The Adventures of Nurse Niki
It’s Not All Cute Print Scrubs and Bunny Blankets is this week’s episode of The Adventures of Nurse Niki. Niki ruminates about floating from PICU to pediatrics. If you’re new to the blog you may want to catch up by starting here, Chapter 1
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The problem with committing to writing or drawing something for 15 minutes every day isn’t finding the time to do it. The problem is convincing yourself that 15 minutes is worth the effort in the first place, which is funny if you think about it. I mean, if you were starting an exercise program for the first time, 15 minutes would feel like an impossible amount of time to run in place or around a track. 15 minutes of laps in a pool would be a goal of achievement to an out of shape swimmer. Hell, meditating quietly for 15 minutes is hard to do for the initiate. But for an artist or writer, 15 minutes of creating something feels barely worth the effort. For most artists and writers, (notice I did not say bloggers, a genre of creatives who often boast about how fast they can whip together a post) it takes 15 minutes of staring into space or working out a puzzle just to limber our minds enough to type a thoughtful sentence or paint a meaningful stroke on canvas. Once it’s in place, we are known to again stare into space, read, or work a puzzle for another length of time before inspiration strikes and the next sentence or gestural stroke is generated. 15 minutes? Why bother?
ink drawing by Julianna Paradisis 2015
Here’s what I’ve discovered in a few days about committing to writing or drawing for 15 minutes everyday: during my waking hours, whether home or at work, I now find I am thinking about what I plan to create when I get home and set the kitchen timer for 15 minutes. This post in fact, began vaguely in my head sometime after lunch today while I was at work. By the time I came home and ate dinner, I couldn’t wait to get to my computer and start writing. How did this happen?
Actually, I already know the answer. It’s because what you focus on expands (Wayne Dyer). It’s very New-Agey to talk about intention, and mindfulness, but intention and mindfulness are euphemisms for “Pay attention!” as in when you were a little kid and your mom or dad yanked you by the arm out of the way of something or someone, and hissed, “Pay attention!” Or maybe you weren’t spanked as a kid, and instead your teacher dropped a book on your desk in front of you because you were daydreaming and not following along with the rest of your class, and then said loudly, “Pay attention!” until someone complained about that teacher, and now when someone doesn’t pay attention someone else makes a new rule and everybody has expend for the kid who wasn’t paying attention whether or not they were.
Self-discipline, the foundation of personal progress, is like that. If you pay attention, you can accomplish almost anything, and that’s why no one should think 15 minutes everyday isn’t enough time to change a behavior. It is. Give it a try.
I’m not saying that there aren’t occasions when entertainments transcend their aim and become art, and I’m certainly not suggesting that art must not entertain, but the ultimate aim of an entertainment is to confirm the reader’s existing sense of how things are and how things should be, while the aim of the literary artist is to upset and disrupt that vision.
Robert Boswell
At a restaurant, I demurely settled onto a chair pulled out by my escort. Glancing at the menu, I wonder out loud what the night’s special might be. In a gesture meant to display his bravado, my date raises his finger to signal the server, shouting, “Nurse!”
Another relationship bites the dust.
If Kafka Wrote About a Nurse by jparadisi
The public’s image of nurses hasn’t changed for decades. Every Halloween, sexy nurse costumes appear out of nowhere, as if summoned by call lights. On TV shows, doctors do hands-on patient care while nurses find the necessary supplies STAT! from wherever TV hospitals store their supplies.
The media represents nurses as one of five basic archetypes. Oncology nurses, in particular, tend to get lumped into the nurse saint group, perhaps because of the longstanding relationships we tend to develop with our patients. It’s a difficult persona to uphold during long, short-staffed shifts.
Additional images are created from combinations of the basic five, which are:
Why do derivative portrayals persist?
Because screenplay writers do not write from a nurse’s perspective.They write about nurses from their own point of view, limiting the possible creation of new characters. These portrayals of nurses are weak because depth of knowledge, intuition, internal dialogue, and a range of personalities cannot be grasped through observation without familiarity. Writing workshop instructors will tell you: Authenticity only occurs when a writer has a clear understanding of her topic.
For instance, in his deeply moving novel, Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese creates a complex tapestry of personality for his character, the surgeon Thomas Stone. However, in his portrayal of Sister Mary Joseph Praise, the mother of Stone’s twin sons, Verghese resorts to a clichéd saintly-sexy-mother nurse composite who dies early in the story, saving him from further character development.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Verghese is more familiar with the personality traits of surgeons (he’s an MD) than of nurses. He writes a stronger character when he’s familiar with his character’s point of view.
With this in mind, I believe nurses will not be authentically represented in the media until we raise book writers, novelists, and screenplay writers, or TV and filmmakers, from within our ranks. The media’s portrayal of nurses will change when nurses take creative control of it.
What might occur if grants were available to nurses desiring to make film documentaries, write books, or create paintings from our point of view? What if hospitals allowed, and encouraged, creative sabbaticals for nurses to pursue such projects, as do many other industries? Would the public perception of nursing change? Would nurses’ perception of themselves change? Would patient care and delivery of service also benefit from nurse empowerment through creative control?
-Pat Conroy
Icarus (2009) oil on unstretched canvas artist: JParadisi
I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it. You can’t get it into shape; you can’t build on it, it’s only good for wallowing in. Looking back, of course, is equally fatal to Art. It’s keeping you poor. Art can’t and won’t stand poverty.
Katherine Mansfield
