Feelings of Time

There's always something odd to me in those days between Christmas and New Years, the days between when Santa is measuring goodness and before resolutions actually start.  Time doesn't seem to make sense on these days.  In my mind's eye, I see it as a strange void in the calendar, to the degree that each time I land on those days I find myself surprised that they're there.  

Of course, this could be due in some large part to the schedule shifts and pressures of the holiday season.  The first couple weeks of January seem to linger in an odd refractory period.  This is compounded by two things:  the general stress of trying to reacquaint with routine while acknowledging the positive and negative toll of the season and the pressure this time of year to generate new, healthy habits as New Years' Resolutions.  In other words, there is a recovery period where extra energy is needed there on top of the "normal" load itself, still while attempting to carve out new spaces.  It makes for some interesting emotional work.  

I've heard before that it takes about thirty days for something to become a habit.  I cannot say whether this is true specifically on the psychology angle, but at least in my own personal experience that seems about right.  I have been looking at restarting my meditation app, where it has been encouraging me to find the same time every day to do X or a keto restart book that states out every meal for about a month...and all the enthusiasm drains away.  I don't have the kind of schedule anymore that allows for routine.

I work a twelve-hour shift, in a twenty-four-hour field.  The work is never over.  That's become a new mantra in some places for me:  "The work is not over; it's time to stop."  I'm not going to be able to "fix" any of my patients, but I am able to contribute to their success in small increments at a time.  There are certain tasks that must be done every shift, either at a specific time or to be completed by the end of shift, but when they happen in the day, well, there is no pattern.  I try to get at least two patient assessments done before we all meet with the charge nurse at 0800, and then it's off in the flurry of 0900 med pass, completing the subsequent assessments in the morning and working through the huge push of morning medications, all the while my phone seldom stops ringing with patient call lights, doctors' responses, family members wanting an update, a deluge of staff communication, and all else.  The best thing to do is find a way to bend to the most immediate needs and set boundaries or expectations in others (e.g. "I am in another patient's room at the moment" or "I can call back in about an hour"), because, no, I'm not going to leave the patient who has suddenly dropped in blood pressure to bring someone else a glass of water.  There are too many places I need to be at once, which means I have to make some choices.  As such, there is no daily work routine, only outlines.  Usually, I eat lunch somewhere between 1130 and 1530.  I chart in the gaps.  I go home and unpack and jump into the shower to ensure I don't share anything more than I have to with my housemates.  Decompress a bit or set everything up for the next day or start some laundry or whatever else.  Wander to bed sometime between 2000 and 2300.  

So about creating rituals or routine, my workdays are not conducive to that.  And subsequently, my workweeks are also not conducive to finding a daily pattern:  I work three days a week, and which days those are varies by week.  My housemates and I have to meet weekly to talk about groceries (which alternates to different days) and discuss who is cooking when.  We want to establish some better habits for Luna--I cannot commit to specific days because my days move.  Which days I am going to swim changes by week.  When I schedule time to reconnect with family and friends varies.  Weekends don't feel like weekends anymore.  This means I'm out of sync with a lot of the assumptions in the world--when people talk about Mondays, there is no sting of dread in quite the same way.  There is no daily pattern, and there is no weekly pattern.

And somewhere it clicked that I do have rituals and routines, just that they are different now.  There are small habits and rituals that can be grown, and there are larger pieces that can be done on an "X times a week" basis rather than a daily or "every Tuesday" kind of pattern.  It doesn't have to be a set time every day or every week to still be a valid change for myself.  I have a particular workflow in how I perform a patient assessment and how I gear up at the beginning of a shift.  And that isn't nothing.  

The pattern is either in small details or in broader swaths--I have to change how I think about time and how I balance my various needs of it.  Even on workdays and how I think of them, time moves differently on those days than it does on non-workdays because a twenty-four-hour field moves...differently.  There is an odd reframing that has to happen after a couple of days, where the work "stops" (or at least "waits") in the bulk of other jobs.  There is no closing--resting and restocking is a deliberate act of pausing and sharing the narrative and tasks to the next body to continue the work.  

In other words, there are some of those same kinds of spaces where time does not feel right.  And it's simply not going to find patterns that I'm used to--so it's time to rethink that expectation.