The search continues

So what have I figured out in a week's time? A fat lotta nothing! lol No, no, let me try to think more objectively for a moment...

1. Despite my love for and knowledge of animals I probably shouldn't work in any field having to do with them. My guidelines on how they should be treated and kept even at a minimum are strict and SOMEONE will always fall short turning things quickly into a big mess.

2. I've done retail type jobs to death and though I seem to be good at selling it just doesn't hold my interest. It becomes too much of a grind. It starts out great as I learn the products! My whole sales technique is to learn the products inside, out, and compared to others then simply tell customers about them honestly, the good, bad and ugly. I don't do pressure sales, period, but I do like partnering with a customer to help them find what's really right for them. I think I need something more mentally stimulating. Plus in sales it doesn't matter how much you sell, there's always a push to sell more and more and more which starts nudging you back towards the high pressure approach. What on earth is wrong with gaining in customer loyalty and satisfaction to count on word of mouth bringing in new customers for that sales growth? It's slower. That's it! The bosses want bigger profits and they want it now, now, now even if it means having to stay on that treadmill because you lose out in customer loyalty and satisfaction in the long run.

3. Working in restaurants seems to be even worse than retail, mentally void.

4. I tried a few plant nurseries thinking that with all there is to learn about gardening/landscaping and such it'd certainly be mentally satisfying enough but if someone mistreats a plant somehow I just don't get quite the same kind of hacked off as I do if it was an animal. Unfortunately there was so much to do simply maintaining the stocked plants that I never really got that mental stimulation and it too turned into a grind of water, pick off the dead bits, repot this, find a way to display that...blah.

5. I did daycare once and in some ways I simply loved it, especially when I was switched over to the babies that were about 12 months old! No matter what kind of bad mood I'm in nothing can magically turn it right around instantly like a baby! That particular job ended up having the same drawback as working with animals did, though. I could not, would not abide someone not treating those children as I thought they should be treated! No one at that daycare seemed to agree with me but I still say that keeping a boy in the 2-3 yr old room in a playpen all day every day so you don't have to deal with him is abusive.

Two ideas that I keep coming back to are nursing and psychology. Psychology I've kind of put on the back burner just because I don't know if I'm ready to go through quite that much school at my age! Nursing, on the other hand, would only take a minimum of 2 yrs of school and opens up realms of possibilities. Home care? Pediatrics? Pallative/Hospice? I volunteered for a Hospice for awhile before I moved away and found that caring for someone that is dying didn't bother me at all. I would feel pangs of sadness, of course, but I also felt great to be able to give some joy and comfort to people like that. But would it really fulfill me?

What about Ob/Peds? It would be a huge, awesome thrill to help babies come into the world, care for them, help new parents learn what to do, and all!! That just sounds like the best thing in the world to me!! But could I handle the dark side of the job where we lose a baby? It might help exorcise my own demons about the loss of Jonathan and who could sympathize with a woman who's just lost a baby better than another woman who has also lost a baby? But it might just rip that wound in me wide open again every single time. I just don't know which! What would I do if I didn't approve of how someone was handling a baby? What if I did something accidently that lead to the injury or even death of a baby??? Could I handle that??? It sounds like a possible minefield to me!

Pallative/Hospice type nursing wouldn't hold the same kind of risks for me but it wouldn't compare to the possible joys of Pediatric nursing either. Surely the joys would make the risk worth it? In that it would be similar to my days of animal rescue, at the sad, hard times you hold tight to the good times and remind yourself that you can only do what you can do, you have to hold on long enough to reach that light at the end of the tunnel because there'll be more there that really need you. Or am I just in the wrong ballpark completely with this? Am I idealizing the role of a nurse? I know that a lot of the job would be the mundane, dirty, hard stuff like changing soiled sheets, giving meds, paperwork, getting barfed on...but ANY job is going to have it's less than fun and pleasant side! Maybe I should push the idea of nursing aside and think about other options but what? Am I simply asking that to put off making an actual decision?