Work

More Than a Woman?

Tired. That’s how I’ve felt this past week­end. I think the 10-​​hour days are catch­ing up with me and I’m not look­ing for­ward to Mon­day when it will start all over again.

I think it’s time to take some time off. Maybe a sched­uled men­tal health day to regroup myself. On a Mon­day. Or a Fri­day. So I can extend my week­end by an extra day.

Oh, who am I kid­ding? I’m still going to spend the day before return­ing to work wor­ry­ing about what I need to do the day I actu­ally return to work. 

I worry too much. Not a sur­prise for peo­ple that know me very well. To oth­ers though, espe­cially at work, I guess I put off this vibe that every­thing is going to be okay. But inter­nally, I’m a ner­vous wreck.

Why is that?

Hubby seems to think I put too much pres­sure on myself, that I should learn to ease up on myself. That I should learn to break down projects into man­age­able tasks. And he’s right, the smart man that I married.

I do put a lot of pres­sure on myself to be as best that I can be. I guess it goes back to that thought that if I try hard enough, I’ll suc­ceed in any­thing I do.

And we all know that Infer­til­ity taught me that that state­ment is not always rel­e­vant to everything. 

So why am I still liv­ing my life like that? I guess I do it in the hopes of being a bet­ter per­son than would be if I had kids. That some­how, I need to make up for being more of a woman because I don’t have kids. 

Does that sound ridiculous? 

I know it does. There are lots of women liv­ing child-​​free by choice that can attest to this. Heck, there are women that have gone through infer­til­ity and are now liv­ing child-​​free that can say that they still feel like a whole woman. 

Right now, I’m not one of those women. Which is why I worry too much. And expect more out of myself. And I wish there was a way that I could just be happy with who I am. 

 

Nothing Important

Sit­ting and star­ing at the blank Word Doc­u­ment in front of me is kinda intim­i­dat­ing. I hate how the cur­sor blinks to the tune of the back­ground music at the Cari­bou Cof­fee I’m cur­rently sit­ting at.

I know it’s been more than a cou­ple weeks since I last posted, but there hasn’t really been much of inter­est to write about. Unless you wanna talk about how hec­tic my last onsite visit for work was. But why would I want to bore you with that?

I could also tell you that I came SO close to see­ing Jefferson’s Mon­ti­cello estate dur­ing my last work trip. I even took the 20 min­utes to drive there, only to be dis­ap­pointed that I could only get to the visitor’s cen­ter … Which then would have required me to pur­chase a ticket for a shut­tle to take me up to the prop­erty just so I could look at the building.

If I had the time, I prob­a­bly would have done it. But as it was, I had already been teach­ing all day and I was exhausted by the thought of tak­ing the extra time to buy a ticket to tour the entire prop­erty, when all I wanted to do was admire the struc­ture. Plus I wasn’t feel­ing too hot.

When trav­el­ing, noth­ing sucks more than not feel­ing your best … Espe­cially when you have to get up in front of a group of strangers and teach. But since there was no way of can­celling the class, I just did my best and hope that all the par­tic­i­pants would stay engaged in our dis­cus­sions. Lucky for me, they did.

So now I get to travel again next week and I hope that this cold has finally left my sys­tem. It will be another hec­tic onsite visit (large hos­pi­tal, two dif­fer­ent loca­tions for each ses­sion, etc), but the best I can do is leave it up to God and my con­stant chant­ing of the Seren­ity Prayer.

Until next week …

Sunsets and Sunrises

I can’t believe I actu­ally have time (and energy) to write today. Per­haps it’s the fact I’m en route (and in the air), antic­i­pat­ing a nice reunion with Hubby. And the fact that I’m kinda caught up with work things for now. Either way, I’m feel­ing some­what inspired today.

