50 hours a week

I am sick of talking about my work. However, when I find myself determined not to talk about it, I have nothing else to talk about. I can't tell whether it's because I'm kind of boring or if it's because I have no life because work take up so much time and brainspace.

So what do I do? I realize I haven't put a description of my job up on my blog and only the people I see in person ever hear about it. This entry will probably be the first and last I'll say on the internet about some of the details of my work and what I do since most of it is a) confidential and b) depressing. Besides, I intend someday to have something else to do and talk about. Someday.

I am a legal assistant at the local Public Defender and the part of law I guess I "specialize" in is juvenile law. I spend a lot of time organizing paperwork of some sort, trying to wrangle information out of or hammering certain messages into various bureaucrats and service workers over the phone, making sure shit's in it's proper place, doing various gopher assignments from the two lawyers I work with specifically, sitting through arduous and dramatic family-law type meetings, visiting foster homes to make sure kid clients are getting treated properly, sometimes to rarely visiting parent clients (yes, we represent grownups and child molesters too...) in jail to check up on them. I produce a lot of text that summarizes my impressions of people and their interactions, and I think I need to harp on myself from letting it deteriorate from long descriptions to "Person A=Horrible. Person B=Awesome." Yeah. I do a lot. It is damn interesting and fun for an office job. I'm pretty lucky in that respect. I also spend at least ten hours a week commuting from the city to the suburbs, and a lot of time in my car traveling around the suburbs trying to visit various kid clients or go to whatever Department of Human Services building I need to go to for whatever gut-wrenching meeting I need to go to that day. That is a lot of time to be spending with one's car in awful Portland-style traffic. I am pretty unlucky there. Yup. I guess the important thing to know is that my job is busy and stressful and sometimes a little draining. It is also deeply engaging and gives me the chance to feel like I'm contributing something positive to the world. I like to be busy. I like my job quite a bit, but I think I need to go visit the dentist soon because I am beginning to grind my teeth. You tell me what that means.

I feel like after three months I'm finally beginning to adjust sort of enough to start having free time again and to start having a life outside of the work-vegetate-work-vegetate cycle. I need more subjects of conversation, in any case.

So now you know. Whew.