Coming to grips.

I'm a former corrections officer. I worked in corrections for seven years, ten months, and two days.

And now I am learning how NOT to be a corrections officer, even though I loved the work. Talking to people from a different walk of life, and learning about the things that made them tick--it was important to me. I did my best to treat each person as I would want to be treated.

Now, for reasons completely outside my control, I may have to find a new career path. I don't know where my experience and education are taking me, and a future employer in a bad economy will have to take a leap of faith to hire me, a stranger in a new place. One could say my career path was not aligning with the goals my former employer had in mind for me. One could say a lot of things.

I gained strength I never knew I had, by working as a corrections officer. Mind games and manipulation and all manner of BS actually sound wrong to my ears because of the work. I grew strong enough in my personal life to identify situations that were not working, and try new ones. It's gotten to the point where it's easy to call things as I see them. Despite all that, I know my creativity was stifled every day. I know that my work environment wasn't conducive to feeling energized, or having all be well with my soul.

There was a Lieutenant at my facility, recently retired, who taught many officers under his tutelage, to look for "what's wrong with this picture." It is not until I look back, tonight, that I realize he was not just talking about the living areas for inmates. All I can say, is I learned very well to recognize what's wrong with a picture. And I'm also able to recognize when fixing what's wrong is far beyond my capability.

It's amazing in the midst of all this uncertainty, my soul is at peace.