Adventure! Thrills! Escapes!
Or rather, not really, but you try making fixing-the-screw-on-my-glasses-and-putting-the-lens-back-in sound interesting.
It has been a thoughtful week rather than an hilarious one. I still love my haircut, my wrist is giving me no end of gyp and small lad knows how to make microwave popcorn. None of those things led to any particular thoughts, but I have thought to mention them.
I got told by an orderly that he wasn't "...paid enough to be pleasant." Eheu. When he said it, it gave me some pause, but I could see his point. Orderlies aren't paid well. Certainly not considering they get vomited on, abused and, being the low men (and occasionally women) on the totem pole of hospital hierarchy, are ordered around, and often not nicely.
On top of this, several times this week* there has been this dialogue:
Me: Here we are again, how are you?
Other: Back to the shithole. It's not too bad ... yet.
Me: Well, you don't want to peak too soon.
And then I run away to my little lab. (*This "week" started for me last Friday, apologies for any temporal confusions.)
Granted, I've started liking my job again - I don't have to read the procedures manual every time I get something that isn't the routine get specimen/process it/put everything away, I've gotten more things right than wrong (I wasn't getting that much wrong, but I hate making mistakes) - and I have my time off, deliriously filled with things like housework, it's true, but compared to the life I was living eight months ago, it is marvellous.
That said, I would much rather be writing for a living (despite all of my current and ridiculously* crushing doubts about my ability to do that); still, the food is on the table, the roof is over our heads and we're all, pretty much, okay.
My advantage, I suppose, is that I work alone and therefore can ignore any and all politics, peccadilloes and people, if I so choose. So long as my work is done, nothing else really matters. (Others might argue with that, and they can if they like, I'll probably ignore it.)
It is a huge relief to not worry about what's been said today, asked what I'm doing (in tones of I must be doing it wrong) or having too much to do and no time to do it in. I (finally!) have my right head on about that. I have as much as I need and time left over for reading books, watching movies and possibly running away to Queensland for a couple of days in the school holidays with small lad (husbandly too if he can manage it). I believe people call it perspective. Mine's changed. Nice.
That was a fairly marvellous digression, and I'm still not even close to what I started out to say, but bear with me, will you? I might just get there and try for witty along the way.
*It's ridiculously crushing. Ridiculously. While I'm getting things into perspective, it occurred to me that I'm reading real writers' (!!!) work and immediately comparing it to what I'm managing (zilch, currently). Of course I'm nowhere near it. Der. Once again I'm trying to run before I can even turn over on to my belly. (Side note in the middle of all of these side notes - the family do last weekend involved lots of babies and smaller children than small lad; I was pleasantly reminded of all the fun things such as vomiting (baby vomit really isn't as bad as it sounds, but it is ubiquitous) and learning to crawl and walk and baby frustration (which resulted in small lad as a small baby looking at me as "Fix it, Mum! You fix everything else!") and turning over and then back again was a big achievement.)
Phew. Back to the point, which I'm sure by now we've all forgotten (but I haven't, I went back and re-read the first couple of paragraphs), the idea that you can be paid enough to be pleasant. It's a poser. In some respects. Bear with me again.
One of the things that used to drive me up the wall (and still would, if I had to put up with it) is the idea that when you're at work it should all handed to you on a plate, particularly when major changes (or even minor ones) are afoot. I can probably explain that best with the comment, "I'm not paid to think." Well you're not paid to breathe either, are you about to crash out all blue?
It's...interesting that people at work have this entitlement attitude - that you should be compensated for civility or effort. The effort part is a no-brainer - if you're paid to do "x" minimums then I suppose, she types doubtfully, the minimums are all you must do. Everything else is an extra, but why you should be ordered to apply yourself when something changes is a source of puzzlement to me. To keep doing your job you have to absorb the changes and adapt to them. As Sue Kaufman put it, "...Change is Growth and Growth is Life, which makes a pretty neat equation." In more ways than one. With this is mind, should you only develop outside of work? Should your personality only be formed away from the job? Only be affected by the people you meet?
I've certainly found the people I deal with professionally (i.e., outside of friends in the workplace) instructive in how to live in ways that friends are not. Which brings me back around to civility. One of the great liberators for me was the realisation that most people don't get out of bed in the morning to make anyone else's life difficult. Those who do usually have something else going on, and they're still in the minority. Hmm. So if I've got someone unpleasant on the phone or in person, they're either unpleasant themselves (more on that in a minute) or something has happened before the phone call, incident or conversation.
Unpleasant people, character disorders and total effing nutbags are usually more to be pitied than hated. Or perhaps empathised with. Can you imagine having to live you life constantly on guard? Constantly having to fight nearly everyone you meet because you think that's the way to live? To always be angry?
I've spent a lot of time angry, nearly all my life. Considering that start I got (in short, nasty - is it enough to say I was a foster kid? Well, I hope so, because I don't feel like getting into it), it isn't surprising about the anger. Having said that, my dearest wish is to be at peace. To not be angry; so I find myself, confronted with angry people, upset people, wanting to make them feel better, or at least less worse.
I'm certainly not paid for that - but I choose to live the way I want to rather than dictated to by a paycheck. And there's the logic fail in the attitude. If you're not paid to be anything other than the bare minimum in your duties, aren't you ceding your power (to choose, to live, to be) to your job?
As far as empathy and/or sympathy goes, it's somewhat off-putting that there are people who might read this and assume I'm fooling myself, since I fell down (In their opinion) so spectacularly when confronted with someone in genuine need. This blog probably isn't the place to start - or at least not in this entry. We can disagree on what the genuine need was, when balanced against the needs of the job and the ridiculous lying that was going on (nice and intriguing?). And for the moment I'm leaving it at that.
Some personality wobbles are fascinating, and not in the sense of looking at a new bug, although any reading this may think I'm having a shot, I'm really not. I have my moments of shit too. Anyway.
Most of the time I find people hugely entertaining; exuberantly laughing my way through my days is how I prefer it. Even crazy eyes (a subspecies of nutbag - always defensive, always have a scapegoat and often dud themselves) are wondrous in the way their minds work.
Ah-ha. Finally I come to the point. People are fabulous. Even the repugnant ones. Because after all they're just trying to get through too; first do no harm is my ethic. I could go on for pages about how fantastic, how awesome people are, just being themselves, but I'll bog down in sentiment (more than there is already?) and I'd like to pass and leave it at that.
"What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god!"
That'll do for now. Peer group? What's that?
