You can't tax some perks

I was most disappointed to discover that one of the blogs I read regularly has been mothballed. The Jobbing Doctor wrote about life as a General Practitioner, with its ups and downs, frustrations and bonuses. I enjoyed his musings but know that for many Bloggers who write about work related matters,  no matter how hard you try to keep your identity a secret you are eventually 'outed'. It is usually not a problem if you don't have too many readers but as the Jobbing Doctor's posts got more and more widely read I would guess it got more and more difficult for him to stay unknown. Or..maybe he just got fed up with it and needed a rest. Either way I will miss his thoughts.

The lack of JD prompted me to search the blog sphere for other interesting blogs to read and one of them that I found was "Hold my hand": a social worker's blog by Doris Plaster. Her post about a dying resident in a nursing home was really very moving (The Language of Love) and caused me to reflect on my post yesterday, where I was bemoaning the lack of perks in the public sector. It made me realise that my professional life has been full of all sorts of wonderful bonuses.  I often tell students, when they are struggling to come to terms with the difficulty of the cases that they have to deal with, that as therapists we often get to work with people at the lowest point of their lives. We see people do amazing things, fight against all the odds, we see the best of people, the worst of people and in some cases we can make a very small difference to their situation. That is truly a privilege and, if you like, a perk. And the best thing about it is that David Cameron and readers of the Daily Mail can't do anything about it! So thank you Doris for helping me see my work in perspective! I am very pleased to be leaving this bit of it now but it is nice to be able to go thinking of the good things about it!