On dementia work.

The other week around the holidays, I went with an old library coworker to visit a mutual friend of ours, who was retired and ended up in a care home in the rural midwest that was all paneled ceilings and bedsores and rooms that smell vaguely of shit, with country-friend steak for lunch, and who also now has early dementia.

During the visit, I noticed that she kept pushing up her glasses, and I asked her if they were slipping, and they were, so I got some tape and ended up repairing them for her.

Then, when we were about to leave, she kept asking about making her glasses work, but they were sitting high up on her nose where I had thought she liked them.

And, she was getting really anxious, out of nowhere, so I asked if she could see, and she could, and then I asked her if her nose hurt, and it didn't, so then I started thinking to myself that she might be worried about a *permanent* fix, so I said that we would be sure to tell the nurses on our way out, that they should permanently fix her glasses.

At that, her anxiety *completey* dissipated, and we had a nice farewell.

Later in the car, my old coworker from the library observed that working with people with dementia is almost like a puzzle, where you have to figure out what's happening with them.

At that, it was like a light bulb went off for me, and I completely agreed, and I realized that that was probably why I find the work so engaging.

I said, too, that I enjoyed teaching others about practical care tips, like I had earlier that day a bit with our mutual friend's niece, who popped in while we were there.

It really is all the good parts of teaching but without all the bullshit: the interpersonal development stuff and the intellectual engagement and the social impact, and maybe I could eventually find a job with an actual teaching component as well.

I'm definitely going to keep my eyes open; this could be a good direction for me.

The environment is definitely less stressful and more stable and more fair than academia.

With academia, you don't realize how much you walk on eggshells over bullshit, till you're out of there.