ç'est la vie RN

Category: The journey

  • S.M.A.R.T. Goals

    S.M.A.R.T. Goals

    Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Relevant – Timely

    Here is the list of goals I have vowed to work on in 2024:

    • Personal:
      • Schedule event with the girlfriend group at least every other month
      • Do something new once a quarter
    • Professional
      • Maintain positive progress (pass each class the 1st time with a B or better) in my DNP program to stay on target for a December 2025 graduation
      • Secure employment by May 1st with an organization that is a 30 minute commute or less, does not interfere with my extracurricular activities (choir, mentoring, board participation), AND does not threaten my sense of well-being
    • Spiritual
      • Join the Unity Choir for 2024 (Done – consists of weekly evening rehearsals and a two Sunday per month performance requirement)
      • 1 hour quiet time daily with the Lord (devotionals, praying, reading the word)
    • Physical/Health
      • Limit eating out to once a week (because it’s getting pricey AND they tryna kill us with everything they put in our food anyway)
      • 30 minutes of moderate activity at least 5 days a week (will use Fitbit tracker)

    Simple enough, right? We shall see. After reviewing these with the therapist, the conversation landed on self-care. She sent me the link to this awesome self-care wheel, because sometimes people have a limited view of what is considered self-care. What are you doing for self-care? If you’re not doing ANYTHING on this wheel, I challenge you to make a S.M.A.R.T. goal or two of your own. Self-care is a form of love. I understand some of us may occasionally have a difficult time loving ourselves because we don’t feel worthy of love. Remember this…

    “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.” – Ephesians 3:18-19 NLT

  • What’s a girl to do?

    What’s a girl to do?

    In my mind, the plan is to not go back to work until at least April (so far, so good). I also knew it was very important for me to make the best of this time and tend to some other areas of my life that I somewhat neglected over the years. First, was establishing some sense of routine (currently, not winning lol). I know it is THE thing that would probably make me so much more productive, but the days when I have nothing on my schedule are so few, that I usually use them to do absolutely nothing…no cooking, no cleaning, no communicating, no getting dressed, etc. I decided to get with a therapist to talk through some things during this time of transition. There were a couple of items I was experiencing under the “things we also grieve” list. Plus, my sister and I were having a conversation one day about our childhood, and this question came up, “How do you know that you’re healed (from trauma)?” I can tell you that I did not feel like I was burying stuff to move along, but that was my opinion. I’m not the professional.

    My first appointment was actually December 27th. The assignment was to come back with my story from birth to present time and include everything I felt was major in my story or influential in my decision making. That was easy enough because I do not have the greatest long term memory. And it’s not a loss of memory. Something just needs to be significant and meaningful enough to stick with me. Most of my long term memories are centered around my five senses or a deep flooding of emotions. I know the one thing about me and trauma is that I rarely gave myself permission to accept the fact that something happened to me, because I was always cognizant that someone somewhere else was struggling with the same thing, but on a deeper level. I learned a few years back this has a term – comparative suffering. What I did not know in the past is that while my perception may be valid, it does not negate my trauma. I should still allow myself to feel what I’m feeling and express what needs to be expressed.

    A perfect example of this is my role during the pandemic. At the height of it, I was managing an outpatient cardiovascular pre-op/post-op unit. All of our non-essentials were shut down. Since I was a leader, I couldn’t just take off and go work in New York or Seattle. Actually, I guess I could have…did not seem like a feasible option at the time. I also felt a responsibility to be present for my staff, one of which volunteered to loan her previous critical care experience to ground zero, the intensive care unit. I was grateful because I was somewhat sheltered from the frontline experience. However, I also felt guilty that I did not try to be more involved at the nucleus. We lost many colleagues. I lost a cousin. She was a respiratory therapist. It was a sad time, yet somehow, the bus just kept rolling.

