Reviving (and Nurturing) Your Nursing Career in 2013

With the coming of a new year, many of us choose to make resolutions and promises in hopes of achieving our goals or fulfilling our personal aspirations. In terms of your nursing career, this can also be a good time to plot the course for how you would like to revive (and/or nurture) your professional life.

Resolution or Revolution?

Well, Bono may have sung that "nothing changes on New Year's Day", but we can choose to make small personal changes with the force of our will and a determination for growth and self-improvement, no matter the outer circumstances of the world. Even as genocide, hunger, poverty and war rage around us, we can champion incremental changes within our own small sphere of influence, and those changes can ripple outward and effect others in positive ways for days to come.

Personally, this New Year is about self-care and optimal health, and rather than make resolutions to exercise more, eat better, and sleep eight hours a day, I will simply make a commitment to self-care in whatever form that that may take. Mind you, I am planning to make a list of self-care activities and choices that I can make, but rather than serve as a list of resolutions that I must follow without question, this list will be a reference point, a place to look for hints when I feel that I've lost the thread.

I see resolutions as dangerous for one good reason---they are inevitably broken. If I resolve to swim no less than 60 laps per week, I'll most likely fail half the time. If I resolve to write a blog entry every day, having that verbalized expectation will probably thwart me in my writing process. If I decide to eat absolutely no sugar for the next two months (something that I have done for many months at a time in the past), I also will probably fall on my face (with a mouth full of chocolate to cushion the blow).

My simple solution is to revolutionize my personal resolution process. Today I will generate that list of self-care options, and it will serve as a reminder of what I can do when my wheels are spinning. It is an ongoing process of discovery, and I see the New Year as a perfect time to recharge those self-care batteries.

Many happy returns to you and yours, dear Reader, and may the New Year open its heart to you in gentle and compassionate ways.

New Year's Eve Ruminations

A friend sent me this incredible link to an on-line video which I highly recommend. You can find it here. It is an inspirational, humbling, and provocative evocation of what it means to be a citizen of the Earth at this point in human history. A fitting moment of reflection at the turn of the year.

Concurrently, I also recommend visiting this site for a microscopic view, equally humbling in its representation of the complexity and beauty of the world in miniature.

Both of these experiences provide ways to get out of one's own way and see one's place in the world for what it is---an infinitesimal part of the wider web of life. In our peripatetic lives---wandering from person to person, place to place, experience to experience---our own lives become so big in our eyes, and we so easily lose sight of the bigger picture. When we curse our broken toaster and lament the money we will spend on a new one, we miss an opportunity to think of those who have never known such luxury and convenience, and perhaps haven't even been blessed with a piece of wholesome bread to eat for months. Sure, a broken toaster is a drag, but if you can just go ahead and buy a new one without so much as a second thought, you have precious little to grumble about. I say this to myself more than anyone else.

It is so easy to lose perspective. Sogyal Rinpoche writes about "cherishing" one's self to such an extent that one wears blinders towards the plight of others. I remind myself more than anyone that gratitude is the key---giving thanks for what I have, not focusing on loss and what-if scenarios. On her desk, one of my colleagues has a quote posted next to her computer monitor: "If the only prayer you said in your life was thank you, that would suffice" (Meister Eckhart).

So, in keeping with the tradition, here's to letting go of the old, ringing in the new, and accepting the past as done. Any new year, be it secular or religious, offers a fresh start. The fact is, every sunrise offers a fresh beginning. Taking that thought even further, every breath offers an opportunity to start again. Imagine that, a "new year" every moment. "With this breath, another year begins. With this breath, another year begins....." (Let's just agree that a glass of champagne does not need to accompany each breath. since precious little would ever be accomplished!)

Tonight, Mary and I will make New Year collages to visualize our goals and aspirations for 2007. We will listen to our favorite New Year's Eve song, "Sacrificial Bonfire" by XTC, and probably be sound asleep at midnight.

For all you revellers, dreamers, seekers, and beings great and small: Happy New Year and many happy returns.

Sacrificial Bonfire

Lyric by: Colin Moulding

Fire they cried
So evil must die
And yields are good
So men pull back hoods and smile
The scapegoat blood spilled
Spittled and grilled it crackled and spat
And children grew fat on the meat
Change must be earnt
Sacrificial bonfire must burn
Burn up the old
Ring in the new
Assembled on high
Silhouette against the sky
The smoke prayed and pranced
And sparks did their dance in the wind
Shadows wore thin with less and less skin
And the clothes that were draped
Was all that told man from ape
Change must be earnt
Sacrificial bonfire must reign
Reign over good
Banish the bad

© 1986

It's a Wrap

At 4pm today we locked the office doors, popped the champagne and sparkling cider, toasted a year well done, and called it a day, or rather, a year. There is always something satisfying about handing in that last paperwork of the year, submitting the final time sheet and expense report, dashing off those last emails, and shutting that door. It has a comforting feeling, leaving the year of travail and sweat behind, readying oneself to receive the new. Whatever happened, whatever failed to happen, whoever lived, whoever died, it's all part of the stream now, and we can let it all just wash away.

"See you next year!" was the refrain as we began to file out the door, some lingering to put final touches to their work, as always. Yes, Bono did indeed sing "nothing changes on New Year's Day", but something does change, if at least internally.

This evening afforded me a massage and a haircut, then a return home for a shower and a shave. Clean, shorn, with pajamas and the warmth of home, 2006 begins its denouement, and I could not be more content.