Epping Forest, an antidote to Work

It may look like a convoluted form of narcissicism (the photos)but it helps to balance and exorcise the more pathologised aspects of my life ie the addiction treatment work (which I'm heartily sick of) and the ghosts of Hep C which I am equally heartily sick of. Courage - of the heart.

I walked out of work today in the middle of the morning meeting, over a "clinical" decision I didn't agree with. Got out onto the Kings Road and in the mixture of illicit 'delicious 'cause unexpected' freedom and survivor guilt at leaving my colleagues behind, there was also the sobering realisation that I'm done with this fucking work - at least in this front-line primary treatment incarnation. Our old clinical supervisor, Andrew Akers, once told me burn-out was a necessary part of the job. "Its like Masai 'slash and burn'," he said, "it encourages new growth and prompts change". Well, yeah, I hear that; its not like I haven't been here before,7 years working in prisons for RAPt, the last 3 of which spent taking a 12 step Programme to young offenders - a thankless task eventually (and probably pointless - the jury's still out for me on that one).

Before that Lorne House, Turning Point, a residential drug project for young people in Hackney, no discernable ideology other than whatever confused superstitions and prejudices the benighted crew of well-meaning inadequates (for the most part) who manned the place brought with them. And before that the 493 Project (Addaction needle exchange living off the fat of the HIV money - for a time; gone now). People coming in on crutches and Zimmer frames brought low by the new-found ability of Temazepam to shape-change once safely ensconsed in the femoral vein and metamorphose into a half-brick. I've clearly reached my shelf life.

And all the time this forest, 20 minutes from my house, continues, as its always done. These from yesterday -