Archive for general
A little lightness of being
Posted by: | CommentsHello, Dear Readers,
I thought after my last post’s sturm und drang, I should post a something a little lighter and a little more heartful.
The interview process is going really well. I have 3 practices who want to meet me, the question now being am I willing to give up Canada, or am I merely postponing it? I’m still deep in thought about it and will see, depending on the fit of these practices.
Moving is stressful, and that definitely colored my last post. However, I know that I have much to be thankful for. I may be temporarily moving to scenes unknown, but I know I will never be homeless and that is a great blessing. I mean, I was planning on moving to the suburbs of Vancouver this month, I’m really not certain why the suburbs of NYC freak me out so much. But here we go. Next Saturday, all of my worldly belongings will reside at my sister’s beautiful home in Connecticut. My life will continue to be in NYC until such time as I take a job here, in another city or go to Canada. I’m not sure exactly when Brooklyn began to feel like home, but it has, and change is scary.
However, change is good! These past six months have been one of the most intensely creative periods of my life. I’ve written what I’m told is a really awesome sci-fi/fantasy web series, acted, sung, fought, and met some amazing, amazing people. I’ve worked as a midwife and an RN Caught babies and advocated for patients to be sure they got the care they deserved and were safe in the getting of that care. I’ve organized a team that built a house for a Sanctuary for Kids, and I’m going to get the chance to get to know my beautiful nieces better by living with my sister, temporarily, and what an awesome thing that is. They have both become these incredibly poised young women whom I really want to get to know better.
I’m trying to just allow myself to be in the moment. If I don’t catch another baby for 6 months, I’ll be disappointed, but my neither my life nor my midwifery career will be over. Nerves happen, and I’m glad to have readers like you who get that. I’m very glad that I have skills that will always be in demand so that I will never go hungry, and that I love what I do so very much that I can be more or less happy doing it anywhere.
I’m very much looking forward to spending some time with my LA friends in a couple of weeks, both for being with lovely, lovely people and for really determining if I could live out there either temporarily or permanently. I thank you all for continuing to read, and promise wonderful times ahead, no matter how scary they may seem to me.
Namaste
New Day, New Thoughts
Posted by: | CommentsWhen did it become the end of October? Welcome to crazy times. It’s been such a busy month I’m having trouble grasping just where the time went. In a little more than a month, I’ll be packing up my belongings and putting them into storage while I get ready to make my move to Canada. I’m excited and terrified. I’ve been reviewing the documents for applying for my visa and discovered that while I get the approval for a visa in 4-5 weeks after applying, I don’t get the actual visa until I cross the border. I’m trying to figure out what that means for moving my things into the country. I really need to find others who’ve been through this process from outside of Canada and figure it out. I’m hoping I’ll meet some other midwives who’ve been in my shoes at the CAM conference in Niagra falls next month.
Plans are being made to apartment hunt in Vancouver in January, visit friends in LA in December and, of course, the big move by early February if all goes well.
Any other Mac-users reading? I am coming up to time to replace my 4.5 year old iMac. I was considering replacing it with another iMac, because I really prefer the experience of sitting down at a desktop and the larger screen for writing and video editing. The Macbook Pro is the alternative, but significantly pricier and there is that smaller screen. But then there’s the fact that I will be moving around quite a bit in the next year. Any thoughts?
Lastly, I had to postpone my recording for my lullaby album until next week thanks to an awful case of bronchitis that I contracted as a sequel to the flu. I’ve been sick for 2 weeks and am finally beginning to feel human again. A reminder to myself not to procrastinate when it comes to the flu shot.
More to come. New job starting Monday. I am a bit of a wandering midwife, these days.
Carefree Summer
Posted by: | CommentsA summer off for the first time in memory since, perhaps, 8th grade, has been lovely, but as I get ready to return to work on September 6th, I thought I’d write an entry for my blog. In a little more than 100 days, I will be heading west to Los Angeles and soon after that, north to Canada and my ultimate destination, Vancouver. It’s hard to believe how soon that will come.
Until then, I’ll be working as a per diem midwife in another NYC hospital. This time, in a much smaller unit. In this job, I will not be doing regular office prenatal care, I’ll be working in the labor and delivery unit mostly taking care of triage. I will occasionally attend births, but no where near as often as I did in my former position.
This may come as a surprise to some, but I actually enjoy triage. I didn’t like it at my other job because it was so insanely busy. When you work in a hospital that does 8000 deliveries a year and all confirmed intrauterine pregnancies are seen in L&D triage, you get an overwhelmed triage most of the time. It’s not to say that my new position won’t be busy, it will, but after my prior experience, it will be totally manageable, and I do look forward to that.
As for a position doing mostly triage, well, I love birth, it’s true. Laboring with a woman and seeing her and her baby safely through is the ultimate reason why I became a midwife; but I find that all the triage I have done in the past three and a half years has taught me more about obstetrics, complications, and emergencies than I could ever have gleaned in twice that time in what I like to think of as ‘true’ midwifery model care. After training in such a model, I have often felt a little cheated working in this system, but when push comes to shove, I have come to think of it as my ‘residency,’ as it were and try to keep as positive a spin on it as I can because I am soon to be moving into a system where midwives practice midwifery, and I go with an armory of skills that I might not have otherwise attained. So, three and a half months working nighttime triage? Bring it on.
