Farewell, Livejournal.
This will probably be my last entry here. I love Livejournal so much. It's a great place for me to go and vent, and also serves as a log for what has happened in my life. If I can't remember when a certain thing happened, I can usually find it here. On occasion it is fun to go back and read things and realize that I don't even remember that some things happened. But it appears that everyone has fled. Live becomes ever more filled with distractions, and I, too, am guilty of finding more and more things that keep me distracted. But I think I have only one reader left (waves at DaraQW) and I appreciate it, but it appears that Livejournal's time has come and gone.
Still it is nice to go out on a good note. My career is on a solid trajectory toward management. The past few weeks have been bustling-to-damn-near exploding with opportunities. This week I am being sent to preceptor training class. I am on a solid path to being the department manager. I was chosen to be the nursing council representative for our department. Now granted, that last thing is usually a nuisance for most people, but I like serving on committees, and it is a requirement for the professional nursing career path at the hospital. So it's good to get it out of the way now. It is also a way of learning a lot about how the hospital works, and how departments interact with each other, so if nothing else, it is a fantastic learning experience. And for as long as I can remember, I don't mind getting paid to sit in a meeting all day. I also get an additional 2 hours a week to work compiling information from the meeting and getting it out to the rest of the department.
My job has some interesting dynamics. I work evening shift and part of that shift overlaps with the day shift. The day shift nurses love me, adore me even. I am so close to some of the nurses that there is hugging and kisses on the cheek and holding hands while we talk, lots of physical affection and I really love it. It might be a cultural thing - the majority of the nurses are Filipino and Indian, so to them there is nothing unusual about kissing and holding hands with someone you like and appreciate. Then on the evening shift, which is my usual shift, I am bullied and harassed. Well, they try anyway, but for the most part I ignore them. If I were a weaker, more inexperienced person it would bother me. But I am older with almost 10 years of dialysis experience, dealing with mean and nasty patients, so their schoolgirl antics don't bother me so much. They will say something like "I don't know why they picked you to go to preceptor class. You don't have very much experience". I stare at them for a minute and then go back to what I was doing. I don't even give them the satisfaction of answering back.
Doors are opening for several reasons. People around me can see that I have talent and brains. They see that I have a work ethic, emotional maturity, teamwork values and strong leadership potential. Another thing that works strongly in my favor is that - I am white. But it's not just the color of my skin, but that fact that I can COMMUNICATE well with the doctors, and I can see that they appreciate it. There is also a cultural difference with my race. The Filipinos are taught to do everything by the book, and they are exceptional at that. They know policy backward and forwards, they have fantastic bedside skills. Unfortunately they do this at the expense of common sense and critical thinking. They are subservient and obsequious. They don't make a move without checking with the doctors. For the older doctors who are more patriarchal this worked well. With younger doctors, it annoys the piss out of the them. They want us to be able to troubleshoot things, problem solve situations, use our nursing judgment to take care of things and not call them for every single goddam thing that happens. It didn't take them long to notice that that's how I work, and they appreciate it very much. Also, very little is lost to miscommunication with me and they love that too. They don't have to ask me the same thing six times and have me stammer out an answer in broken English and try to figure out what the hell it is I'm saying.
So yes, I am fully aware of the entitlement that comes with being white, but I am also aware of the skills I bring to the table. I can't just coast on the fact that I am white. I need to be tough and smart, use my critical thinking, my personality, my experience and my sense of humor to make working with me more pleasant for everyone. While some of the nurses feel that by being in that department 20-some odd years it makes them better at their job, my position is I have been in lots of hospitals and seen lots of ways of doing things. I have interacted with hundreds of doctors and can pick up on what style of interaction suits them best. And since I have that experience under my belt, I'm not stuck in a rut. I bring a fresh perspective on how things can be done.
So I realize that the bullying comes from resentment. At first I tried just being friends and getting along with them. That just made things worse. It made me look weak to them and they just bullied me harder. I finally realized that there's nothing I can do about it. It's a tough situation and it's not going to get better. All I can do is be polite to them, work as a team, make sure I'm doing everything by the book so they can't tattle on me, and ignore them. They are pretty much a powerless, sorry bunch who can't see that, if they were smart, they could use me to their advantage to make all our jobs easier. They would rather be immature and ignorant, wallow in their petty bullshit and feel sorry for themselves. It wouldn't bother me if I had to deal with this forever if need be. I love my job so much that I can overlook their nonsense. But as it turns out, the situation is quite temporary. I'm moving on to bigger and better things.
