Parenting is always a highlight. Why is it that all of the parenting goals I previously held so dear are now shooting me in the foot? Who wants kids with healthy self esteem and emotional intelligence when you are now all stuck together in a kind of home detention that is social distancing? Not me, it turns out. It appears that my efforts to teach my children that being understanding, kind, compassionate and respectful, means they expect that crap from me now. Who knew that my husband (when he was alive, obviously) arguing for a more totalitarian style of parenting might have had a point after all?

Then there is, of course the wonderful irony of ten years of psychotherapy to get me to a point where I could leave the house for more days of the week than those I didnt. What a bloody waste. But it is how I now have a job, so I guess I should be grateful for that, however given my complex set of mental health issues and personal history, my job comes with its own issues. Its an odd thing to work with the doctors named on your husband’s death certificate. Its hard to know how to broach that at a work social do. I also try very hard not to think about the fact that some of my health services are provided by people who I also have to work with. Thats a lot of people with a lot of very personal information about me who I have to smile at and make small talk with.

Let me say at the outset, there is nothing that makes an uneducated (yet oddly self-important) person feel less worthy of oxygen than working with high level, very accomplished healthcare professionals. Bring on a pandemic, and I retreat to my home office, providing remote support to senior medical consultants and hospital executive staff, while they discuss the realities of personal protective equipment and suitable accommodation for isolation should they become infected with a potentially fatal virus. I am not just in the shadow of greatness, I am the dust on the moss covered pebble, shrouded from sunlight by various large fungi in a distant corner from greatness. If one has no intention to go into the medical field professionally, it can be hard to hold your head high in the circles my work takes me.

I mean, at least when I was handling legal claims (medical whoopsies as it were) at the hospital I was privy to the fact that human imperfection exists in us all. One can definitely even the playing field when one is aware of instances of human error that occur (often due to poor communication, which I assume is because all of these miracle workers probably have the ringing of angel choirs in their ears to contend with – its basically an elevated form of industrial deafness).

So what do I do for a job? I help these incredible specimens allocate their personal time and money to support their peers and further the training and research that goes on in the organisation. Oh, and I facilitate their financial donations to professional acknowledgements and medical charities. That’s right, while they are working all hours, often on little sleep and in less than ideal conditions, teaching medical students, treating patients, undertaking ongoing professional development and then going home to their hobbies such as classical musicianship, spearfishing and orca whispering (I might have made that last one up, but who knows), I press some keys on a keyboard to direct their freely given money to support their colleagues and sponsor medical charity projects. Do you know what I do in my spare time? I play on my ipad! Occasionally, I read a book if I want to feel fancy.

Its hard being surrounded by so much good. Highly educated, highly affluent professionals with experiences I can never dream of. Worse still is that these people are sometimes nearly my age. The comparison grates like knuckles on a pavement (which is an apt descriptor for how evolved I feel in this mix). In fairness to myself, my start was less than ideal. I left home at 15 and spent the first six months after that homeless. I left school just after (barely) completing year 10. Its probably semi-miraculous that I avoided getting pregnant until I was all of 20 years old! As I’ve said before, Chance and Chaos had a party in my life for a LONG time, and clearly Ethics was busy with the people I now work for (there’s a lesson there, kids). Resilience was in a binge-drinking phase and showed up with all the regularity of a fashion model’s menstrual cycle.

But Im still here. I made it this far, against some pretty long odds. Im now half way through a double university degree in criminology and law and the proud holder of a Distinction average mark. However, even if and when I graduate and finally develop my own career trajectory, I cant see myself ever feeling on a par with the people I work with right now. There is a bravery to it that is often unseen. Its not the willingness to expose themselves to this virus, or the long, hard hours, or anything obvious. Its the small scale they work on. They can work their asses off, be incredibly knowledgeable in their field and not only will they save a handful of people’s lives, they will be guaranteed to lose others. There is a bravery in the odds of it and the personal cost-benefit ratio. I also want to do good in the world with my education (should I ever complete it), but the difference is that in my chosen field (public policy) the good I hope to do will be mediocre and large-scale: impersonal. I would never have the courage to attempt to make a real difference to anyone on a personal level because failure on that level would be unbearable to me.

Anyone can aim high because failure is almost guaranteed. Small, realistic goals that really matter to someone else’s life is where the real challenge lies. Sometimes, though, even achieving those goals comes at a cost, like when your 16 year old child with autism who has all the tact and diplomacy of Prince Phillip (Trump was too easy – low hanging fruit) tells you that he doesnt appreciate the attitude you are giving him. Thats what you get for working hard to support his language development.