Early on in the beginnings of my career as a nurse…I had a goal. Well, honestly, I’ve had several goals related to nursing and they have changed many times. I’m not actually sure when I voiced this particular one, either in the trudges of nursing school or deep in the virtual insanity of working graveyard shifts, but there has been one goal that has remained consistent while other goals shifted and molded into my ever changing ideas about nursing.
I want to work less so that I can do more.
I have been working my ass off for the past several years, as a nurse, building my experience. Working long shifts. Working stressful shifts. Putting in extra time so that other nurses wouldn’t have difficulties picking up where I left off. Or putting in extra time so a patient or family member was comfortable and could have a better evening. Or just trying to catch up so that I could attempt to relax in my time off.
For the past few years in home health and now hospice, managing caseloads of patients/families, means that my days are never really “done.” Often that means I am putting in extra hours to stay on top of things, and then putting in extra hours trying to “turn off” the day so I can have some time for myself. It’s tough sometimes. It’s tough a lot of the times. I tend to put off things that I’d like to do or accomplish because at the end of the day….I’m just too tired to even think about it. Not cool.
Because I hate to make it sound like I am only complaining, I should say that I really do like what I do. I could write an entire other post about the things that I have learned from what I do. That being said, I don’t want what I do for work to define who I am. And working 50+ exhausting hours a week does not really help me feel that there is much else to me.
The other more recent addition to the goal of working less, is that I want to work weekends. “What?! Are you crazy?!?” you might say. No. But my partner in life crime works every weekend, and I REALLY don’t care what days of the week I have off…as long as I have them.
So why am I blabbering on and on about this? I really just wanted to try to set up how AWESOME this next part is to me.
I got another position doing what I do. But it’s 30 hours a week….Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And I am giddy in the knowing that I am getting what I want.
So, if this isn’t enough to make you say in your head “YEAH MARIA!!”, I also made a lot of pretty new things over the weekend. Here are some of them.
Prepare yourself…to see (or hear of) a continually new and improved, but still ultimately genuine, version of ME. I’m just sayin’.
