Normal Is a Cycle on the Washing Machine

In my mind, as long as the weather is good, summer isn’t over. However, the beginning of the new school year, and the return of football indicates that ritual outweighs my imagination.

Sigh.

It’s good to let an imagination run free from time to time, so I took the summer mostly off from blogging.

I’m back.

I think there’s a tendency to view creative work as less taxing, dare I say less challenging, than nursing. I wouldn’t say less, so much as different: Different types of knowledge, different sets of skills. The biggest difference, I think, lies in accountability. Harsh criticism of their work can damage an artist’s psyche.Missing a deadline for a post or art exhibition is unprofessional and negatively affects the editors and curators writers and artists work with. It leaves them in the lurch, which in turn negatively impacts the artist’s career.

In nursing, however, medication errors can seriously impact a patient’s health, with potential life-changing consequences for patient and nurse.

I discovered something this summer: Taking time off from creative projects creates a vacuum into which other projects, out of nowhere, are sucked in, filling the “free” time I worked so hard to create. I see this phenomenon in the lives of the retired too. In fact, I often tell my Mom, “You’re scaring me; retirement looks twice as busy as working life, without the paycheck.”

Mom just smiles, and says, “Remember, ‘normal’ is a cycle on the washing machine. Don’t wait for things to slow down. They won’t.”

She’s right.

An unexpected project close to my heart this summer was the opportunity to hang my paintings and monotype (one of a kind) prints in a health care setting. It is a very satisfying experience to work with a design team to select and hang art with the intention of improving patient experience. In the past, I’ve sat on selection committees choosing artists for hospital art commissions, but this was my first experience as the selected artist.

For me, it came together when a patient, unaware that I am the artist, made this remark about the art, “It makes me think of other things than why I’m here.”

Bingo. That’s exactly the result I was looking for.

The Adventures of Nurse Niki is back too. The latest episode, At The Raleigh, posted Monday.

Summer vacation brought fresh insights, generating posts for AJN’s Off the Charts. In a drop-in life drawing studio I drew a connection between art and nursing. A road trip with my husband inspired this post. And a close call with danger inspired yet another.

Normal is just a cycle on the washing machine.