And that’s all I have to say about that

I borrowed this post title from “Forrest Gump,” as it is where I am with life as a blogger at this juncture.   My life is currently on a cycle of similarity to other years — still teaching, still working in research too, and still having a revolving doors of medical issues that challenge and disrupt life.  There is a sameness to it all, which isn’t really my style but is my truth right now.  I’m not writing much but am reading a lot — currently on my fourth read-through of Rabbi Naomi Levy’s “Hope Will Find You.”  (I highly recommend reading it, especially if your life has ever been rudely knocked off-course by some kind of medical circumstance).

At some time in the future, I expect there will some grand change in my life, prompted by a relationship or a move or a puppy!  (I had such a clear vision the other day of me in a condo with a galley style kitchen, and there was a baby gate and the sweetest puppy in the kitchen!)  I expect I’ll have a lot of new things to say and will start writing more again.  But, this chapter with this blog and the focus here is closed.

Thanks for reading!  Love all the comments and comradery.  Go forth and read others…check out Andrea’s Superhero blog (on my blog roll) — you won’t be disappointed.

Over and out.

My big ideas

Due to work and school, I have been immersed in thinking about nursing and education a lot in the last three years.  Nursing and teaching are pretty similar professions in three large ways — both fields are dominated by women, are considered “caring” or “service” professions, and have high rates of attrition (with people leaving the field entirely).  Other professions have high attrition too — I teach students who are re-training for new jobs either due to being laid-off or because their first profession wasn’t a good fit.

So this got me thinking…and thinking…and thinking.  And my conclusion from the thinking is that a helpful part of people’s education as they decide on a career could be to ask a series of questions that alert people to key non-task features of certain types of jobs.  For example… some jobs are more 9 to 5 and your off-time is yours, while other jobs have flexible scheduling but may require work at home.  Some jobs require you to be on call, some require travel, some offer overtime.  Some jobs run on a specific schedule so your time off may always — and only – be at holidays and summers, while others may offer more opportunity to decide your own time off.  I suspect that those facts about certain types of jobs have as much to do with people leaving the professions as the tasks people do on the job.

My professional life works best for me because my schedule is about 90% flexible.  I have to be in class to teach, and I have to be at certain meetings, but that’s only a total of about 8-10 hours per week and the rest of my work hours (which often go over 40 hours per week during the academic year) are my choice and can change week-to-week.  My life works because of this — I can rest a lot and pace myself in ways that work around my health and around the rest of my life.  I do most of my teaching work (preparation, grading) at home, a lot of it on weekends, so my time at home is often work-focused.  And I don’t get to choose my vacation time — I can’t just take a week off in mid-October or go to an out-of-state wedding in March.  The downsides are such small prices for me to pay in exchange for the flexibility that I have, and I also appreciate the fact that when I’m off (over a teaching break, for example), I’m off — nobody has any sense that they are allowed access to me on vacation.  But, I know plenty of people who would not want to work at home, or who want to be able to take off on vacation during the off-season.

So, I just wonder whether people understand these types of job features as they choose a profession.  Seems like some of the “interest inventory” surveys that people take could include questions related to professional lifestyle (for lack of a better phrase).

And that’s my big idea.    (One of my friends has a category called “My Big Ideas” on his blog, and this felt like the right title  here.)

 

 

A weird year

I really think the last 12 months have been one of the strangest time periods in my life.  Not bad, not good, just weird.  Some of it was my fault — for the first time ever, I really felt over-committed in terms of the number of different responsibilities that I had to keep up with; it wasn’t the time commitments involved but just that my brain could not switch tasks well enough to keep up with all the different sets of expectations.  Some of the drama was just from other people behaving badly.  Some of it has been health stuff for relatives and for me — for me, an oddly healthy winter followed by the Summer of Infection (still ongoing).  And yesterday, I almost got hit by a car.  Bad karma?

So I’m just trying to look ahead.  I’m looking ahead to the end of my current grad program, to travel (Philly next year?), to someplace else to live (a larger apartment in 1-2 years and/or a condo in about 3 years).  I’m looking forward to a new baby cousin in November (another girl for my Dad’s side of the family!).  I’m looking forward to attending the Messiah concert in December (maybe even sitting in the Mezzanine this year) and to seeing “Chicago” on stage next spring.  I’m looking forward to watching the Summer Olympics next year!