School is going very well. I already have four classes under my belt, and one more to finish up this semester. I love that it is self paced. I can burn through classes that I find easy and take my time on things that I don't grasp as quickly. I spent two weeks on care of the older adult, two weeks on nutrition and two months on biochemistry. It seems that most classes are of the nutrition variety that I can speed through without much trouble. If that's the case I could be through with my degree by September. At the very latest it would be a year from now. Either way, by this time next year I will be enrolled in a master's degree program and my life will have changed tremendously. Once I have the master's degree and a couple years of experience as a department manager, I can be a department manager anywhere, and that includes manager in a hospital closer to home.
As for the rest of my life, J and I are closer than we have ever been. We just observed our 15th anniversary. Neither of us can believe it has been that long. The really great thing is it doesn't feel that long. We still have wild, sexy chemistry even if we don't always have the physical ability to act on it. The fact that we WANT to is proof enough for us. Plans are underway for the next house. This time I feel like more of a participant. Now that I've been through it once I know how it works and what has to happen. I'll be a bigger help to J this time around. I am very glad that she wants to scale back to a smaller house. She got her dream house and all that goes with it, and it's not as much fun as she thought it would be. She still wants a way bigger house than I would ever want - four bedrooms and a four-car garage? Really? But at least she sees that a media room is useless. As I said all along, why am I going to get up and watch a movie in the media room, when I can stay on the couch and watch it right here? At the end of the building process we found ourselves too old to want to do much entertaining, so lots of things like a dining room, a butler's pantry and a big patio are going to go away too. Every time we have a party it takes us two days to recover. What's the point?
As for family, my kids alternate between being okay and not okay, but I think that's how it is with adult children. I do what I can to be their mother, but have finally got it through my head that I can't go back and change the past. All the money in the world cannot fix my poor decisions. I just have to be the best parent I can to them now and try and help them navigate adulthood. But it is a sadness I will carry for the rest of my life that I wasn't there for them like I should have been. As for my siblings, we barely acknowledge each other. As they slip into religion one by one we grow farther and farther apart. My theory for their finding religion is that they never found anything to give their lives meaning. As they grow older they grow more fearful of the world and technology, and so cling to religion because they don't know what else to do. I, too, struggle with the speed of change, but I do my best to make it work for me in my world as I know it and not be fearful. But my brothers took a path different than mine 20-odd years ago and our paths grow more divergent over time. I miss them terribly and I wish it could be different, but it's not.
Another great sadness is that I don't have a social life or friends to speak of. I have tried so many times to change this and nothing ever sticks. Most everyone I know who has friends met them in their teens and 20s. After a certain age it is impossible to develop relationships with other people. They already have full lives with old friends, family and grandkids. They don't have room to add someone new. And that's just people I would even care to have friendships with. Most people I meet aren't people I want to be friends with, for various reasons. People have more peculiarities and prejudices as they age. They are more set in their ways and not open to new ideas or perspectives. So when I get to know someone and they tell a nigger joke or show tea bagger leanings, it just ruins it for me. Older lesbians can be just as weird. Many of them are stuck in their hippie attitudes, mistrust the government, are given to conspiracy theories and are frequently fearful of new technology as anybody else. I am weary of the "I refuse to give up real books and try ebooks" attitude. To find anyone I can try and relate to, who isn't fearful of technology and still listening to 70s love songs till you puke, I get down to women who are in their 20s. I enjoy their enthusiasm for the world and learning new things, but get annoyed with their love of drama and overreacting to things I think are petty and stupid. And it's weird hanging out with people who are my kids' age.
So in that way, J and I are perfect for each other. We both have more in common with each other than are respective cultures, which is what drew us together in the first place. We aren't perfect. We have are challenges but they aren't as big as they once were. We are both faster to forgive and more likely to ignore things instead of making big deal out of them.
I don't know what the future holds, but I am hopeful. My career looks solid. Money is secure. My personal life isn't what I would like it to be. A social life will have to come find me. My trying to go find one hasn't worked out all that well. I wish my kids the best. My family is pretty much not a family to me anymore. So that leaves focusing on my health and fitness, my intellectual interests, and maybe some creative interests once I retire.
