It's been months now since I've felt any sort of confidence with most of the life decisions I've been making. I was tired of being a floor nurse, I was thinking about getting back into travel nursing, I missed my family, I missed my friends, and truth be told, I missed having a little humidity in the air. I was stuck in a rut with nothing really guiding me in one direction or another.
Back in April (or was it May? I can't remember...), two of the three experienced charge nurses on my nursing unit quit their positions in pursuit of other things. That left a pretty gaping hole in the charge nurse department. I had been filling in since the winter of 2013, and there were a few other gals who had been oriented to the charge nurse role earlier this year. It was obvious that my boss was going to be hiring one, if not two, new charge nurses to replace the women who had left. And I thought about it. I thought about it a lot. I wondered if maybe changing the role I performed at the hospital would change my newly negative attitude towards my profession in general.
Being a charge nurse is nice due to the fact that instead of my focus being the total care of 4-5 patients, I now got to focus on 20 patients and support my staff of 4-5 nurses and a patient care assistant. Which sounds weird...why would taking on more patients and staff be desireable in any fashion? Well, in the role of the charge nurse, I get to be the helper. When someone is having trouble with a patient, or if they're struggling to get some of their work done in a timely manner, I get to step in and help them out. It feels good to help, and I like being a helper. I'm also emotionally invested in the patients in a different way than I would be if I was managing their complete care for the evening. I don't know...it's hard to explain, but I enjoy being a charge nurse, and from what I was hearing from my colleagues, I was good at it too.
When the position opened up for applications, I hesitated to apply. Simon and I were thinking about and actively pursuing the idea of getting an RV and travel nursing next year. We had even seen a couple buses and had contacted the owners of a few others. I had joined a few RV-themed Facebook groups, and was learning some of the lingo of the RV world. But the search was stressful, and it was difficult, and truth be told, I don't know that my heart was in it. Not to say I wasn't trying, but I was frustrated that things weren't coming together as quickly or as easily as I would have hoped. I'm an impatient person by nature, which doesn't help in the slightest. I was starting to feel stressed and irritable again, and knew that something needed to change. I just didn't know what and was grabbing at straws to try to figure it out.
Given all the pressure I was getting from my colleagues, I decided to apply for the charge nurse position, even with the knowledge that I might be leaving within a few months. It seemed like a silly thing to do, and I went back and forth with contacting my boss to have him pull my application in the interest of not wasting his time on someone who might just up and leave anyway. But I hadn't yet committed to leaving, and figured it couldn't hurt to at least apply, so I left the application and the decision to interview me in his hands. I interviewed for the position with my boss, John, which felt so strange. I've only interviewed for a job a handful of times before this, and given that John is also my friend, I didn't quite know what to expect. So I got all dressed up because I assumed that's what you're supposed to do for an interview, even though this is Flagstaff and "dressing up" most times means that you put on clothes that are relatively clean and not too terribly wrinkled...I can't recall ever seeing a man in a suit in this town, and certainly not in the hospital. I met our new CEO a few months back and even he wasn't wearing a suit. So I put on some nice pants, one of my grandma's blouses, and a sweater vest and called it good. I wasn't being interviewed for my fashion sense, after all.
It was a weird experience, going through the interview motions with John, whom I have shared many an alcoholic beverage with in the off-hours, and our remaining night charge nurse Cathy, with whom I have had many heart to heart chats in the wee hours of the morning when the patients are quiet and we're trying to keep each other awake. Even though the three of us are very friendly towards one another and interact comfortably both inside outside of work, the interview process left us awkwardly shifting in our seats, going through all those standard interview questions. But we got through it...luckily I only had to do the one interview...I think Cathy and John had to do about 7. I didn't envy them that.
A few weeks after the interview, I was asked by John to come chat with him in his office about work stuff. I assumed it had to do with the charge nurse interview, and it did. On my way out the door, Simon wished me luck. I told him I probably didn't need any luck because the decision was most likely already made. I showed up and John and I chatted freely about this and that, catching up on each other's lives since we didn't get a chance to do that during the interview. When I started at Flagstaff, John was a charge nurse on the night shift. I still miss him a lot on nights, and love the opportunity to catch up and shoot the breeze with him. After a while, he got serious and we talked about the charge nurse interview. He asked me what my plans were for leaving, as he knew that I'd been thinking about leaving in the next year or so. It was a hard question to answer, as I didn't really know myself what my plans were.
I feel like I'm in a hard spot compared with a lot of other 35 year-olds I know. I don't have kids or big financial obligations or a burning desire to be somewhere specific pinning me to one place, which seems to be what keeps most of my peers in one place or another for extended periods of time. Some might think that it would be great to be able to up and move and go wherever at the drop of a hat, but honestly, after a period of time, a lack of ties leaves a person feeling adrift and lonely and unstructured, and quite frankly, a little bit hopeless. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever feel like I belonged anywhere, which is a truly sad feeling indeed.
And then...I got offered the job as one of the night charge nurses. John admitted to me that prior to our chat, he hadn't decided if he was going to hire me, based on my prior statements about leaving. He said that if I had had a date in mind for leaving, he wouldn't have offered me the job. But given that I was waffling, he decided to take a chance and give one of the open positions to me. It was humbling to me that he was willing to take that risk on a waffler, as I don't know if I would have been able to make that same decision had I been the one sitting in his seat. I was thrilled and nervous and excited. Prior to the offer, I had had it in the back of my head that if I didn't get one of the positions, I would just continue on with the travel nurse idea for the coming year...no harm done, no hard feelings. I didn't realize how much I had been hoping for the position until he told me that I had it.
I don't quite know what it means for me in the big picture, but it was like a sign at a fork in the path pointing me in the right direction. I feel really good about getting the job, like it's something that was supposed to happen, like it's something that will be good for me, and something that will help me grow professionally, mentally, and emotionally. I'm truly happy about it, and I just want to thank my coworkers for browbeating me into applying, and I want to thank my boss for trusting me in this role and for giving me this wonderful opportunity. And of course, Simon...always gratitude to Simon for supporting me in all my crazy ideas and endeavors. I couldn't do half the stuff I do without his love and support, and his occasional firm "no" when I start to spiral out of control. He is my center and my balance and my cheering section, even if sometimes he's the only one in it.
The future looks bright and happy, and I'm excited about staying here in Flagstaff for a while longer. How long? Time will tell. I just committed to a 12-month lease on an apartment, so the people of Flagstaff are going to have to put up with me for at least another year. I hope they're okay with that, because I know I am.
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