Burn Out

Whoa, that was quite the hiatus.

Blogging about homelessness is depressing. You watch the same stories of funding cuts and rising numbers of people who are homeless cycle through over and over and over. New programs sprinkle in optimism but it starts to feel like nothing is changing. Eventually, I burnt out.

Burn out is a huge hurdle for human services. Energetic people, especially young people, come to human services with a sense of optimism. They are going to save lives. So many of them walk away, bitter and confused, after only a few years. Nobody ever told them that they wouldn't be doing the saving. Their supervisors didn't teach them to leave their job at the door when they went home at night, if they had supervisors.

When I looked at the tags I've used in the past, I realized that "self care" was never one of them. Maybe because I wasn't doing a good job of it myself? I'm one of those optimistic young people who is at greatest risk of forgetting to put my own self care first.

This time, I'm going to try blogging as a form of self care. Even with all of the depressing stories, blogging reminds me why I do the work I do. It's not so I can help "those" people, it's so "they" can help me.