filer157

This is my first post and I'm torn between wanting to abandon nursing but feeling that I have too much invested and not being sure what else I want to do when I grow up...I should add that I'm 49! Anyone else feeling this way? Early in my career I worked on a rehab unit, then home health and then in home health management. When my son was born I wanted to work part-time and had to leave management. I started working part-time on an inpatient psych. unit mainly due to the weekend and evening shifts which kept my son out of daycare, my interest in psychology and being out of touch with high tech clinical skills. I worked as a part-time psych RN for 10 years. I initially enjoyed it but as regulations changed, we had more chronic, violent patients and questionably appropriate patients, I grew to resent working weekends and had little self satisfaction even though I am very knowledgeable and got excellent performance reviews. I feel like I have painted myself into a career corner because the area of nursing that I have expertise in, is the very type of work I no longer want to do. I have since left inpatient work, presently work psych home health prn (too many regs and paperwork!) and work part-time for a mental health residential rehab program. (low wages, poor public funding and admittance of more violent consumers) I did temp work doing chart auditing for a Medicare project which was interesting but the contract ended. I have no interest in any shift work, school or office nursing. Quality improvement seems interesting but all ads have required prior job and Excel experience. If I had another burning interest I think I would already be out of nursing as most friends my age have done. I am usually a decisive person but feel like I am stuck at this crossroad and am either afraid or unsure which direction to go. Sometimes I fantasize about things that seem exciting but are totally unrealistic for me or my family like working in the Foreign Service or for W.H.O. or U.N.H.C.R. at the U.N. or moving to Australia or writing and traveling for National Geographic. Maybe I'm looking for a fantasy job to put excitement in my otherwise routine, middle-aged, middle class, small town life?! Sorry for the long, whiny post...but this is my story and I'm sticking to it! Anyone else out there feeling like this?