Failure's Mama Wears Army Boots
So I talked with Maureen the nurse manager again yesterday afternoon.
I had left a voicemail for her around midday, saying that I agreed that it was probably impossible for me to continue as a nurse on Wright 10 under the circumstances, and I wondered whether we could defer the question of whether I was resigning or being terminated, assuming that question was still open, for another day or two as I researched some questions related to unemployment. I actually had written out what I was going to say ahead of time so I wouldn't get flustered, and I was kind of relieved she didn't pick up her phone, so I could just go ahead and say it into the electronic void.
I then left a message for Tina, the HR person assigned to our unit. I wanted to find out what she might know about filing for unemployment benefits in my particular situation. She called me back an hour or two later, and I was surprised that she wanted to chat with me, and we ended up talking for 20 minutes. (If it were up to me, I'd probably still be using the phone I got in 1988--supposedly white but now badly yellowing, not cordless, with an actual bell for a ring--but married to Gadget Boy Pete as I am, I talk on a phone with countless useful features, including a screen display of exact time spent at the end of each call.) She didn't have a lot that was useful to say about the unemployment question, except to suggest that I could tell the UI people that I had resigned because I would be terminated if I didn't, which seemed kind of reasonable. She wanted to talk about my situation more broadly, though--maybe (one could cynically surmise) to determine my level of disgruntled-ex-employee-ness (lawsuit? worse?), but once I set a tone of kind of depressed reasonableness, she seemed truly to want to be helpful. She suggested the possibility of applying for a job at the large rehab hospital affiliated with OFH (the same place my dad was for two months in 2004 after his fall). She affirmed that it was way, way better to resign than to be terminated. She reminded me that Wright 10 was a very, very acute unit and in many ways an unusually challenging place to work. I mentioned that Maureen had offered her support in my finding a position in another clinical setting, and Tina enthusiastically urged me to take her up on it. On the practical side, she said that although the rules were that a person couldn't cash out earned vacation/sick time until after 6 months (and I've only been an OFH employee since October 11), they would be able to waive that requirement, and I could at least get my accumulated week-and-a-half's pay.
Minutes after I got off the phone with Tina, the phone rang again, and it was Maureen. She said she had gotten my message (judging by the timing, she had also spoken with Tina about our interaction), and she sounded relieved that I wasn't going to fight it. Her voice was friendly, and she sounded less manager-y and more sincere about her suggestion to get experience in another setting because this just wasn't quite the time for Wright 10. I said that I really did love the setting, the patients, and my fellow nurses on the unit, and ventured that maybe in 2 or 3 years, I might try again. She agreed warmly: "The door is always open." She volunteered that they would not contest unemployment, and I should go ahead and file. And she said that when I was done with maternity leave, I should give her a call about looking for something else.
I had been feeling very discouraged about ever working clinically again. Maybe a desk job was really my only viable option. And trying again in another setting seemed dismally likely to lead to increasing my run of involuntary job losses to 3 in a row. But I think that now, after those conversations and others (with my mom, with my friend Marina, with elswhere...), I'm starting to feel like, "so what?" This was always a grand experiment. For years I'd gone around saying that I could never be an inpatient staff nurse, I just wasn't cut out for it. I'd make a terrible hospital nurse, I'd say. And then I up and decided to do it anyway. And it turns out that it still hasn't been proven that I can't. So maybe I'm not quite up to it on an acute specialty unit, while pregnant, right out of the gate. But it remains to be determined whether I can do it at all. Removing fear of failure from the equation, there's really no reason not to try.
Which is a weird thing to think. How can you remove fear of failure from the equation? That's insane. But for a moment, I find myself believing that maybe I can. I'm probably not fundamentally an everything-happens-for-a-reason girl, but it does strike me as pragmatic and useful to look at most setbacks that way, if you can manage it.
So if the question is "what am I supposed to learn from this?", maybe that's the answer. Maybe this is an opportunity to look failure full in the face... and shrug. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, Failure, you and what army?) And then go about my business and keep trying to do what I want to do.
How crazy is that?
I had left a voicemail for her around midday, saying that I agreed that it was probably impossible for me to continue as a nurse on Wright 10 under the circumstances, and I wondered whether we could defer the question of whether I was resigning or being terminated, assuming that question was still open, for another day or two as I researched some questions related to unemployment. I actually had written out what I was going to say ahead of time so I wouldn't get flustered, and I was kind of relieved she didn't pick up her phone, so I could just go ahead and say it into the electronic void.
