Home Sweet Home

I am looking for a "day job" right now to support my writing habit. I am having very little luck. The economy is bad for everybody, so I am trying to not take it personally. Being a retired nurse and a massage therapist with carpal tunnel syndrome has caused me to apply for jobs I haven't done in 25 years. I am sending applications out to grocery stores, drug stores, you know, the usual suspects. I am trying to beat out all the high school and college kids for jobs, that I am normally cheer leading for them to get. I am in direct competition for work with my son. So far he is the one with the edge. It's a double edged sword to watch your son beat you out for an interview and yet feel so proud of him at the same time.

I was thinking back on my "career". Most of my time was spent as a nurse in nursing homes. I had a real love/hate relationship with my job as a geriatric nurse. I loved the patients and the feeling of making a difference, but I hated the system I worked in and the constraints that strangled many of my and my co-workers attempts to do right by the people we were trying to take care of. Insurance companies, Medicare, and profit margins, all put very limiting guidelines on what we were able to accomplish. I went to work everyday for over 20 years feeling as if I were smashing my skull into a brick wall. I watched other nurses get tired and bitter and burn out. I watched as some did the least they could just to get by in order to have the strength to face another work day. I watched many give up and stop caring and punch their time card day in and day out to get to retirement. I had promised myself I would leave the field before I became the zombie nurse, just going through the motions. I promised my patients I would do my best and if I didn't have it to give anymore, I would step aside and let the younger generation, fresh and hopeful, take my spot. I left my field in 2007 after twenty two years. The money was just OK, even though I was making less than a dollar an hour for every year of experience I had. It had never been about the money, so the reason I decided it was time to go was bigger than my check. I knew it was time because I couldn't find the joy in my work anymore. When things got tough, about four times a week, I would sit in the cafeteria and sing to my patients who were nearly catatonic or paralyzed due to strokes and other horrendous ailments. My friends at work would eventually join me after they figured out I wasn't going to stop singing and if they didn't help me out, I would make them the focus of the musical tribute. I would dance down the hallways in order to keep myself awake for the sixteen hour shifts I pulled, so that my family wouldn't go belly up. I told jokes, made faces and ran around like a maniac, all to entertain the troops and myself. I did "crazy" things in order to keep my sanity.

Nursing homes are depressing even for those of us who chose to work in them. They smell of urine and decay, they are worn and old looking, like the residents that inhabit them. They aren't portrayed in sitcoms, because for most of us, they are the beginning of the end and there isn't anything funny about that. I felt the best name for a nursing home would be "The Last Resort".

My goal is to write full time, so I can go volunteer in one, rather than try and work in one again. I was right to retire when I did. I was tired and getting very cynical. As much as I loved working with older people, I felt defeated in the substandard care I was providing. The state mandated I, as an LPN, was able to take care of 50 people; 30 people, if they required increased care, such as Alzheimer patients in a lock-down unit. I tried to do what the state said I should be able to, but the truth was I, nor anybody else could pull that rabbit out of the hat much longer. I got out before I made too many mistakes, or caused harm because I was tired ands beaten. Being burned out, means at it's core, that the fight has gotten bigger than the warrior.

I was reminiscing with Michael about the jobs I have left behind. "It's really not much of career", I said feeling as though I have wasted much of my adult life on work that no one cares about. "You put your money where your mouth was. You did what a lot of us are afraid to do. This will come back to you in a good way." Michael, ever the cheerleader, tried to make me feel better about my choices in jobs. He's right , of course. The work I have done throughout my life is something I feel very proud of. I have given 110% in every position I have had. I have no idea where I will end up from here. I won't be a nurse, or a massage therapist, and I will continue to write not knowing if I will ever get to have another book published. The "day job"? Today, I will go out and talk to people, see what feels right and be grateful that I am still here, able bodied, and mostly of sound mind. I will shoot up a prayer to those I had cared for during my time in "the home" and see if they can intercede on my behalf. That may well be the good Karma I am looking for.