Running Away To Join The Circus?

Job frustration...big time. The raving inner Roman Catholic says, "Shut up, you bastard, at least you have a job...you're not allowed to complain." Bravely I blog ahead...

The number of folks I learn about who are unemployed without any apparent job opportunities continues to grow. This post is in no way to dismiss them and their own personal hell currently. Yet, their very existence makes folks in my situation all the more stressful. We look around us, listen to the news reports, watch the parade of economic indicators and it keeps us afraid.

We don't speak up when we are assigned yet more responsibility without any additional compensation. We don't speak up when we are stripped of more of our dwindling benefit package. By the way, how do they get away with calling them benefits if we are paying more and more of the cost? We don't speak up when our bosses are completely unreasonable. So we continue to muddle along in our own little versions of The Devil Wears Prada.

I have job frustration and I don't see much in the way of solving what I feel are the issues. They all stem from weak, absent management. As a previous manager, I see what needs to be done. As an organized, control freak, I am skilled at creating systems to ensure it gets done. As a typical "oldest child" I end up having to do it all to get it done. My boss sits back and lets it all fall on my shoulders.

As much as I have enjoyed aspects of this job, as much as I believe I am very good at this job, I think I am very close to being done -- put a fork in me and see.

I am fortunate that I am a college educated, RN. With those credentials, I should be able to find something else. However, I am living in a region of the country where this hospital is essentially it for nursing employment. This severely limits my opportunities.

For the past 6-8 weeks I have been working a contact that I met purely by chance. I'm not getting to hopeful in that it's quite possible the position is "wishful thinking" on the part of my contact. She is a case manager for a company that follows patients in the Upper Peninsula. There are currently two full time nurses and a part time nurse and they are all maxed out with their patient loads. Any future with this company is currently dependent on how successful she may be in requesting an additional position for the region.

I have been monitoring the jobs listing here at the hospital as well. I avoided posting for a position in the Education Department initially because I wasn't sure where the position above stood. I should add that I was less than enthusiastic about the Education job, but I am near the point of taking something else - something without a pager, something with a limit to my hours, something with an involved manager.

Which leads me now to consider a PM shift position on the Adult Psych Unit. I have pretty much decided that I no longer want to do bed side nursing. However, I'm thinking that the milieu would be different enough that I might consider making an exception. At the same time it scares the bejeezus out of me.

In the way back when I was in nursing school during my Psych Rotation, I chose to work on the unit with the more functional patients - Bi-Polar, Depression, etc. I am such a communicator that I'm not sure how well I would do with the psychotic patients. Yet there was a time during nursing school where I thought I might consider this route.

A former supervisor liked the expression, "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know." Fear. It is helping to keep me in my place. I am struggling to transcend the fear of the unknown in making this decision.

I have always liked the "frog in the pot" metaphor. You know, you place a frog into a pot of boiling water and he will jump right out. You place in a pot of warm water and put a slow flame underneath and he will sit there and boil to death, never realizing he needs to jump.

Then there's that lovely expression, "out of the frying pan and into the fire."

The worst thing about that last expression is there is no escape. There was an experiment done with dogs. They were placed into a wire bottomed cage with a divider down the middle. They would shock the floor on one side to condition the dog to jump to the other side. Yet eventually they began to shock both sides to see what the dog would do (yes, sadistic I know). The dogs gave up jumping and whimpered in the corner no matter how much shock they received, having learned that there is no escape.

I fear that more than anything else right now, that when I jump there will only be more pain on the other side. Peace.