Tag: nursing school

Self confidence is not the same as self forgiveness

Yesterday was the first day since I started my daily writing challenge at the beginning of December that I didn’t write.  I made it almost two months without fucking up.  I’m going to try and continue to make it the rest of the year.  I won’t be perfect, I may fuck up.  The point of this journey is growth and part of my growth is teaching myself that that is okay.

Yesterday started with taking one of my pups to the vet cause she had stopped eating.  She was diagnosed with lymphoma last year and went through chemo, and is now one year in remission.  Her battle with cancer has made me extra protective of her and extra nervous about losing her, so I suspected some GI problem, but my biggest fear was the cancer was back.  My vet ran bloodwork and sent us to a specialty hospital/ER about two hours away.  The cancer wasn’t back, or isn’t as far as we know right now, but instead she has IMHA.  I won’t go in depth into that condition, but the short version is a fair to guarded prognosis with a estimated 65% chance of survival after days or a week of hospitalization with medication and blood transfusions.  I was a mess, I still am.  I thought about writing when I got home, it didn’t happen.  I thought about doing homework too, it didn’t happen.  Aside from a short trip out to bring my niece home from work because she was considering walking 3 miles in 1 degree weather which was not happening on my watch, and talking to the doctor again about Kiwi a bit after midnight, I really wasn’t in any shape to do anything.  I’m still not, but homework has to happen, so I am going to at least try to do that now.

Anyway, I feel crappier because of not doing anything that I see as useful and productive, and because I failed to write yesterday or do homework.  Which teaches me something very important.  I may have a lot of self confidence, I don’t think I’m shitty in any way for not being functional right now, but I need to learn to forgive myself.  I can fail to meet my standards for myself and still maintain my self esteem because I don’t connect individual actions with my overall self image, as long as I’m not violating my core morals.  But that doesn’t mean I’m immune from feeling like a failure for a specific action or lack there of.  It doesn’t mean I’m not hard on myself.  And right now is not an appropriate time to be hard on myself.  It isn’t helpful or reasonable, and I need to foster forgiveness and compassion for myself instead.  So there is my lesson for the day, I have yet to figure out the exact hows of doing so.  Normally I learn through my writing, this process teaches me a lot about myself.  Today I learn from what happened when I failed to complete my writing, and I will use that learning to better myself even more.

Advertisement

A never-ending lust for learning

“What are you up to?”

“I’ve been doing homework, or pre-reading for class”

“Oh, that sucks”

“No, it’s really exhilarating!”

It’s true though, despite the looks of confusion I get.  I love to learn.  I love the feeling of stretching my mind to add in new concepts and ideas.  To storing knowledge away knowing that there will come a time where one piece of it will provide that perfect ah ha! moment, that click as I solve a puzzle.

While most of the people I surround myself with seem to enjoy learning and growth in some way, the folks I interact with that are part of society as a whole often just shy away from it entirely.  I grew up in a household where my parents read the paper every day, delighting in some new article about a topic they hadn’t heard of before.  I have a lot of privilege in that way.  While most parents struggle to make ends meet and get enough sleep after their two or more jobs, mine were talking me to performances and plays.  I wonder how much of my absolute lust for knowledge comes from them.

Kelev brings up a few new movies he got when we talk on the phone before bed.  He loves watching documentaries, especially about history or famous figures.  His favorites seem to be the ones that show a side you never really expected.  He’s like an eager puppy digging up a favorite bone when he finds some new treasure trove of knowledge about an event or person who we all thought we knew and took for granted.  I love watching how excited he gets, I can practically see his tail wagging and his exuberance is contagious, soon I’m wagging along with him.  I’m happy that a lifetime of shitty retail jobs and mind numbing tv shows, of institutionalized education in a fucked up school system, hasn’t killed his curiosity.

James shares an article with me, something he read that really spoke to him.  It’s intriguing, and some of the concepts require I read over it for a third time to really begin to grasp them.  We discuss it, coming at it from very different perspectives, and I’m grateful that it didn’t just show up on my feed one day.  Reading it has already stretched my mind, but hearing how he views on it pushes me even further.  I’m thankful for that moment of growth, it invigorates my whole day.

I eagerly share it with Hoffy, and am surprised when he reads it right away and discusses it with me.  I am still getting used to having partners who are so interested in what I share with them.  Our minds tend to work in a more similar way.  With James, I was stretching to get another perspective, with Hoffy, there is more of a shared understanding.  It feels like home, and it cements a strong foundation, so when we talk about what we are thinking, we can keep building upward together on our own discoveries.

