The First Day, Only 364 Left To Go
A new year begins...
Did you make a New Year's resolution? I made one to not make one. I'm doing good just living my life right now without complicating it by placing restrictions on myself to change things. It seems like my life is a constant adjustment to daily situations I am placed in. That daily need to adjust to the ongoing demands of my family and job create more than enough change for me.
What I'm dealing with is a job that (for the most part) could be used for a military recruiting slogan. Something on the line of "Be It All To Everyone". Of course, just like military non-com's, that is with more than enough direction from the power's-that-be. Don't get me wrong, I like my job, if I was allowed to do it without being told how to do everything from the clothes that I wear, to how to properly dot the i's and cross the t's. In nursing, there are a lot of i's and t's to endure.
To keep home and loved ones together I travel for my job. For the most part I live out of a suitcase. I spend my time divided between my kids and my home and my job and my significant other's home. It works out to about a 50/50 split each month. Fortunately, my kids are for the most part raised (27 year old and a 15 year old) so other than a daily call home to keep up with their activities the elder son maintains the status quo in my absence. I'm blessed with good kids who take care of business whether it be job or school or choosing friends who have standards for living that are equal to their own. It helps that my boys like each other too and share similar hobbies. My better half works shifts that are often a struggle to juggle quality time with, given I am working on his, mine, and the boys schedules too. I can flex my time, he can't. So flex I do to the point that packing and unpacking and driving to and from gets extremely wearisome.
And then there is my daughter... She's a great gal, with a tremendous competitive drive that has taken her through her career to Albuquerque. I'm very proud of her, but gee it's hard to parent from afar. My New Year's Eve was spent worrying first about her traveling home after spending the holiday's with family in Kansas, then on the phone with her stuck in snow in a small town on the eastern edge of New Mexico, upset that she was stranded in a over-priced fleabag motel. This morning after work I called to check on her and found her determined to push on home regardless of road conditions. Her determination was motivated by the fact that she is scheduled to start a new job in management, which was a great move for her career. The good news is she made it in one piece. Normal drive time should have been 2.5 hours - she spent 6 hours standing much of the time still or traveling at horse and buggy speed. Patience is not one of her virtues though - my ears are still recovering from her appraisal of New Mexico's drivers and road crews.
All in all, life is good. It's a little hectic, made even more daunting with schedules and travel and the like. About three years from now, I will permanently settle with the significant other. In the meantime, it's one day at a time and maintaining a flexible equilibrium. For this year, I've made it through the first with just another 364 days of adjusting left. Catch me New Year's Eve 2009 for 2010, I've already figured out what my resolution will be - NO MORE SCHEDULES!
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Did you make a New Year's resolution? I made one to not make one. I'm doing good just living my life right now without complicating it by placing restrictions on myself to change things. It seems like my life is a constant adjustment to daily situations I am placed in. That daily need to adjust to the ongoing demands of my family and job create more than enough change for me.
What I'm dealing with is a job that (for the most part) could be used for a military recruiting slogan. Something on the line of "Be It All To Everyone". Of course, just like military non-com's, that is with more than enough direction from the power's-that-be. Don't get me wrong, I like my job, if I was allowed to do it without being told how to do everything from the clothes that I wear, to how to properly dot the i's and cross the t's. In nursing, there are a lot of i's and t's to endure.
To keep home and loved ones together I travel for my job. For the most part I live out of a suitcase. I spend my time divided between my kids and my home and my job and my significant other's home. It works out to about a 50/50 split each month. Fortunately, my kids are for the most part raised (27 year old and a 15 year old) so other than a daily call home to keep up with their activities the elder son maintains the status quo in my absence. I'm blessed with good kids who take care of business whether it be job or school or choosing friends who have standards for living that are equal to their own. It helps that my boys like each other too and share similar hobbies. My better half works shifts that are often a struggle to juggle quality time with, given I am working on his, mine, and the boys schedules too. I can flex my time, he can't. So flex I do to the point that packing and unpacking and driving to and from gets extremely wearisome.
And then there is my daughter... She's a great gal, with a tremendous competitive drive that has taken her through her career to Albuquerque. I'm very proud of her, but gee it's hard to parent from afar. My New Year's Eve was spent worrying first about her traveling home after spending the holiday's with family in Kansas, then on the phone with her stuck in snow in a small town on the eastern edge of New Mexico, upset that she was stranded in a over-priced fleabag motel. This morning after work I called to check on her and found her determined to push on home regardless of road conditions. Her determination was motivated by the fact that she is scheduled to start a new job in management, which was a great move for her career. The good news is she made it in one piece. Normal drive time should have been 2.5 hours - she spent 6 hours standing much of the time still or traveling at horse and buggy speed. Patience is not one of her virtues though - my ears are still recovering from her appraisal of New Mexico's drivers and road crews.
All in all, life is good. It's a little hectic, made even more daunting with schedules and travel and the like. About three years from now, I will permanently settle with the significant other. In the meantime, it's one day at a time and maintaining a flexible equilibrium. For this year, I've made it through the first with just another 364 days of adjusting left. Catch me New Year's Eve 2009 for 2010, I've already figured out what my resolution will be - NO MORE SCHEDULES!
(All open trackback post links MUST be reciprocated by a link to this site within your original post - it's only good manners, ya know...)
posted by Is It Just Me? at 2:46 PM
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