Tonight, Part 450 (Approximately)

Lately I've been thinking and doing some stuff to move forward with my degree and my career. I've gone so far as to start the application process to the Pie-in-the-Sky State University that I have my highest sights set upon. I've gone through some of the motions and even started the short essay of "Why You Should Let Me Study At Your School." I haven't submitted anything yet because it's not complete, but I'm pretty satisfied with what I have so far.

I had a brief detour last week from this endeavor. I found myself riddled with self-doubts and questions of "why bother?" and other such nonsense.

The question of "why bother?" was answered with "besides the fact that you are, indeed, worth it, you practically OWE IT to the people you serve to move forward in the level of care that you are legally able to provide." I can say this about myself professionally: I crave the ability to do more. I can do more. I can almost run circles around my own job. I crave more responsibility and I want to be the one writing the prescriptions, diagnosing, doing therapy, et cetera.

So professionally, this is what I need to do. Doing the nursing assessments is nice, but frankly, it's too easy. I assess, I fill out a form. I'm not knocking it, it needs to be done. I *LOVE* visiting clients in the home. I almost always find a find to do more than I set out to do. I could keep it simple, gathering vitals and briefly discussing the details of their lives, but I find myself wanting to do more. Sometimes I wish I could just stay with them all day cleaning their apartments and making them more comfortable in their environments, but this is really not nursing. Still, these aren't easy tasks. I think that what I am drawn to are the challenges these people face and where I can fit in with that.

On the other hand, the doing more hand, I think that with the professional and academic track I am on, it only makes sense to further my education and become a nurse practitioner. This means get through the Bachelors, get through a Master's degree geared towards practicing adult psychiatry and get my certification.

I am still not 100% clear on what I really need to do to do this post-Master's stuff, but I do know that before anything else happens, I need the Bachelor's degree.

A few things have happened in the last couple of days that have told me that now is not the time to give up. Now is not the time to say Oh, my life is so hard and complicated, maybe I should just stick with working things out and wait until everything is all settled down and comfortable and then I'll think about school.

Hey, that day might not ever come! Things might not ever be as "stable" as I imagine they can be. And yet time will continue to pass and either it'll pass with me attaining the necessary degrees or it won't.

The only sure thing is that TIME WILL PASS.

I had a conversation today with someone I consider a mentor, a nurse practitioner at my workplace who really kind of helped seal up the deal. She basically reflected the whole idea of just getting back into school, getting the degrees taken care of, doing it now and not later. She gave me some good solid advice in a really concise way. She confirmed what I had been suspecting: NOW is the time.

I've got to at least try to move forward. I've got a solid goal, I've got some good experience, I've got the work ethic, and I've got the passion to work in this field to the highest level of my ability.

So what the heck am I waiting for?

Thursday Evening

Mood coming around slowly. Feel like I'm shaking out the cobwebs, mentally. Working hard on putting things into perspective.

I've been listening to way too much NPR lately to think that my life sucks. I might have some issues in my life, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm holding it down. Currently, I own no property while the value of property continues to plummet. I miraculously sold a house recently in the very inhospitable Florida housing market. I can afford my rent and expenses. Plus, I am gainfully employed.

We are healthy. We might not be perfect, but we are pretty good. We have health insurance.

There are so many things that I personally crave, that may or may not ever materialize. I think I was a good wife. I want to be one again some day. I wish Penny had a sibling or two closer to her age but this may not ever happen. I just don't want to turn out to be the crazy widow mother of the little girl with no father. I just don't want that to be Penny, or Sadie, or me.

Life has become a constant locker room pep talk. I am the coach and the team at the same time. Some days I'm admonishing myself for all of the mistakes I've made, opportunities squandered. Other days I'm mentally rubbing my shoulders and patting my back and telling myself to just keep pushing and success, in some form, will be mine.

And the team, the other side of me that listens, just keeps on going out there and playing, with and without faith depending upon the day.

Monday Night

So I've really been feeling the need to travel lately but a few things are getting in my way. Let's get them out of the way before I commence with the day-dreaming, ok?

• Childcare
• Dog care
• No vacation time accrued yet
• Affordability
• Decisions

Ok, forget all of that stuff. There are solutions to each point I've listed. I just really need to recharge. The last time I went on a real getaway was April of 2005. Rob and I took long weekend to Ocean City, MD and made Penny. It was nice. But returning from that short/long weekend, I was met with some kind of weird information. One) the dogs just need kenneling and not family to watch them and Two) I had just had a future career rug pulled out from under me. So whatever relaxation may have occured while we were gone, it was all negated by the realities of returning.

