(This post originally appeared on my previous blog, A Table for One Please, in May of 2013.)
It’s 7 am on a Monday morning.
For the last four weeks, I would have dragged my ass out of bed at around 5-5:30 am, waking up before the alarm went off because of some dream related to work that made me wake up frustrated and aggravated from the get-go. I would have felt a dull ache in my upper back and a slight headache. But I wouldn’t check my blood pressure so I could continue in denial. Then I’d check email and Facebook, jump in the shower, pick out a shirt to top off my black pants from my one-stop generic work wardrobe and grab some scrambled eggs and a sausage patty from the free hotel breakfast and drive to work, arriving at 7 am to “start” my day.
I’d spend the next two hours and 15 minutes frantically trying to go through the weekend notes and orders for two units, totaling about 55-60 patients. The stack of paper would look like a novella or screenplay. I’d be trying to get up to our morning department head meeting room because this company keeps the walls covered in papers that track every fucking thing on the planet and I am supposed to read all the notes, check that all the orders were documented and the family notified and write anything pertinent on this board before 9:15 am. Because at 9:15 am, I would be grilled on what was and wasn’t done in front of all the department heads, and there would be hell to pay if it wasn’t done, regardless of what happened before the meeting — regardless of having patients tanking and needing stat chest xrays, having nurses who are trying to pass AM meds and deal with a crisis with no one else to help but me, family members calling to bitch about someone needing a haircut or having new grad nurses who don’t know how to do anything (which I don’t know the procedure either as I’ve worked in this company’s buildings before but I do not know this one as a temp traveler.)
But hey, no problem. And that is the best part of the day when I get the most done.
Then I’d be in morning meeting till 11 am being chewed out and grilled about patients I don’t know as they keep changing my unit manager assignment (6 times in 4 weeks for the record) then try to finish up all the things I didn’t get to before meeting, plus the never-ending crises on the floor. And, oh yes, let’s throw in 6-10 pages of “audits” because of survey deficiency corrections. Then I’d try to get everything done so I could repeat the morning meeting ass-chewing at the afternoon meeting. Then back to the floor to try to get my work done before I gave up at around 6 pm after a day with no breaks, except maybe shoving down a pack of peanut M&Ms. Then eat the hotel dinner, go to bed, and repeat the whole thing the next day.
Yeah, that’s what I would be doing today if I was still working at that job. If I was still working as a nurse.
But… and there is a big but on this one… today I am not working as a nurse, because that job is done. And I am hoping that the nest egg I built up from that hell is enough that it was my last nurse job ever. It’s a long shot, but it’s possible.
See, this temp job work pays a shitload of money. And instead of blowing it frivolously this time, I made a rather large purchase… an RV. It’s nothing fancy or expensive, but a 1978 Georgie Boy Cruise Air. I don’t need big and fancy. I don’t want big and fancy, because I finally realized all that big and fancy expensive shit we buy makes us slaves to jobs we hate. And I don’t want any of it anymore. I started looking at all the crap around me and started seeing it as “x” hours of misery at a job I hate to pay for it. And I started hating all the garbage I lug around everywhere I go.
That was why when this job came up and I was ending a lease on my apartment in Phoenix, I decided to just cut everything down to what could fit in the Jeep Cherokee with me and the two cats.
You see, I finally realized with the way I like to travel I should be full time RVing and should have started long ago. I’ve been planning this and cutting expenses everywhere I can. I’ve lined up freelance writing work and now a job with Google rating ads I can do online from anywhere.
Dear rat race: It’s time for me to move on. And no, we can’t still be friends. I’m never going to own a pair of Louboutins or anything by Versace. But I’ll own my own life, even if it’s now living one moment to the next with the uncertainty of walking away from any kind of “normal” life.
But I saw a great piece of tattoo flash that summed it up perfectly: “Death is certain, but life is not.” Most things are uncertain now, but such is the price of freedom.
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