I then left a message for Tina, the HR person assigned to our unit. I wanted to find out what she might know about filing for unemployment benefits in my particular situation. She called me back an hour or two later, and I was surprised that she wanted to chat with me, and we ended up talking for 20 minutes. (If it were up to me, I'd probably still be using the phone I got in 1988--supposedly white but now badly yellowing, not cordless, with an actual bell for a ring--but married to Gadget Boy Pete as I am, I talk on a phone with countless useful features, including a screen display of exact time spent at the end of each call.) She didn't have a lot that was useful to say about the unemployment question, except to suggest that I could tell the UI people that I had resigned because I would be terminated if I didn't, which seemed kind of reasonable. She wanted to talk about my situation more broadly, though--maybe (one could cynically surmise) to determine my level of disgruntled-ex-employee-ness (lawsuit? worse?), but once I set a tone of kind of depressed reasonableness, she seemed truly to want to be helpful. She suggested the possibility of applying for a job at the large rehab hospital affiliated with OFH (the same place my dad was for two months in 2004 after his fall). She affirmed that it was way, way better to resign than to be terminated. She reminded me that Wright 10 was a very, very acute unit and in many ways an unusually challenging place to work. I mentioned that Maureen had offered her support in my finding a position in another clinical setting, and Tina enthusiastically urged me to take her up on it. On the practical side, she said that although the rules were that a person couldn't cash out earned vacation/sick time until after 6 months (and I've only been an OFH employee since October 11), they would be able to waive that requirement, and I could at least get my accumulated week-and-a-half's pay.
Minutes after I got off the phone with Tina, the phone rang again, and it was Maureen. She said she had gotten my message (judging by the timing, she had also spoken with Tina about our interaction), and she sounded relieved that I wasn't going to fight it. Her voice was friendly, and she sounded less manager-y and more sincere about her suggestion to get experience in another setting because this just wasn't quite the time for Wright 10. I said that I really did love the setting, the patients, and my fellow nurses on the unit, and ventured that maybe in 2 or 3 years, I might try again. She agreed warmly: "The door is always open." She volunteered that they would not contest unemployment, and I should go ahead and file. And she said that when I was done with maternity leave, I should give her a call about looking for something else.
I had been feeling very discouraged about ever working clinically again. Maybe a desk job was really my only viable option. And trying again in another setting seemed dismally likely to lead to increasing my run of involuntary job losses to 3 in a row. But I think that now, after those conversations and others (with my mom, with my friend Marina, with elswhere...), I'm starting to feel like, "so what?" This was always a grand experiment. For years I'd gone around saying that I could never be an inpatient staff nurse, I just wasn't cut out for it. I'd make a terrible hospital nurse, I'd say. And then I up and decided to do it anyway. And it turns out that it still hasn't been proven that I can't. So maybe I'm not quite up to it on an acute specialty unit, while pregnant, right out of the gate. But it remains to be determined whether I can do it at all. Removing fear of failure from the equation, there's really no reason not to try.
Which is a weird thing to think. How can you remove fear of failure from the equation? That's insane. But for a moment, I find myself believing that maybe I can. I'm probably not fundamentally an everything-happens-for-a-reason girl, but it does strike me as pragmatic and useful to look at most setbacks that way, if you can manage it.
So if the question is "what am I supposed to learn from this?", maybe that's the answer. Maybe this is an opportunity to look failure full in the face... and shrug. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, Failure, you and what army?) And then go about my business and keep trying to do what I want to do.
How crazy is that?
posted by Rosie Bonner at 3:09 PM
6 Comments:
You're so... sane.
I love it. See what being almost 40 and a mama and just so brilliant and *evolved* will do for you?
Go, girlie pie, go.
xox from snowy WV
Marina
Yeah. You just rock, so much. You're my midlife hero.
Midlife? I object!
Midlife doesn't start until you're at least...
oh...
late 30s, early 40s.
oh for Pete's sake.
I guess that explains my husband's recent motorcycle infatuation.
I'm not really anonymous, I'm just not a blogger - yet.
I am in fact your long lost uncle Emil. I've been quietly following this ongoing saga cum soap opera for several months now. Time has arrived for me to put in my 2 cents worth.
Your blog is probably the best written and most exciting autobiography I have ever read. A little judicious editing, mostly with regard format, and you've got a best-seller on your hands. Okay, I'm a little prejudice in favor of the author, but it really is great.
The way you are living your life, scabs and all, is worthy of something along the lines of junior sainthood. Parenting wise and career wise you're doing just fine. Don't even bother over-mulling the grayish parts.
I'm almost as anxious as Cassey to greet the new kid. Partly because of his/her merits, but also because then I'll know the you have climbed yet another mountain, and made the top.
Doris and I are both anxious to see you again, and failing that, to read future chapters of your blog.
Love,
Uncle Emil
Ditto Emil and bihari and every positive thing ever written about your writing. I just read a memoirish novel and kept thinking--wow, this award-winning author's got nothing on our Rosie.
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