I continue to pass on threads of the conversation to Kyuu or to Witty.  I discuss it with Kelev as we talk before bed.  I learn more from each person and delight in how my day is just filled with that bright happy light of discovery and innovative thought.  I remember how I felt so numb, with drinking, with depression.  This is the opposite of numb.  This is growth, this is wonder, this is what I think of when I think of education.

It is back to schoolwork the next day and the feeling persists.  What I’m learning in nursing school isn’t often of the same nature as an article shared to me about communication styles or societal power structures. It isn’t the same as a documentary with a whole new take on a historical event that gives you insight into the minds of another culture or country in that snapshot of history.  It has the same glow though.  One day I will be teaching what I’m learning to a patient, or discussing it with a fellow nurse, and someone will say something that expands my perspective on it in another burst of light. I still have a lust for such learning after all this time, it will persist through my whole life.  So yes, I am excited to do my homework, I’m excited for just about everything these days.  The more experience and knowledge I can pack in my brain the better, and while I’m sure I’ll need periods of relaxation and silence again soon, I’m immersing myself happily in the hubbub of learning and growth right now, and I feel at home there.

Utilize the momentum of good moments

I love new beginnings.  Today is the first day of a new semester, and it has been a hectic day so far.

One of the cats recently had dental surgery and has been getting medication in the morning.  The medication is finished, but he’s on soft food and needs to be fed separately, which means shutting him in the bathroom to feed him.  Because he still expects me to catch him and give him meds, he gave me quite the run around when I was trying to corral him into the bathroom for feeding this morning.

The dogs were let out to run in the yard for a few hours, Dawson absolutely adores the snow and was bouncing around like a maniac.  I went to break up the ice in their water bucket and fill it with fresh water.  The only watering system that works for them is a large industrial bucket, chained to the kennel by two point.  Bowls or dishes filled with water, or even less heavy buckets or ones not chained down, are two much fun for Dawson to toss around.  He won’t do that with his food bowl of course, just anything filled with water…you know, the thing that needs to be always available.  So, of course I broke the water bucket when trying to get the ice out.  It has a nice crack in the bottom and some of the rim shattered off.  I should have remembered that would happen, this isn’t my first winter, but instead of bringing it in to defrost and them dumping it, I tried to knock the ice out against the concrete.  Now we need a new bucket.  I found another that had a handle too thick to clip onto the chains to hold it down and filled it, hoping that since the other was immovable for so long, that he wouldn’t think to go back to his old habits of tossing them around.  He’s my little monster though, so of course five minutes after I fill it I see him happily tossing a now-empty bucket around the yard.  So we need a new bucket.

On a normal morning this all might have seemed tedious, but it’s the first day of a new semester.

I’ve been working on my pre-reading and homework for my nursing class.  If I don’t get ahead, I’ll get behind, so I wanted to finish the homework for the next couple weeks before class started.  We had gotten a preliminary copy of the syllabus, but the module assignments due didn’t actually match the online modules available.  Some of the ones listed on the syllabus don’t seem to exist, and some of the ones online that seem relevant to the reading, were not on the syllabus.  I figured it might be because it was just a preliminary copy, so when our online platform for the class opened up, I checked the new syllabus hoping for updates.  Nope, it was the same.  So, I fired off an email to the Professor hoping to clarify what actually needed completed and handed in.  The online modules are constantly changing, and I imagine they don’t always update every single teacher who uses them, that they have been changed, so I’m guessing that is how that confusion happened.  I could wait until class in person tomorrow to discuss it, but I’m hoping to possibly here back today so that I can work on it tonight after my first ceramics class.

Normally this would all be very frustrating and create a lot of anxiety, but this is the first day of a new semester.

I just can’t help but get excited at new beginnings.  It’s like when it first snows, and you run outside and make the first footprints in the flawless blanket of white.  I just love the wonder of a fresh start, the ability to do everything from a pristine organized standpoint.  That feeling of having my shit together.  And I don’t have my shit together, as you can clearly tell from my brief summary of the morning.  But I feel like I do, because I took that fresh start energy and handled each problem with a wry grin and a laughing shake of the head.  I did not let it pile on pressure and anxiety, I just took life’s curve balls, small ones that could easily overwhelm me on my anxious hot mess days, and I rolled with them and felt accomplished instead. I love to utilize that new beginning energy for as long as I possibly can.  It is one of my own little life hacks, taking something I know that makes me feel good, and using it to circumvent the anxious low-spoon state of my every day life for as long as possible.  If I get it right I can sometimes move fluidly from the fresh-start-I-can-do-anything feeling, to a wow-I-handled-shit-great-I-got-this feeling of success that keeps me on a forward trajectory even one the shiny newness has worn off.  That is the goal, take the pre-made good feelings in life, whatever they may be for you, and build on them until you get enough momentum that it can carry you through the rough patches for as long as possible.  Life won’t always feel this effortless, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

