Night Owl

A few years ago, while i was in college, i spent Christmas break in the most glorious sloth-worthy way.  There were four of us...my roomate and two new guy friends of ours that ended up being incredible long term friends of mine...that spent every night hanging out until the not so wee hours of the morning.  We played mario kart, made Shipleys runs for donuts at 3am,  played music, told funny stories and jokes, and basically laughed until we cried every night.  Then we would stumble home in a tired stupor and sleep most of the day away and then wake up and do the same thing over again.  It was wonderful and truly one of the funnest  seasons of my life.  

I am absolutely a night owl and since graduating from college and having a "grown up" job i haven't got to flex my night time stamina muscle in a while.  Until i quit my job.  And now i end up staying up until 3 am every night while my roomates crash by midnight.  So it seemed like a great opportunity when i got hired by a local mental health provider to work the overnight shift at a group home.  It's not my dream job, and by no means my dream pay, but i thought it might be a great temporary job to make a little money at until i could find a real job.  I've had a pretty good amount of experience with mentally ill people due to my previous job and thought that this would be no big deal.

Boy was I wrong.

To start off, this job is in the ghetto ya'll.  Which is okay, i'm used to the ghetto. worked there for the past two years.  But i was also working there during the day.  So to say that I hated the idea of walking from my car to the home at midnight is a bit of understatement.  I was terrified.  Luckily both times i had to go between car and work there was a police man patrolling the street.  Which i couldn't figure out whether to be comforted by that fact or downright scared.  Not to mention i was questioning whether or not my car would actually be there in the morning.  However, that was the least of my uncomfortableness during the night.  I don't want to go into to much detail as to what specifically happened to make me not feel safe there, it would be a little inappropriate to go into the story of what i was told.  But to make it short, these people are not the mentally ill i was used to working with.  Think of every television show and movie you've ever seen involving a mental institution.  And then remember how the people in these lock down facilities act.  Now picture them, but in a home setting where they are free to get up and walk around and do whatever they want in the darkness of night.  And then picture yourself, a 25 year old girl, having to go into their bedrooms every hour during the night to make sure they are still alive.  

Needless to say, i quit the next day.

And as i was telling my supervisor why i was not going to be coming back, she said "but we rarely even have an occurrence." 

Rarely? Is that supposed to change my mind???

So I'm looking for a job again.  And amidst some other dashed dreams of mine that happened yesterday i haven't had the best couple of days...but at the same time these events led to some much needed words of encouragement from my Dad.  And some great Godly advice, that i don't think I've ever heard anything of the like come from him, so a bad situation quickly turned into something i've been desperate to hear for a while now.  God is good like that to me a lot of times :)

love.