Who am I anyway?

Just a girl.
An old timey girl.
A girl destined to be another feisty old lady.
Do you know it takes for buggery ever to figure out these things (ie: who AM I? and who would I like to be?) when you are me.

The girl thing as you grow up:
Girl 1:"What do you want to be?" (playing with toy pony)
Girl 2:"I am going to be a TEACHER!"
Girl 1: "Know what I am going to be? A nurse!" (cuts hair off Barbie)

I never knew what I wanted to be other than happy.
Falling into a series of interesting and very challenging careers was effortless.
I had trouble STAYING interested.
I just had no idea at all what I would really say was my passion in life.

A strange thing happened when one of my parents became ill. The sicker my parent got the more I saw the difference between me and my siblings. Where they wanted to run away and let someone ANYONE do the hard stuff, I wanted to do the hard stuff myself. I just was not very fast nor good at it. In the end, I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me and that this was a strange and loathsome dysfunction. After all you cannot very well say to people:

"Hey guess what? The coolest thing happened! Someone in my family died! Damn I liked that!"

Grief counselling was my first step. Then I got involved with Hospice. Then I took on a few private clients although my training in Healthcare was minimal. I knew that had to change so I went back to school to take Nursing. I was the eldest in my class and I had to try twice as hard as everyone else as God blessed me with an imaginative brain not a no-nonsense one. I graduated as the Outstanding Student in my year which made me very pleased. It was a battle for that let me tell you. One of the people who really did not like me very much was my teacher! She thought that I was full of myself rather too much. She always thought I was a show-off. My reponse was: "And..?" A life in the Arts what else could I be? A career manager of course I was in charge. People don't change personalities when they take up new careers. I did however understand that I was at the bottom of the totem pole. Believe me, people love to point that out. I guess it comforts them to know a big old blowhard like me can be humbled.
:)

I did my practicums in various hospitals and then in Community Nursing, the field most people dread and call the "lowest level of Nursing." yeah well I LOVE it. Bring it on! I love it because you have more one on one time with a person and do the extra things that would not be possible in a Hospital setting. I love it because I am accountable to myself chiefly and that means I do not have to check and re-check and call in for permission. I am a responsible caregiver.

The sheer amount of emotion that comes my way in an ordinary day necessitates unloading somewhere. I choose this blog. I used to write in my little diaries but you know what?
It is alot easier for me to type than to write longhand. Also I can fool around with colour and doodle with ascii I like that!

Does this help?
I suppose I am rather one of those people who were inevitably meant to take on life full-board.
I can do it for others too.
And when I come home at night I am happy. I feel good about things. I like to think that actions can impact the world however smally. I cannot change what is happening in Iraq or Africa. I cannot take away the aches and pains of life for anyone. But I CAN distract them from themselves even if just for a tiny while. Sometimes thats all you need.