Drive

I'm wondering what happened to "me," or what I thought was "me"?

The culture/reality shock of real life hospital nursing is settling home now, and that's fine. I know I will still continue to be outraged by the apathetic anti-care we give, but things frustrate me less, on some days, maybe because I have more experience, and certain things are not quite as scary once you've been through one or two, or a dozen.

Any way, I wonder what I'm doing with myself. Most people who know me think I am underutilizing my potential, even if they don't exactly put it that way. Part of this is because people think nurses are, on the whole, bimbos, whose main job (aside from luring doctors into marriage) is to fluff pillows, bring water pitchers, and scrub out bed pans, which is actually not an entirely inaccurate picture of part of what we do (the fluff and puff stuff). And I have met nurses who are scary bimbos, or just plain scary. But that's kind of besides the point, because I've met bimbos and scary people in all walks of life.

Unfortunately, I'm just tired right now. Too tired to think about hanging another millstone of debt around my neck and go back to school, too tired to think about suffering through endless papers and classes and crap just to get another degree that will prove "I'm really good at school." I had a fleeting thought about going back to school, getting my JD, and getting totally Jack McCoy on hospital administrations' collective asses. Unfortunately, law is probably not as fun and sexy as they make it look on Law and Order, just like ER, while probably remaining the most accurate made-for-t.v. portrayal of medicine, still rings hollow in a lot of ways. (Which is too bad, because it would be great if everybody really cared that much about their patients, clients, whatever. And also, I really like the time-speed-up thing, like how a Law and Order murder trial takes about 5 days from start to finish, and how no one bothers to send any one to surgery on ER, they just do whatever major surgical procedure in a trauma bay, with the family watching, because who cares about such silly things as sterile fields.)

I've also thought about writing a book, but not a real academic book, just a funny one. Kind of like Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts, or something. I'm much too lazy to write an entire book, though. Maybe some nursing haikus:

Stupid attendings
Patients bleeding out their ass
No one gives a fuck.

Oh that's all for today. Too spent to think up something more creative. Maybe I'll have a book of haikus in another decade or so.

How about I'll just live in obscurity, like everybody else, and make fun of people and stuff at whatever stupid job I get hired to next, and complain about how crappy my life is, just like now, except I'll be in a different, but similar, environment.

Note to self: orthostasis and nausea are not good for creativity. Must come back to this topic later, when feel less like wretching for physical, as opposed to philosophical, reasons.