    During my second session, we dove deeper into some pivotal events and worked on S.M.A.R.T. goals for the professional, personal relationships, physical, and spiritual areas of my life. I’ve been an online student since 2015 y’all, so if I know how to do anything, it’s write a S.M.A.R.T. goal! I think they actually keep me progressing. If I go off track, I’ll have to rearrange everything, and that annoys me, my intricately scribed planner, and the dozens of dated sticky notes that adorn my office, bathroom and dining room table. Tomorrow, I’ll share those goals. Please keep in mind that I am an introvert. I give of myself and connect with others in rations to prevent the risk of becoming totally depleted.

    ‭‭“For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11 NASB 2020

  • How did I get here?

    How did I get here?

    I won’t go ALL the way back to the beginning…Towards the end of 2022, I was starting to feel like something was missing. I loved my job. I treated people right. My gal-pal group had grown. I would volunteer and give back whenever I was able. Still, day in and out, the feeling would not let up. I often spent my commute listening to Gospel/Christian music. I had become more intentional about the thought seeds I was planting in my life. One particular morning, a stream of tears overflowed the banks of my lower lids, and I instinctively knew it was time to re-dedicate myself to the Lord. I began that journey by becoming a member of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship and completing the new member spiritual growth course. It resulted in my developing a more heightened awareness of people and their behaviors. I say more because I already considered myself pretty observant and intuitive. It was the people that refused to return a “good morning”, the people that walked around frowning all day, every day for seemingly no good reason, the people that cause confusion simply because there is none in that present moment, the people that assumed their role designation somehow made them “better” aka more significant than the next human being, and so many other examples I could give.

    The funny thing was, this stuff wasn’t new. It happened around me all the time. I had just become more sensitive to it. I participated in the American Organization for Nursing Leadership’s Nurse Manager Fellowship in 2023. Taking several trips away from work allowed me to really sit on the complexities of what we were being taught. It also led me to do a lot more self-reflection than usual. As my daily commute transitioned into a personal worship session, giving God gratitude for all the ways he has kept me despite my unfaithfulness to Him, I realized I had no idea if I was living according to His will. In my mind, there was a quick flashback of me doing thing, after thing, after thing, for the past several years, never stopping to ask if it was the thing He wanted me to do.

    At this time, I had been a nurse manager about 5 years. Right before the pandemic, I had planned to take a week of PTO quarterly to maintain work/life harmony. The term balance suggests a state of equilibrium or stability, and honestly, that really does not exist in healthcare. Introvert me plus not enough vacations meant I needed to take some time. A month was not going to be enough. That would barely allow me to finish unraveling the tangled cords of my life that I had just let do their own thing for so long. When I initially heard (what I thought was my spirit say), “You need to quit.” I was like HOLD UP! The last time I checked, there was a mortgage, living expenses, other debts, medications, no husband…Seriously, could I really afford to NOT work, at all? And in His perfect timing, the Holy Spirit chimed in, “I held you down when you were out of work before (long story). The difference is that I placed Myself there and covered you in such a way that you would know it was Me. This time, I’m giving you the opportunity to choose Me.”

    So, I’ve been home y’all since December 22, 2023. There has been therapy, a lot a tearing down to rebuild, no homelessness, no hunger, and lots of PEACE! I’m going to break here and watch some videos on how to use WordPress better than I have today. Tomorrow, I will be back with a January recap. If anyone is curious about whether or not I’m worried, the answer is, I am not.

    “So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” Matthew 6:34 NASB 2020.

  • Hey y’all!

    Hey y’all!

    My name is Tiffany. Up until the end of 2023, I was a registered nurse manager. One morning, during an extended commute (courtesy of DFW traffic), a series of meaningful questions and a conversation with the Holy Spirit led me to take a break from my career. While I sort through my life and what comes next, I decided to make my journaling public. A couple of caveats…1) I am a believer in Jesus Christ. You will see His name, you will hear me testify to how He moves in my life, and my faith is not up for debate, 2) I was born and raised in southeast Louisiana. Sometimes I will type how I talk with my 504 family/friends, so the grammar police is not needed or welcome here (don’t get it twisted…ya girl is well educated), and 3) I may not be punching a clock, but definitely working on other things and will try to be consistent. There is no main focus here. We’re just journeying through life as it happens : )