This is How Life Should Be...

This is how life should be...a friend said this to me as we were baking "butter" cookies, listening to John Mayer, and getting ready to watch the Pens game on Saturday evening. And I couldn't agree more...
For the past two years I had to say no to alot of things and alot of people. I had to say no to dinners, brunches, lunches, outings, and other things that I have probably forgotten along the way. My life seemed to be a fast paced whirl-wind of nursing, studying, clinicacl rotations, and other things scholary. Now that I have put in the time and the State of PA seems fit that I have completed course work and clinical work in order to sit for the NCLEX-RN, my life (at least for now) has slowed down, or at least calmed down. I'm not sure about this free time I have. In fact I don't know what to do with it. I'm not planning on studying for boards just yet, I just want to enjoy my time with my nursing friends and non-nursing friends alike. I feel as if I have gotten part of my life back and it feels great, but totally wierd at the same time. But I am not going to lie:I am burned out. My brain is fried, and if I had to wake up at 5am this week I think I would have cried. I've reached my breaking poinit, and its time to step out of my scrubs, take my hair out of that messy bun, and just be a normal college student for once, instead of one that is constatnly obsessed by medicine; even though it is my drive. It has become a part of me that I can not deny, and I would not hide it for a second, but I need a freaking break. Which is why this week is a week of extraordinary porportions or at least to me and my clinical group. It all starts tomorrow with a dinner of Hamburger Helper at my place and ends with dancing on friday night. For a group of six that spend well over 100 hours together, we feel we need to spend at least that much time if not more outside of the hopsital/classroom. These people have become my family and I will miss them come next fall. Even though I am comming back to finish my BSN in the fall, not everyone is starting that at the same time and others will be having jobs, which means different schedules for everyone. It still seems unreal. As soon as I pass boards I will be an RN...it just seems wierd. If someone would have aksed me four years ago what I saw myself doing, I wouldn't have imagined this...but now, I can't imagine doing anything but this!
So this IS how life should be....I should love and focus on my patients while at the hospital, but even though at times it might be hard to let that go, I have to remember they are in a much greater care when I leave and I need to trust that. And on my days off, it can be like that Saturday full of cookie baking Pens game watching wine cooler drinking ice cream eating dancing to John Mayer....okay well maybe not like that all the time, but it can be somewhat like that....