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2005
in Summary, and Looking Towards the Future
October 7, 2005 It seems this has turned out to be a hiatus year. Once I started working again, it became just too overwhelming to try to come up with a fresh essay each week and not write about what was going on in my working life. I spent four months with a very special client, and I was with her when she died. I attended her funeral, and her family introduced me as their “little angel.” Now, almost a year later, her husband needs a little extra care, and I have been spending time with him. He doesn’t really need me there, but he thinks he does, and it makes him feel better to have me stop by for a little while every day, even if I do nothing for him but make his bed and take out the garbage. I worked for awhile with another client who was on hospice, but then they placed me elsewhere because he and I were not a good match. He died not long ago, and they thanked my company in his obituary. I would have gone to the funeral, but I didn’t hear about it till it was too late. Now my very favorite client is on hospice and not doing well. For whatever reason, the company is no longer placing me with her. I think about her constantly. Every day I check the obituaries. It sounds morbid, but that is the only way I know she is still alive. I haven’t spent the entire year dealing with death, even though sometimes it has felt like it. Sometimes I get to work with a younger client who had stroke at 58 and is paralyzed on one side. Thanks to my company, she is able to stay in her home and live a fairly normal life. She is so grateful that we are there. We gossip and giggle when we are together, and she is more like a friend than a client. However, things haven’t been going so well lately. Work has been slow, and the company has chosen not to place me with my “regular” clients. I am developing this sick feeling that it’s time to move on. I don’t want to leave this company. I have never before done anything worthwhile, never made a real difference in peoples’ lives. And all my old insecurities are pushing their way to the surface of my mind. It took me a year to land this job. Being this severely underemployed is pretty much the same as being unemployed, but without the unemployment checks. It could take me a year to land another job. Or longer! Unless I go back to my old company, which is hiring like crazy right now, but I’m not that desperate. Not yet. Do not look for me to start posting regular entries for the rest of this year. I have signed up to participate in NaNoWriMo, which is going to consume the month of November. I am hoping that will kickstart my writing. I have actually been writing a few essays, but I am trying to get some done ahead so it won’t be quite so overwhelming when I get back to this. But I am still here. And I am still writing. And I will be back! |