How a Registered Nurse became a writer of stories people actually claim to read thanks to a mundane elementary school assignment.
When I was in the second grade, we had to write a daily journal entry in a notebook and it had to be a certain amount of sentences. I suppose this was to evoke creativity while mastering the concept of language arts. The irony of this daily task from childhood is that I hated it with a passion and yet now I love to take a pen to paper-or should I say fingers to a keyboard.
My mom still has these notebooks in the attic and recently ran across one and after reading a few or my entries, it was obvious I found loopholes for content. Assignment topics varied, but no doubt three out of four posts ended with the following two sentences sounding something like this: "I like visiting farm animals. Do you like farm animals too?" Clearly, I knew how to work the system.
Years passed and I approached high school graduation scratching my head on what to pursue as a career. I had dreams of an office and wearing suits and heels to work and having my very own computer-mind you this was the late 90s and dial up internet and Napster were the highlight of my day. Alas, I didn't know where to steer my talents and did what any college freshman does when forced to pick a major: I picked something in the college of business. Two years in and I realized my math skills could not handle accounting , so I decided to switch gears to something polar opposite and became a nursing major.
Now, don't get me wrong, It's a great profession and quite flexible for someone with a family and the opportunities are endless. Seriously, they are-I've done everything from working in the operating room to labor and delivery to home health-and I have seen some amazing and "interesting" things in my time. I currently am blessed to work part time with some of sharpest and most caring nurses in Acadiana who also recognize the work I do away from the bedside. Nursing is a science and an art as you need to have a balance of both to do it just the way old Florence Nightingale intended. So, is that possibly why I became a writer? Because Florence told me to tap into my right brain because nursing is also an art? Surely it's not because Mrs. Gordon made me write in a wide rule notebook on a daily basis.
It all led me here to this-the journal assignments, a college elective on creative writing, escaping accounting and mounds of clinical paper work. When I was in search of a second career in something outside of health care, no one would look twice at my resume because I had "no experience." The joke's on them because the school of life taught me a plethora of knowledge that might as well prepared me to be a contestant on Jeopardy-I'll take Winning for 500, Alex. I turned to blogging to release some of my creative thoughts and to also write about things I love-food, family and fitness. I never dreamed I would become the person with the responsibility to generate ideas for print. Sometimes it's not what a piece of paper says you are qualified to do, but more of what your personality dictates.
So, here I am, this writer on the rise who was stumbled upon by IND Monthly from a blog of my thoughts and I am ever grateful for the opportunity to learn as I go and unleash my creativity that has been compressed. Some days I even surprise myself with ideas I didn't know I had within. Of course, when someone asks me what I do and I say, "I'm a writer. And I'm also a nurse," this usually leaves them with a scrunched brow wondering how that works together. But, what they don't know it all has left me feeling balanced-my right and left brain are living harmoniously and happily together.
A future IND Monthly writer? Stella loves to help edit along side me.