To whom it may concern:
Out there in the big wide ‘Western World’, there are an enormous number of people who dread Mondays and wish their lives away, each and every week, until the weekend comes. They work to live. I used to be one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I liked my day job. I have been lucky that I have enjoyed pretty much every job over the years (though clearly some more than others).
When I was a teacher, I was pretty convinced by the argument that I worked long hours and I deserved my holidays (thirteen weeks in a year). Don’t panic – I am not going to turn my back on that profession and claim that was a lie. However, I have never worked harder in my life than I do right now!
Being an educator of future generations was an amazing job. It had plenty of challenges – politics, workload, behaviour etc. – but, more often than not, the end of the week was met with a sense of achievement. A young person had finally mastered the art of fractions, learnt their nine times tables or reached another milestone in their education. Even on a bad day, I always felt like I was in the right job and that I was ‘making a difference‘.
I have (on many occasions and again, today) been told by lawyers that I missed my calling and should have joined the legal profession. I think it’s perhaps a little late now to re-train. But do you know what? I don’t think I would change my job for all the tea in China (even if the salary might be a whole lot better!). Partly, because I am not all that fond of tea but also because I have the best job in the world (in my opinion). Over the last three months, I have worked on four adoption cases and found the most extraordinary information out for clients and in various cases, I have even amazed myself.
At Family Wise, ‘we find people‘ – that’s what our ‘tag line’ is. That’s what we say our role is in life. But I think we might need to alter that to ‘we change lives‘ because quite frankly, that’s what we do.
Many thanks for reading,
The Happiest Person in the Sandpit of Life
Source image: Salesforce.com