And I hope the next 12 months feel like happy, growing, grateful times.

The kidneys again

No matter what is going on with my health, we never get far away from worrying about my kidneys.  Low blood protein last winter raised some alarms.  And I just had my third episode of significant and persistent fluid swelling that landed me in ER, which was undoubtedly triggered by infection but things don’t usually get that bad with simple infection.  In most people.  But my body never follows the rules of most people anyway.  Each time, we put me on antibiotics, and I lose 5-10 pounds in a few days as the fluid swelling goes away.

So we’ll check my labs again, and my doctors will puzzle through what’s up with all this.  I was at NIH a couple of months after my first fluid swelling/infection episode, and they couldn’t figure it out, and I’ve seen two nephrologists and a urologist locally, and they are at a loss.  With my hydration disorder, nothing about my kidney-related labs looks like it would in someone with normal hydration patterns.

As one of my late relatives used to say, if you’re going to have medical problems, get something common.  Having rare conditions is the pits!

Retirement

For a lot of reasons, I haven’t given a lot of thought to life beyond my working years (other than diligently saving for retirement).  I’m still fairly young.  I don’t particularly like to think about having unstructured time!  (I’m all about structure.)  With my health issues, I haven’t always pictured myself living long enough or living with good enough health to really enjoy (or have choices about living during) my retirement.  But, I also had a hard time imagining very far into the future when I clung so tightly to old dreams for my life.  If I married and raised children, my entire future would be different from what I could ever imagine now, so those dreams required a “planning for all contingencies with total unknowns” mindset that is puzzling to deal with.

But lately, I’ve played around a lot with painting a picture of what life looks like if another path unfolds for me.  And that imagining has extended into retirement, which is 30 or more years away.  That’s a long time to dream ahead for!  But I thought…let’s just suppose I don’t marry and don’t have children, and I’m healthy enough to have a fair amount of choice in what retirement looks like for me.  What would I do?

At the same time as I’m imagining forward, I also had the recent experience of feeling so sad leaving Disney World.  As we drove home from Disney World, I was actively trying to figure out a way to arrange life so that I could spend more time in Florida.  And then these two ideas collided!  Why had I never thought of this before?  Especially given that I’ve had many relatives take this route.  I could retire to Florida — at least for winters, if not year round.  My grandfather did that!  Several of my grandmother’s sisters did that.  Mom’s cousin did that.  My parents won’t be doing it, but I could!  Why not?!  I can’t imagine who would need me to stay in Michigan year-round 30 years from now.

So, I’ve got Plan B of life all planned out now, ending with retirement to Disney World.  That just sounds like entirely too much fun. 

Spring cleaning

My work schedule is lighter than normal this spring and I’m not taking or teaching any classes right now, so I’ve had a lot more time at home lately.  During the first week of this schedule, I’d get home at 5 or 6 p.m., eat some dinner, and then wonder, “Now what?”  It would occur to me to watch a movie…and when that ended at 8 o’clock, I was back to the same question, “Now what?!!”  I wasn’ t sure what to do with myself!

This week, I got my groove on though!  I was having problems with my computer that I thought might be due to the somewhat overcrowded workspace on the table that I use it on.  So I took the piles of papers off the table and put them in the middle of my living area, on the floor.  And my answer to my “now what” question became apparent, at least for that evening — go through all these papers!  When I got done with the papers and catalogs that night (most of which were recycled), I went through old bills the next night, and then started on the magazines.

And so, I have recycled 27 pounds of stuff in the last few days.  And there is more to come!  When I finish with papers, I plan to go through my closet and work on getting some clothes out of there.  And there are always empty bottles that need rinsing and recycling.  My aim is that my apartment will be 100 pounds lighter by June 1st.

It’s very nice to have this time to clean and to have the spirit to do it!  I felt like I was overdue for a cleansing activity of some sort, and this is surely fitting the bill.  All the piles of stuff drive me nuts when I’m crazy busy and really don’t have the blocks of time needed to do this kind of cleaning.  They will drive me nuts no more!  And thankfully (I guess…), the newspapers will not pile up again since we don’t have a daily paper here anymore, and I no longer subscribe to any magazines.  So some of this work will get rid of a problem permanently.  If only the rest of life’s problems were that easy to get rid of forever, eh?!

