I had long be living the reality of emergency department life at the local public hospital and it sucked. So after nearly 3 years, I quit my nursing job. Quitting made sense. I tried to talk with HR, I talked with the contracted counseling service, I tried to make work work but the professional solutions offered to my lack of satisfaction were to meditate and to start taking anti-depressants. OK and no thank you, respectively.
I came to believe that the problem wasn't that I hadn't started taking anti-depressants, rather the problem was how I worked and how I made money. No professional ever entertained the idea of questioning the necessity of my job. With more time, maybe the counselor would have broached the topic, but why wait for her to catch up?
On my second visit, I told the counselor that I quit my hospital job. She asked me to promise not to make any other big decisions. That's when I learned that if you ask a client/patient/stranger to make you an important promise, then you'd better be very convincing. I quit the therapist after that meeting.
Back to hospital thoughts: helping patients in need felt good and happened daily; however, the lack of staff, host of mistakes and bad treatment seen/delivered mixed with a daily exposure to the unfairness of poverty fucked with my ability to leave work at work. I left not in a vain effort to punish an unfair healthcare system rather I stepped away, largely, because I had already squeezed out enough money.
Step away to what?
"What do you do?"
I don’t have enough to retire and never run out of money, but I'm OK for now.
I do work, but I don’t get paid. Certainly not in the conventional manner. I make $20 here and there ($160 from Paul who will probably read this and should text me), but I spend most of my time talking/eating/wandering and generally not making any money.
I thought that I was a hard worker because I have been one and can be one. I want some passion in the work that I do and, perhaps more, I want a job with less inscrutable, unchangeable admin bureaucracy. I guess I have to become a self-important entrepreneur. There will certainly be administrative work to accomplish. Will it be worse than what I left? Will I come running back to the cushy banality of corporations when the money runs out? Certainly not if the money doesn't run out. Will I just recreate the existing system as I earn more money? Time will tell.