This summer has been amazing, and I am so grateful for the time it’s given me to explore my creative side without constraint. I have sung, acted, auditioned, written, fought (stage combat), and found what I hope is a way to balance the part of me that needs that right-brained, creative energy, with the part of me that is single-mindedly passionate about women’s health and safe motherhood.
I’ve spent time in my future locale, narrowing down the area where I want to live (North Shore, preferably North Van), spent lots of time in the yoga studio, started training for my first 10K, entertained visitors to NYC, and relaxed with my friend who is home on maternity leave with her first baby. I’ve also read a bunch of books including Ina May’s latest: Birth Matters (which should be required reading for all providers of health care to women IMO), the newest Lady Julia Grey novel, The Hunger Games Trilogy, and am making my way through A Song of Ice and Fire’s five books. It’s been an amazing summer. How lucky am I to have had this time?
So, this weekend, I head to Atlanta to join my fellow geeks in that ultimate party of mass-geekery known as Dragon Con, before starting my first day of orientation on the 6th. After a month of red-tape-credentialing pushbacks, I’m ready to work, and work hard, and when this job is over, I’ll be heading west and north to the next chapter in my life. I really can’t put down this book. It’s pretty good. 
Well, hello!
Posted by: | CommentsA month since my last post!
Since then, I have been to Paris and gotten back to work. Things are still up in the air as to an end date. I know I had said Christmas previously, but things have gone back to the negotiating table. My main sticking point, the so-called ‘dread four’ each month is what we are talking about. I’m citing both patient safety and midwife sanity as reasons. I am off of the shift for October, but there has been no actual decision made at this time. Since I am applying to go to Canada at the end of 2011, it would be better if I didn’t have to find a new job for the interim, but I will if necessary. I’d like my last year in NYC to be one that I can really enjoy. I’m willing to work hard, but I want my quality of life outside of work to be good. That’s why I took this job. I knew it would be hard, but I also knew that the required hours would afford me a nice life outside of the workplace. So there you have it.
More midwifery news. I’ve taken on my first private patient in a long time, and I’m really excited about it. It’s really lovely getting to spend quality time with a client and providing actual midwifery care. This is not something I frequently get the chance to do.
In creative news, I am working on a concert/cabaret as I mentioned in my previous entry. I am trying to decide how to program it. A cabaret would probably be best in terms of least expense to me, but a concert might be better in terms of programming and having control of the funds. I can’t quite decide. Since the charity I want to fundraise for is affiliated with a sci-fi show, I know I could rent a theater and put on a concert and still be able to raise a fair amount of cash. If I let the fandom community know it’s going on, I imagine they will come- and bring their checkbooks.
I’m also learning acting for the camera. It’s really fun and exciting. I’ve only ever done one on camera job in my previous career, so it’s really really cool to learn something new. I also want to have some skills I can take into auditions if I am out of a job come January, or even if I’m not. It’s just a nice change, and lets me tap into something that’s really quite different from the high-drama of operatic arias.
And in fitness news. I had been slacking hugely on my fitness routine since coming back from Vancouver in July, mostly due to being totally overworked and insomniac’d. When I got back from Paris on the 8th, I decided not to fight the jetlag, but rather, to make it work for me. I’ve been getting up at around 5:30 each morning and either going for a run or doing yoga, and I feel great. Yeah, the running is still hard. I’m up to a mile and a half, but I’m still red-faced and huffing and puffing, at the end. But so far, so good. I’m fixating on the fabulous legs it’s going to give me, and that motivation seems to be working, lol. The yoga is keeping me flexible and all of those sun-salutations are doing lovely things to my arms and shoulders. I’m also eating better than I have in ages. I’m starting my 3rd week of this schedule and the working out has become a real habit now. It’s totally integrated into my daily life so yay! Or at least I’m committed enough to it to make it that way. My one day off each week is my post-call day when I really can barely think let alone move.
So that’s what’s going on now. I keep trying to blog more frequently and failing. Maybe I need to put it on my schedule like the fitness? I’m thinking that might help me out with keeping everything in perspective over the coming year.
Sometimes old friends become new again
Posted by: | CommentsWhat a lovely, if exhausting, week this has been!
A BSG friend from the UK has been visiting NYC this week with her husband and Andi and I had the chance to spend some fun, quality time with them. We went to a Yankee’s game on Tuesday, Thursday we went to a free concert by the B 52′s at Coney Island, and today we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge before having lunch and a walk in Brooklyn Heights. I may be exhausted, but what a recharging week. It can be really fun to play tourist in your own home town. I highly recommend it.
It was also a creatively positive week. I found out that I have an audition that I didn’t expect to get next month, so I’ve been working on some music for that and definitely feel the musical mojo. It’s a really nice feeling to find that again after being a bit stymied for the past few months.
I think that as much as uncertainty is terrifying, it can also be very liberating! I don’t plan on living with uncertainty for that long, but there’s a little edge in it that I’m enjoying. I’m waiting for the Canadian Multi-Jurisdictional Midwifery Bridging Project application for 2011 to open so that I can start working on that and move forward.
Other plans for the near future:
- finish writing and copyright new project
- plan concert to raise money for my new favorite charity Sanctuary for Kids –seriously y’all, check them out, they are doing AMAZING work
- sing like no-one’s listening/sing like everyone’s listening
Lastly, I’m going to Paris with Andi on the first. My French is SUPER rusty, so hopefully enough will come back to get us around so we don’t seem too American. I can’t wait!
More to come soon.
xoxo and thanks for reading!