I flew out to South­ern Geor­gia this week for a train­ing ses­sion at a regional hos­pi­tal in the area. It was a one-​​day ses­sion, so ulti­mately I should have flown back yes­ter­day evening instead of today. Except the clos­est air­port to this town was approx­i­mately a 3-​​hour drive. Even if my ses­sion ended when it was sup­posed to end at 5 pm, I would have never made it back to Jack­sonville, FL in time to catch the lat­est flight back to Detroit. So instead, I’m catch­ing the ear­li­est flight back to Detroit today. Non-​​stop, of course! :-P

Since my flight didn’t leave until noon, I thought I’d take full advan­tage of being close to the ocean. Just like I did a cou­ple weeks ago when I was down in Miami (South Beach, baby!) But since I had a lim­ited time, I thought … what bet­ter way to dip my toes in the water by watch­ing the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean? So early this morn­ing, I sat on the beach to watch the sun hide behind clouds; watch­ing the clouds pro­gres­sively change hues. It wasn’t the best of sun­rises; def­i­nitely not any type of “golden hour” scene. But it was beau­ti­ful, nonetheless.

As I sat on the beach, I reflected on how much I still love the ocean; still love being around water. And no mat­ter that it was cloudy and that I felt drops of rain splat­ter onto me, I felt peace­ful, con­tent and – for a brief moment – happy.

I knew some­time in mid-​​July that, despite being on med­ica­tions, my clin­i­cal depres­sion had started to resur­face. (Which, if I would have read back at some of my pre­vi­ous posts, I might have real­ized this a lot sooner.) The pre­cip­i­tat­ing fac­tor – or rather the event that forced me to re-​​seek treat­ment – was when Hubby & I offi­cially moved all our stuff from Chicago back to Detroit.

It makes sense, look­ing back now, that I would need to feel weighted down by every­thing; to feel the con­stant fatigue asso­ci­ated with depres­sion. It makes sense now why I couldn’t even to get out of bed; why I couldn’t stop the rac­ing thoughs of anx­i­ety that would keep me up at night … or, at the very least try to relax.  The truth is that in the span of a year, I had lived through many stres­sors that could have eas­ily sent any other per­son run­ning up a moun­tain, only to jump off the cliff.

Not that I’m say­ing that my stres­sors were any worse than any­body else’s stres­sors. (After all, I’m not writ­ing this to com­plain about my life.) I’m just stat­ing the facts.

I look back at 2010 in awe of myself; of hav­ing sur­vived through one of the most stress­ful years of my life. (And by that, I do mean that there were both bad and good stres­sors.) “But why am I feel­ing so mis­er­able now?,” I remem­ber ask­ing myself in the begin­ning of August.

I had no answer at that time, but today I real­ize that this was exactly what hap­pened when deal­ing with my depres­sion the first time around. But that time, it took three years after my failed IVF to real­ize that I hadn’t even begun to deal with my loss. At least this time, it only took 9 months from the last major life-​​stressor to real­ize I needed help again. And two months from mid-​​July to finally do some­thing about it.

I’m slowly begin­ning to feel the fog lift. And by slow, I think of the “Slowsky” tur­tles in that one TV com­mer­cial (who, coin­ci­den­tally, just recently had a baby … WTF?). Over the past year, there have been moments of bright col­ors scat­tered amongst the other days of gray. There were those days where I felt brave enough to face the world amongst those other days where I just didn’t want to deal with any­thing. But it seems like that those moments of hap­pi­ness – brief as they can be – are hap­pen­ing just a tad more fre­quently than before. And I guess that’s some­thing to be proud of.

One thing is for cer­tain … even when the sun goes down in life, it even­tu­ally rises again. Here’s hop­ing for brighter days ahead.

*****

Related Posts:

Emily is moved in mys­te­ri­ous ways

Emily goes belly-​​up

Emily makes her list and checks it twice

Emily starts another new chapter

Emily hopes to keep her promise

Emily weath­ers through a loss

Emily loses a piece of her heart

Hug A Nurse Today

It’s Inter­na­tional Nurse’s Day … Did you hug your favorite nurse today?

Ticket To Ride

Almost a week with­out a post. Yes, I’m try­ing to get bet­ter at writ­ing at least one post a week here. At least thats my goal.

As it turns out, I’m on a train head­ing back to Detroit from Chicago. Hubby and I drove back to Chicago in mid-​​March, but he had to get back to Detroit before I returned from my Boston work trip this past week. Any­way, this just means that I have a lit­tle win­dow of oppor­tu­nity to sit and write with­out being distracted.

Dr. Bro, LJC and me at Disneyworld

Being a “Road War­rior” for work has given me the oppor­tu­nity to spend more time lis­ten­ing to music on my dig­i­tal library. After all, many times I find myself in air­ports for just enough time to check my email, but not enough time respond to them. Or else I’m lit­er­ally on the road dri­ving to a loca­tion hours away from where I started. Either way, music is my con­stant com­pan­ion at these times.

