One Truth and Three Worries

The week before everything changes

The thing I’ve always loved most about getting a new job is waiting for it to start.

Yes, work can be exciting and meaningful, but there’s nothing like that week in between an old job and a new one. The old responsibilities are dust. The future is pure promise and possibility. Briefly, blissfully, you’re free.

I’ve been enjoying what feels like an extended between-jobs phase since June, when I finished the prerequisites to secure my spot in Western University of Health Sciences’ MSN-E program. Classes start August 18th, so I’ve been without school or full-time work for two months.

I’ve tried to make the most of it. I’ve traveled with my family, met friends for walks and lunches, took a girls trip to Ojai and started some long-overdue home improvements.

Yet now, with my carefree summer about to end, I’m wondering, did I take advantage of this time enough? Could I have spent more time with my family? Written more? Cooked more? Read more books?

To be honest, I feel a bit melancholy.

My gloom isn’t about dreading nursing school. I’m actually quite excited for it. It’s more about my dreamy summer ceding to reality, and a wistfulness I always feel around transitions. The shift probably started a couple of weeks ago, when I visited my dad in New York City.

I made the trip partly to accompany him to a medical procedure. He’s nearly 83 and in decent health overall, but has had a few issues in recent years. This particular procedure wasn’t as involved or risky as surgery, but still required a 14-hour hospital day.

It felt funny to be in a hospital as a family member after a year and a half as a volunteer. I managed to stop myself from putting on gloves each time I entered my dad’s room, but did offer to restock the cups in the unit’s kitchen.

My dad recovered well, and in the days before and after his procedure we took little walks together around lower Manhattan, shared meals, saw some relatives and watched Marc Maron’s latest standup special on HBO.

I love my dad in a way that’s almost painful at times, like staring at the sun. He reminds me of The Dude from The Big Lebowski. We really like hanging out together, and he’s always been my biggest cheerleader. There’s no sign that he’s about to keel over (knock on wood), but 83 is 83, and it freaks me out to see him getting older.

My mom passed away in 2023 and I’m not ready to lose my dad.

I want to emphasize — THERE’S ZERO REASON TO THINK I WILL ANY TIME SOON — but the visit, while lovely, got me on a moody jag about mortality.

Since returning to L.A. I’ve been spacey, distractible and a little down. I put music on in the car instead of my usual podcasts, and drive around lost in feelings and disjointed thoughts. I wake up too early feeling wired instead of tired, and find myself rereading the same paragraphs in my book multiple times.

I know this is temporary. Once classes start Monday, I’ll snap into a new gear. I’m a “rise to the occasion” kind of gal. In the meantime, I’m working with medium success to ride out the blues with the boring stuff that soothes the soul, like exercise, sleep and housework, instead of obsessive scrolling, staying up late and other dopamine-seeking behavior.

Last Thursday I attended an all-day nursing school orientation that was inspiring and scary at the same time. I got the sense that the next two years are going to be hard, but if I do my part diligently, the professors in the program will help drag me across the finish line. They even put it that way themselves, which was extremely comforting.

At one point, a professor handed out index cards and asked us to each write down “one truth and three worries.” The truth, she said, should be some essential piece of information about ourselves that we’d like her to know. (Worries are self-explanatory.)

I went big with my truth and didn’t overthink it. I wrote, “I truly love my fellow human beings.”

It felt as essential as anything else at that moment. I was feeling very tender after returning from New York, and the sentiment was oozing out onto classmates, teachers, future patients, people on the street.

For my worries, I wrote:

1. I won’t be able to keep up.

2. I will hate this.

3. I won’t be able to master the clinical skills I need.

I guess that pretty well sums up where I am right now, a few days from starting this new career journey.

I’m scared, sad to say goodbye to this luxurious limbo and hello to rigor, in love with my life and the people in it, a little scattered and worried but hanging onto the basic truth that I hope will propel me through these next two years and beyond.