Good Work

I received my every-other monthly issues of Mother Jones and Utne Reader magazines day before yesterday and finished them both yesterday. I think I'm going to have to stop reading Mother Jones. I appreciate what the editorial staff does. We-the world-needs progressive investigative journalism. Mother Jones sheds light on corruption and abuse in the government, corporations and the world. I want to stay informed. I want to know about injustice and to learn about the backgrounds of people, companies and issues that impact my world. But geez...I get so depressed reading that magazine.

I'm generally not a worrier. My attitude is to affect change where I can and let the rest go. I'm naturally a cynic but I'm fairly optimistic. But when I read Mother Jones I get overwhelmed by how corrupt our government is, how individuals in corporations make decisions to use natural resources for a profit, including humans, and throw them away. Greed. Greed. Greed for profit, for power. As I read through the magazine I get to feeling that there's almost no point in trying to do anything because the odds are so against making any kind of positive change.

Utne is better. They do occasionally print some articles of an investigative nature culled from other publications but they try to focus on what's positive; what we can do to make the world a better place. I don't feel disheartened or overwhelmed when I read Utne. Sometimes I feel really positive, hopeful even, like when I read about progressive politics in other areas of the country.
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This project I'm doing for work is at it's half-way mark but for me, it's winding down. I still have 34 cases but most of them I have phone numbers for so I don't have to leave the house to work. At this point I'm working maybe 10 hours a week and, because they want the work to be done by phone and pretty much anyone could make these phone calls from anywhere in the country, my new field manager could take my case load from me at any time if she feels it would me more efficient to do so. They hired a bunch of interviewers specifically to do phone work for this project so I won't have the opportunity to have to work longer in that capacity.

So, I'm thinking about looking for another job. The field manager I had just left to train for another project and she said she would love me to work with her on it, which is nice, but I don't want to sit around waiting for a phone call. This job is so disruptive: At the beginning I work 40 hours for weeks and am "on-call" pretty much 24/7 and then the hours taper away to next to nothing but still I'm on-call all the time. I'm tired of the constant disruption of my schedule. Working from home and setting my own hours is wonderful but the work is always there, waiting. I find it hard to relax when I'm not working, assuming, in the back of my mind, that there's work I should be doing. I think I'd like a job that I feel is doing good work but that I can forget when I leave the office.

I must go to work right now but I will write more about this later...