Qi Qong and Tai Chi
It has been a while since I blogged. Since my last entry I have given up work to concentrate on my recovery, both mental and physical. I started doing Qi Qong and Tai Chi last September because I read somewhere that it helped with balance – something I very much need. I found a friendly…
Flourishing
I struggled initially when I left work and for a time took anti-depressants. They helped me to look up and start my painting journey instead of lying in bed weeping. I take them no longer. I still weep but I have accepted that as part of my life now. Painting has been a joy. I…
Voluntary Severance
My workplace is offering voluntary severance – I am going to go for it. I have been really unhappy in my job for years. I promised myself that when I had completed my PhD I would leave and find other work but then I got ill and lost my confidence. So I stayed on. Recently,…
Loneliness and Covid
I have started to read a book by Davies and friends – ‘Unprecedented’. Their argument is that trends in society have been exacerbated and revealed by the pandemic so these trends have become clearer. In an earlier blog, I talked about authoritarian states and the production of loneliness and I found echoes of this in…
Where have all the ideas gone?
We seem to be living through a series of political and economic crises. Liz Truss, our last leader, galloped back into the Thachterite past without much regard for our current troubles. It seemed too much to expect this politician to consider current suffering as she and her chancellor inflicted more in the name of ‘growth’.…
Misinformation, Propaganda and Conspiracy Theories
The WHO declared recently that there was an infodemic relating to Covid. Public health officials expressed worries about the amount of misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media platforms and alarmed at what people were prepared to believe. This has led to a refusal to take a vaccine and demonstrations against lockdown measures designed to…
Brexit and the North
I am a remainer. I live in London although when I was younger I spent some years in Manchester – a place I liked as it helped me grow into adulthood. I have been reading a book called, ‘the Northern Question’ by Tom Hazeldine which describes the relations between the City and the Southern counties…
Loneliness
I have come to the end of Arendt’s ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, a long and not particularly cheery read, but lots of food for thought about the politics of the USA, Russia and the UK. In the final chapter, she talked about the totalitarian state – in this case Nazism and Bolshevism – and how…
Bringing in Critical Theory
In a recent forum about research, a small group discussed critical thinking/theory in relation to a review that a colleague was developing as regards to grief (a very current topic!). There was some confusion as to what we mean by critical thinking/theory. As researchers reviewing evidence, I think we mean critical thinking as an application…
Interdependence
I have come across this term quite frequently recently. Firstly, it came up when I was considering help seeking by women dealing with domestic violence. I read an interesting article, written as an exploration of the disabled sector fight for independence. The author (Reindal 1999) identified ’embeddedness’ (i.e. being part of a supportive network) and…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Walking whilst ill 