The next time I go anywhere, I want to come back to relative peace and quiet.

And don't even dare to think for a second that the past couple of years of back-and-forth to Florida even come close to real vacationing. Each one of those trips down to Florida was a fact finding mission filled with town and house hunting and heavy DECISIONS about major life changes. I mean, we may have gone to Disney or seen some interesting things. That's not what a vacation is about. We always came back exhausted, with more questions than answers.

And, please, don't suggest that my trips up to Jersey were vacations either. They were more like brief gasps of fresh air at the surface of my life in the fishbowl. I would hold out there, like holding my breath underwater, until I was ready to crack, order a round-trip ticket, and take a deep breath every time I came up. Evidently, it sustained me.

But really, crying on the airplane every couple of months at the ecstasy of landing in Newark and the horror of landing in Tampa and just wondering how much more I could take...well, that's not a vacation either.

So I think I need a vacation!

For real this time!

Of course I'll take the girls somewhere this summer when Sadie has off from school. I think even prior to that, I need to travel somewhere that is not part of a fact finding mission, or house hunting, something for myself. I need to go somewhere that is just for me.

It might be nice to go somewhere I've never been before. I don't really know that I want to rekindle old memories. This world is huge, but I can't come up with anything.

Dear Internet Friends, do you have any suggestion?

OBAMA WINS

I want to say this as if no one is watching and everyone is watching. 

I just watched Barack's acceptance speech, and frankly, I am moved. After eight years of extreme discomfort and impending doom under the Bush/Cheney regime, here we are. The historical quality of this election cannot be over-emphasized. What an interesting time in history to be alive.

Here we have the first president of the United States of non-Caucasian heritage. You cannot downplay the power of this fact. He won by a landslide. Considering that this group of people attained the right to vote a mere 138 years ago, give or take a few months, this is monumental. It also feels like a very, very long time has passed between the right to vote and the opportunity to win. It has been a long, hard fight up until now. 

The landslide quality of this event should serve as a stern reminder to the Republican party. According to the evidence shown today, most of the people in this country do not feel that you are up to the task of representing our country on a national scale. The proof is in the pudding. Take this as an opportunity to re-work your mission. Find what is good in your party, in your ideals, and discard the bullshit that scares the rest of the country away. Smaller government-OK! Guns for every Tom, Dick, and Harry-maybe not so OK! Entwining yourself with the dwindling conservative Christian-right and others obsessed with other people's uterine activities-really, really not OK!

This is our country, and by God I feel it's the greatest one on Earth. This is not a new notion and I am far from alone in my opinion. Certainly the most important, the one with the most influence on the rest of this planet. For good or for bad, that's what it is. It's a huge responsibility. It was borne from the minds and hearts of the greatest rebels that ever lived and by it's nature it is a mutable place, able to change as needed for the good of it's citizens and absolutely responsible to do so. Within the framework of the Constitution, which remains ambiguous in the best of ways to keep the dialogue open and flowing.

It is not too late for the GOP to get their act together and avoid becoming a footnote in history. (OK, I know this is a far-reaching statement but bare with me-other very good political parties have disappeared over time). I am not anti-GOP. I share some of their ideals. Hell, I'm in love with one.  I just think that by and large, a lot of people have a very hard time aligning themselves with a party that is mostly anti-choice, and primarily conservative Christian, among other things. 

How about if both parties just kind of turned their back on that pre-historic way of thinking? What would happen then? Would we just be left with real issues like the economy, the military, our relationship to the rest of the world? Shouldn't that be enough? Why muddle it with the dark and private recesses of what goes on in our female citizens' uteri and if dudes and chicks want to marry people of the same sex? 

Isn't that what God is for? To sort all that out later on? Isn't that, kind of, his or her domain? 

We are humans. Let us worry about humankind. Let us take care of each other. 

And let the chips shall fall where they may.

Something To Consider

I have been a fan of Merlin Mann's ever since I stumbled upon 5ives back in 2006. I found the concise entries of bulleted entries funny and thoughtful and really believed he was on to something good in that format. I still believe this. I'm sure he would retch upon reading any of my entries but that's Ok. He made me want to be better, and although this is a slow process I think I might be getting a little bit better at this. If anything, I'm getting a little bit better than the early days of "wow, we ate SUCH a great dinner!"

So I'm completely reproducing something that I read on 45 Folders that I have been taking to heart as of late. I'm think he would probably detest this. I'm sorry for that, but I really think it bears repeating for all of the people who don't really follow him.

