2011 Highlights, Otherwise known as “Why I was gone so long”

December 12, 2010.  That was the last date that I posted on this blog.  I can’t help but wonder if anyone is reading this anymore? Well, since I haven’t posted, I would assume not.  There have been hits, of course, people looking up old posts.

Anyhow, if anyone is reading this, I do want to send out a ‘Happy New Year’ post that is more than a year delayed!

So much has happened this past year that it’s hard to know where to begin.   Perhaps an explanation as to why I’ve disappeared for this past year:

1. Life is just crazy busy.  Life has gone from busy to bonkers.  I was in school with projects and deadlines, I had the CRNE to study for, then the NCLEX-RN (I passed both!) and I’ve spent most days off commuting between cities (across a border), but more on this in a moment.
2. I’ve started a full time job – and was working as a casual, but full time, in the mean time.  I do nothing but sleep, take care of myself and relax between shifts.
3. I hesitate to post about anything work-related as I want to be very very careful to respect the confidentiality of my patients, and workplace. I know privacy can be a concern with the internet so I don’t want to post anything that could come back to haunt me.
4. There have been some major changes in my life, all good (that I’ll get to), but it creates a challenge in terms of content.
5. I want to blog about ‘living my life well’ but that’s a rather broad topic and I’m not sure how to pare it down into a series of posts that are relevant, interesting to my readers etc etc.  I also know that it’s partly so friends and loved ones can keep up with me, true. But, I’m still not sure what it all means: living my life intentionally, health and fitness, student-loan pay-offs etc, family and relationships etc.  See??? All rather broad.  And knowing the current direction of my life, it could mean many other things too. So, if anyone is reading this, and has comments, there’s a comment box at the bottom of this post (just click on this post so it’s on its own page. It asks for an email address, and it wont get posted or used by me, it’s just to verify you’re not a spammer).

Anyhow, since my life has gone through so many changes in 2011, perhaps a “Top Ten Highlights of 2011” is in order.

10.  I AM NO LONGER A STUDENT!!! That is definitely a highlight! I finished Nursing School, am done with pesky assignments, no more APA (unless I need to write for work, I suppose…), and no more Monday to Friday 9-5.

9.  Passing the NCLEX-RN (US) exam. It’s a tough exam, and designed very differently from the CRNE (Canadian exam).  Both exams I’m proud of passing, but the NCLEX has a lower pass rate for Canadian trained RNs and the way the exam is set up makes it seem harder (and I believe it is).  I used to have a link with the data, but if you do some searches it data from official sources can be found — I passed it several months ago and I have long-since deleted the links.

8.  I was immediately hired on where I worked as a student, as an RN.  I still work there, but only pick up shifts occasionally. So jobs, money and all that worry post-graduation was for naught.

7.  About 6 months after I finished school I was hired at my dream job — in a full time position! I love it there.

6.  Many miles of commuting across an international border between two cities. I haven’t moved, but do spend a lot of time in another city.  I cherish those miles of driving — it gives me a lot of time to think and reflect.

5.  My nursing school graduation gala dinner.  That was a delightful party with many friends and a reminder of :

Hello Nurse!

and many other moments of hilarity. There were many gorgeous nurses who are at the start of amazing careers.

4.  Memory Lane Camping trip. I had the chance to go on a camping trip throughout Oregon this past summer.  The time was spent walking down memory lane, it was a delight and eye opening.

3.  Visits to Portland meeting some special people.

2.  My birthday this year was spent in a nearby town with some very special people.  People I was just meeting, or have been getting to know this year

And… Number 1 is…

The biggest highlight of my year intertwines with all of the previous highlights, and goes back to New Years Eve 2010/2011. That weekend, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I ended up going to a dance event.  I worked up the courage to take initiative in asking people to dance — it was follow (female) heavy, and I’d been asked by several beginners.  So I decided it was time to be more assertive.

That decision to go to that dance event was one of those minor life choices that we make that seem innocuous at the time but end up being a significant turning point.  The reason for this is shortly after midnight, I asked the DJ to dance and I ended up meeting the love of my life. When people say that finding love happens when you least expect it is certainly true.  This past year I have begun a journey that I cherish with an amazing man.  We don’t live in the same city – yet, but are working on how to make that happen.

