Volunteering

5/20/14

Since retiring, I have more free time on my hands than is good for me mentally.  You can only do so much laundry (boring) and dusting (also boring) before your "enthusiasm" for these chores begins to wan.  For my mental health I know I should be busy and so decided to try and volunteer for certain local organizations.

At the senior center, where I thought I might be the most useful, turns out I wasn't.  The volunteering in the county is driven by the high school students who must have "x" service hours in order to graduate.  You would think an older volunteer would be an asset to a company, but my experience says otherwise.

I have been to several orientations and told that I would be contacted when/if something came up.  To date, nada, zip, nothing.  Why I can't imagine.  It's true that one place needed volunteers at the children's center involving a lot of physical play and sitting on the ground, etc.  I am unable to do those things, so they never called me.  I was highly discouraged.

A few weeks ago I saw a volunteer opportunity at the Humane Society of America to help make packets for their annual drive for donations.  They called and asked if I could help, and on the appropriate day, showed up ready to stuff bags.  The job was only for a few hours, but it felt good to be needed.

Before I left that date, I told he volunteer coordinator that I hoped she would remember the next time a need arose for something involving pushing paper.  She remembered me and yesterday I returned to the HUSA to photocopy contracts.  I was there about three hours and will go again tomorrow to finish the job.  Again, it felt good to be needed.

What struck me about their office was that there was no noise.  I'm used to phones ringing and a lot of talking in the halls and over cubby walls.  There was none of that.  Because they are HUSA, there were many dogs of all sizes in offices and cubes.  Even the dogs were quiet.  I commented to the lady I was working for that I had never been in an office so quiet before.  It is certainly a calming environment and I hope that they'll remember me for jobs in the future.

I can't earn money since I'm on disability but my time comes free and I'm happy to help particularly with some kind of office work.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can volunteer at their office again in the future.

But for today, I have already folded up my laundry and put my clean dishes away which gives me free time for reading.  And between the library books and the books loaded on my Kindle, I will never run out of reading material!

Enjoy.

P