Just A Mouse Click Away...

I am enjoying my official return to a sane life, less than 24 hours after completing my last involuntary 12 hour shift. I am trying to pretend that the fatigue I feel today is not a work hangover. It really is, but let's pretend it's not.

Yesterday I was so happy. Even though it's a seamless transition between working as a regular employee to going to a relief position in the same department, it really felt like I stepped over a threshold. I suffered through the usual stuff all day, and made mental notes once again of all the ridiculous little steps that get in the way of actually interacting and taking care of the patients' needs.

Lately it's been coming down to how many mouse clicks does it take until you can get back to patient care. Adding an extra mouse click after the login screen, for example, to force you to look at the "message of the day"- before you can click into the work that you really have to do- it's just one more mouse click that adds to the already built up stress that is driving people crazy and leading to random meltdowns and four letter expletives. Now I will spend fewer hours of my life dealing with that.

I went to the pool at EPIC this morning and ran for 45 minutes in the deep water followed by 800 meters of swimming. I'm getting more efficient, it's like riding a bike, it comes back even after years of not doing it. I can't believe I didn't do it for so long. The last time I swam regularly was in graduate school, back in the early 90s, at the CSU rec center, when it was new. Now they've already updated the facility. I loved swimming then, and gave it up after graduate school.

The other night I ran with Wheaties Boy and it went much better this time. We went slow, but picked it up to a sub-8:30 pace at the end and the hamstring was fine. I just need to ease into it. I feel like I've lost very little fitness despite the long breaks and minimal activity of the past 5 months. And the intentionally unknown amount of weight gain...

I wish the tire around my midsection would at least keep me warm. It's cold today, I turned on the heat! I am a wimp, I know, but it was 59 degrees in the house and the toilet seat was cold. WAAAH!

So I spend my time now working on parts of my business plan. I found a great website designer to help me, she is highly recommended and is local. I also found someone to help me redesign my logo. Those are the fun parts.

So much to do! After the website and logo, there's filling in the details of the business plan, the certifications, the client inquiries, the marketing ideas, the trademarking- yes I'm going that far- you name it. And it all costs money. But...someone once told me there are only three things you need for success in business. Compassion, courage and cash. And cash is the least important of the three. So I think I'm on the road to success.

Of course that's oversimplified. All the stresses of working for someone else are replaced by different stresses of working for yourself. But it's really a different stress, and completely different than what I've been doing. For example, it's raining today, and 48 degrees. I had to run across the yard to my office, the Woman Cave, in the rain, and turn on the heat.

But during my breaks from work I made lentil soup and danced with the Buffaloes. And I had time to pee when I needed to.

Ask any nurse, it doesn't get much better than that!