So long, Livejournal. If by some miracle it livens up again, I will come back. But as it is right now I will consider this my last entry.
Thanks to everyone who was my friend and is still my friend. It has been a fun 10 years.
Still it is nice to go out on a good note. My career is on a solid trajectory toward management. The past few weeks have been bustling-to-damn-near exploding with opportunities. This week I am being sent to preceptor training class. I am on a solid path to being the department manager. I was chosen to be the nursing council representative for our department. Now granted, that last thing is usually a nuisance for most people, but I like serving on committees, and it is a requirement for the professional nursing career path at the hospital. So it's good to get it out of the way now. It is also a way of learning a lot about how the hospital works, and how departments interact with each other, so if nothing else, it is a fantastic learning experience. And for as long as I can remember, I don't mind getting paid to sit in a meeting all day. I also get an additional 2 hours a week to work compiling information from the meeting and getting it out to the rest of the department.
My job has some interesting dynamics. I work evening shift and part of that shift overlaps with the day shift. The day shift nurses love me, adore me even. I am so close to some of the nurses that there is hugging and kisses on the cheek and holding hands while we talk, lots of physical affection and I really love it. It might be a cultural thing - the majority of the nurses are Filipino and Indian, so to them there is nothing unusual about kissing and holding hands with someone you like and appreciate. Then on the evening shift, which is my usual shift, I am bullied and harassed. Well, they try anyway, but for the most part I ignore them. If I were a weaker, more inexperienced person it would bother me. But I am older with almost 10 years of dialysis experience, dealing with mean and nasty patients, so their schoolgirl antics don't bother me so much. They will say something like "I don't know why they picked you to go to preceptor class. You don't have very much experience". I stare at them for a minute and then go back to what I was doing. I don't even give them the satisfaction of answering back.
Doors are opening for several reasons. People around me can see that I have talent and brains. They see that I have a work ethic, emotional maturity, teamwork values and strong leadership potential. Another thing that works strongly in my favor is that - I am white. But it's not just the color of my skin, but that fact that I can COMMUNICATE well with the doctors, and I can see that they appreciate it. There is also a cultural difference with my race. The Filipinos are taught to do everything by the book, and they are exceptional at that. They know policy backward and forwards, they have fantastic bedside skills. Unfortunately they do this at the expense of common sense and critical thinking. They are subservient and obsequious. They don't make a move without checking with the doctors. For the older doctors who are more patriarchal this worked well. With younger doctors, it annoys the piss out of the them. They want us to be able to troubleshoot things, problem solve situations, use our nursing judgment to take care of things and not call them for every single goddam thing that happens. It didn't take them long to notice that that's how I work, and they appreciate it very much. Also, very little is lost to miscommunication with me and they love that too. They don't have to ask me the same thing six times and have me stammer out an answer in broken English and try to figure out what the hell it is I'm saying.
So yes, I am fully aware of the entitlement that comes with being white, but I am also aware of the skills I bring to the table. I can't just coast on the fact that I am white. I need to be tough and smart, use my critical thinking, my personality, my experience and my sense of humor to make working with me more pleasant for everyone. While some of the nurses feel that by being in that department 20-some odd years it makes them better at their job, my position is I have been in lots of hospitals and seen lots of ways of doing things. I have interacted with hundreds of doctors and can pick up on what style of interaction suits them best. And since I have that experience under my belt, I'm not stuck in a rut. I bring a fresh perspective on how things can be done.
So I realize that the bullying comes from resentment. At first I tried just being friends and getting along with them. That just made things worse. It made me look weak to them and they just bullied me harder. I finally realized that there's nothing I can do about it. It's a tough situation and it's not going to get better. All I can do is be polite to them, work as a team, make sure I'm doing everything by the book so they can't tattle on me, and ignore them. They are pretty much a powerless, sorry bunch who can't see that, if they were smart, they could use me to their advantage to make all our jobs easier. They would rather be immature and ignorant, wallow in their petty bullshit and feel sorry for themselves. It wouldn't bother me if I had to deal with this forever if need be. I love my job so much that I can overlook their nonsense. But as it turns out, the situation is quite temporary. I'm moving on to bigger and better things.
