ER, Again?

I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm seriously considering taking another full-time job in the ER. I've been doing prn since quitting my previous full-time ER day job last September, opting instead to put my energy into my massage business. Only to discover I have very little energy for much of anything, at this point in my life. When left to my own devices, I tend to do gravitate to sitting on my ass, writing and surfing the internet. So shoot me.

I really thought I was through with nursing in general and ER in particular. I dreamed of the day I could tell HR to remove my name from the calling list and bid her have a nice life. I've thought and journaled and lamented about nothing else for years, at least 5. My family and friends are sick of hearing about it, already. And yet, while basking in the serenity of my new life I found my creativity stunted. Rather than blossoming out into the creative rebirth I anticipated, my 10 month semi-sabbatical from the ER has proven to be more of just a convalescence. A "resting up" period during which I reorganized my priorities and recuperated from the soul-deprecating effects of 20 years of nursing.

I thought I would write volumes, but volumes never materialized. I found in their stead, an empty, albeit calm and comfortable, center where I reposed for weeks on end never inspired to write more than a sentance or two. A chilling thought now shadows over me. Could it be that I somehow need the harried life of the ER not only as a source of writing fodder, but for a well-rounded life of any kind? Could it be that, perverted by nursing school, my life has deteriorated to the point of needing the ER like a junkie needs heroin?

This is not what I had envisioned. I planned to build my massage business, branching out into other holistic modalities, until I was able to one day ease out of the arena of nursing, entirely. I would then, as my mind movie progressed, begin to write in my spare time until the day I would become a financially independent writer of books and essays. My life would then consist of days spent in the following manner:

I would get up at my leisure. Pad up the carpeted stairs to my office (we live in a single-story dwelling) where I would drink coffee in a soft, overstuffed chair upholstered in light, floral patterned fabric. The 2 or 3 windows in my office would be covered with white Venetian blinds, you know, the ones with wide slats. On the back wall would be a huge, built-in book shelves where I would keep the majority of my myriad books. ("Mine" in the sense that I own them not necessarily that I wrote them after all, even I recognize my limits even in the realm of creative imagery).

It would be there that I spend the first hour of so of my day, followed by a healthy lunch, an hour on my EFX machine which would be located in the exercise room to the left of the now nonexistant staircase. Mid afternoon would find me soaking in my jacuzzi tub followed by a nap. This on the day I don't have an appointment at Turtle Cove Spa on Lake Ouachita for my weekly mud wrap and 90 minute massage. Upon awakening, I would prepare a healthy, gourmet meal for my husband and myself before returning to the office to write until late in the night.

Cold winter nights would be spent before the fireplace downstairs, dressed in leggings, an oversized organic cotton knitted sweater and thick, white, cotton socks, my dogs at my feet as I sipped herbal tea into which I'd squeezed a couple of tablespoons of Agave Nectar. I would, as a matter of course be writing in a notebook while listening to the wind howl beyond the orangey light of our livingroom lamps. Apparently my husband will have decided he no longer wishes to watch television with the volume at his current, deafening level of preference as this would never be possible otherwise.

When involved in a big book deal, we would take to the road in our new RV that I would buy for us with my first (in a series of many) book deals. He would drive while I slept or ate and at night, he'd read or watch tv wearing a good set of headphones while I reclined in the back bed and wrote. Our RV would be equipt with fax, copier and WiFi, of course, allowing me the necessary constant communication with my editor. We would travel to New York in the RV as we use to do before the rat ate the lines under the hood of our old one, only this time we'd frequent the publishing house working book deals and negotiating advances and film rights.

On our trips home, hefty checks in our bank bag made out to me, we'd amble around the countryside, West Virginia where my father's family still lives, Tennessee, Georgia to visit my sister, buying antiques which we'd have shipped back home and eating gourmet meals. We'd eventually come home and start the whole grueling process over again.

That's what I had envisioned. And I'm serious about the word vision. I read The Law of Attraction and I know how to do it (more on that, later). I've been working on this one for years. So what's with this pull to return to the ER? Well, maybe the road to my dream life isn't via living the slow-paced ethereal life of a holistic nurse/massage therapist like I thought. Maybe I need to work like a dog and be abused by ridiculas patients, doctors and family members 3 days a week as a type of catalyst to my creative process. What's more, earning my living in 3 days in the ER as opposed to the basically 7 days a week required by my current combination of massage and prn ICU nursing, will allow me sufficient "moodling" time, as Brenda Euland calls it. Maybe I can write better during my recovery period of 4 days off each week. I don't know. All I know is, damn me, I don't seem to be able to quit ER nursing.