Opportunity

I've been a bit occupied recently by housecleaning activities in anticipation of a visit from my mother-in-law, which always gets my wife fairly animated. Specifically, I spent last Saturday and Sunday cleaning the kitchen. Which was fun; I put in earbuds and listened to King Crimson until I thought my ears might bleed.

I caught myself thinking that I would be (all things equal) just as happy as a janitor. Obviously years of employment as an engineer have paid well and I consequently have a lot of blinders on. Rose-colored blinders.

And I've worked as a janitor before and was not happy then (but I think it might have gone better if I'd had good orthopedic shoes).

I volunteered at Opportunity Village for the better part of a year in Las Vegas. I worked in varying capacities with people who had different mental impairments, e.g. who had mild or moderate general learning difficulties, traumatic brain injury, stroke, etc.

My job there became to evaluate people for their ability to perform basic office work - documents, spreadsheets, email, etc, and just sitting at a desk for eight hours per day. I would record my impressions; Opportunity Village would take those impressions and relay them to the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Social Security Administration or an insurance company or whomever.

But I also stepped in from time to time to help with other groups around the facility, e.g. the folks with learning disabilities who were training to become janitors. As I recall, people with certain issues could be paid less than minimum wage, which leads to some interesting incentives.

I don't really know how well Opportunity Village has aged reputationally, and I admit to some mixed feelings about the enterprise as a whole, but I liked working with the people I worked with and generally felt pretty good about myself.

Anyway, my mother-in-law's doing great.