Upheavel

This week has been one of several crazy emotions for me.

I have hit rock bottom emotionally, given up on myself, cried my eyes out, and sunk into a deep depression. On the other hand I still have hope, have found enjoyment in some simple things and have even made a few people's days (well if we're being literal it would actually be nights) better.

I have found a little bit of enjoyment working the night shift. For four days/three nights I get to ignore the world. I get to keep myself surrounded in my job, in trying to focus on this new venture in my life that no one else is a part of (which is also semi scary and isolating at times) and I am forced to lose contact with most of my life. Which for me is wonderful. For that time I am not connected to anyone nor am accessible to my phone. And it's nice to disconnect from the world for awhile. I have floundered a little this past week but also found myself jumping in head first to try and learn all the new things that come with my job. While it can be overwhelming I am trying my best to focus and pick up on any little thing I can. I like feeling a part of a team, even if it's temporary and semi-transient.

Every other part of my life other than my job has proven to be too much for me to bear.

It has been hard knowing my family really doesn't care for me too much. Knowing that I am a burden on everyone else and not being what anyone else wants or needs me to be. I find myself yearning for my complete alone times alone and inviting as much time sleeping as possible. Sure signs to me that I'm sinking into a depression of sorts. I have long learned I don't yet have a niche in the world.

I struggle so much month to month just to pay the bills. leaving little to no free time, never getting ahead and always getting further behind. I am not quite sure what free time really looks like anymore. And when I do have free time I find it hard to find things to do as I have no money to afford anything...not even money to afford to go buy paints and canvas and the like to scrapbook or paint or make photo collages. I don't have time to go play with my camera nor time to work out (ok well in realisticness I have time for those but no means to do either most of the time). I feel like I struggle so much only to keep digging myself into a hole of semi-hopelessness.

And wow, don't I sound so damn emo and depressed?!

But I have to get it out. I don't know where else to go with this. It's just been building more and more inside of me.

My confidence is all but gone, my hope for having a future that I can do much of anything is diminishing and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to continue making it month to month. I guess in some ways I have lost a sense of hope and faith in a bright future for myself....just feeling so beat up and discouraged. I feel very alone and completely misunderstood. I have given up even trying to open up to those around me because really what can anyone do?! Who would want to do anything to help me out?!

The latest updates in my life:

The first is my home. My parents are re-painting the whole house. And putting it up for sale. Which has me severely depressed and anxious. If the house sells I will have to find my own place. And I can't afford my life as it is, especially with the upcoming costs of school. So I'm not sure how I'm going to afford a place of my own. But I have to find a way to somehow make it work. And I'm scared. Once again, part of why I feel like I just keep hitting walls. I'm not sure where to go from here. And my only safe place is no longer becoming my safe place as it has to be "show-worthy" and really my room is meant for my comfort, not for show...but now I have to start covering up my safe zone. I don't want to do that. My photos, my books, my stuff in my room is all I have. As materialistic as that sounds, everything is placed the way it is that makes me comfortable and now I have to take it all down and hide it and cover it up. So my safe zone is no longer mine. It's freaking me out.

The second is a wart. I have a wart on the bottom of my foot that I've ignored for about 8 months and it just kept getting bigger. So I finally ripped the top layer of skin off and start putting Compound W on it ...which worked! But it also made it open up into a hole that is approximately a half-an-inch deep in my foot. I went and got it frozen by the doc today. She said it's actually a pretty good sized wart (oh yay) and that it will take about 6 months for it to go away. Really?! So gross to me. If it was on anyone else I'd be fascinated. On me, it's like a violation of my OCD....I have a HOLE in my foot. That is housing a wart, complete with a root and other gross shit. ICK!! I can't wait for it to be gone. Between that and my acne breaking out again hardcore, I just feel like crap. Oh and the weight gain. I'm gaining weight like crazy again. Eating comfort food and having no time to set up a consistent workout schedule (and also unable to run or apply pressure to my foot because of the wart).