The trips to Portland are for family reasons (his) and my birthday in a nearby town was so I could meet his brother and Fiancee when they were in Portland for Christmas.  The camping trip wasn’t my memory lane, it was his — and it was a special time of learning all about his history and where he’s lived.

The question comes, will I continue posting? I hope so, I have goals and plans for 2012 that definitely fall into ‘living life well’ and if I can figure out how that  could all shape into blog posts, they will show up here. On the bright side: I’m no longer required to come up with ‘reflective journals’ for school so that makes me enjoy posting here more!

As I reflect on these highlights I smile in amazement at the bend in the road and I am excited (and nervous – but in the good, anticipatory way) about all the changes that 2012 will bring.  I hope 2012 is an amazing year full of wonder and growth and most of all, happy, for all of us.  Happy New Year.

End of Term Reflections

What can I say about life since school started back up in September? Very little is new for me, yet I feel like so much has changed.  School was one thing: busy.  I’ve had group assignments like crazy — as usual — though this time I’m dealing with a group member who is less than effective, to say the least.  The issues with this one person were so intense that I lost many hours of sleep trying to figure out how to handle the situation.  The challenge was, this group member has a complete lack of respect for the other members of the group, wouldn’t work within the group process and occasionally seemed to sabotage the group assignments.  I wont start a rant about all that this person does, as I do have to continue to work with them through the next rotation (believe me, this group has a lot to do before Feb 10th, but I can’t wait to be done with this person!).

 

Suffice it to say, this rotation has been nothing but busy. I am not really sure of the count anymore — well, to be honest, I don’t want to go look — but I think I had about 14 deadlines in the space of a few weeks.  As such, I feel like I’ve done very little lately: when asked I don’t know what to say.  But the reality is, I haven’t totally disappeared, I’ve hung out with school friends, I’ve kept running — slowly, but still moving forward — and I’ve been meeting with some friends who knit.

 

This term has been important for shaping me in some important ways.  It’s been a time of better refining what I enjoy and where I want my career to start.  I’ve realized that what I appreciate is working with children, and their families, to support the children to reach whatever potential they may have.  I find this more gratifying than working with a geriatric population and supporting them as they move towards the end of their life.  I’m not saying that nursing in that population isn’t important, or there isn’t the potential for some important work to be done, just that when I compare the two populations I do prefer pediatrics.  However, we’ll see what direction my career actually takes, as I don’t ‘dislike’ geriatric units, but when I have to state a preference, that’s where I stand.

 

Next term I will be back on a geriatric unit for my last rotation before my preceptorship; I don’t yet know where my preceptorship will be (though I’m hopeful it will be a pediatric placement).

 

The other rotation I had this term was maternity.  This particular rotation was generally a happy one: the patients are in the middle of a major life transition, but overall it’s a happy one.  The patients are full of joy and wonderment and a lot of uncertainty.  For me, I think it was the hardest rotation out of all of them (though it’s not one that gets a ‘I’d NEVER work there’ from me — that’s Mental Health with Community a close second – I could see myself working in maternity – maybe). I’m not saying that it’s a hard place to work (it’s not), rather, I think it hit me the hardest.

 

The thing with this unit is it’s families, couples and single women being given this amazing gift of a new baby — or babies (I did work with a family that had identical twins too!).  This particular unit made me face the reality of what I want most of all: a family of my own.  Every day I was reminded of my dreams, and every day I think I grieved the loss of what I feel like I’ve never been allowed to have.  I don’t particularly want to get into details of this topic in this post, but I will get back to it, and I expect it will be soon.

 

Suffice it to say, being faced with newly formed families on a daily basis was very difficult.  I think I was lucky in who was in my clinical group — I felt very safe to be honest about this (though I was probably the quietest about this, compared with the others in my group) with this group of women.  I was also faced with the reality, like I haven’t been before, that I am getting to the point where I NEED to decide if I’m going to have a family on my own: even without a husband.  That thought breaks my heart. I know that I will have much processing and grieving to do if that’s the path my life ends up taking, but I’ve also realized that I would regret it if I let an inability to find a husband hold me back from having a family.  Again, this whole topic could be a book on its own, let alone a separate blog post.

