I'm Fine

I miss being fine. I would love to be great. You know, when people casually ask you how you are doing, and you say “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” It is just a greeting. People don’t really want to know if you are NOT fine. So sometimes, if it is a person I don’t know well, I just go ahead and lie.

It isn’t that I mean to be untruthful. The truth is just too complex and too sad and to wearisome to tell. I’m not so fine these days. But I am well, I suppose.

I’m clinging to my cosmic egg theory. I am nesting and keeping this precious, delicate thing warm until it hatches and I get to become acquainted with the nascent universe inside.

The truth is, I don’t really know what I am becoming. The pain of surviving nursing school and losing Little A and all the other hurtful things I am enduring now may be making me into a goddess or a monster. Or both. I am more ferocious now, but I am also more tender now. I cry more, but I also laugh more.

I was telling a friend yesterday that all the weak and useless things in my life are falling away. We are nursing students, so we are learning to be like firefighters in that we run into the crisis when others are running out. We face down the blood and viscera of other people unflinchingly. That is shaping me emotionally, as well. I am learning to see people much more clearly, and by extension, myself.

I know what I want. I want to bed down in hot coals. I want to howl at the moon. I want to make the world tremble when I roar. I also want to hear the whispers in silence. I want to cradle precious love in my hands. I want to heal. I want to be able to rest my head somewhere safe.

I can’t fall apart. If I can survive being hollowed out by grief, then I can be a vessel to contain joy. If I can avoid filling myself with anger and bitterness, I can fill with the appreciation of all of life’s small, almost indiscernible moments of beauty and truth. That is what happy looks like to me. Then I will be beyond fine. I will be transcendent, incandescent, and very, very good.

The Wellness Plan

So, I started back to school today, which is wonderful. I was so glad to be back and see my classmates. I gave and received many hugs. Of course, we hit the ground running, so there is already tons of work to do, but it still feels so much more purposeful than my desk job.

To make it through last semester, I had a rough outline of my wellness plan in my head, and I did a pretty good job of sticking to it. This semester I thought I would write it down and share it.

So here it is, in a nutshell: clean living. As clean as possible, anyway.

1. Proper diet: including taking a daily multivitamin and limiting the refined sugar and white flour, etc. No fads or crazy diets, just nourishing my body with lean proteins and veggies etc.
   
2. Proper sleep: That means as few all night study sessions as possible.
   
3. Time management: even if I have to write myself a to-the-minute schedule daily (with breaks, of course), I have to stay on task, especially if I want to get some sleep.
4. Exercise: SO important. Even if it does take an hour a day away from my books, I need to get up and MOVE.
5. Very little alcohol
6. Meditation time: sometimes a good workout is a good mental break, but I need time to attempt to still the torrent in my mind.
   
7. Family time: accomplished most readily with family dinner, but I can't be nose in a book 24/7.
8. Art: The hardest thing to make time for in my science curriculum. But I drag my poetry notebook around in my backpack, just in case.
9. Brainless entertainment: especially TV that makes me laugh. Gotta break up the stress.
10. Study, study, study: Nothing would give me a better endorphin rush than getting good grades.
11. Proper Hand Washing: you would be surprised how this one simple thing will keep you from getting sick.
    

Go me! Yay!

Some days this is HARD to do. But just trying to be mindful of it daily really seems to help.

Left, Right, Left, OWWW!

I have been walking 24-28 miles per week. My baby toe on my right foot has had a few blisters, and it is thrashed right now. I might need to switch up my exercise for a few days to let it heal. OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!

Bummer. Let's just say that I am not the type to ever have had much in the way of sports-related injury. I am built for comfort, not for speed.

But I am trying to be healthy. Even if it hurts???

What an Awesome Day!

I have had the most amazing day today. I feel so fantastic right now.

First, I got up really early-the stars were still out-and took a 4-mile walk. It was cold outside, but beautiful clear skies and stars and lightening pre-dawn skies. Usually I don't go that early, but I woke up with a fire in my belly today. I just felt good and wanted to get a workout in before going to class at 9 am.

It must be because I rested yesterday and connected with some friends and family on the phone, because I felt strengthened as I headed off to school after a good breakfast. I felt fortified and relaxed but alert.

School was great and totally stimulating today. I ate a salad for lunch and got philosophical with a classmate who was feeling down. I felt so good it was cool to be able to encourage her. I didn't have to worry about my own stuff and could really listen to her.

I just feel totally spiritual and energized. I'm loving life. Sure, a few people gave me funny looks because I was so cheerful, but how can they really argue with it?

*smile*

Then when I got home, I got a care package from my buddy Ted. It was this Japanese mayonnaise that he is totally obsessed with. He always sends me cool culinary things I can't get in Reno. I'll have to try it and see if I am a convert. It made me smile, though. It is so nice to have such stalwart companions. Just that little gesture made me feel cared for. I still need to drink that goat beer he sent me. That shit is strong, though. He knows I need a stiff belt from time to time. So thoughtful.

