I am back!

A year ago in May I kicked off my social worker shoes and put on a pair of high heels with a cute pencil skirt and button up blouse.  After having experienced the last stings of burn out, I was done.  No more home visits to client's houses, worrying that I might bring home cockroaches or bed bugs.  No more vacations followed by 50 voicemails.  No more constant filing of the endless barrage of paperwork.

With a sigh of relief I took a job in the professional world of external relations.  This new chapter was exciting with the promise of something new and fun.  I would be working with fundraising, and event planning and capturing the stories of the people I worked with.  I would be able to experience exciting new things and fun events instead of seeing the world's sadness.  I was on cloud nine, feeling like I had escaped the gnawing feelings of secondary traumatic stress from the harsh realities I was introduced to through my clients.

In my first few months as a recovering social worker, I would find myself driving home through the city and would pass a familiar street name or a house of an old client.  I would always wonder- where are they now?  Are they doing okay?  Is their new case manager helping them?  Are they still alive?

As the months wore on I began to notice that my problem solving skills at work was in direct conflict with my current job.  My response to nearly ever "issue" at work was, "Is someone dying? No?  Great!" and "Your emergency is not my emergency," or "What I hear you saying is..."  I began to resent every problem that arose at work because they weren't problems in the grand scheme of things.  Problems were losing your housing, not having enough money for food for the month, having bad side effects with your medication.  The crises that I was dealing with in my new job were not even blips on the radar of what a crisis actually was.

It started to hit me, and it hit me hard:  I missed social work.  It wasn't just the work.  I missed working with social service providers.  Problem solving to make a better world.  Sharing resources and constantly learning new things.

When people asked me about my time as a social worker I would say, "It was a good job, and I was good at it, but it wasn't for me and I just burnt out."  But here is the thing, burning out is not a sign of weakness or a sign that you need a new career.  When you burn out it is because you have put too much of yourself in your job and not taken care of yourself.  The social service arena needs people who care that much.

In a wonderful twist of fate, I got a sign.  God, or the Universe or whatever you call your higher power, put some amazing opportunities in front of me and for the first time in my life I just went with the flow.  I wasn't looking to leave my new career.  I wasn't actively seeking new employment, but there it was:  multiple doors back into the world of social services.  All I had to do was open the door and I would have a new career and an opportunity to help other social workers do their jobs better, fight burn out and continue using their skills to help others.

So I opened the door and found my second calling as a social worker again.