Tag: Work

Inspiration Engine V.3 – Work and Social Mores

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

This is a series I do once a week on interesting blog posts I’ve found, posts that make me think. This week, the posts took me on a familiar thought experiment about living a satisfying life.

1. The GOP and the Histoprial Obsession with Work in America –

I’ve been thinking about the Protestant Work ethic lately as I’ve been trying to think about what I’m going to do with my life. Being in this position right now is not fulfilling me.  I can work my ass off. I can tell myself it’s for a Catholic agency and I’m serving people as I am called to do by my loving Higher Power. But it’s not doing it for me.  I’m not challenged. At the same time, taking time off is terrible for me – I feel so guilty.  Isn’t that crazy?

This blog post challenged me to think about that but, unfortunately, didn’t offer any insight into how to NOT participate in this system I am ensconced in.  How do I work around it?  Can I? I started thinking about moving to France or somewhere with a less intensive protestant work ethic. Maybe I should read about the French and what they do.  So I began to think about that, and this also lead me to my next search…

…where i found this:

2. French Social Customs, Etiquette, and Idiosyncrasies

This post specifically talks about things like the long lunch and other French, well, idiosyncrasies, and how it can be frustrating. For example, how it can be frustrating when you’re trying to take care of business and business is closed. That would never happen here (U.S.). So perhaps this is just a matter of “the grass is greener?”

3. So then, as I was thinking about all of this age old question of balance, I looked up “priorities” and stumbled upon Hundred Goals blog, that pretty much speaks to this very question.  The author of this blog, he lists 100 goals that he has, and it kind of reminds me of an adult version of a bucket list.  Like, not something I want/hope to do, but something I will do. (No offense intended to bucket listers – perhaps that what they already do; I just don’t think of them that way.)

I love this dude’s philosophy, about setting goals that people will work to accomplish. “Those who dream and believe will do whatever it takes to make their dreams a reality.” I believe that, at my core, and I think I forgot about that – we are so much stronger than we think we are.

Glub, glub, glub … (sink or swim)

~ Sahara ~ 11 Comments

The very first time I worked alone in the homeless shelter, I felt completely overwhelmed, and I didn’t know how I’d make it through the night.

I was a shelter supervisor on Saturday and Sunday night from 4:00 pm to midnight.  I had to work the desk phones, oversee dinner, make sure the chores were done, do any intakes that came in, hand out 9:00 pm medication for folks who had them, breathalyze the residents before they went to bed and enforce lights out, and keep notes of everything that happens for legal and case management purposes.  In a shelter with, at first, 30ish, and eventually 40 residents. 40.

Continue reading “Glub, glub, glub … (sink or swim)” →

Small thing, big joy

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

We moved offices at work!!

I normally don’t talk a lot about work; don’t grouse about what it’s like here, because I want to keep this blog separate from all that.  However, I’m going to talk about it today, because we’ve moved offices!!

This is a change that I”ve been aksing for over the past several years, we just haven’t had the time or money or support to do it.  Today it’s happened, and for the first time, I’m in an office with natural light. I’m sitting a bit away from windows so people aren’t staring at me all the time. There are plants in here.

This is beautiful.

This is not my life

~ Sahara ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was particularly challenging here at work.  I went downstairs, away from the eyes and comments of the clients, and cried. I was gloomy on the drive home. It was no fun.

I got home, and I made buckwheat crepes, my new favorite thing in the world. I took a long walk in the trees, read and imagined work I would do on my research.  I cleaned my kitchen. I prepared veggies to make another kind of crepe in my dehydrator. I finished a chocolate shake from the freezer.  This is my life.  All the stuff from work, though it takes up so much of my day, is not my life.  I have a life. The prying eyes and shady characters trying to hit on me are not it.

This is something I’ve been meditating on all evening and this morning, and it helps.

Being Thursday and almost Friday isn’t bad, either. 🙂