All the Spices

When you identify as a nomad and circumstances have you grounded, how do you deal?

Here’s my current explosion of thought, for those who think it’s entertaining enough to keep coming back to read up. I’ve been balancing work, school, and play for the last eight months, speculating how to work hard and study long enough so that I can get through it to have some fun. But when I daydream, I’m not on Kingston Pike or the Strip. Every free moment I have with my thoughts is spent on a side street of Bali. With a dog in Maui. On a moto in Paris. Anywhere but here…

My search history would make anyone assume that I’m having second thoughts about nursing school:

“how to survive your first year of nursing school”

“how to know you want to be a nurse”

“cheap flights to Hawaii” 

“how to move to Hawaii”

“does Hawaii have Home Depot”

“minimum wage in Honolulu”

I’m not having second thoughts about being a nurse. I want to be a nurse because I love medicine, I love people and I want to use my intuitive mind and young body to serve and heal and comfort; but, I am getting antsy being stuck in the ole K-town once again. I don’t really want to work minimum wage at Home Depot in Hawaii, but I maybe wouldn’t turn an orange apron down.

I love my friends so much; the community I’ve been so blessed to develop here is unmatched. I never want to abandon my people, and I will always fight to keep these relationships strong and unyielding. There is just a piece of me that still, and probably will eternally, long for the unknown. I crave the danger of mystery. This is not a bad thing by the way, for those who are with me and have that confused-emoji-look on their face (like I often do when recalling my busted face from that one time in Cambodia).

If I had a husband and a career I was happy with, also an eventual family, the craving would be worked out in whatever way we could make it, because love comes first. But being a single student with no prospects makes me feel like I have to figure this shit out now; get my degree, start my new career, buy a house, have a mid-life crisis… only then will I be “ready” to “settle down” into my life that will be fudged together once I find the human that is willing to put up with me and uproot our family every time I get the urge to learn to surf in San Diego or visit friends in the Midwest.

Alas, I realized all of this was incredibly wrong as I wrote it.

I really don’t want to figure anything out. Really, the only thing my brain is responsible for at the moment is figuring out the pressure gradient in the O2-CO2 exchange occurring inside our pulmonary capillaries during respiration so I can get it right on my test next week.  I am LOVING (cannot write it big enough without messing up the formatting here) school. I love what I’m learning. The human body’s complexity is blowing my mind out of the back of my head and I’ve never felt so mentally healthy and sharp. My classmates are wonderful and the next couple of years of nursing school are going to be insane in the best and worst way.

But, still – I’ll be stuck here until I’m done and signed up for my NCLEX. And it’s okay!

I hate to say it’s a means to an end because this journey is oh-so-fun and important. But it helps me cope with the inevitability that my travel plans will be extremely limited come August. There will be a season where I’m in the books hardcore, probably not seeing my friends so much, working my tail off to get a C and wondering why the FRICK I can’t just take off to New York for a weekend and a slice.

It’s all good. Life is just a drawer of seasons. There will be a season where I’m working 13- to 14-hour night shifts and haven’t seen my mom in a month. There will be a season when I have a little bit of something figured out, and it’ll be really nice. There are sure to be seasons where I’m exhausted, lonely, and utterly lost. But a kitchen wouldn’t be complete without variety. I love how different a dish is when you season it with paprika verses oregano. You can’t make curry without cumin. What would pasta sauce be without parsley? Embrace your flavors and let your seasons do their thing. Sometimes when an unplanned zest gets tossed in the pot it makes the outcome that much more exceptional.