Fulfillment

The other day, I was asked whether or not my job fulfills me, and I kind of laughed and said 'no'.  I won't get into lots of detail, but I sit in various areas and watch cameras, or I patrol, or I'm searching things.  To me, that's not really fulfilling.  It's hard for me to draw much fulfillment from such a dormant job, one in which I don't believe I'm making much of an impact or accomplishing anything.

The activities of my job don't excite me, nor does the schedule where we work days one week and nights the next until we're zombies (or maybe it's just me that's the zombie).  Despite the lack of excitement from my daily activities at work, it is a good job, with good pay and benefits, it's typically not strenuous, and because of long working hours each day, we get many days off per month.  But we'll work weekends and holidays on a consistent basis.

There was a time that I looked to this job for fulfillment, though.  I let the job, and my quality of work, the 'rankings' define me.  When things weren't going well at work, I let that affect other areas of my life.  I'd let the disappointments of the day, the anger, get to me at home or when with friends.  When relationships at work were in bad shape, it would dominate my week, and it let it fester.  I work with several people who pride themselves in being assholes, who at times act like they need to put someone down.

That's one thing I've been intentionally working on lately (the last several months), to not let work carry over to home.  While things have gotten better relationally at work, a bad day doesn't wreck me.  What I do, and what happens at work isn't my foundation, it's not what defines me.  My relationship with Christ is the sole thing I care about that defining me.    Maintaining that is of utmost importance to me, and it does take effort.  Not 'work', but effort and time.

At work, I've kind of become the crew motivator, or 'cheerleader' maybe.  My goal is to develop relationships, and let people know I care.  Sometimes it's not fun, if I'm dealing with the same guys who are never really responsive, but I try not to let it get to me if there's no response.  I'm not doing it for me, at least I'm trying not to.  I don't think my witness as a believer has been that great, and that's probably the biggest thing I regret,so far.  I still have a general lack of trust that any of them would have my back, especially supervision,but that doesn't matter.  My job, as a Christian is to simply love them, for they are made in the image of God, just like me.  I fail a lot, but I'm doing better.