School is going very well. I already have four classes under my belt, and one more to finish up this semester. I love that it is self paced. I can burn through classes that I find easy and take my time on things that I don't grasp as quickly. I spent two weeks on care of the older adult, two weeks on nutrition and two months on biochemistry. It seems that most classes are of the nutrition variety that I can speed through without much trouble. If that's the case I could be through with my degree by September. At the very latest it would be a year from now. Either way, by this time next year I will be enrolled in a master's degree program and my life will have changed tremendously. Once I have the master's degree and a couple years of experience as a department manager, I can be a department manager anywhere, and that includes manager in a hospital closer to home.
As for the rest of my life, J and I are closer than we have ever been. We just observed our 15th anniversary. Neither of us can believe it has been that long. The really great thing is it doesn't feel that long. We still have wild, sexy chemistry even if we don't always have the physical ability to act on it. The fact that we WANT to is proof enough for us. Plans are underway for the next house. This time I feel like more of a participant. Now that I've been through it once I know how it works and what has to happen. I'll be a bigger help to J this time around. I am very glad that she wants to scale back to a smaller house. She got her dream house and all that goes with it, and it's not as much fun as she thought it would be. She still wants a way bigger house than I would ever want - four bedrooms and a four-car garage? Really? But at least she sees that a media room is useless. As I said all along, why am I going to get up and watch a movie in the media room, when I can stay on the couch and watch it right here? At the end of the building process we found ourselves too old to want to do much entertaining, so lots of things like a dining room, a butler's pantry and a big patio are going to go away too. Every time we have a party it takes us two days to recover. What's the point?
As for family, my kids alternate between being okay and not okay, but I think that's how it is with adult children. I do what I can to be their mother, but have finally got it through my head that I can't go back and change the past. All the money in the world cannot fix my poor decisions. I just have to be the best parent I can to them now and try and help them navigate adulthood. But it is a sadness I will carry for the rest of my life that I wasn't there for them like I should have been. As for my siblings, we barely acknowledge each other. As they slip into religion one by one we grow farther and farther apart. My theory for their finding religion is that they never found anything to give their lives meaning. As they grow older they grow more fearful of the world and technology, and so cling to religion because they don't know what else to do. I, too, struggle with the speed of change, but I do my best to make it work for me in my world as I know it and not be fearful. But my brothers took a path different than mine 20-odd years ago and our paths grow more divergent over time. I miss them terribly and I wish it could be different, but it's not.
Another great sadness is that I don't have a social life or friends to speak of. I have tried so many times to change this and nothing ever sticks. Most everyone I know who has friends met them in their teens and 20s. After a certain age it is impossible to develop relationships with other people. They already have full lives with old friends, family and grandkids. They don't have room to add someone new. And that's just people I would even care to have friendships with. Most people I meet aren't people I want to be friends with, for various reasons. People have more peculiarities and prejudices as they age. They are more set in their ways and not open to new ideas or perspectives. So when I get to know someone and they tell a nigger joke or show tea bagger leanings, it just ruins it for me. Older lesbians can be just as weird. Many of them are stuck in their hippie attitudes, mistrust the government, are given to conspiracy theories and are frequently fearful of new technology as anybody else. I am weary of the "I refuse to give up real books and try ebooks" attitude. To find anyone I can try and relate to, who isn't fearful of technology and still listening to 70s love songs till you puke, I get down to women who are in their 20s. I enjoy their enthusiasm for the world and learning new things, but get annoyed with their love of drama and overreacting to things I think are petty and stupid. And it's weird hanging out with people who are my kids' age.
So in that way, J and I are perfect for each other. We both have more in common with each other than are respective cultures, which is what drew us together in the first place. We aren't perfect. We have are challenges but they aren't as big as they once were. We are both faster to forgive and more likely to ignore things instead of making big deal out of them.
I don't know what the future holds, but I am hopeful. My career looks solid. Money is secure. My personal life isn't what I would like it to be. A social life will have to come find me. My trying to go find one hasn't worked out all that well. I wish my kids the best. My family is pretty much not a family to me anymore. So that leaves focusing on my health and fitness, my intellectual interests, and maybe some creative interests once I retire.
So long, Livejournal. If by some miracle it livens up again, I will come back. But as it is right now I will consider this my last entry.
Thanks to everyone who was my friend and is still my friend. It has been a fun 10 years.