The Need for Space

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As I reflect about my job... yes there are stressful moments, yes there are high volume work periods, yes there are periods where I can literally scream out "I am stressed!", yes sometimes I lament the fact I am not doing direct social work and wonder if one day I would return to it, but then the conclusion is: I still love my work.

Maybe I am just trying to justify staying in this job because of a recent job offer. But then, frankly, at this point in time (I repeat, at this point in time), I can say "I love this job!". Why le? Maybe, it is my interest in working and establishing systems. There is just this part in me which find thrills putting together things and also finding solutions for problems, despite my interest in helping people directly. One of my supervisors have even shared with me that my skills seems to be in indirect social work. Well, it is sad to know that since my interest is in direct social work but then now, I am starting to see how things just fit together. In a way, I felt God has led me to this place and so far, things seem to work for good and there seems to be a good fit between my skills and the programme. Of course, there are things about me that could be better e.g. I could be more extroverted so it is easier to interact with my volunteers etc but then this is not what I would like to focus on now...

I really thank God for a good boss who gives me leeway to exercise my creativity. In this job, my boss has given me lots of autonomy to develop my volunteer programme. Let's see... so far, my boss have given me free play in my job to:

• redesigning volunteer management workflow,
• develop a very simple database to track volunteer statistics,
• develop and refine forms,
• revamp the volunteer report to management,
• develop a volunteer opportunities bulletin,
• start a volunteer coordinators' update to all my VCs,
• plan training and meetings,
• use instant messagers for volunteer recruitment,
• put together a pictorial yearbook to capture the essence of volunteer work in my organisation,
• develop a mission statement for volunteer involvement,
• start looking into developing policies and a volunteer handbook,
• study response time for volunteer placements and
• most recently, I am proposing to start a blog for my volunteer programme

Rarely will my boss say "no' to an idea and I guess this is really what i treasure in a job -- the autonomy to be as creative and to be given free space to put things together but yet, knowing that support is round the corner when I need it.

I also thank God for sending me my colleague who is now helping me with the admin stuff, leaving me more time to spend thinking about how to make things better in my organisation's volunteer programme.

For this reason, I would say "I love my job!"

Thank God!