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11:04 p.m. - 2007-06-21
ugh work ugh
Some days/weeks, my job is really hard. I really really like it. I love the kids and the staff and the agency management. I make decent money for this stage of my career and I have good health insurance and a lot of days off.

But there are these hard parts, like when kids completely freak out over the littlest things and get themselves in trouble over it via fighting, screaming or just general distructiveness. And when parents just decide to be rude and throw around the weight of being a parent at us. They are paying us nothing or practically nothing and they get mean and go for the jugular as soon as they don't like something. I just wish they could somehow know how much we care about their kids. How much we give of ourselves every day in the hope that they will overcome the obstacles that they will inevitably face.

People say that being in non-profit can be a thankless job, and they are right, sometimes. But we don't do it because we want someone to thank us, although it is super nice and greatly appreciated when they do. We do it for different reasons, ranging from caring deeply about something or because we're good at it, or because we don't know what else to do. But most of us don't do it because we want a constant stream of thank yous. All we want, sometimes, on some days, is for the people we're serving to understand that we're doing the best we can, with the resources that we have, to provide them with a service. Can we do better? Sure. Do we make mistakes? Yes! But what I quickly grow tired of is people trying to manipulate me, me recognising it and choosing not to be manipulated, and them announcing that they are going to sue me or hanging up on me and calling my boss the moment they realize they aren't going to get their way. Fortunately for me, I have excellent management at my agency and I feel a lot of support.

I kind of have two bosses. One is official and the other is kind of unofficial. The unofficial boss just did something incredibly nice for me this week, like, way out of the way nice. This makes me feel all warm and happy. That was the nice part of this week. And the part where I was told that within days of the end of the fiscal year, i am in the black and super close to the targeted expediture number. This means that I neither have to beg for money from somewhere else in the agency, nor do I have to scramble around and spend a bunch of money on 8 million post it notes (something I have experienced elsewhere.) Imagine that - the girl who can barely balance her check book (i.e. can't and has her smart husband do it) has managed to operate a quarter million dollar budget successfully - part of me thinks it's just dumb luck, honestly, but I'll take it as a victory. There were a lot of not so nice parts of this week though and the weekend is looking real good rigth about now. Except I'm in a wedding. But there are free drinks and my husband looks scandelously cute in a suit.

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