A Fresh Start

As many of you know I'm making a fresh start next week, and starting a new job in a very different area of nursing.  I'm going from being a "hands on nurse" to being "A Money Girl."  I'll be reviewing our new electronic patient records and making sure that the charges are accurate as well as the peri-operative information.  I tell people it's my way of "untangling the healthcare debacle one 'star fish' at a time."  (If you don't know the starfish story Google it - it's worth reading and very 'Half Full Glass' )  Anyhow, I decided that maybe it might be time to re-examine my own finances and make a fresh start there as well.  There is only one person for that job and that would be  Suze Orman.  She is a genius, and has never let me down.  Even though from time to time I have fallen off the "Suze Wagon," she always lets me climb back on, and helps me to get back to the falling off point only to move forward again.

I downloaded her new book today The Money Class: Learn to Achieve the New American Dream.  So far it is good.  She has lots of tools available to the reader through her website SuzeOrman.com. Today  I looked at my finances - expenses v. assets.  I went to the website and used the expense tracker tool. I learned about my finances.  The snapshot was a bit scary but not impossible to fix.  This last month has been a little hard, but things are on the upswing and by the summer I'll be looking better.  I'm getting a grip on what is wrong and I'm going to fix it.  In the first class Suze says "you need to be able to stand tall in your truth about your finances and then you can go on from there."   As usual, she's right.  I've been through enough therapy to know that is a fact.  Without truth you are blind and it keeps you from a lot of joy.

A fresh start is a good thing.  It gives us hope for the future of ourselves.  We all need that from time to time.  If you can stand tall in your own personal truth, what ever that may be, it will make your fresh start even better.  Dig around in your life.  Take the time to find your truth, stand tall in it and give yourself a fresh start.  It's a gift that doesn't cost much and can be very beneficial for everyone in your life, but most especially yourself!  Cheers.

Riding the Wave

A few weeks ago I changed my status on Facebook.  That prompted all kinds of comments.  I answered everyone with much the same answer.  "Thanks for your good wishes.  I'm a lucky girl in that someone I dated previously has walked back into my life again, and after many conversations, private messages on facebook and texts we've decided to give 'us' another try."  Yes indeed, so far so good, however there are some things that are different this time.  For one thing we both have traveled very different paths.  I traveled the path of a single parent, and I have to say, that although I've made some mistakes, I think I have it down now.  I'm a much happier and "settled" person than I was when we dated before.  I've figured a few things out and I've got a better outlook on life.  He has traveled the path of the married man and new dad again.  He has a daughter that is grown and just graduated from college.  He and his former wife adopted two babies while they were married and the girls are 3 and 5 years old.  Basically, he started from scratch.  His dad wasn't around much when he was growing up and he wants to do a better job than his dad.  He is a devoted father to his little girls and I'm happy for him.  When I sat down and thought about what all that meant it did send up a giant red flag.  When my daughter graduates from high school his girls will be in the 6th and 4th grade.  That was a daunting thought.  In fact, it scared me.  Two girls going through all that middle school and high school bring all over again.  At that point in my life I'll be 54.  Retirement will be on the horizon for me.  Now comes the cool part.
The women in my family, God love them, tend to be a little controlling.  They try to change and manipulate things that are pretty much impossible to change. In the end it makes them miserable sometimes.  So, being the "outlier" anyway,  I decided that maybe it was time to travel a different road.  I like this guy a lot.  We never got to really find out how things would have turned out, and honestly I think we probably should have tried a little harder.  But what I've decided is that we weren't ready for each other.  Now we are and there is lots to consider.  Can I change the circumstances that lay before us in our relationship?  Nope.  Can I change the fact that he wants to do the right thing and be a stand up guy to his children?  Why would I want to?  Can I change the way I perceive the circumstances and maybe ride the wave to see what happens?  You are darned right I can and I'm going to.  What I did think about and decide was that his former wife has the girls 85% of the time.  He has them 15% of the time.  Is that time worth our relationship?  I don't think it is.  If all this works out and he and I decide to take the next step at some point, what ever that step may be, I want him to continue to be a stand up guy and do the right thing for his kids.  It will give my daughter and I a chance to do some special mother/daughter stuff.  We have a strong and deep relationship she and I, and we have talked about this at length.
At my age it's highly unlikely that I would meet a man that doesn't have children.  That's kind of how it works these days.  Your kids are either little or all grown up.  It doesn't mean that you sacrifice your relationship because there are children involved.  It just means that our life together will be a crazy adventure that we get to go on together.  It will keep us young, and active and out of "Shady Acres." Just when we think we are done with kids the grandchildren will start to arrive, and I can tell you right now, I'm going to be one awesome grandmother.  Just like at the beach the waves just keep on coming.  Might as well grab a surf board and ride a few!