 

I do think, overall, my perspective has shifted: from a resistance to the idea (of single motherhood), to a realization that it may be my reality, even if it’s not what I prefer.  My priorities leaving school haven’t changed: find a full-time job, pay of debt and buy a place.  But interspersed in that is the realization that I need to be preparing myself and my life for a family.  It could mean moving to the states and working there for a while (that’s an idea I still carry, and plan to work towards once I’m done school), but if I do end up as a single mother, I will move home: the support of my family is essential.

 

All in all it was an emotional term, one that is taking a lot of time for me to process.

Kitty Food

I confess, I buy my cat’s food at Costco in bulk and just feed her that. She doesn’t seem the worst for it, but sometimes I think I should consider her feed more closely. She’s so fluffy it’s hard to tell if she’s overweight:

Anyhow, my dear friend Melanie has a kitty food review posted, and I get a chance to win a tester pack if I post something on my blog. So, for those who are actually following my blog still (I have been going BONKERS with school, but I’ll get back to posting about a balanced life and living life well, once my life is… er… balanced…) here’s a link to her post.

Check it out, and if you’re from Canada comment and you have a chance to win. Say I sent ya!

Debater Dude

Last week I went on another date with a guy from an online dating site. He wanted to surprise me, so we met at a nearby Starbucks. The plan was to go for the best pie in this city. I was perplexed as we were no where near a place that I know of that has great pie… But he took me to a local department store with the comment that “there are many silver haired people here with time to complain thus it must be the best”. Let me tell you… The crust was terrible and the filling was from a box. On a bad pie day my pies are better.

This guy was very smart, but also very aggressive. We spent the better part of the date discussing health-related issues where I was forced to take a position because he wanted to argue against it. I’ve never felt so tied Into knots during a first date -and I don’t mean from first date jitters!

I think I managed to shake him off, through my “I’m not interested” vibes (I suspect I’m too good at that part of things, in fact…).

Edited to add: It is REALLY difficult to type a blog post on an iphone, particularly with a cat who insists on attention… Excuse any typos…

Online Dating: A Simple Rule

On and off lately I’ve been exploring online dating. I have those experiences that good stories are made of, if nothing else — really, one day I’ll have to see if I can capture the humour that was the Gumby story in writing. Recently, I decided I need to take initiative more — I use the ‘he should pursue’ as a crutch or an excuse not to act. I’m trying to take initiative more. But, this post (sorry I’ve been AWOL, schools nuts — as normal — but this story has to be shared) isn’t about me and taking initiative.

This is about a simple rule I have when chatting with someone I don’t know from an online dating site: using whatever available information I have I do an internet search on the guy. Often they eventually give me their email address. Unlike me, they usually use their main email. I appreciate that as it makes my digging easier. I use a non-identifying email address — that I check — so that I have a certain amount of anonymity, at least until I have met them once or twice.

But, whatever information they give me (a number an email address etc), I search for them. Last weekend I decided to contact a couple of guys who’s profile seemed interesting to me. One guy respectfully responded that he was already communicating with someone and felt it was not polite to correspond with more than one person at a time. I was impressed, and respect that. Anyhow, the other guy responded. A few messages back and forth and he suggests contact through email. So, once he’s emailed me I did my usual search, found him on Facebook.

Now, I have my facebook account pretty locked down, people can’t see anything, and even some ‘friends’ aren’t allowed to see my wall. This guy’s wall is visible to all.

What did the most recent status update say?

Mr X ” says you’re all invited to my bachelor party! Granted, I’m not even getting married. But thats not a reason to not have a night out with my buddies with beer and strippers!”

The status update below that, from Friday was:

Mr X ” says whenever I start to get tired of being single… I go sleep on the couch to remember what being in a relationship is like!”

Now, I realize that he may be making a joke and I haven’t met him and don’t know what his sense of humour is like, BUT, this is publicly visible, employers can see it, media, customers, and WOMEN HE MAY WANT TO DATE. So, if he was someone who I knew, I may have found it quite funny (depending on the person saying those things), but in this case it’s just offensive and creeps me out.

So, he goes into the ‘NO’ category. Now I just have to decide if I should be direct and say what I’m thinking (something I’m working on), or do what I normally would do and just never respond.

So my simple rule: WATCH what you say when you’re online, because women, or at least this woman, does search and it can be a deal-breaker.

