Hard-won lessons from one nurse's "Summer of Discontent", which began with what seemed to be a secure job and the adulation of many, and ended with a much-changed---and humbled---attitude toward life and work.
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If you've been following this series, you know it's been a tough summer for me.......perhaps the toughest one of my half-century-plus on this planet.
In three short, but seemingly interminable months, I lost not only my job and my income, but my very identity. That, surprisingly, has been the most difficult aspect of this experience to accept---harder than the humiliations of unemployment, harder, even, than the job interviews (and rejections) and the forgoing of our usual summer activities because we literally couldn't afford them this year. All of a sudden, I not only didn't have a place where I needed to be every day, I was no longer the person I've believed myself to be for many years: the "go-to" person who dispenses medicine and wisdom, the family's problem-solver and decision-maker, the caretaker and protector of all.
Though my period of idleness came to a fairly swift end---I found a new job after only a couple of months---I've gone through some tectonic shifts in the foundation of my life that have literally shaken me to the core, and while I'm no longer reeling, the aftershocks continue. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing, as I'm discovering something new and transformational every single day:
I've learned that there IS no such thing as security anymore..........if indeed there ever was. I think the illusion of security is about the best we can expect in this life, whether we seek it in a job, a loved one, even an identity. The only consistent thing in life is change; just about the time we become contented with the way things are, something hits the fan and blows it all away, and we have to get used to a new 'normal'. Best to simply accept that fact and get on with it.
I've found that nursing doesn't make me happy. In fact, the career itself is one gi-normous cluster-mug, and if one isn't neurotic, depressed, anxious, paranoid, and chronically anal-retentive to begin with, nursing will make her/him that way. It's not just the crazy hours or the politics, it's because we have so much responsibility....and so very little power. That said, I am a nurse who still finds rewards in the job that I know I'd never find anywhere else, and until that no longer holds true, a nurse I will remain. While my mental health may suffer a little sinus condition from time to time, at least I know now where my vulnerabilities lie so I can avoid the situations that used to send me into a complete tailspin. And THAT's power.
I've come to believe that willful ignorance should be added to the list of deadly sins. I'm not talking about "dumb Doras" here; there is a world of difference between genuine stupidity---which is often inheritable, unintentional, and generally unamenable to fixes---and ignorance, in which one a) behaves as though s/he is stupid, and b) has every intention of continuing in this fashion. We see examples of it every day, not only in our workplaces, but in everyday situations where our managers, co-workers, and even leaders take pride in their open-mindedness to the detriment of all concerned; or when so-called political correctness rules the day instead of hard-headed common sense. To illustrate: how can nurse managers who have ever worked as actual nurses NOT understand that we don't "have the time", no matter what their silly scripts force us to say?
And finally, I've discovered that no matter how much we may think we matter, NO ONE is indispensable, and work---indeed life itself---goes on without us. In fact, I'm happy to report that my former employer is doing just fine without me; the census is back up, and the nurses who toughed it out are working overtime now. And even though some of 'my' CNAs still text me and tell me how much they hate working under the nurse who replaced me, it's clear that they're not going to quit anytime soon......nor should they. Even if loyalties were such that they did want to follow me, I wouldn't want them to disrupt their lives in such a manner; that would be the height of selfishness.
Besides, I'm still looking: the workload at my new job is twice what it was at the old one, and my almost-52-year-old body simply won't last long under these conditions. But thankfully, I'm dealing from a position of strength now---few things are more attractive to an employer than an applicant who already has a job---and since I have absolutely nothing to lose (and possibly everything to gain), I'm going to be very relaxed at my interview with the state government people next week.
