Another Excerpt

Yeah, most of my writing energy is still going to NaNoWriMo right now.  Just crossed the 25K threshold this week.  Here's another Ordinary Thing:

"Liminal Space

There are weird intersections in the world where time does not feel like it moves correctly.  Spaces that feel like an odd intersection of time.  A hospital hallway at night, for example, feels outside of time, that people and time both pass in the hallway but somehow without actually touching one another, walking alongside each other but not affecting the other.  Alone in the early hours of the morning, before the sun is up, I have my own space in the kitchen.  No other sounds except for my dog adjusting herself, the hum of the refrigerator and whatever I might put directly in my ears.  This morning, the sound of my keyboard is also present, gently but steadily clacking away in bursts at a time.  My dog has found her favorite spot on the couch as we adjust to the waking day together.  She will adjust by going back to sleep; I will take the same kind of peace for a moment or two longer, finding that pausing to acknowledge and dwell in the in between spaces is a good moment to run a self systems check, notice the taste of my coffee, and otherwise allow my mind to wander a bit further before jumping into the full weight of the day.  

A few words written before the day even really starts, dressed and prepared for more active spaces but waiting in a relaxation state if only for a moment.  The day promises to be a full one, but this moment is mine at least, a moment that is outside of time and space.  I feel vast and thin, stretching my mind out without trying to force it in one particular direction, allowing it to move to the crevices I had been avoiding or to find a new outcropping that I had not noticed fully before.  It’s a safe space to wander if only for a moment, where I can control the input without outside demands.  I notice my shoulders hunched forward and ask them gently to release.  I notice the tension in my temples and ask those muscles to calm as well.  One more deep breath to release the stiffness in my thoracic cavity.  And another deep breath just because it feels good, noticing how the breath feels in my body, moving through each space with awareness and curiosity. 

For just a moment.  For just this space.  Luna will need to be fed before I leave for work, and my lunch will need to be packed and readied, but at least I have a moment here, an infinite and temporary moment that is mine and only mine."

It's NaNoWriMo Again!

 Hello, all!  

So, I blinked and October was gone.  It's November.  Somewhere before that happened, I had been considering participating in NaNoWriMo again.  NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writer's Month, and it presents the goal of writing 50,000 words in the month of November.  The idea is to get into a habit of writing, stressing quantity over quality for a period of time.  

It's paralyzing, sometimes, to stare at an empty page.  And it's hard when the vision in your head isn't what comes out.  There is a pattern of overanalyzing and simultaneous editing while creating that ultimately slows the whole creative process.  But to put that aside for a time, to create freely and see what happens, even having a side rant on how this particular section didn't actually work today, well, that still adds to the word count.  We can grow a habit, carving a path to make it easier for the words to flow.  At the end, now there's a pile of raw material to refine and edit.  It's a journey and is gloriously freeing.  

It's also a bit exhausting, trying to fit in a few hundred words here and there.  My current count is 15,011.

I've been working on two projects simultaneously, which allows me to move to the other when I get stuck on one.  One of them I'm calling "Ordinary Things" where I pick a random thing and describe it, the feelings around it.  The following is an excerpt from that.

Wish me luck!

"Radio

Driving around town this morning and utterly annoyed at other cars being on the road—because how dare they have the audacity to exist and want to get places, too—there was a point today when a song came on that I had not heard in a long time.  I was back in high school when it was popular.  I remember playing the radio in the shower and hearing it come on in that space in particular, feeling the humidity and warm of that space as I tried to learn the words to the verses this time, hearing it come on once again. 

I felt a small smile.  It had been overplayed to the point I stopped liking it, but now in this moment, it was an old friend whose appearance had been sweetened by a long absence.  I never did learn all of the words, but I do remember trying to sing along with it in the company of friends long gone, persons that were important at that point of my life that will always hold that importance of that particular moment in time and all the warmth that implies, but they don’t have to be a part of my current life to be a part of that snapshot in time.  I appreciate them with distance, grateful for the time we had together and recognizing the places we’ve since drifted apart into different people with a bittersweetness.  It’s okay to let go of those spaces.  It’s okay to let them stay in those places, and be grateful for that time we had without demanding the recreation of the same relationship with my current self.  We’re all different people now, but the song is exactly the same.  Refreshed by time, nostalgic by time, and an old memory of places past.  There has not been enough time to erase any cringeworthy moments of growing up, but there is a prevailing fondness.  And there is genuine joy in hearing the song, before it is time to let it pass from my mind into the next and the mental list of tasks for the morning ahead."

