The First Step - An Open Letter

Today is my 40th birthday. I’m actually quite excited to be 40. I had a minor flip out at turning 30, but 10 years later, I’m not just fine with being another decade older, I’m happy about it. I’m attributing that to being more settled in my life now than I was then. My life isn’t perfect, I work hard and I work long hours that mean my work/life balance is , well, unbalanced. But the trade off is I’ve achieved a lot in the last 10 years.

I’m a nurse and I’m not sure how other health care workers feel, but being a nurse is less of a job, more a lifestyle.

The hours and the shifts result in a lifestyle that revolves around work. The requirement that we be registered with governing bodies has a condition that we will continue education in our own time that means we spend time away from work reading and studying, not even for career advancement but just to keep our jobs. If our personal opinions differ from that of the governing bodies, we aren’t permitted to openly express it. We can lose our jobs if we do.

Our jobs become a way of life that impacts on our social lives, relationships, what we wear, choice of hair colour, tattoos, piercings, the jewellery we wear, our social media use, our health and wellbeing.

And once in the industry there is a strong and persistent push to further our careers: to study more, do more, seek promotions. Sacrifice more of our own time. We give up a lot to start our careers and then continue to make sacrifices. This is not a job we do because it is well paid (I don’t know many rich nurses!). We are nurses because we believe in the service we provide. It has been like that for a long time, the sacrifices and the love of the job, long before a pandemic that challenged us all to view our existence differently.

Covid shook us to our foundations and turned our lives upside down. The pandemic didn’t stop our lives though. It just compounded the difficulties we face in everyday life. Life has gone on regardless of who lost their livelihoods, businesses and loved ones. Babies were born, weddings and celebrations happened even if not as previously expected. People passed away like they do every day. Sometimes it is anticipated. And sometimes our losses completely blind side us.

We lost a friend last year. I say ‘we’ because as much as loss can feel very lonely, it is always shared. The world lost a special person. He was a co worker. We didn’t always agree. In fact, we butted heads a few times. He was the sort of person who could let go of a disagreement though. If he was wrong he could admit it later and if I was wrong he didn’t rub my nose in it.

We lost him suddenly with no warning. He finished a shift at our workplace with a headache one afternoon and called in sick the next day. A couple of days later we found out he was gone. He left behind a family including an almost adult daughter who’s world had just imploded. He was nearly 10 years older than me. And through all the other noise that happens in my head when an event changes my world, one thought kept rising making itself heard. What if it was me?

What would I regret not doing? What would I regret missing out on? My answers were not a promotion at work, climbing the ladder, an expensive car and bigger house. It wasn’t money or belongings. The answers were simple. I’d miss my family and the people I love. I’d regret not spending more time with them. It changed my focus. I don’t think I’m the only one to reassess either. As much as we are all nurses because of a love of the job, a lot of us have had to take stock of our lifestyles. Recently some of my co workers have started asking: What would I do if I weren’t a nurse?

My current skill set has me feeling trapped. I can give in to the pressure and spend my time studying to climb a never ending career ladder where people seem never to be content to just be. I can go back to study and pursue tangent career paths that will result in the same issue. More study leading further towards the regret I want so badly to avoid. I just can’t see myself being happy with that in another 10 years.

I have realised that since becoming a nurse I’ve lost a lot of personal time. I love my job but I can no longer find time for the hobbies I used to love. I could lose myself in drawing, painting or sketching, disappear into a world of someone else’s making or one of my own.

And that would be my second biggest regret, never sharing my world. That is how I arrived at my answer. If I weren’t a nurse any more, I’d want to be a writer. Story telling is in my blood, it’s part of my soul. Oh, I am well aware that I might such. Big time. I may never earn a cent as a writer, it may never be my career. Who knows?

What I know is I will regret never trying. It might be that putting my heart and soul into words is what I need to be happy in my career again. It might be the armour I want against the pressure of a world that wants me to reach for other people’s ideas of what my goals should be that feels like nothing more than a heavy burden. I want to reach for my own goals, the ones I choose for myself.

I wish it hadn’t taken the loss of a friend and a pandemic to recognise what drives me and what I see as success. I wish it hadn’t taken me a year to act on it! My goals for the future feel daunting but every journey starts with a first step.