I’ve been relatively quiet on social media the past few months and a few people have reached out to make sure everything is OK.
It wasn’t this big, planned out thing, nor was it a social media fast. I didn’t disconnect entirely, just became a little less vocal about all I’ve been doing and thinking, mostly because I was just so busy doing and thinking it!
Any time I would devote to writing blog posts or even basic social media updates and cute photos of my family, has been eaten up by all the unseen activities in a busy life.
I know it’s no longer cool to say, “I’m so busy.”
So let’s just say my life is jam-packed with all the things: from a full-time job as a Patient Care Technician (nursing assistant) that’s harder and more exhausting than any of the many jobs I’ve done in my life, to dealing with paperwork and applications for nursing school, cancer deferment for my student loans, financial and tax stuff, kids and family stuff…
Oh, and then I’m supposed to be…trying to be…deeply desire to be…a writer. So, I’ve been trying to carve out several hours a week to work on my first book. The one I have been working on – off and on – for close to 15 years.
I’ve also been learning how to turn my blog into an online business of sorts. And meanwhile not publishing a single post on said blog! But I’m not going to beat myself up. And I know no one really cares how many times a week or month I post in my silly blog anyway (0 in all the month of January and only a few in December, but who’s counting!) and no one has missed the welcome email I haven’t gotten around to sending out yet to all my friends, family, former clients and blog subscribers. Especially since I don’t really know who my “audience” should be anyway!
So now it’s the beginning of February and I wake up early on a Sunday morning to take a breath, spend some time thinking and contemplating, and then write a little update about the things I have been thinking and contemplating in my relative silence.
Of course there are those obvious things that lots of people have been thinking about recently, the big current news stories: fires in Australia and all those poor animals dying, the Coronavirus, the impeachment trials and election, Kobe Bryant and what to make for the Super Bowl party.
But the things that have really taken up space in my brain are both smaller and bigger, more personal and more universal, more general and more specific.
Maybe a few of these will become blog posts or articles soon, but for now, here’s a list of a few of the things that have been on my mind the past few months – a brain dump, if you will:
- Whether getting breast implants following my bilateral mastectomy is really the best choice for me…
- The amazing audiobook I just finished listening to, A Second Chance by Catherine Hoke…
- 5 Top reasons this middle-aged mom drives for Uber and Lyft…
- Why I ever thought I should and could become a nurse at 40+ years old…
- Why I inactivated my Real Estate License after 20 years…
- The fact that the young man who was shot and killed by police after showing up at one of my company’s hospitals brandishing weapons last week was an employee I had met briefly during training last year, a normal looking blonde-headed kid…
- My mixed emotions after receiving a postcard in the mail this weekend announcing a sex offender in our neighborhood…
- Working my last shift at the hospital last week and preparing for a new position as part of the float pool, which will have me working at all five hospitals in our network and all different departments…
- Why I keep showing up for this job, which should have the description: professional butt wiper, waitress, maid and counselor, and is the hardest job I’ve ever done and pays among the least…
- All the crazy things I saw while at this hospital – which serves a very different population from most of the ones I’ve been surrounded by – and where I regularly cared for homeless people, drug addicts, diabetics, amputees, and patients with mental illnesses of all types.
- How every single one of these people were just people, each with their own story and their own struggle, and how just acknowledging our similarities, connecting with them, allowing them some dignity as I cleaned up their messes – and smiling as much as possible, seemed to make a difference…
- The top 5 reasons I’m looking to switch nursing programs following my current leave of absence for breast cancer treatment…
- Paying off debt while in nursing school with an irregular income …
- How blessed I feel by our health insurance coverage in this difficult time…
- How parenting teenagers is sometimes harder than parenting toddlers…
- Contemplating the preciousness and beauty of life after attending a memorial service for a 12-year-old who lived life better than many of us…
- My book – Believe: a Memoir and a Manifesto…
- How I once became a runner and wonder if I’ll ever become one again…
- How I prepare meals for our family which includes both a committed 11-year-old vegetarian and a few hardcore carnivores and how to know what kind of eating is really the best: from Keto to Veganism, I’m surrounded by opposing views…
- Meanwhile, while I’ve been surrounded by healthy eating and an active vibrant community my whole life, I take care of patients who truly don’t know a carbohydrate from a protein and have no idea how each affects their body, blood sugar and overall health…and I feel like I should help people like that somehow…
- The similarities between suicide and drowning (How the moments leading up to each are so much more silent than you’d think)…
- Why I have secretly disliked phrases like “Kick cancer’s butt!” even though I’ve been praised for having a truly inspiring attitude as I faced my own little fleck of cancer, and how a conversation with a cancer patient at work validated my feelings, helped me understand them better, and sparked an idea of how I can truly make a difference in the fight against cancer…
- Why seeing the color pink doesn’t make me feel weak but rather strong…
- Why I make time to get together regularly with new friends and old, even when I feel like I have too many responsibilities, big dreams to chase and no time for me…
- How I can help others see their glass as half full instead of half empty and find the silver linings in their own circumstances…
This is not an exhaustive list. My brain is always gathering data, asking questions, formulating answers, dreaming big dreams and creating plans, even while I clean up sh*t, figuratively – or more often than not – quite literally!
Let me know which of these resonate with you and which ones you’d like to hear more about!