Fledgling Nurse, Part 3: Language

There is a different way of talking out on the floor.  Yes, there is a fair bit of jargon floating around, but that doesn't encapsulate the full flavor--no one I speak with on the floor sounds like a textbook to my ears, at least.  

My coworkers are also starting to realize that I 
come with catchphrases...

Brevity is not my strong point.  You may have noticed.  My brother told me once that I speak in essays, and I think about it from time to time, even in how I draft things I want to say and write.  It's not impossible for me to tap into brevity, but it does take a level of intentionality--the ideas tend to wind to a point at the end, coming together through various explorations of thought and verbiage.  This is more for deeper discussions and playing with hypotheticals, but there are still places that it crops up in "normal" conversation.  So I have my voice, which goes through various filters depending on the needs of the moment.  There is a dominant influence from my English major brain paired with a few successful NaNoWriMos.  In fact, the first scientific paper that I wrote and turned in for research--a completely different kind of writing--was veritably covered in red ink, slashing out my descriptive phrase, adverbial clauses, and all other facets designed to add flow.  The work was stripped to choppy sentences of only the essentials.  It was a jarring but important lesson:  the creativity came not in the wording but instead in the ideas behind the research.  I needed to consider words differently, and I'm finding that I might need to again.

As such, I have been paying attention to how people speak on the floor and I have identified three facets of communication between nurses, in no particular order:

1. Brief:  When giving report, my impulse is to frame it like a narrative, to describe the story.  Odds are the nurse receiving report would be very grateful if I spit out the specifics without the color commentary.  After all, they have four other nurses that they have to tackle to get report on four other people before than can get going on their day.  Their phone is also already going off because one of them needs to go the bathroom and the tech is helping another patient with the same already.  There are always additional irons in the fire, whether they're immediately visible or not.  We're even taught in nursing school to start with the point and then fill in the background, the whole design of the SBAR format in making a question.  When communicating with doctors, I try to tell myself that it needs to fit in an original tweet length.  Keep it simple.  Be direct.  Spit it out.  Add additional information when asked.  
2. Morbid:  Those in fields close to death tend to develop (or already have) an altered sense of humor.  It's a defense mechanism, to help release some of the pressure and otherwise to protect oneself.  We were having a conversation at the front desk one day about what happened to larger persons when they die, specifically how could someone be cremated if they didn't fit into the machine.  It was a bit uncouth from the outside, but it was fueled by genuine curiosity and something that needed levity in the midst of the stresses of the day.  As with many things, stories traded around are hilarious in retrospect but terrible in the moment, adding evidence to the axiom that tragedy + time = comedy.  As a hypothetical, discussing how a confused patient ripped out their IV or central line, in the moment there might be a chorus of "ohshitohshitohshit" and a few other choice words going through my head while deciding what to do next, but that certainly wouldn't be how I tell the story later in the day--it would become more of an epic on how my patient looked like an extra from a Halloween slasher movie.  The emotionally difficult pieces can't all be processed immediately--there are other patients that also need care that day--but there are tiny outlets to take a breath of air before diving in again.  That small gasp of air is the brightest moment in a bleak storm of terrible things.  So, no, it's not a joke for polite company to talk about blood or vomit or death or dismemberment, but the laughter is needed.  And one finds it where they have to.  
3. Constantly interrupted:  Maybe the group is talking about what happened over their vacation, but then an alarm goes off.  Or someone might be venting about something when the tech walks up with some important patient information.  Or maybe one nurse is seeking advice from another and both of their phones go off at the same time, they resume conversation and another phone goes off again.  The point is there are many conversations that start but the majority are interrupted and never resumed.  Some days, your phone truly does not stop ringing.  Pieces that need an answer--sounding board kinds of conversations--are easy to resume or start with a new body, yet there are many conversations where we're supporting our peers as people or talking about other life things that are important to us that never have an opportunity to continue.  In the beginning, I tried to wait for parts of the conversation to naturally ebb before interjecting important information.  However, then I found there never was a chance unless I just throw the information out there.  As a result, I've seen two major effects in how I approach staff conversations:  I feel an increased pressure to speak in conversation the less urgent it is, lest the opportunity fizzle out immediately, and I interrupt a hell of a lot more if there's any kind of actual urgency.  

So, yes, there is a veritable alphabet soup of acronyms, jargon, and all else floating around, but there's also a style.  There are moments to breathe and moments to laugh and moments to vent and moments to see your peers as people.  There are also spaces where we're just surviving at the moment, "eggshell fine," if you will.  I'm adjusting my scripts as I go, finding what pieces I'm going to keep and refine.  

Definitely going to work on the brevity thing.  Eventually.