New Beginnings

In 3 days I start my new job. I am full of anticipation - my stomach full of both butterflies and wasps.

How will I like my new employers, my new colleagues? How will they like me?

I've been thinking a lot about how I can make a good impression. How I would like them to see me? I would like to be seen as highly skilled, eager to learn, helpful, friendly, and positive.

I also worry about what it will be like to be new? Will I be able to live up to the expectations of my new workplace? In my present job I have become used to being one of the more experienced, the person my colleagues come to for proffessional advice and guidance.

To prepare I have gone through 12 online introductory courses - everything from fire safety to blood draws, the layout of the hospital, security procedures, and procedures for documenting medication administration.

One of the reasons for taking the new job is that I will be salaried as a nurse anesthetist. So I think a lot about how I can let my competency come to expression in the ER setting.

Finally there is the question of the commute. It is an hour by train, pluss 10 or 15 minutes by bus. I look forward to the time on the train and am thinking of how I can make the most use of it: studying? surfing the internet? doing my meditations? relaxing with a good book or napping? After plotting my workday into google calendar I could see that I will not have time for activities before or after work, so in order to still get some fresh air and exercise I have bought stud tires for my bicycle. It really doesn't take longer to bike down to the train station (3 km) where I can chain my bike at the bicycle park right next to the platform, than to take the car out of the car port, drive down and around to the parking area on the far side of the station, and then go back under the underpass in order to come up on the right side again, where the platform is. Once I had decided to bike the distance, I started thinking about the stuff I will have to lug around, like my unwieldy laptop, and so I decided to order an iPad. The tires came yesterday, husband will be mounting them this weekend, so I should be all set to bike to the train station by tuesday.

Being Positive

It was one of my new years resolutions for 2010 and I failed miserably at it. Throughout the year I kept hearing complaints about my negative attitude, as I became more aware of it I would catch myself whining, or criticizing. As the new year rolled around I found myself renewing my resolution to aquire a positive attitude. There are people I work with who seem to spread happiness around them. They can make the most overwhelming situation seem fun. I would like to have that sort of influence on other people. I would like to be the one who is able to point out the good side in someone difficult, who can find fun in a challenge, something to lauph at in disaster, hope for in times of crisis, something beautiful in the hideous.

How to accomplish this? Just resolving it doesn't seem to be enough. I think I have to make a plan. Do practical exercises. Here are some examples of exercizes I could do:

• Every day write down 5 things that make me happy. If all I can think about is what bothers or upsets me find something positive in five of these. In this way I will try to shift my focus.
• Say something nice (but true) to someone for whom I have indifferent or negative feelings.
• Do something (out of my own initiative) to make someone happy every week.
• Do something (out of my own initiative) to make my environment more beautifull every week.

If anyone reading this has comments to these exercizes or suggestions for exercises to increase positivity please post a comment.

Resolution and Resolve

The beginning of a new year is traditionally a time of resolutions. Usually though, they last a few weeks and by the time several months have rolled around they are forgotten. So I have spent the first 6 weeks of the new year focusing on Resolution itself, and what can be done to strengthen the power of resolve and thus increase the likelihood of remembering and continually working on what has been resolved upon.

To this effect I began an exercise given by Rudolf Steiner, to resolve on some action every day. It can be the same action or a different one. It should be something that you wouldn't necessarily have done otherwise, and something which would have no consequences if left undone. It should have no moral or ethical value, however it should not be completely trite either. Steiner mentions watering a flower every day. It is useful to choose a time when the action is to be carried out - this does not have to be a particular hour and minute, it can just as well be "immediately after dinner", "before bedtime" or whatever. Another important aspect to this exercise is to notice the feeling of an impulse to act that arises just before you carry out the exercise. I hadn't been aware of this part of the exercise before. It is indeed important - in fact I have been discovering that an important point to many of Steiners exercises is becoming aware of the feeling which the particular exercise generates, and thus becoming more aware of oneself.

I practiced this exercise for a month last summer, and found that it helped my memory and my concentration - in the sense that I did not so easily forget to do things. The way I practice this exercise is that in the morning I visualize performing the action. I chose actions that had an esthetic component, like picking a bunch of flowers, or something like that. This is something I don't have to do, that doesn't have a moral or ethical quality, but that is not completely meaningless as for example "touching my left ear with my right hand at 2 pm" would have been. Also I didn't really choose a particular time to carry out my resolution. I just did it some time before going to bed. Sometimes I would remember it after I had gone to bed, and would get up again to do it. This, as I understand is important. To remember a resolution, to experience the impulse to act, consciously or unconsciously, and then IGNORE IT, weakens the power of resolve - in other words it has the opposite effect to what the exercise is trying to accomplish.

I took the exercise up again for 2 weeks in November. By this time I had read that Steiner also suggests adding actions so that you begin with one, then add another, and another, as many as you can manage... However in November I wasn't even able to remember the one action. Plus I had chosen things that were not so easy to carry out after bedtime, in the dark, if I happened to remember it then. It was a complete disaster.

