My Job

I have such an important job that if I fail, they throw me in jail. Or someone's life is ruined forever. Or both.

You'd think that, with such an important job that the future of the nation depends on me (and the others who have my job), that we would get a certain amount of respect, but no. Instead, we get criticized, shamed, called stupid, and generally dismissed as foolish, uninspired, unmotivated, dumber than average, unwilling to contribute to society, lazy.

The job is a hard one, too. It includes hours and hours and days and days and years and years of mundane, repetitive tasks that I can't outsource. There are no sick days. Days off are allowed, but seriously frowned upon and are generally few and far between (say, five in every ten years, if that), and never allowed on holidays.  The contract is for life. I can't get out of it.

And the tasks require millions of skills that I was never trained for and knowledge that they consider unimportant to teach in schools (so I have to just figure it out somehow a lot of the time). It's a job that nobody's ever done before, even though millions of people have the same job. I was trained for the job, of course, but it was while I was kid, so some of the details of the lessons didn't really sink in, and some I remember wrong.

But it's a job I'd never give up for anything, never trade, and don't regret taking.

I'm SO GLAD I decided to be a mom!

 Even on sick days.