I am grateful for the unexpected and for how it can test my resourcefulness. Today I enjoyed a longer than usual walk to work, three and a half miles, to Commercial Drive where I had time to stop in an Italian market to buy a slab of Asiago. There is a Spanish woman working there who is pleasant and we often pause to chat in Spanish. For a Spaniard her accent is incredibly good and clear. It is an irony of the language of Lorca that while the grammar of Spain is superior to the Latin American countries, the Iberian accent in Spanish is often something atrocious.
Following my time with my client, shortly after getting on the bus it began to rain quite hard. I detoured to my apartment to my apartment downtown where I picked up an umbrella. I was late getting to my next client, complicated by a bus driver missing my stop (being an express bus, the following stop would be almost a mile away). While on the phone with another client and standing by the back door, waiting for the bus to finally stop, I shouted from the back "Driver! You missed Arbutus." Now I have often noticed that when a transit operator misses a stop or fails to properly open the back door, I'm the only passenger present loud enough for them to hear. This is odd, given that I am told that I almost always speak in a very soft voice. But when it has to carry I tend to drown everyone out. So I don't shout in a polite little Canadian voicy-poo, and then apologize for raising my voice by one-tenth of a decibel. I shout out loud like a professional auctioneer or game show host " DRIVER! YOU MISSED THE STOP!" People always thank me for this.
It's been a more tedious than usual day without sufficient break or rest time, but this can be typical when I am working with three clients back to back in different parts of the city. I am feeling more tired than usual, rather drained, not because my clients are particularly needy, but because some days it does all feel rather intense. This is part of my job. My clients are, first and foremost, believe it or not, human beings, or should I say, persons? They are not file cases, they are not collections of symptoms, they are not diagnoses. Each one has a life, has been through their own share of life experience, and is each on their own journey. Whether my clients present as very well, or ill, I try to and always succeed to see them as persons, without referring to them through the filter of mental illness. If there is any core, unifying principal in my style of work that makes me good at what I do, that would be it. I do not judge them as being sick or well, I think' for the simple reason that everyone I know and encounter outside of work also manifests symptoms of having a potential mental wellness disorder. By the same token, I almost always see manifestations of wellness in my clients. For this reason I often try to treat my friends like clients, just as in many ways I treat my clients like friends. This isn't the same as claiming them as personal friends as that would be an unfair burden to place on them.
Do I enjoy my work? Yes. Is it always happy happy joy joy and kumbaya? Don't be ridiculous. It is seldom enough like that with any of my closest friends, so why would I place on my clients the burden to entertain me and make my life enjoyable? What really matters is serving well the people I work with. Sometimes there is an emotional payoff. Not always. If that's all I was interested in I'd probably be using drugs, instead.
By the way, I never did need the umbrella. The rain stopped and now the sun is shining. I was still glad to have it along if but for a prop for feeling safe from the rain, from any rain whether it should ever fall or not.
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