Lesson learned: freeze the damn wart IMMEDIATELY when it comes. Don't ignore it. At least I don't have to see this gross thing other than when I look on the bottom of my foot. ICK!

I have a project I want to work on. It's a canvas artwork. Not sure how to do it or if I can afford it but I'm going to try. Hopefully I can get to that next week after I'm done with my work week...we'll see what happens...

Graveyard

In orienting into my new job, I have currently been assigned to working the night shifts. From 7:00pm (aka 1930) to 7:30am (aka 0730) I have been assigned to work on 7A at Denver Health.

First it's been just a wee bit tough adjusting to continuous 12-hour shifts. Sure I'm used to work ALL day long, but in a different way. Working in one spot for 12.5 hours with only a half hour lunch is a bit different. Especially when I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing! Now put them together back-to-back and that is a bit exhausting. For four days my life revolves around this cycle sleep-work-sleep-work-sleep-work-sleep-work. And now I'm having to completely flip my natural circadian rhythm. Working nights (which actually isn't near as hard as I thought) and doing 12-hour shifts back-to-back.

So I have quickly found that putting that all together has left me exhausted!

So my life has come down to working in a ghostly hospital at night, not sure of what I'm doing, and sipping on things containing caffeine to keep me going. Basically these highlights of my lunch have become essentials...


Welp I guess a little sacrifice on the road to bigger dreams right?! Besides getting the opportunity to watch the sun rise over the city from the windows of the 7th floor of a hospital can be breathtaking :-)

9News and Denver Health

This week has been CRAZY busy for me!! And by crazy busy, I'm really not kidding.

I spent all of last week working two jobs everyday...I had to miss the beautiful weather we've had :-( Saturday morning I got up and worked the 9News Health Fair as a phlebotomist first thing in the morning. Can I just say....poking healthy veins as opposed to the veins of those in the hospital is SO nice?!?! It was cool to freshen up my skills and know that I actually do have my phlebotomy skills :-) I came home and took a quick nap and then headed to Erie to go babysit six kids for the evening.

Sunday I spent (trying to) sleep, which was somewhat successful.

AND THEN......

I started my new job bright n' shiney Monday morning.

And by bright n' shiney I mean before the sun was even up. I was on the Denver Health campus by 6:30am and spent the next 11 hours there. Monday was a long New Employee Orientation and then Tuesday/Wednesday I spent 10 hours each day (starting at 7:00am both days) at what was called Nursing Training. As a new Healthcare Tech I will be involved directly in patient care so we had to go through "special training" in regards to hearing a lot about different units and all the privacy/legal stuff that goes into direct patient care. It was some great training but it was three long days sitting in a chair....which was hard for two reasons...being up early each morning coupled with long long days AND sitting all day long. I'm not always such a sitter!! And then yesterday I got to actually start some of my on-the-job training.

Now let me explain a little bit more. Denver Health is a Level One Trauma facility. Meaning they specialize in high trauma. Think mass casualties and severe trauma...well they are great at that. If you come into their Emergency Department (ED), you have a 95% chance of leaving with a pulse! Pretty great statistics!!

Their slogan is Level One Care For ALL...meaning (and especially being in the heart of downtown Denver) they serve all populations regardless of ability to pay for the care they receive. So we serve a lot of minorities and at-risk populations. Poverty. Behaviorial/psych. Underprivileged. Etc. They campus is really pretty damn big and houses a lot of different needs. They have a lot of community and school-based clinical sites, house poison and infection control, have a huge lab and serve the prison populations. They have a floor that treats eating disorders and have several psych wards. Denver Cares is a detox/psych arm of the hospital. They have a SICU, PICU, NICU, MICU and regular ICU. They have Labor & Delivery, Mother/Baby, Med-Surg, Ortho....and all those other areas you hear about in every other hospital. It's just a massive health care system.