Oh, and how did I find him? Not sure. It was probably a link on a blog in a galaxy far, far away. Point is I don't remember. I do know that somehow during that time, probably the same afternoon spent lazily on the couch in the throes of maternity leave, that I also discovered McSweeney's. Both discoveries have stirred a latent desire in me to write a little bit more, and hopefully a little bit better.

Merlin's most important words of wisdom, in my opinion, to date, from Kung Fu Grippe, with my thoughts mixed in:

• identify and destroy small-return bullshit; (if it's never going to return what you put into it, say goodbye)

• shut off anything that’s noisier than it is useful;
  
• make brutally fast decisions about what I don’t need to be doing; (brutally fast. i need to work on this.)

• avoid anything that feels like fake sincerity (esp. where it may touch money); (This is my favorite one and I have disobeyed this rule a nauseating number of times. See next bullet's comment)

• demand personal focus on making good things; (I really need to be more demanding. Never again will I get prison gang-raped when buying a car. That's just one example that comes to mind.)

• put a handful of real people near the center of everything. (this one reminds me of selecting your wedding party. if there are only a few REAL people, then plan a small procession)

And, so, these are some of the mantras that I aspire to live by. Naked and brutal bits to shape the new view I hope to attain. Because this circular way of thinking and behaving that I've fallen into is doing nothing to push me forward. 

Like his stuff or not, it's not important. I like it. I find inspiration in it. 

Why Tonight?

When I truly need nothing more than slipping into the darkness of slumber, why can I not sleep? Have I not earned it somehow? Do I honestly need to hear the silence, see the empty space next to me and wonder if it will ever be inhabited by another soul? Should I, at 1:45 am, really have to face these thoughts?

So why tonight? 

With each minute that passes my mind grows more and more fixated on my need to sleep playing against the back drop of everything real and imagined scenario that causes me anxiety and sadness. 

I want these feelings to be over. 

I want to feel secure in something again. 

I am sick of it being 1:45 am, alone, with no one to prod out of their slumber so I can bear just one simple request:  hold me.

How I could've had that at one time and how it could've been so forcefully ripped out of my hands, well, it's just a very cruel feeling. I am left to imagine every unthinkably horrible event that could strike the lives of me and the girls by myself in bed late at night. No one is there to remind me how ridiculous these fears are. The reason: they have proven themselves to not be ridiculous fears but something that could happen and that already has happened to us.

The light coming through the window has a very late autumn quality to it. I imagined for a moment that there was snow falling.  Discovering that there wasn't snow was almost a relief, and not because it was going to make driving difficult, or that we might slip on ice, or even because we don't really have the proper foot wear yet.

It is because it would've been so beautiful to see that I almost can't stand the thought of seeing it now. I have gone on for months about how much I've missed the snow.  And I do-I certainly do. It's just that the discovery of snow falling in the middle of the night is a much nicer thing when someone is there to wake up to break the news to. Just as nice is having someone shake you out of a slumber to spread the good word. I know this to be true.

Most things of beauty are difficult for me to handle. Any of the good times I have are very fleeting. I feel like I'm having a hard time carrying myself through this ugly phase. I have come to start looking at it as if I am crossing some shallow but freezing body of water by way of hopping onto rocks poking through the surface. The rocks are moments of joy that I have to leap to. Sometimes my aim is off or my jump is to short and I wind up floundering into the water. I will not drown, but I am freezing and uncomfortable when I fall short. I can stand on a rock to catch my breath and appear to be on solid ground, but I'm almost always assessing my freezing feet in their wet shoes. Time is the invisible hand that won't allow me to linger on the rock and we, me and time, just have to keep moving.

I do keep moving though. There is no other way. From one pleasant moment to the next, but the in between part is agonizing. The part where I'm up to my shins in swiftly moving water that is so cold my feet have long since gone numb is what makes up the majority of my days.

This is incredibly unfair to the girls. I put my best face on around them, but cry behind their backs. How can they not know? How can they not sense that their own mother?

Will it always be this way. Will I be standing on a rock in cold, wet feet when either of my girls are graduating from high school or college? What kind of condition will I be in when either of them gets married or has children? Will I truly be able to enjoy any of it or will there always be this nagging emptiness in my heart? Will I never regain my sense of balance again? 

This is a very frightening and sobering thought, now, at 2:15 am, with Jack Johnson singing in my imagination that it seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no... I am sick of maybes and time-will-tells. I want the answer now.