I am now working on it again, though I have given up any ambition of doing more than one action. I am using watering plants a lot (not many flowers to pick in winter). The problem with Steiner's suggestion of watering a plant is that watering a plant every day, will kill said plant (unless you give it very little water), but since I have many plants I generally just choose one at a time. Other actions that I resolve on are trimming away dead leaves, brushing one of the dogs and cats etc. I'm planning to stick with this exercise for about 6 weeks this time. This time I choose a time when I will do it, usually in connection with my midday meditation. I chose the time partly because it is the midday meditation that I am most prone to skip, because of bad planning usually, so I am trying to kill two birds with one stone so to speak.

Bike on Bed

The first week of the new year was mostly about being sick. I've been anemic lately and it seem when that happens I pick up every virus that is going around. So, right after Christmas I had a 24-hour stomach bug (diarrhea and vomiting - yech) and then right after new years I came down with a bad cold.

It started out with an excruciatingly painful sore and hoarse throat, but since I didn't have fever I went to work. By the time my day off rolled around I had developed a fever of 102.2 and spent all that day on the sofa dying. Woke up friday feeling so much better and ready to start a four day work weekend. The fever was gone, the sore throat was gone. All that was left was a couph and a runny nose.

That couph was keeping me up at night. By the time I was done with the first evening shift of the weekend I was exhausted having not slept properly for several nights. I collapsed in bed and quickly dropped off - only to be woken by a poke in the side. This sent me into a fit of couphing. When it was over I was just dropping off when another poke in the side had me wide awake and couphing again. Apparently every time I fell asleep (on my back - the only position that didn't have me couphing) I would start snoring loudly. After about an hour of this I gave up and went to find the guest room where I can snore and couph and spit phlegm without keeping anyone awake, only to find a bike on the bed. I spent that night on the sofa, and by the next the bike had been taken away.

You see, husband has been bitten by the bicycle bug. He has 3 expensive bicycles. Too expensive to keep in the garage, you see, and so they are distributed around the house - and one of them was on the bed in the guest room. After I pointed out the need to use the guest bedroom for a couphing and snoring retreat, he very kindly moved the bike someplace else.

comments and word verification

Some of my readers had requested me to take away word verification for commenting on my blogg. I did so because I love getting comments. However since then I have been getting spam comments very frequently (certainly more often than real comments) and so I have put back word verification. I hope you will still comment - even if it is a slight inconvenience to type out the stupid word first. As I say, I really enjoy your comments.

Skiing

The cold spell having broken and with two days off work, I got out my skis. It was a bright morning with temperatures in the 20's F. Here I am ready to go.

The ski track is only about 50 yards from our front door. I had Lucy on a lead fastened to my belt, but let her go as soon as we were on the track. We followed it down and around the neighboring houses and there Lucy decided to sniff around and maybe go home. I had to take off my skis and go after her. Finally caught her and put her back on the lead. The track continued across the fields and then divided, one going through farmland, the other headed up into the woods. This is the one I followed.

It was a beautiful morning with the sun shining through the trees. I kept Lucy on leash because I was afraid she'd run home. Whenever I went too fast, she would lie down and let herself be dragged. She also kept getting the lead tangled in her feet. We were out for 2 1/2 hours.

The next day it was still relatively mild and calm, and in the afternoon the sun came out. I couldn't resist getting my skis on again. This time I let Lucy run loose as soon as we got away from the houses, and that worked out a lot better. She pretty much kept to the track behind me. We took a shorter route, only staying out for 1 1/2 hours. Tomorrow I have to start working again, and there is a forecast for snow on thursday. That will be good for the ski tracks as there are a lot of pine needles and sticks in them now, due to the blustery weather we had over New Years.

2011 - Expectations and Challenges

For me the new year started in the ER. The roads, as I made my way to work were deserted. Most people had already gone to the places where they were expecting the start of the new year. As revellers set off fireworks early – perhaps to please young children before being sent to bed – colored stars blossomed in the night sky.

My girls are back in London. Sending them off on the train last night was a little sad. We had had such a pleasant Christmas together. But they are young and I can understand the lure of New Years Eve in a big city like London. Audun’s girlfriend came from Germany to spend New Years with him in Lillehammer. Their second New Years together, I think. Last year they watched the fantastic fireworks over Sidney in Australia. Tormod skyped me this evening. So good to see and talk with him. I miss him, but I think he has made himself a good life there in Ithaca, with his jobs, his friends, his cousin and grandmother close at hand. I’m a bit jealous that he got to celebrate Christmas with my mother and sister.

Between patients I am reflecting on the year that is past as well as on the my expectations for the year to come. These are:

• a change in job (in february)

• a visit to the girls in England (sometime in the spring)

• our 10^th wedding aniversary (in May)

• a trip to Peru (in late summer/early fall)

• competing in agility with Lucy

My new years resolutions reflect my core values as well as the challenges these represent to me:

1. Continue working on developing and maintaining a positive attitude.

2. Commitment to the truth

3. Cultivate social relationships

4. Balance my professional and personal life

5. Focus on physical and mental health

6. Environmental responsibility

Driving home this morning in the first dawn of a new year and a new decade, the roads were still deserted. The cold spell had broken and it was only a few degrees below freezing. On the southern sky a huge sicle moon and above it the morning star like a bright jewel adorned the sky.

Happy New Year!