It’s refresh­ing for me, because music has always been part of my life. One that only recently re-​​entered at full force after years of focus­ing on a career. Or try­ing to get pregnant.

My par­ents always had music on in the house and in the car. In fact, many of those road trips we’d take as a fam­ily involved worn out cas­sette tapes or — gasp! — old 8-​​tracks.

One of my favorite mem­o­ries is my first trip to Dis­ney­world at the age of 6. My par­ents packed my brother, my cousin (who would later be known as LJC) & me in our tan wood-​​paneled sta­tion wagon along with our two grand­moth­ers and an uncle and drove down from Detroit to Orlando. Dur­ing that trip, I believe my par­ents only took a hand­ful of 8-​​tracks; ones that we would con­stantly repeat, only because we couldn’t get any radio recep­tion when dri­ving through the mountains.

Let’s just say that by the end of our trip, the three kids knew all the words to every Neil Sedaka song, as well as all the singing parts to the Grease sound­track. And it’s appar­ently a mem­ory that keeps on giv­ing, because Hubby can attest that I was recently able to iden­tify a Neil Sedaka tune!

Another 8-​​track that was in the wagon dur­ing that trip was one of many Bea­t­les com­pi­la­tions that my Dad threw together. It was from that home-​​made “playlist” (cre­ated circa 1978) that I learned the words to most of the Bea­t­les songs. And to this day, every time I hear “Ticket To Ride” I have this incred­i­ble urge to belt out the song.

The 1978 Road War­riors (minus Mom)

It’s one of those child­hood mem­o­ries I keep stored close to my heart. And one that usu­ally sur­faces when­ever I hear any song that reminds me of road trips and spon­ta­neous singing.

For instance: Today on the train, “Tiny Dancer” came  up in “shuffle-​​mode.” The first image that came to mind was my favorite scene in “Almost Famous.”

Or the other day I thought of “Harold & Kumar” when hear­ing Wil­son Phillips “Hold On” on the radio.

Regard­less of the song, each one brought me back to my own road trip mem­o­ries and how much fun they were when music was thrown into the mix. And hear­ing each song cer­tainly gave me the urge to break out into spon­ta­neous singing. Loudly. And at the top of my lungs.

And, in the midst of the chaos that my life has become of late … It made me happy.

So even though I might not be an Amer­i­can Idol con­tes­tant, I think I might just sing aloud. At least in the pri­vacy of my own home. Or car. Or shower.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Your turn, oh Inter­nets … What song makes you think of road trips? Or what song makes you break out your singing voice?

~*~*~*~*~*~

Related Posts:

Emily’s Liv­ing Journal

Emily hears her Own Voice

Emily’s Pitch is a lit­tle Black

*

Oh, how I miss our old sta­tion wagon …

Bottoms Up …

My pre­vi­ous boss once said to me, “You don’t have to get every­one to like you.”

This is the same boss who, in the midst of all the chaos at the end of this past April, didn’t do a thing to help me out. The same boss who wor­ried the whole time that I’d find the job hor­ri­ble and go run­ning back to Detroit.

But, as dif­fi­cult as my posi­tion at this com­pany would get, I actu­ally enjoyed my job. I found that it chal­lenged me in ways I hadn’t been chal­lenged before. And up until the day I was sent home (and even­tu­ally told to stay home), I found myself gain­ing a lit­tle more con­fi­dence in myself … con­fi­dence I had lost so much of when going through the roller coaster of Infertility.

Megan from Bot­toms Off and On the Table wrote a post that really res­onated with me. In her post she talks about how busy she’s been at work and how, per­haps, she’s using work as a self-​​imposed cop­ing mech­a­nism while decid­ing on the next step of her Infer­til­ity journey.

And, oh … could I ever relate to this.

Read­ing her post reminded me of “step­ping down” from my pre­vi­ous super­vi­sor posi­tion in Michi­gan in order to con­cen­trate my ener­gies on IVF. After all, I had already been through years of con­ser­v­a­tive treat­ment and months of med­icated cycles … all with dis­ap­point­ing results. By then I was so exhausted by the monthly cycles of treat­ment, which included mul­ti­ple trips to the var­i­ous doctor’s offices for lab draws and pelvic ultra­sounds, only to be con­cluded with yet another neg­a­tive preg­nancy test.