Summer Reflections

One year ago today I was on a plane, heading home from a trip to Arizona and a visit with ‘the distraction’, I was excited to be heading to my first day of nursing school and I had no clue what the next year would hold.  Today I woke up early, and in spite of a chest cold I dragged myself out for a run with some friends in my running group.  We did a 10k run and then I came home and cleaned my place (and skimmed some readings in preparation for Wednesday).

This break has been much needed, though I have been working at a hospital as a student nurse — so it hasn’t been just relaxing.  I’m okay with that.  It felt ‘normal’ to me, and it reminded me of what it’s like to just work (the new not-nine-to-five  schedule not withstanding).  As the break ends and I face the reality of school.

I thought it was time to write a summary post since I’ve really not wanted to write much.  It’s not that I don’t like blogging my thoughts on life and what’s going on with me, it’s that I spent so much time writing papers, and ‘reflections’ (think blogging but it’s required and has a deadline), posters, videos and exams that I couldn’t help but think “NO MORE”. It was nice to take a break.  I hope to spend more time blogging — after all, there is an app on my phone now so I can blog on the go.

This summer wasn’t all work, and there were great highlights:

KOOZA!

For those who don’t know, Kooza is this year’s Cirque Du Soleil and I went with three of my girl friends.  We’d planned it early this summer and had amazing seats! Watching some of the crazy stunts — some traditional such as type rope walking, some not so traditional, but it made me realize just what some human bodies can do.  I don’t by any stretch of the imagination believe my body should at all resemble those in the performance, but it did remind me that I want to place a priority on maintaining my exercising while I’m in school this time around.  Then there were the contortionists!  These two women were lying stomach down on the stage, their legs were flipped around in front of themselves and the they ran their legs around themselves 360 degrees.  It was amazing to watch but also was a bit creepy in that a person’s body shouldn’t be able to bend that way.  All in all Kooza was an amazing night, magical, and may have been the biggest highlight of the summer!

Bard on the Beach

I try to go to as many shows as possible, and this year I will make it to all of them! The last one will be in a couple of weeks.  My favourite one was Much Ado About Nothing, but all the performances were superb.  Falstaff was a riot and I can’t wait to see Henry V.   There is something about being at an outdoor stage at the beach, inside a tent, a bit chilly (especially this year) enjoying Shakespeare.

The Cabin

I finished a set of four shifts: two days followed by two nights.  The last night was rather intense and I needed to connect with friends. So, I stayed awake and went for a slow jog — more like a walk — then out for a quick coffee.  That day had me rushing to get to the doctor (check up for my whip lash I’ve been dealing with — I’m on the mend but not yet back to baseline), then out to lunch. Yes, all without sleeping.  I’d planned on going to the cabin, so I took a short nap (~45min) and then packed up and went to the cabin.

My family’s cabin is probably my favourite place.  It’s a place of ‘peace’ and relaxation for me, and this break was my only chance to get there this summer.   I spent the time sleeping and recovering — by the time I went to bed (quite early) I slept for 13 hours and then napped a lot the next day.  I learned that I’ll have to make sure to sleep well after night shifts during school.  All in all, I didn’t do much while I was there, but it was definitely time well spent.

Online Dating

One of the things I wanted to do this break is to figure out ways of meeting new people.  So, I decided to sign up for one of the free online dating sites.   I’ve realized that online dating takes A LOT of work, and really, I question if it’s worth my time.  I also need to change my profile so that I’m specific: message me if you think you may want to meet up after a few messages.  One guy who messaged me sent me long as in 1500 word long messages about how wonderful he thought I was. BUT this was after 5 or 6 messages, having seen one photo of me.  Long messages like that are not appropriate for so early on.  Plus, there’s been no mention of meeting up. I was not convinced I would want to get involved with this guy for other reasons (not important to chat about here), so I couldn’t convince myself to write the appropriate email back.  I did suggest we IM but he hasn’t been in contact and hasn’t asked me out. So I can’t be bothered to keep up the effort of emailing.  Another guy started messaging me and it turns out that he’s doing a degree in the same institute.  We chatted for a while, I would have been interested in meeting him. But after 3 weeks of messaging (every couple of days), there was no mention of meeting. I finally emailed a response but didn’t specifically ask any questions — just to see if the guy would ask me out — nothing.

