Last day of official work at the office before surgery leave so I figured this post was the most appropriate:

I’ve worked around healthcare for elders for 11 years already. Granted I started in data entry typing away in a back office with a group of my friends when I was just a senior in high school, I would hardly consider that work. I really think I won the jackpot with my job before I understood the market I worked in. Who gets to go from school to hanging out with their friends typing? Then imagine having to tell your boss that you’re going away to college at UF in a few short months and him actually trying to help you keep a job… Well I did! While my college friends were taking out loans, using scholarship money or working wherever they could to get spare cash I was working from the comfort of my apartment. I wasn’t doing ho-hum entry anymore, no sir, working directly for the big guy doing special projects. Luckily by working with him on these projects I started learning the more business side of our jobs; mix that with the fact that I was checking other peoples work that totally fed my OCD detail oriented side and I was in heaven. I ended up moving up and became a manager when I got back from UF and kept studying at FIU (more on that later on family & life choices). Eventually I graduated with my bachelors in English, a minor in Education and another minor in Psychology ready to be a MDCPS high school English teacher. Then reality hit… Wait a real job? With all these rules? I couldn’t just take a day off? AND They were cutting benefits? Laying off teachers? Last one in, first one out? And for how much?! Oh nonono. Time for a change of plans. Panic officially set in.

Luckily (again) for me that my job was still coming through. I got a promotion to become a department manager and start doing the trainings for anyone using the software system I had been working on for almost 5 years at that point. Seriously?! Does it get any better? Well I think it does. I eventually left that company (after plenty of company trainings and creating procedure manuals up to my knees). Oddly enough I left to work directly for my first boss (yes again as we got separated through all the promotions and company restructuring) at his company, going back to my spoiled ways.

Little did I know that I was going to be thrown a major curve ball and into the deep end. This was not at all what I had been doing, I was not prepared and I was alone at clients… Or so I thought. How am I supposed to show people how to do their jobs better, more efficiently? Where are the instructions for planning computer system changes with a programmer that may save a company a whole week of time and money? When did I become the go to person for making business plan decisions for clients and affecting more than myself? Somewhere along I absorbed enough to make it work. I have worked with some of the most passionate and stubborn, knowledgeable and frustrating, crazy and endearing people at the clients I’ve been with. I learned so much more about long-term care, the aging community, non-profit agencies, business planning, project management, government services, and people than I would ever have imagined.

I also never would’ve imagined that the data entry job I took almost 11 years ago would take me down this path. Much less become my solace, my comfort zone, my confidence builder, and my frustrating relaxation in the face of utter personal chaos. I didn’t (and still don’t really) think jobs and bosses like mine exist, where bottom line and dollars almost took a back seat to health, happiness and safety. I’m inexplicably grateful. I’m lucky to say I have invested a lot of myself and take personal ownership in my job but the payoff is immeasurable.

-Vane

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