Oh! And every song on the radio on my drive home was on my list of favorites! Yay!

Good stuff.

How's that whole "being healthy" thing working out?

Um, yeah. I have been sick with a nasty cold and sore throat/cough/laryngitis for a goddamn week. I feel really worn out and can't seem to regulate my temperature properly. Unfortunately, there isn't much time for resting, although a bit more than there was while I was working full time.

Since most of my time is spent studying, you would think that was restful, but it is hard to focus your noggin while on cold medicine. *grumble*

On the upside, I have still managed a lower-than-last-week level of exercise. I figure the fresh air does me some good, so I took a 2-mile walk yesterday while the prep for the balloon races was going on. I wished I had my camera with me, because as I was walking, hot air balloons were landing all over my neighborhood. They were right over my head a few times. There were probably about 30 of them within a few blocks of my house. It was pretty cool, and I just had to smile. I wanted to jump in one and see where it took me.

I'm going to try to make it to the gym tomorrow. But first I need to do a little shopping. My pants are falling off because I have lost weight and need the next size down, and I need a new bra that won't be *look at my tits!* obvious under my white scrub top when I do my clinical rotations. I need a slightly smaller bra, too. (Don't cry yet, my breasts are still epic huge, my band size has gone down, though.)

I was sorta stuck on the whole weight loss thing for a while, but then I made a bet with a friend to lose 25 pounds by the time I graduate in 2010. I actually need to lose a lot more than that, but 25 pounds seems maybe doable. I lost 2 pounds this week, so that is a good start. Fancy that, the old "eat healthy food and work out more" plan seems to actually work.

As for my mental health, I am trying hard to remain positive, and so far I am doing okay. They are doing experiments on us up at school. We hook up to a monitor that measures our heart rhythms for "coherence" and we get a score based on our ability to enter into a consciously controlled state of calm. It is like meditating, science-style. Despite the fact that I am a known and notorious spaz, I got a respectably high score. The idea is that if we tap into coherence often enough, we can do it at will and for longer periods, even while, say, taking an exam. The goal is to have fewer students burn out of the program. It is a trip. I felt pretty calm and centered for a while afterward. I wanted to hug people, even though I spent much of the day solo. It should be interesting to see how this fits into my plans to get through the next two years with as much stress is on my plate.

Art-wise, I have been writing some sorta personal poetry these days. Not surprising considering my introspective mood lately. I do have the submission guidelines for a pretty major web zine sitting on my desk. I can submit up to three poems for consideration. I don't know which ones to choose. I suppose I will pick three that suit me at the moment and send them off and see what happens. It would be pretty cool to get a national byline for poetry like that, but I am in no way counting any chickens there. I would like to publish a few poems in the next 12 months. It would be a good way to keep artistically active. That and it seems like a masturbatory exercise to either only post them on my blog or just scribble them in my notebook and do nothing with them.

I have written hundreds (maybe over a thousand?) poems in my life so far. I even threw a stack from high school away at one point. Or maybe I burned them with that one diary and a bunch of correspondence from my days as a semi-professional crazy person. It seems to me that if I am going to produce that stuff anyway, I should probably do something with it. There is also a possible chapbook idea circling my noggin. Again, I would need to cut the wheat from the chaff to do that, and I just don't have time or enough objectivity to do that now. Might be a good project for next summer between terms.

That is what is up with me. How are you?

The Week in Review

Ok, I know that my week is not technically over yet. I have no classes today, and a list of errands to do that is as long as my arm. But for those keeping score, I thought I would recap my first week at Nursing School, etc.

• The reading requirements for this program have us all in fits. Hundreds of pages per day of complex medical information. I swear my brain has stretch marks. I am actually growing new neural pathways, and that causes real pain. This is the exact reason college students need alcohol. It is anesthetic.
• I have some brand new medical equipment to play with. I am having fun getting to know my new stethoscope. For some reason, owning a stethoscope makes me feel like the real deal.
• I'm sticking to my healthy diet and exercise plan. I'm even squeezing in short trips to the gym on days that I would normally have blown it off in favor of going to get a coffee. I am proud of myself for that.
• I can already see where I have some tangible strengths to bring to this program. All that time spent talking to the patients at the VA has given me good tools for assessment and other communication skills that are going to come in handy.
• I need to work on the technical side of things, and learn to handle the equipment confidently. I already know how to give injections, but all those tubes and wires are hard to handle gracefully. I have a bit of trepidation about learning to draw blood and start IV's, but I am lucky that one of my fellow students is a phlebotomist from one of the local hospitals, and he seems like he would be helpful.
• There are tons of interesting people taking the program with me. We are all getting to know each other. I have had lunch with different people every day. I have even proposed getting a study group together with other students who have kids, so Little A can get some play dates out of it, and maybe Tony can get some support from their spouses.
• This is going to be a really rough program, but so far I still feel positive about it. I'd like to think I can thrive, since I seem to manage under stress even if I do whine about it. I have a lot of homework to hammer away at over the weekend, but I am scheduling some leisure time.