Guy #3 and I messaged back and forth and then met for dinner. He’s a nice guy, and it was a pleasant conversation, but I wasn’t attracted to him.  Plus, he has no car and lives in the boonies. That would be okay, except that he was unwilling to come my direction to meet and didn’t use a co-op car.   This makes me think “Um No”, but I would have gone out with him once more — give him a second chance.  As it turns out, he didn’t call, and I’m relieved about that.  Now that school is starting again I think I’m going to just ignore the site. I wont specifically take my profile down, but I’m not particularly interested in taking the time on this.

So tomorrow I start the insanity of school and I have 8 months left.  As time progresses, I’ll better understand where the next path will be and what that means.

AWOL

I’ve been completely AWOL lately. I know. Some readers, or at least those I have left, are wondering what’s up. Fair enough.

Life for me is pretty steady right now. I’ve been on a 7 week break from school and wish it was just finished entirely. I have been working as a student on a sub-acute unit this summer. This unit isn’t where I was hired but to make a long story short I’m here just for the summer and will go back to my regular unit in the fall.

The experience has still been good and I’ve got a lot more hands on than other classmates will have.

Otherwise I’ve been trying to see my friends as much as possible before I return to the books full time.

In other news, I’m posting this short post from my new iPhone 4. There’s a story there too, but I’ll wait on that for now.

Writer’s Block

I think I’m still burned out of all the things I had to do before school finished. I have zero motivation to do any writing. I keep thinking about blogging and will get back here soon.

All is well: school finished (don’t have grades yet), work (two jobs) is ongoing, life’s fairly stable but a little non-noteworthy, oh and I was rear ended 2 weeks ago. I’m still sore but massage is helping to keep that at bay so I can work. Not my fault, so car repairs are covered, not sure if my repairs will be…

No TIME!

I so wish I could blog properly right now. I have no time. The organization of the last few months of this program has been poorly done. We have 4 courses. One is our main clinical course, it’s worth the most credits and is the focus of the program. We also have theoretical courses (ethics, research and relational practice) that have been running since January. Problem is these theoretical courses had us doing almost nothing through these last 6 months. And NOW we have projects all over the place.

I’m a bit stressed. But bootcamp’s been keeping me on an even keel. Mostly. I did have one day of tears this term.

But I so wish I could blog more about some of these things — what it means to be working in a team, my thoughts on working in a psychiatric unit as a nurse later on, and what I’ve been thinking about relating to a weekend where I had 2 dates (with 2 different guys — a first for me!).

All in all it’s been an interesting rotation. There’s one more week of clinical left, one more set of classes and I have due: two papers, a poster, a presentation, a final exam and a reflective journal (for completion not for marks). So on that note I’m going to sign off for now and get back to talking about things a bit more once I’ve finished dealing with all these assignments!

Self Discovery

As I go through this program I continue to learn about myself and today I was happy to realize something.  In the past, I have always wanted to be ‘liked’ and I don’t want to rock the boat in communities (we wont go into the number of times I’ve butted heads with idiocy in the program or in situations, at least not right now).  I’m not sure what to call it, because I will definitely stand up if I believe something’s wrong (that’s a story for another time), and I sometimes am very stubborn!  However, I don’t want to act in such a way that will cause people to think ill of me.  Perhaps this has some significance that harkens back to childhood. Who knows. I need to sleep (or stop procrastinating as I’m doing so well this evening), so I’m not going to delve into that depth of self-reflection right now.

However, earlier this week I met in a group project for school and made comments about making sure to use ‘buzz words’ from the assignment outline.  This is to orient the instructors so that they know that we’ve met their criteria.  I commented that I didn’t want to lose marks because the instructors simply got lost in the presentation.  A group member rolled her eyes at me.   At first, that made me a little sad as I don’t want to create poor group dynamics, but I do want us to do our best on the project!  Then today in another group meeting, we were all having casual conversation before the meeting really got underway.  This same group member made a comment that reminded me of a scene from the film Mary Poppins.  I brought it up as a part of the banter.  Her response was roll her eyes, make a remark and direct her conversation elsewhere.

Other than feeling like I’d been transported back to a high school group project, I realized that I just don’t care what she thinks.  She can dislike me, or think I’m anal, or whatever her opinion is and it doesn’t matter to me, I just can’t be bothered to care. I can only choose to act professionally myself, ensure that the criteria are met for any of my group project and ignore other people’s attitudes because I can do nothing about that.