Now what's my job?! Well I'm a Healthcare Technician. What does that mean?! I'm a CNA with other qualifications or extensive experience in healthcare. I'm assuming the combination of having my CNA license, my Phlebotomy licensure, and experience working with special needs and home health care landed me this position. So I'm a step above a regular CNA but a step below an LPN (Licensed Practicing Nurse). Now what unit do I get to work on?! I get to work in the CCMF. The what?! The Correctional Care Medical Facility. What?! Basically I work in the unit/department that treats the prisoners!

No I'm not kidding. I'm dead serious (no pun intended)!

It's actually a really safe unit...accompanied by the Denver Sheriff's Department as well as other officers of the various jurisdictions that use DH's services, I'm in one of the most dangerous yet safest units there is!!

I will be trained as both a ward clerk and a healthcare tech...doing both desk work and healthcare work.

Pretty exciting stuff.

I'm pretty exhausted but am pretty excited about only having to work 3 12-hour shifts a week to pay my bills! Gonna be hard and a lot of work but let's do this! So that's all been my whole world for the past couple days :-)

One Day Without Shoes

Today I was substitute teaching in one of our middle schools. Today also happens to be a celebratory day. TOMS Shoes has a day of awareness dubbed One Day Without Shoes. It's to raise awareness of the issue of "shoelessness" around the world. TOMS shoes also has a one-for-one policy, in which for every pair of their shoes you buy, a pair is sent around the world to a person in need. My friend Alyssa, who is currently in Guatemala for the Peacecorps, can attest to the importance of this organization as a lot of the people in her host village wear TOMS shoes.

Well today, I decided to let the classes of 6th graders I was teaching for the day get in on the action, promoting the release of their little toes from their shoes while in my class. Not all of them participated, only those that were comfortable. But the kids got a KICK out of it! They wanted to share and go talk to other teachers and get other classes to do it too. At the very least it was fun for them while in my class and a fun story to take home to their parents.

Here's to a second year of promoting One Day Without Shoes!


For more information about TOMS shoes, please visit www.toms.com and for more information about One Day Without Shoes please visit www.onedaywithoutshoes.com!

A Little Wish

My big anxiety attacks started coming back this weekend. Sunday I had a massive one and this evening, another. I forgot how discombobulated they leave me.

I don't wish or ask for much in the way of being taken care of physically by anyone.

But in this rare moment, I wish nothing more than the ability to put my head in a friend's lap and for them to rub my head until my mind and body are relaxed by that small loving compassionate gesture. That is my small wish tonight....

A Lil Bit O Country

I am a self-described music whore. I will listen to just about anything and everything...with very little exception. Some genres I have to be in the mood for but I really do just enjoy music, all day every day...excellent, horrible and everything in-between.

However there is one genre that will always be my favorite, hands-down, no questions asked.

Country music.

And yes I am a music elitist when it comes to this genre. I will listen to all country but you DO NOT MESS with my country greats. It's just not something you do.

There is nothing that makes me feel more human, more comfortable, more happy, or more at home than some good ol' country music!

What is it that I love about country music?!

Well for starters, I grew up on it. It's just near and dear to my heart because it's one of two main genres I grew up listened to. Saturday mornings were started with either a little classic rock or a little country. Roadtrips always were accompanied by a vast richness of cd's and singing as a family. Evenings were spent watching classic Disney (as we didn't have too too much when I was younger) or rocking to our old record and cd player.

But on top of that it's just home-grown, classic, genuine music from genuine down-to-earth people (mostly). They talk about love, life, heartbreak, successes, the little things in life, God, and of course big green tractors! I love the genuinity, I love that I can rock out to it, I love Brad Paisley's comedic outlook in his songs, and I love how closely it always hits to my heart.

I love songs about love and loving others. And country music does that on a continual basis.

A lotta bit o country music is always a great thing in my book :-)

Lock It Up!

Sometimes you just gotta have those nights where you have a ton of fun...just a relaxed night with a few beers and a few friends and LOADS of laughs....last night was that for me. It was wonderful to just "release" myself for the night...

Sometimes you just gotta "LOCK IT UP!"