And how I even man­aged to keep track of all the super­vi­sor duties I had dur­ing those years, I’ll never remem­ber. But what I do know is that once I decided to become a “reg­u­lar” staff mem­ber (instead of super­vi­sor), I sud­denly felt as if I had more breath­ing room … at least enough to allow some pos­i­tiv­ity and hope into my life before head­ing into IVF territory.

After our IVF failed, I admit I began to slack off at work; an obvi­ous sign that I cared lit­tle about any­thing dur­ing those first months of incred­i­ble depres­sion. Then I dis­cov­ered that throw­ing myself into work helped dis­tract me from feel­ing like a com­plete fail­ure. Flash for­ward a few years, and now I found myself mov­ing to Chicago to accept a posi­tion that I’d hope would advance my career. I, once again became a super­vi­sor; but this time for a high-​​profile group within a much larger company.

I did this for a num­ber of rea­sons, but mostly I did this so that I could fur­ther my career. My thought was this: If I couldn’t give bear chil­dren because Infer­til­ity robbed me, then I might as well focus on the part of myself that I knew I could be good at. I might as well be a “suc­cess­ful” career woman.

And then … well, you know what even­tu­ally hap­pened with that job. And the ulti­mate fail­ure I felt from that fall­out. What had angered me most was that I felt I went above and beyond my capa­bil­i­ties of being suc­cess­ful (and had been rec­og­nized for such accom­plish­ments), but yet my pre­vi­ous boss never both­ered to step up for me and fight for me; some­thing she could have eas­ily done. Except … well, this being the same boss who told me that I didn’t need to be liked, I rather think she had some­thing against me. Per­son­ally, I think it’s because she had kids and was cur­rently in school, which meant that she couldn’t com­pletely “focus” in fur­ther her career …

As I’ve just com­pleted my first week at my new job, I have found myself con­tem­plat­ing the lessons I’ve learned from my last job; what I should take away from that expe­ri­ence. And since I had four months to mull over the past year and a half, this is what I came up with:

There’s no need to “make up” for my inabil­ity to bear chil­dren with try­ing to more suc­cess­ful in other ways. Because it’s more impor­tant to focus on being happy with who I am and the strong(ish) per­son I’ve become … even though it’s nowhere close to where I though I’d be at this time in my life.

And

My pre­vi­ous boss was right. I don’t have to get every­one to like me. Because it’s not about being “liked.” Rather, it’s about being respected … which should really begin with respect­ing myself. And how can I respect myself if I con­tinue to mea­sure myself on my inabil­ity to have chil­dren? My life isn’t sup­posed to be all about whether I or not I failed in the “kids” depart­ment. I should be about my accom­plish­ments and about remem­ber­ing to give myself credit where credit is due.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Posts

Emily’s Big Flop

Emily’s Funky Color

Emily’s Ghostly Appari­tion

Ghostly Thoughts

I have ghosts in my head that keep telling me I’m a failure.

Amaz­ingly, this feel­ing of fail­ure has noth­ing to do with my inabil­ity to have chil­dren. Well maybe indi­rectly, anyway.

No, this feel­ing of fail­ure has to do with every­thing that has hap­pened since los­ing my job this past May. And with what has tran­spired since.

You see, I had this won­der­ful blog entry sched­uled to post today; antic­i­pat­ing that I’d be busy in Seat­tle (thanks to the gen­eros­ity of my par­ents) try­ing to board a cruise liner for an all-​​expense paid cruise to Alaska. It talked about how lucky Hubby & I were to be able to have had a won­der­ful (albeit hec­tic and finan­cially dif­fi­cult) sum­mer this year. And I also wrote how I was look­ing for­ward to start­ing my new career path in Clin­i­cal Health Care Edu­ca­tion. And how excited I was that Hubby & I decided to stay in Chicago rather than mov­ing back to Sub­ur­ban Detroit.

Except some­thing hap­pened this past Fri­day to make me scrap that post. With­out going into much detail, Hubby & I were forced to reassess whether or not we were mak­ing the right deci­sion to stay in Chicago. It affected us so much, that we were will­ing to lose the secu­rity deposit on the lease we just signed for an apart­ment and move back to Detroit.

