When a career goes full circle

My very first job was a live-in position as a cleaner and night veterinary assistant at Four Winds Animal Hospital in a small city back in 1980, 45 years ago.

I found it in the local newspaper a few days after I turned 18. The veterinarian thought I was too young, but offering $25 a week with an in-clinic efficiency apartment but no benefits, he didn't push back too hard against the office manager's choice. 

I think maybe I was hired because I was only a few years older than the manager's super-smart, sweet, and hardworking daughter, who cleaned and assisted on weekends.  A week later, an older vet tech quit, I got extra duties and a boost in pay to $60 a week. I kept that job until I left for college two years later. The vet trained me hard, thinking that my acceptance to "Ithaca College" meant "Cornell in Ithaca to become a vet." He wasn't pleased when he found out my future major was environmental ethics/philosophy, but I got six solid years of vet-quizzed education (two full-time, four additional when I was home from college). 

From then on, that lucky foundation led to one job after another.

After career twists and turns, and immersion into countless different worlds, from animal control and cruelty investigation, to a fabulous internet start-up, to ratings-centered TV and digital entertainment, pet food, police emergency dispatch, laboratory animal and plant science, and digital/brand marketing, I'm actually back in the veterinary clinic space with a spay/neuter/special-surgeries clinic about 35 minutes away. 

Pay is unremarkable, but it comes faithfully every Friday, unlike my last 2 years working for online marketers who sacrificed their team for their online image.  The commute eats up a lot of gas in my not-meant-for-daily-driving van, but it's purging to have 35 minutes of time in my own head twice a day. And it's actual work for actual humans and actual pets. No more creating false realities for online professionals who have fallen for the belief that just a shiny online image will somehow bring profits rolling in.

And wow, is it eye-opening to be back in an environment that cares about animals and their owners, with a team who to put their effort where their heart - and public image - is. Every workplace has its bumps and quirks, but when the work has a real cause, rather than a super-shiny professed one, it's so much easier to sleep at night.

I've taken the first tiny steps to dig myself out of the huge financial hole I allowed myself to be shoved into. It's going to take years to clear away the financial damage, but luckily I have retirement resources I can tap that will allow me to pay back people who helped me shortly.

And seeing - every single day -  animal rescuers and pet owners so incredibly relieved to find a veterinary option they can afford for spay/neuter and emergency services (sometimes to tears),  helps smother the anger I have after years of smoke and mirrors in the so-called online 'pet space.'

I've cut out SO much. I've spend two hours writing and deleting full paragraphs of frustration, since the point of this blog is how relieved and happy I am. 

Both the long and the short of it:  I am so glad this opportunity came by, to get me back to the roots that really mattered to me as an 18-year-old, taking my first working steps centered around animals.