NursingZen

During the past week I’ve had an intense motivation to Organize and follow through with things in my life – and I’ve been doing it each day, several times a day. The organizing has been both big and small: from throwing away pens that have run out of ink and moving the shredder to the front door to buying a filing cabinet and changing office to bedroom and bedroom to office, I’ve been having a hard time thinking of much else. The organizing has become more than that. I think I may understand the meaning of ‘deep cleanse’ now. I feel like I’ve never done this before to this extent.

It all began last Wednesday when I began obsessing over boxes. Storage boxes for files. Files for writing ideas and magazine clippings that inspire writing ideas. I realized it was ridiculous that after all these years I can’t find any article or quote or poem that I remember reading and thinking, yes, I need to remember this for my stories.

I began to evaluate other areas of my life that are just full of paper, and I wonder, where are those things? How can I build knowledge, history, meaning and inspiration if I can’t refer to anything I’ve learned about or come across in the past? I used to think I could rely on my memory to build one piece of knowledge or experience on another. I’m finally realizing the mind doesn’t work like that. It retains only bits and pieces, and sometimes very cryptically and vaguely. I can’t rely on memory. I need tangible evidence before me.

Over the past week, I sold some books. I rearranged all my books by genre. I dedicated a definitive section to my science books and a section right next to it to my non-fiction and fiction. This was definitely a declaration that I am accepting nursing’s place in my life next to writing. The science books are important to me, especially as I study pathophysiology and need to continuously refer to books from previous classes. I realized I enjoy building this library.

I feel like I’ve crossed some threshold where I’m able to take a little more control of my life and start to unravel the jumble of conflicts and multitude of interests in my mind.More metaphors: I feel like I’m starting to break through a blockade in my mind that had been holding me back, making me procrastinate, perhaps freezing me in fear of something. Maybe this is the first step to unblocking the ‘writer’s block.’ Perhaps it’s not just writer’s block – it’s also life’s block. I feel like that big black spirit in Spirited Away who became unplugged and released mounds and mounds of junk and sewage from inside of it. Suddenly he became who he truly was and floated happily away.

I might be suddenly obsessed with organizing my life because I’m trying to distract myself from my growing anxiety about UCSF as the date draws near. But I also feel the motivation and the unplugging have felt so real and have been so joyful that there must be more to this than just my mind’s clever way of passing time. The notion that the universe may be helping me to prepare for a new phase in my life is apt whether I’m accepted to school or not. Either way, after this week, my life is entering a new phase. Big changes are on the way this year. I want to be present and mindful and appreciative of each and every one of those moments.