New year’s resolutions

It’s a brand new year, all shiny and hopeful and just prime for a good fucking up.  So, in the nature of things that are just waiting to be fucked up, I’m going to make some new years resolutions!  I’m actually very fond of the practice, it can be a meditative exercise for me, figuring out what I need to change and focusing on it, examining the motivation, and trying to imagine the progress and reaching the finish line.  This year I snuggled up in bed with Kelev and we decided to each come up with three resolutions, preferably well grounded goals, since our extensive and loftier ones last year lasted until mid February.  Here are my three:

Health

My first resolution is to improve my health.  This is actually a multifaceted one, a series of mini resolutions you could say.  First, I need to work on eating better.  I have some food intolerances I have been ignoring for a while now, which leads to chronic pain, so to start I need to better stay within my limitations in what I eat.  During the spring/summer/autumn I get most of my veges from a weekly CSA (community supported agriculture) program through a local farm.  It helps me eat seasonally and support a local business, and I know my produce is raised in a way without a negative environmental impact.  I did not get a large enough CSA share to store and can for winter though, so winter this year is when I get to choose what is “in season” for me from the abundance at the grocery store.  In some ways it’s lovely, I really did miss avocados a lot during the rest of the year, but it doesn’t fit my ethics in the long run.  Plus, when I don’t have an automatic big box of fruits and veges that I have to go through in a week, I tend to hop more on the pasta train, and eat out way too much.  So, limiting the eating out and adjusting my diet to a more healthy balance again.  I also need to reincorporate yoga into my routine, my flexibility has dropped drastically since I got too busy for it, but I want to do it weekly at the minimum and then increase that.  Also trying to consistently get to 10k steps on my step counter.  I’m very good at that some days, but during school I do a lot of sitting and studying, and those days my step count is pretty sad.

And weight loss.  Big sigh.  Weight loss for me is often a side effect, not a primary goal.  I have struggled with an eating disorder since my teens, which was at its worse around the time I developed adult onset bi-polar.  So I’m very very careful with weight loss, not to mention it often isn’t a focus when I’ve learned to really enjoy the fat on my body.  I embrace body positivity whole heartedly, and I love when I see myself taking up space and having curves and rolls to my body.  When I was getting the most complements and praise from my parents and friends, was during the times where I would eat one day out of an entire week for months as a time, and subsist in between on cigarettes and sips of vodka. That was when I was applauded for looking “healthy”, I really had to decide on my own what healthy was for me, and body fat is a proud part of it.  It means I’m not self-destructing, I matter to myself, I have a will to live.  That all said, I know weight loss will be a side effect of the changes I’m making, and I plan to embrace that if it is happening in a healthy way, and also later transition to gaining muscle so that I can still take up space in a way that makes me feel real.

Finance

This year the founding group of the intentional community I’m a part of is beginning to meet regularly and move forward with our plans.  As such, I really need to learn to budget tightly, and help Kelev do the same, so we can start planning for our future there and map out what we are about to do financially.  I want to cut down on eating out for my health as well, and hope that in doing so, I can also save a little money.  I try to be a prudent person who does not buy what I don’t need, but the stress and lack of spoons from school has led to me leaning more on pre-made food because it was a choice many times between having the energy to study or having the energy to grocery shop and cook, and I chose my grades first.  That is reasonable, but I want instead to find solutions where I can still maintain my study habits, but also have time to cook and eat healthier and cheaper meals.  I also will be looking again at my budget, as I do every year, and figuring out what I can trim back.  And, when I do my yearly spring cleaning and de-cluttering this year, I will see what I can part with and sell, as the beginning of my savings for my community venture.

Learning

I had an amazing first semester with nursing clinicals, and a difficult and stressful second semester.  I did not take enough time to relax during break and then went in to the semester already stressed and scrambling to keep up.  That feeling pervaded through the entire fall, and while I did the best I feel I was able, it was a struggle, and I would like to feel more competent and on top of things this time around.  I also am appreciating the amount of personal growth that has been coming of writing this, and place to continue it daily and learn as much as I can about myself in the coming year.

 

So, I am looking forward to a year in which I can let these three guiding resolutions or areas of focus light my way.  If it is anything like last year, I may have a lot of change thrown at me and have to adapt to all that as well.  Maybe this year will bring more relaxation and time to recoup and plan.  I hope so, because I am setting the building blocks to forge ahead to a bright future and many ambitious plans, and I’m ready to do this right.