We knew it would be finan­cially risky to stay in Chicago. How­ever, when we sat down to dis­cuss the pros and cons, our guts told us that mov­ing back to an economically-​​challenged state (with incred­i­bly lim­ited job oppor­tu­ni­ties for Hubby) would be the wrong thing to do. At least in Chicago, we knew there was a demand for tal­ented peo­ple like Hubby … even though it might only be con­tract or free-​​lance work.

As Hubby & I (once again) dis­cussed our var­i­ous options, I found myself spi­ral­ing down uncon­trol­lably. Sud­denly my feel­ings of inad­e­quacy and incom­pe­tence started to resur­face. And it was per­pet­u­ated by this feel­ing I’ve had since this past May .… that, since *I* was the one to lose a job, I was a failure.

I was a fail­ure because *I* moved us to Chicago for this “incred­i­ble” job oppor­tu­nity … and then lost this job.

I was a fail­ure because *I* encour­aged Hubby to quit his full-​​time job in Michi­gan and go “free-​​lance” so that he could real­ize his dream of work­ing for him­self. But since I no longer had a job, I couldn’t sup­port his dream.

I was a fail­ure because *I* wanted to move to Chicago order to pro­vide some dis­tance away from all the bad Infer­til­ity mem­o­ries we had in Michi­gan; all in an effort to help us move for­ward in our lives. Except now, we were on the cusp of mov­ing back to Michi­gan, back to the same house that held such bad memories.

So yeah, the way that I see it … I just plain and out­right, failed.

What’s worse than this feel­ing of fail­ure is the self-​​doubt that has now crept in to my head.

These same ghosts, hence forth known as Ghosts of Fail­ures Past (GFP), are now telling me that I’m not going to be able to hold any job down.

It’s as if my GFP decided to team up with my Ghosts of Fail­ures Future to give tips on what to look out for if I started to travel down the road of “fail­ure” once again.

And that no mat­ter how excited I am to start my new job … new career, I should just expect to fail again. After all, wasn’t I so excited to move to Chicago for an incred­i­ble job opportunity?

Yes, I real­ize that this makes no log­i­cal sense. And I real­ize that I shouldn’t base every future expe­ri­ence on all hor­ri­ble past expe­ri­ences. But I do. And I am. And it ter­ri­fies me.

Despite the (rel­a­tively large and inde­scrib­able) hic­cup that hap­pened on Fri­day, Hubby & I have deter­mined that we will stay Chicago. For now. While I’m incred­i­bly happy excited relieved that our deci­sion is final, I’m now incred­i­bly scared that I might just screw up again.

I know Eleanor Roo­sevelt once said, “No one can make you feel infe­rior with­out your con­sent.” And I’ve tried to ingrain that quote in my mind; believe that, with­out a doubt, I am the mas­ter of my own perceptions.

But when it’s your own “Ghosts” that are the cause of such infe­rior thoughts … how do you coun­ter­act these thoughts?

Per­haps vis­it­ing Seat­tle, the city where Hubby & I have dreamed of mov­ing to, will keep me focused on mov­ing forward.

Per­haps breath­ing in some fresh Pacific North­west moun­tain will help clear the ghosts from my head.

And if it doesn’t, I’ll be mak­ing some seri­ous phone calls to Dr. Peter Venkman to do some seri­ous Ghostbusting.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Post

Emily wears the color of her emotions

Bullet The Blue Sky

It’s another warm and sunny day here in Chicago; been like this since last week. Not that I’m com­plain­ing … I’m just hop­ing the Blue Skies stay through the Memo­r­ial Day week­end. Espe­cially in Detroit.

Any­way, because I’m admit­tedly lazy today, I’ll have to do one of those bul­let updates as to what I’ve been up to. Because con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, I’ve been a bit occupied.