A New Path

Today I began to walk a new path in my life.  I am about to continue my nursing career in a brand new direction.  Pretty soon I will hang up my scrubs, pretty cloth hats,  latex free gloves and night call - all the tools of my beloved career as an Operating Room Nurse.  Fifteen years is a long time.  Days and nights spent with some of the most hardworking, genuine and intelligent people I have ever known taking care of our patients at the most vulnerable time in their lives.   While they slept, we fixed what was wrong, broken or in some cases bringing them back from the brink of death.  Most of the time it was uneventful, but there were a couple of times that, when looking back, the circumstances seam surreal, and we were not as successful as we would have liked.  All in all, it was a good run.  Saying that I learned a lot is an understatement.  Originally I went to the Operating Room "to figure things out."  I was discouraged with floor nursing and I had questions that could only be answered by getting right in there where all the action was happening.  A nurse named Katie-Jo Brown saw something in me that she thought might make a good Operating Room Nurse and she gave me the chance of a life time.  I took it and ran.  A few years later after a plane ride from Portland to Fargo, ND on my way home to Baltimore I met someone else who put me in touch with another nurse named Pauline Svetska, and before I knew it I had a job in Portland, Oregon three thousand miles from my hometown of Lewes, DE, and honestly, that's when the big things started happening.  Here we are now again at a cross roads.  The previous paths were much the same, the geography was just different.  Now it's the same geography but the path is different.  Next Friday June the 3rd I'm going to have my own "Oprah Moment" where I say good bye to one adventure and begin a whole new one.   I have to say that's a daunting prospect.  My mom told me just this week during a tiny freak out moment, that the unknown is a little scary sometimes.  She's right.  I'm about to walk down a road I've never been down before.  A few days ago it looked pretty dark down that road, but not anymore.  I spent today with two great women who have been down that path already and they handed me a flashlight!  Thank you Jill and Clare!  I'm feeling much better about walking down this path now that I have my trusty flashlight.  That's not to say that giving up what I've been doing for the last fifteen years is easy, it's not.  But what I do know is that I'm channeling the sadness that comes with moving from something that I've given my whole self to to something  totally different into something really great.  I can take all that I've learned and use it on my new journey, and that makes me feel safe and secure.  I might not be walking along the same path as my Operating Room colleagues anymore, but I'll be there with my trusty flashlight ready to show a whole new set of folks the way down a new path, and that will be good.

Here We Go!!!

Today we are starting something new.  I'm taking my title from Oprah Winfrey on this her last day of her long running and much beloved afternoon talk show.  She uses that phrase every month in her magazine to launch her readers into magazine bliss.  It's a happy thought "here we go!"  We are leaping off into a new thing, a new adventure or just starting a new day.  I always said that to myself when I rode roller coasters.  I was at the top and the rush and the thrill was about to get started.  So it's an appropriate phrase to begin my next blog project.

Just a little mention of the title... The Half Full Glass.  This is me in a nutshell.  I used to live the half empty glass life.  It was a bummer to say the least.  It was hard to be happy in those days.  Thankfully I managed to change that up.  Whew.  When I think of the energy it took to live that way, it makes me a little sad.  I missed out on so much.  I was on medication and just had trouble getting through my day.  I lost the love of my life when I lived that way.  Thankfully, as I said that has all changed.  I got tired of being tired and negative.  It almost cost me my job at one point.  It's not easy to crawl out of that half empty glass, but when you do...oh my.  It's an amazing view!

So here we are now.  Jumping off into a new day.  Celebrating the Divine Miss O as she says "good bye for now."  Here we go Oprah, running off in a new direction with our half full glass.  Maybe we should plan to get together.  To sit on your big porch in Hawaii and smell the flowers or walk on the beach.  Two friends walking and chatting while the dogs run up and down.  Who knows where this adventure will lead us, but I can tell you one thing, our glass will always be half full, and we will be grateful for it!
Cheers!