Job

"Wow, I'm glad you can do this, I know I couldn't!"

Versions on "I don't know how you do this work." I hear it often. But I feel the same about other's jobs. I don't know how surgeons can keep going and going, then find themselves with a bit of difficult anatomy, more damage, friable vessels that require tedious repairs, a bone fixation that looks good until the x-ray shows it not, and they have to start all over again, another whole procedure that needs to happen, family called for consent, and hours more fiddly, careful process.

I don't know how school teachers manage, all those little aliens running around, uninvolved parents complaining, principles and school boards and the mass of government breathing down their necks, yet they somehow manage to teach most of the little buggers something.

I don't know how EMTs manage, underpaid and making up their job as they go along. Or police, dealing with drunks and users, criminals and violence, as well as innocent victims and ordinary citizens, amazing more are not alcoholic and or corrupt. Most are good folks doing a difficult job.

I don't know how anyone survives cubicleville, sitting all day, keeping some kind of focus on doing a job. Every day, the same schedule, the paper, the memos, the meetings. IT guys, with everyone ragging on them all day, as they deal with users who are afraid to restart the computer, don't know how to check that everything is plugged in, eat over their keyboards, and want perfection at all times, then panic to the Help Desk when it is not.

I don't know how dancers and actors and musicians cope with always having to find another gig to pay rent.

I am in my right job, I love it more than it annoys me. What seems like it would be hard from those who it would not fit, are usually not the hard bits. The gross stuff, is just like the nuts and bolts of any job, it becomes background noise very quickly. The paperwork, is my way of communicating - a small point of satisfaction. The emotional wreckage, is practiced. The worst was finding the words at first, now I have patter that comes on. Genuinely meant, but the phrases are well used, the jokes well worn in, I know what to say, because I have done it so often before. I feel that emotional connection gives back far more than it takes away, to both me and the patient and family. I pour it out, and it flows back down to me. Tales to tell, souls to cherish. The absurdity of people to laugh about.

The difficult aspects are all about being hindered in doing my work well. Having to work around the people who are supposed to be helping. Equipment or supplies not available. Petty cliques. Sharp corners and the resultant bruises. Armless anesthesiologists (Those look like arms, but they don't do anything.) The inept, the new, the clueless, the irritating. Just like in every other job, joy or misery is all about who you work with.

Think you couldn't do my job? I feel the same way about yours.