  • Applied for every Case Man­age­ment posi­tion avail­able in the Hos­pi­tal and Health Insur­ance set­tings in both Chicago and Detroit
  • Never received any phone calls from any com­pa­nies located  or based in Chicago
  • Received calls and set up a few inter­views with com­pa­nies located in Detroit
  • Inter­view­ing by phone today for the posi­tion which requires trav­el­ing (cross fin­gers, peeps!)
  • In the mean time, help­ing Hubby’s friend out with pop­u­lat­ing pages for WordPress-​​powered web­sites and get­ting paid to do this. Woo-​​hoo!
  • Some­how knew my blog­ging skills would get me some sort of work … :-)

Any­way, wish me luck on the inter­view I’ve got sched­uled for this after­noon. This is the one that I really would love to try out. It com­bines my clin­i­cal knowl­edge and my love of teaching/​training. And, if I should be so luck to get it, would allow me to live any­where as long as I’m close to a major air­port. So … once we have our house sold, Hubby & I can look at mov­ing fur­ther west!

I promise, more witty and inspir­ing posts at a later date.

Cherry-​​Coloured Funk *

It’s after mid­night and I’m find­ing myself in some sort of funk.

Which is sad, because my last posts were all about try­ing to enjoy the sim­ple things in life; like the uncon­di­tional love that a pet can give you.

I am truly and utterly in a funk.

And I hate it.

I’ve (obvi­ously) been try­ing my best to be opti­mistic about every­thing, but lately it seems as if I can’t catch a break. And it’s ridicu­lous, because it hasn’t even been more than a month since my life turned topsy-​​turvy.

Maybe it’s because the loss of my job reminds me too much of another loss that I’ve finally came to clo­sure on. Well, as “closed” as it could get anyway.

I’ve always alluded to the fact that my inabil­ity to have chil­dren of my own, to be a mother has made me feel less of a per­son. It’s made me that Fil­ip­ina, who was brought up to think of bring­ing up her husband’s chil­dren is the only pur­pose in life, feel like I’ve lost any rea­son to exist in this lifetime.

And once I  “resolved” myself to a life with­outh chil­dren, I nat­u­rally grav­i­tated to my career as the next “log­i­cal” rea­son to get out of bed every day.

Which, when you look at the time line of my blog, you’d notice it. Start­ing back in Autumn of 2008, up to the point where Hubby & I decided to “cut the strings.” Plain as night and day; writ­ten in black and white. (Fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, that is). And when you see how much I put into this job since mov­ing to Chicago; all the effort I made to mak­ing my career … it’s obvi­ous that I found some­thing to fill the void of Motherlessness.

Then sud­denly and unex­pect­edly, I find myself with­out a job. I find myself with­out yet another pur­pose in life.

I find myself strug­gling with the loss of yet another rea­son for my existence.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Ear­lier today, I asked my hus­band what my pur­pose in life was.

This was all before I came to the con­clu­sion I did up above; before con­nect­ing the dots as to why I’m feel­ing the same kind of loss for my job as I did for the loss of Motherhood.

Before I real­ized that I wasn’t quite that crazy for hav­ing these neg­a­tive thoughts; how­ever irra­tional it may have seemed at the time.

And Hubby’s answer was, “It’s what­ever we want it to be.”

In my mind I know that Hubby’s right. And my heart tells me that he’s right for me to think of this as a time of opportunity.

But the empty feel­ing I have in my gut keeps dig­ging away at my core; strug­gling to find some­thing out of noth­ing. And I wish I could make it stop.

Damn … but I was doing so well.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

* In case you’re won­der­ing where the title of this post came from, it’s the name of a Cocteau Twins song that com­pletely reflects the mood I’m in. Take a lis­ten to it here … isn’t it haunt­ingly beautiful?

Happy Birthday, Flo!

I know I’m a lit­tle late, but Happy Nurses Day to all those esteemed Nurses and Nurs­ing Stu­dents and Aides out there.

Yes … I know that last Wednes­day was the start of Nurses Week, but if you recall from last year … the actual day for Nurses is on Flo­rence Nightingale’s birth­day. And that day is/​was today, the 12th of May.

Since usu­ally the first cou­ple weeks in May I use Nurses Week as a dis­trac­tion for another “hol­i­day” in May, I’m find­ing it quite ironic that I ended up being okay with Mother’s Day this year.

It’s been a really strange Nurses Week this year for obvi­ous rea­sons. See­ing that I’m cur­rently not employed, it’s not that I’ve had any rea­son to celebrate.

I know, I know … I can hear y’all ask­ing why I’m not already employed else­where … espe­cially since RN’s are in “high demand” all the time. Well, it’s because of the type of career I’ve cho­sen with my Nurs­ing Degree.

