Pain

I read another blog today in which the blogger wrote about receiving discouraging comments from parents. She said she would have rather her parents said "You can do it" instead of "there's time to change"(career directions). I'm not 100% sure what it is she was trying to do, but it sounded like a teaching job, and you know, I bet she would be a great teacher.

There are a lot of challenging jobs out there. And not all of them pay spectacularly well or require some secret innate talent. Some just require a long adjustment period, before you feel totally comfortable, before you "hit your stride". Sometimes it takes a while to obtain that special sixth sense, a feeling that you instinctively know what to do, how to respond or what to say.

Take my job for instance. I am a psychiatric nurse. It is not glamorous but it is challenging and it takes years before you truly trust yourself to make correct decisions and even then you second guess yourself alot. The reality is that you can learn about medications and state laws and you can practice cognitive therapy techniques until you're blue in the face and it doesn't always work out.

The job is dangerous. Patients are frequently not ready to accept a diagnosis and they lie to your face. They are frustrating. But when it all comes together and you help someone dig themselves out of their state or understand the chronicity of their illness and learn to love their life anyway, the rewards are breathtaking.

The frustrating parts are real. And the danger is unpredictable, anything can happen.

I have learned not to complain because even at my age people say "It's not too late to change". Yes it is and I don't wanna.

So miss L, you'll get there and you'll thrive.

But you're wrong about something. When it comes to job hunting and networking sometimes luck has everything to do with it. And that's unpredictable too. What sort of "luck"? You never know. In my case when I applied to my dream job I thought it was futile. But I got in, in fact the HR person said "I really want you". I was elated, thinking that my qualifications and interests were key. They were not. It was my name. Seems she hired several other people with the same first name and they had worked out well, so she chose me. If my first name had been the same as somebody who quit before orientation had finished or who was fired for cause I would have never been hired. This was corroborated by others who had watched this trend over time. So luck matters, sometimes.