cue the floodgates

I have just finished my third week in Ottawa. I thought I would have a lot to talk about in regards to hospital pharmacy (my work with the CSHP, to expand on that more) or with regards to where I stand with Jesus Christ. I went to Emily Ho's church today (OCAC). Religion is a subject that I have not touched in my writing for a long long time, and it has been surprisingly easy to forget about it. But this morning gave me a lot to think about.

Surprisingly, neither of those topics is what I want to talk about. Right now, I feel frustrated. I feel frustrated because I have been, for the last two weeks, doing (volunteerism) work on my own time that I shouldn't be doing because it's not my job. I am frustrated that I had to initiate it, that there have been minimal responses from other stakeholders/key players, that I had to do it, and that there are still minimal to no responses, except for a negative one I got a minute ago.

Some of this is systemic and some of this is over the top. I am used to being required to initiate things, I am used to doing the lion's share of the work, and to a point I am used to the lack of prompt and thoughtful response. I want to discuss perhaps why this is the way it is later. But first, why do I feel frustrated enough to blog about it this time?

I think part of it is that this isn't the only thing; most of the volunteerism-work stuff I have been doing in July has been outside of my portfolio, and there have been several such examples. Some have been met with reasonable response and others have been met with (in my humble opinion) unreasonably insufficient response. I know that it is summer, that people are vacationing or working full-time or whatever. But so am I? I'm in Ottawa working full time and exploring the nation's capital in the spare time that I have. I've been trying to proactively organize some aspects of my life for the next year, and these (a scholarship application, some school review, chart edits, an ARV renal adjustment summary, vacation research, finding a place to live in Victoria, exercise, a Directed Studies proposal) have been put on my backburner in order for me to tackle my volunteerism.

So what? Do I just need to take a chill pill? Maybe. But I need people to smarten up!! Come on, help me out here!! Check your email! If you read my email, send me back something if I ask you to! If I say or imply that you need to do something, take an hour max out of your fricking week and do it! Do your own work and take some initiative sometime!

So now that that is out of my system (hopefully), the more systemic issue that I have alluded to is why does this matter to me so much? Why do I put my own stuff on the backburner and why do I put so much effort into stuff that seems to not get me anywhere? Well, I'm certainly not doing it for any glory or recognition whatsoever on my end - I think I can say that honestly. And I think the main piece of it is that I enjoy my volunteering - I actually prefer doing this stuff to the more personal projects that I have lined up for myself. So it is easy for me to do, and I want to take the initiative, to drive the project along, to see it work and to see people benefit from it. I want that, enough to put in the work.

A previous post of mine explored Dr. Ensom's suggestion to do the dirty work in order to enable a project or team to succeed. Clearly I am still learning. I am trying to do it but often I feel abandoned by the people who should be there working with me. Maybe I should not be doing things my way; ie. maybe I am not being a good team person and as such, people are more reluctant to work with me (although to the best of my knowledge, that is not the case for most things). Maybe I need to learn to deal with my frustration better or to accept that things move slowly or to be more understanding of the situations that others may be in. Maybe I need to be a better enabler and less of a doer - to have the strength and confidence in people to step back from doing something that is not my job, and to support those people into doing their own jobs, even when it looks like they're not doing it. Then again, maybe I need to be more selfish and take back the time that I shouldn't be spending doing someone else's dirty laundry.

So I don't know.