to day administration of its programs.
But for me learning about the best ways to deliver service and how to improve the business is fun.
Program improvement is vital for us, not because of any government nonsense about improvement that’s never related to direct service delivery but because the organisation’s mission is to provide as much support and assistance as we can to people that have a disability and I believe that while unwritten there’s an obligation to continually develop and improve the standard and quality of the programs on offer.
That’s why we spend so much of our budget on staff training, development and research.
So officially and as of today, if I want to spend my weekend reading stuff about disability employment service delivery, if I want to write and think and talk about same and it’s the weekend – that’s O.K.
It’s not that I don’t have a life – this is my life.
* The 41st president of the United States once (possibly hastily) remarked that, “I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.”
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www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/jun/23/russia-and-the-us-have-the-worst-employment-gaps-for-disabled-people
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