I could go back to the hos­pi­tal and be a “Floor Nurse” again; but there are a cou­ple things that have me hes­i­tant to do this. First of all, it’s been well over ten years since I’ve done any type of bed­side nurs­ing (unless you count tak­ing care of a sick Hubby … ). And in just that amount of time, the acu­ity of care that one patient requires has more than quadru­pled. I’m pretty sure that I can no longer keep up with the amount of phys­i­cal and men­tal work it takes to work in the “war zones.” (And trust me … any given day can be as chaotic as a war zone!)

Besides the lack of phys­i­cal sta­mina (and prob­a­bly knowl­edge of new tech­nol­ogy), the other rea­son I’m fear­ful to go back to the floors is because of a pre­vi­ous back injury. While I’m pretty sure I’m per­fectly fine with lift­ing things greater than 50 lbs now, a year after my disk surgery I was lim­ited to lift­ing no more than 25 lbs. I’m just incred­i­bly ter­ri­fied that if I do any con­stant lift­ing on a daily basis, I will re-​​injure myself. So yeah, heavy lift­ing is my other fear.

Instead, I’m look­ing for jobs that fit my career as an RN Case Man­ager; some­thing that I’m more versed and com­fort­able at. And since I’ve had lots of super­vi­sory expe­ri­ence, I’m also look­ing for things within Case Man­age­ment where I can uti­lize those tal­ents as well.

So on my job search, I’ve stum­bled on quite a few posi­tions I’m inter­ested. All from the var­i­ous states that I’ve been look­ing at. (Uhm, that would be IL, MI, OR and WA.) Sur­pris­ingly, I already received two phone calls from West Coast loca­tions … I def­i­nitely thought that wouldn’t hap­pen so quickly.

And while Hubby & I would love to jump ship and move straight away to Ore­gon or Wash­ing­ton … the real­ity is that we still have a house in Michi­gan and rent through August in Illi­nois. So mov­ing to the West Coast now would only put us fur­ther behind finan­cially. But the good thing is that I’ve received good con­tacts and recruiters look­ing for RN Case Man­agers in Port­land and Seat­tle … so when we’re ready to move, I’ll have some­one to contact.

Then there’s two other posi­tions that have def­i­nitely piqued my inter­est. Both are oppor­tu­ni­ties that would allow me to be more flex­i­ble in where I live. One of them is a lead­er­ship role for another health insur­ance com­pany that would have me super­vis­ing a staff of work-​​at-​​home employ­ees … the ben­e­fit of which means that I could also work from home. A def­i­nite plus; espe­cially if we need to move out of Chicago by the time our lease runs out in August.

And since the respon­si­bil­i­ties of this job would be sim­i­lar to what I was pre­vi­ously doing before my early depar­ture from the last com­pany, I’m guess­ing my learn­ing curve won’t be as severe. (Knock on wood.) I’ve already heard from the Hir­ing Man­ager for this posi­tion and hope to have an inter­view sched­uled with the actual depart­ment that’s hir­ing soon.

The other oppor­tu­nity is one that I really really like. It’s one that I had thought about tran­si­tion­ing to do in my pre­vi­ous job back in Michi­gan, but the oppor­tu­nity never came up; at least locally. And the rea­son I was inter­ested in mov­ing over to this career is because it com­bined my love of clin­i­cal knowl­edge and my love of teach­ing. So right there were two things that had me auto­mat­i­cally apply­ing for the job when I first saw the on-​​line posting.

Yes, this is ME as a Stu­dent Nurse

The other one that has me want­ing this job is the fact that I can pretty much live any­where I want to, as long as I was close to any major air­port. So again, I could work out of Chicago or Michi­gan … or even Seat­tle or Port­land, once we get out that way. The only down­side would be the amount of trav­el­ing I’d have to do dur­ing the week; but hey … at least I don’t have kids to worry about! (The irony does not escape me.) I’ve also heard back from this com­pany and am hop­ing for an inter­view soon.

So please, oh inter­net bud­dies … if any of you have a direct line with the Man Upstairs, I’d really appre­ci­ate it if you could put a good word in for me. Because this sec­ond (going on third) week of unem­ploy­ment is start­ing to get old.

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