Artistic Endeavors

It's been ages since I've been here. How is everyone? (You may be speaking into the void Gabs, haha.) Despite everything, I truly hope you're all doing well 💗

I had the intrusive thought this morning to revisit this app (Nowadays I'm mainly on IG, tiktok, and most recently threads). So much has changed (with the world and with my life), but it also feels like going back home after a long trip and flipping through an old journal I left behind. It's definitely odd to be here again! And yet, it brings a strange nostalgic feeling to see all my old art posts!

Not sure if this was some sort of sign, but perhaps I'll pick up this little art blog again from time to time. If you're still here from a few years back, hello and thank you for sticking around! And if you happened to stumble on my old art posts since I left (mainly Free! and makoharu haha), thank you for giving those pieces love!

Hope to reconnect with some of you here, or maybe even make new connections in the near future 🌿 Until the next post, take care!

One of my goals for 2019 is to be more mindful of myself, so I started bullet journaling! 📓💗 Here’s the first page of mine. I originally wanted to go for a design/theme, but then I thought, “Why bother, Gabs? You’re a perfectionist. Focusing on the aesthetics will just stress you out!” So I decided to keep things simple as to make it feel less like a task and more of an activity to reflect and document my favorite memories. I truly hope I can make this a daily habit!

Hi, lovely anon! Thank you so much!!

That’s wonderful to hear! Nursing is a wonderful profession to get into, but many students often fear they can’t get over basic client care tasks. Let’s be real for a second and admit that yes, these tasks can be “gross”. It does take a lot of will power for someone to care for another person in all aspects besides giving meds or doing assessments etc and not gag or pass out in front of the client. Based on my personal experience, I think you do get used to it with time though. For example, I’m not a squeamish person but I absolutely hate anything to do with phlegm; so, mouth care for me is a nightmare. But I’ve learned ways to overcome it, especially when I worked in a care home facility while I was in nursing school. I also find that my drive to help a client overcomes the “gross factor” of a certain task. Of course, it’s different for everyone. Some tasks, no matter how many times you do them, will still be "gross" to you, and you won’t know until you really get your hands dirty and do them.  But I wouldn’t let the fear of not being able to handle the gross stuff stop you from considering nursing school, much less becoming a nurse. I strongly believe that if you are determined and driven to become one, you can overcome any obstacle.

If possible, I’d try and get in touch with current nursing students and ask how they're handling their clinical rotations. You could also try attending nursing club meetings to express your concerns as a prospective pre-nursing student and ask club officers their experiences. It would also be helpful if you tried maybe talking to nursing school professors, shadowing a nurse or volunteering at your local hospital/medical facility. Other things you could also look into are fb groups or forum type sites like allnurses; you can often find questions and responses from other students who voice the same concerns as you. You'd be surprised by how common "sqeamish nurses" are. But at the end of the day and before ourselves, nurses are dedicated to providing complete client care.