Still Here

It may go without saying but it's been over a year since my last post. Anyone reading this knows me and knows what I've done in that year. In the off-chance that you don't know me or what has occurred during this past year, here's the condensed version:

• I moved to Philly to be with my then-fiance. I had just quit a job that I was very unhappy with and that battered my body (hello, repetitive strain injury. Goodbye being an editor). I felt very lost. This time last year was a time when I felt lost nearly everyday and not infrequently depressed.
  
• I decided to become a nurse-midwife. It wasn't an overnight thing. I've entertained the idea for years but I didn't know enough about the profession to say for sure it was something I could commit. What I wanted from my profession was to not be behind a desk. I wanted to actually make a decent living. I wanted to see my children on more than just weekends and weeknights and have a flexible schedule. Most importantly, for years I felt lost about my career so I read about personality types and jobs. I am an INFJ. According to this type, I need to do work that's meaningful, would allow me to be warm and empathic and move people. I am really great at seeing potential and possibility in other people's lives, in being able to read people and help map out a life for them. Some of this is because I'm admittedly bossy and a sometimes a control freak. But I actually have a knack for seeing what other people don't see about themselves and sharing that information to help them (if they, in fact, want that information). So, I investigated counseling (again. I was a psych major, after all) and nursing. Then I decided being only a therapist wasn't enough. I wanted to counsel but also use my body and have a set of knowledge I could share. Nurses counsel and teach about and oversee health issues. Furthermore, I wanted to be my favorite kind of nurse, a midwife, so I can immerse myself in many of the topics I love--sex, pregnancy, ladies, babies, birth, breastfeeding. So, that's what I'm doing and now I can probably kiss that flexible schedule goodbye.
• I became a doula. I attended my first birth as a doula in August.
  
• I enrolled in community college to take all the science courses I avoided as a psych major--anatomy and physiology, chemistry, microbiology. I was scared I was fooling myself. I thought I didn't have a mind for science.
• But I am kicking ass in science. All A's. It's work but I get it and most of the time, I'm really interested in what I'm learning too. All good signs.
• I planned a wedding.
  
• On Sunday, October 10, 2010, Brian and I got married.
• I applied to nursing schools. I'll find out in a few weeks about the fate of one of the applications and the other one in February.
• In the meantime, I'm taking the second portion of anatomy and physiology and nutrition. Actually, I should be reading for class instead of writing this but it has been a year and I'm feeling inspired.
  

I want to blog again. I still want to write, even if I am going to be a nurse. I think about it and miss it but was having problems accessing this blog due to having a--unbeknownst to me--compromised account, . But I also did nothing about not having access to that blog because I thought I should give up my dream of writing now that I am going to be a nurse. I was sad about that. I've been writing since I was a kid and it has always been the one thing I've felt sure about but I couldn't do it because my hands hurt when I type and my ego hurts as I worry about not being good enough. Instead, I tucked it away and studied science and got married and took care of our dog and read some good books and read a few wedding blogs. I want to blog and podcast. It's something I have to do because I'm always thinking about it. I want to do something about midwifery, becoming a midwife, and sex and babies and veganism. But I am still formulating how to weave that all together in a cohesive enough way to make it a good blog.

In the meantime, I'm back to Mutual Menu. And I'm working on a vegan guide to Philly that will eventually be posted on a most excellent blog that I've recently discovered and has definitely reinspired me, Bonzai Aphrodite. There are so many new delicious vegan places popping up in Philly that I need to eat at and need to leave a record of them here. At the very least, I owe this blog a "How To Have a Vegan Wedding," post.

So, I'm back. If there's anything this year of non-blogging has taught me, it's that the things that are scary are the things I need to do most. And they are actually not as scary as I imagine them to be.