First of all, my daughter volunteered yesterday with a group of 15 at a cat sanctuary called Bear Den in San Antonio. Here are some pictures she sent me. I also scrolled the Bear Den TikTok videos.
As for me, the woman I am working with 15 hours a week is going to go into a nursing home and next week will be my last week with her. The company that has her is not gift card boss- gift card boss is technically my “second” job, since she started calling me after I started with 15 hours lady. The daughter of 15 hours lady is overwhelmed, and this doesn’t surprise me. That boss started texting me with other client situations, not knowing I’d taken a second job and when I told her, I also told her I wouldn’t mind moving on with just gift card boss, but would finish with 15 hours lady until she moved in to the facility. I can make more money with gift card boss, even without gift card incentives. She said ok and that if I ever wanted more hours with them, to reach out. Today and Friday, I’m working 12 hours each day with a married couple. I think I mentioned this before, but I get a shift differential of $4.50 per hour for the fact that it’s a couple instead of a single person. The couple isn’t easy or difficult. They’re average. The wife needs to be lifted with a gait belt, and when I transferred her, I was proud of myself for not having any bladder leaks. Maybe that means I’m getting old myself, but I was having them while transferring others.
I do want to mention that a lot of this “spaghetti legs” feeling that I get in the muscles of my arms, legs, back and upper chest is returning. I think I have been making the mistake of calling this feeling “anxiety” for the past 12 years. It’s not painful, so I can’t call it pain either. When I worked with the inventory service, the constant repetitive motion of scanning and keying in tended to ball up all of that energy and force it out. It’s hard to explain! Being up and down on ladders helped too. To make up for this, I’ve tried to speed walk around the 11 acres where I live and set my step count to 7,500. It helps, but in a different way. I cannot tell any doctor about this “spaghetti legs muscle feeling” because they’ll just prescribe an antidepressant, and those don’t work for me, for this. I might as well take skittles. Gabapentin helps it, but I am saving those for when it’s extra bad.
I had a realization. I realized that anything I’ve ever done in my life that had to do with caring for others, whether it was children, elderly, or disabled in the middle, I did so kind of as a result of people being mad at me for wanting to be a mom when I was younger.
The whole reason I started doing it was because so many people, so mad that I said I wanted children of my own, angrily demanded that I do something career wise to help others. So I just kind of said, “Ok I will.” I realize now that none of those people were serious. They didn’t actually want me helping others in a career or job setting. They just wanted to disapprove of my wanting to be a mother. I know this, because when I did start working with children, they stayed haters. This isn’t to say that I have regrets working with children, elderly, disabled. But I’m realizing that it didn’t come from some innate desire. I wouldn’t have thought of it on my own. It was suggested to me in some kind of bitchy way as an effort to shoot me down. “Why do you want to have a baby, why can’t you spend your time helping a child who already exists?”
Me: “Ok”
Them: (Still haters, never actually cared about the children “already existing”, just wanted to throw something in my face).
If I was in therapy alone, probably they would agree with me in my reflection/observation. But if those family members were involved with and paying for the therapy, the therapist might say they are right. I need to stop thinking about things from the lens of therapy, because I’m no longer going. Therapy is also shaped heavily by who’s paying, like I mentioned. There are also a lot of situations in life, perhaps this one included,
Where both sides can be right.
As far as inventory goes, I thought that one up on my own. I was 18 years old and working in a grocery store with my first boyfriend when an inventory service showed up and I said, “Is that all they do, just go to all different stores and do inventory?” I knew I wanted to do that, and I think it was two or three days later that I was in their office applying.
Then there’s my side jobs, the apps I downloaded starting in 2018, where I get paid per location to take pictures to prove displays compliance. There are also a lot of merchandising opportunities on there, as well as mystery shops. I love doing all of them. I learned to do planograms on these apps, and there are a lot of jobs on indeed that want planogram experience. Most of my planogram experience was Red Bull trays in cooler doors though, not entire four foot sections.
I am realizing that whenever I did things where I went around to different stores, I was more active, more positive, and it was something I 100% chose to do. Caring professions were the result of pressure. I find myself getting down in the dumps the last couple of weeks, and moving slower and talking slower. I have to stop myself and tell myself that this isn’t nearly as bad as working at that ABA place. I have a lot of secondary trauma symptoms I need to work through on my own, and a lot of it came from absorbing other people’s trauma over the years. I was happier going from store to store, whether it was the apps or the inventory. I’m not doing anything about it now, though. I’m committed to 15 hours lady until she goes to her facility. I also really like gift card boss. Not just because of the gift card incentives. She’s a genuinely good person. If I motivate myself to be at her beck and call enough, I can really make good money. The couple I get the $4.50 differential for are complainers, but I’ve won them over so they don’t complain about me. Things can be better, but they can also be a lot worse. A month ago they were a thousand times worse. I just have to pace myself and take it one day at a time.
