Along with Gleeking....

Sooo I had a week of self misery around the first week of my arrival here.

My job is just not cutting it for me.  Being stuck inside for long hours, dealing with political nonsense while trying to provide care to patients, doing bullshit paperwork that serves no purpose but to create an ever growing paper trail, having to act like a professional while dressing like a homeless person..... I was over it.  I just plain have lost the excitement and challenge of my career.  I felt complacent.

I was feeling so melodramatic that, I swear, I was having moments of shortness of breath.  Like I said, dramatic.  Pathetic.  The list goes on and on.

I'm just overwhelmingly encased in the letdown of my circumstance.  I am twenty four, and I have always thought that I would be so much cooler by now.  I had always wanted to see so much more, know so much more, do so much more by the time I was this age.  Instead of nursing being an asset to my aspirations, I am starting to feel like I have outgrown it, and it might just be holding me back now.

I kept thinking about my friends at The Buried Life, and being insanely envious of their ability to take what the want from life, and make sure they exhaust all the vitality they have.  I want their situation so bad I can taste it.  So, one day, while completely self loathing and pitiful, rocking babies in the NICU, I sat on a chair feeding a patient and thinking.

what was it that i wanted to be before i was taught what limitations are?

There is a book that I have in my garage from when I was a kid.  It's a Dr Suess book called "My Book About Me", and its pages are filled with descriptive blanks, for kids to fill out information about themselves, their likes, dislikes, etc.  I can see the career page clear as day.  It reads:

When I grow up, I want to be a _________________.  

There is no single occupation written neatly in my slot.  Instead, I wrote across it, over, and under the blank.  I filled it with every occupation I could think of, erasing and rewriting numerous times because I just could not, as an eight year old, limit myself to just one occupation.

That eight year old didn't get over it.

PS. interesting anecdote:  the first item listed? actress.