Gratitude 58

Today I am feeling grateful for my job.  There are many reasons for gratitude:

1. It keeps me alive.  I can pay the rent and the bills, buy food (and eat it), go places on transit, buy clothing as needed, sit in a coffee shop with my sketchbook, or a friend, or both, and go away every year on vacation.

2. It keeps me busy.  I always have the means of structuring and giving meaning to my days.  There are places I need to be at and go to at certain times every day.

3. It helps me be responsible.  Having a rather complex and Byzantine network of three worksites, and various bosses, supervisors, coworkers and clients to keep happy and quiet I have to be answerable every day to any number of persons in any number of situations.

4. It helps me feel useful.  I can spend time with my clients, encouraging and cheer-leading them towards their own mental health recovery while seeing the quality of my own life improve with theirs.  This is very gratifying and satisfying work.

5, I am always learning something new, whether it's a new skill, or a new idea, or a new way to approach things with my clients, or it could be something to do with the state of the world, or any kind of trivia or profundity.

6. I am never bored.  There is no such thing as a boring client, because their is no such thing as a boring human being.  My clients always keep me entertained and interested in their lives and their various worlds.

7. I have a lot of freedom in my work.  Often clients choose to shorten our sessions, sometimes to little more than a half hour.  I still get paid for two hours.  Sometimes they cancel.  I still get paid.  I am always out in the community with my clients.  I am not stranded in n office in front of a computer screen.  I have lots of time to walk between assignments and have passed many enjoyable hours, especially this time of year in the spring, outside in the sweet fresh air, surrounded by trees, flowers and often beautiful homes.

Even though the pay is poor my subsidized rent makes life affordable, otherwise I could never live in Vancouver.  But there is another benefit.  In order to do well in my job I have to put my heart into my work.  This also means being open to change and the challenge to grow as a person.  I believe that the thirteen years I have spent as a mental health peer support worker has done much to encourage me to mature, and to become a kinder, more rounded person.  I have found that the kind and consistent treatment that my clients thrive on is just the kind of treatment that my friends often need.  Yes, I treat my friends like clients.  They love it, and this helps me work better with my clients.

There are tradeoffs and sacrifices.  In order to work well with vulnerable adults I have to pay close attention to my own needs for rest and restoration.  This means spending less time going out with friends and more time at home, or walking out in nature.  It means more time working on creative projects, such as art and writing this blog.  It also means taking better care of myself: eating well, and resting and sleeping well.

This is very spiritual work.  G