Transition State

How's the new job going?  Great question!  Glad I pretended you asked.

Originally, I was supposed to start my new position at the wound clinic Thanksgiving week.  It happened that there were a few courses I needed to complete first before I would be allowed to work with patients--the way that timing worked in this case, I suggested that I take off the rest of the days during Thanksgiving week and then start with the classes the subsequent week.

So on the one hand, yay, surprise vacation!  On the other, well, the existential dread starts to creep in.  I get confused with time off and a little bit paralyzed with how to fill it.  When Andy was let go from Rivian, I was insistent, probably to the point of annoyance, that he take time to simple be and process the change and the grief.  I am shit at taking my own advice in these places.  

I've worked on the inpatient side of things, been a medical floor nurse for a year and some change now.  I have learned a ridiculous amount of things in this time, delighted in teaching the nursing students that came through in particular, and shared in many, many stories with peers.  There is a particular kind of grief in leaving that behind.  I have been avoiding processing it, for multiple reasons.  I am curious to see how I might process it given a bit more temporal space.  

And at the same time, I've got that roiling excitement and anxiety about starting the new position.  Hammering out the little details of when the first day is and logins and lockers and starting those new relationships on the best impression possible.  I think I've prepared just about everything I can:  we're simply in the waiting phases.  

Waiting is not a passive thing.  Waiting is active.  Most every piece of preparation that can be done has been done.  It's time to let things happen and absorb all of that I can.  I am going to continue to be unsettled for a while now, and that is okay.  Expected, even.  And in the same breath, I know that my body does not sort out "excitement" and "danger" correctly sometimes.  There's a lot happening in our lives right now.  And it's okay to let that be.  I am feeling anxiety, but I am not my anxiety.  In the same breath, I'm certain that we'll work out all the kinks as we go.  Through all of those acknowledgements, it occurs to me that it is time to take that advice, to greet those parts of myself and name them.  

It's another period of transition and transformation.

...and before I can even gather those thoughts together, the week is done.  I've had my first full day shadowing and am just beginning to see the flow of the floor.  I'm trying to absorb EVERYTHING.  And it's exciting, and my brain hurts.  I'm also trying to get to know my new peers and to not be the "well, at my old job, we did it X way" person while also acknowledging that that is my basis for comparison.  This expression of nursing is different, has a different pace and utilizes different skills.  I have so much to learn.  

I feel uncertain in my steps but confident in my direction.  And that's not nothing.