Disney Dreams

My Mom and I returned from Disney World on Saturday!  It was a fabulous trip.  I soooooo love Disney World!  I have great childhood memories of being there, and it’s a place that suits my personality with all the music and joyfulness.  It’s just plain fun!

We went to all four Disney parks, and I went to the Magic Kingdom a second time by myself as well.  I took over 200 photos and had fun putting them into an album tonight.  Photos of big events (the Disney street party and the Beauty and the Beast performance) make me smile, but photos of little moments do as well (me grinning ear to ear with my sorbet at the Plaza restaurant, and my Mom drinking apple juice from a Big Bird juice box!).  The weather was mostly sunny and hot — it was great to be outdoors and be warm!  And I couldn’t get over how green everything is.  Spring (indeed, summer!) has sprung in the south.  (Spring is delayed here at home!  It feels like winter.)

It was great to be away.  For days and days, I didn’t even think about work.  I generally keep a better schedule on vacation without all the other distractions of life — medicines and bedtimes are on schedule, and rest is more restful.  And Disney is a place that makes me feel so happy.  I see pure joy in my photos!  It was a joy to just be there.  And it was hard to leave.

Teaching Thursdays #154

Why is it that just when I get my students exactly where I want them, the semester ends?!  I guess it’s just the way of teaching, that they are supposed to be at this point when they are finished.  But, I want to keep them!  They ask great questions and are so much more engaged with the material than they were even a few weeks ago.  Our class time was fantastic the last couple of weeks!  I told them to keep up this behavior in the class they take next because it will serve them well.

Seeking

When I was buying my new-to-me car, the salesperson asked me a question that I don’t think anyone has ever asked me before.  He said, “Are you the type of person who likes to read a lot of opinions about something before you make a decision?  If you are, I can point you to some websites.”  I didn’t even have to think about the answer to that question.  “No,” I said, “I don’t find reading opinions very useful.”

I had never thought about that being a “type of person” before, but suddenly, the whole world made sense to me!  (Well, OK, maybe not the whole world, but the internet at the very least.)  One of my least favorite things about the internet is that everyone seems to voice an opinion on everything, regardless of their level of knowledge or experience.  There are discussion boards and comment features on everything.  I’m all for healthy debate, collegial discussions, and thoughtful presentation of ideas.  But responding to a newspaper article by saying, “Well that guy is just an idiot!” is not helpful to anyone.  Is it?  And chances are good that if I had taken the car salesperson up on his offer, he would have pointed me to a website where people had good things and bad things to say about whatever car I was looking at.  And chances are extremely good that none of them would have really addressed the concerns that I had about the car I was thinking of buying anyway (which was “does the claustrophobic feeling of this car ever go away?!” <– this is why I bought used and not new, by the way, as the new cars are shorter than older ones).

But, even outside of purchases, I am the “type of person” who might seek counsel from a select few, very knowledgable people on some issue to add to my point of view, but then I do what I know to be best at that time.  I’ve made decisions to begin and end graduate programs without seeking much advice on the matter.  I decided on which apartment to move into on my own.  If I pursue purchase of a home (condo) in a few years, I’ll like start looking and proceed through with purchase without much, if any, involvement of other people.  My decisions are not impulsive or ill-informed, but they are not globally informed either.  I rarely need random feedback, and I don’t go seek it from strangers, as a general rule.  And unless someone I know knows a great deal about something (like my brother knows a lot about cars), then I don’t ask them either.  I just don’t.

So, no, I am not the type of person who will read a lot, or even any, opinions online in order to make decisions.  Are you?

Teaching Thursdays #153

So…the downside of teaching in a space that’s much larger that I need is that my students spread themselves out and don’t seem to interact with each other.  I love all of our space, and I love the wide open-ness of it (as I love wide open spaces out in the world!), but having never taught in a large space before, I did not plan for the disconnectedness of the students.  And now we are nearing the end of the semester, and they hardly know each other and rarely talk to each other.  That’s a problem.

But, the space does give me room to dance!    I’m learning to Rumba this winter, and the last two class periods, I’ve very absent-mindedly done some of my Rumba steps in class.  One of my students caught me in the act this week and looked at me, as if to say, “Wait a minute…are you dancing?”  Why yes, yes I am dancing!