Some days are better than others

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2026 plans

It’s that time of year. Having looked back at my progress in 2025, I’m ready to set some goals and aspirations for 2026. Some build on last year’s goals, some are new.

Sew more

Having rediscovered my love of sewing in late 2025, I want to sew more in 2026 and more fully embrace slow fashion. I am forever on a quest to cull the clothing I have, and it seems like despite major culls every year, sometimes twice a year, I still have drawers and cupboards stuffed to overflowing.

So much of what I have doesn’t get worn. It doesn’t fit quite right, the fabric is a bit uncomfortable, it’s not exactly my style, or sometimes I’m not even sure why I don’t wear it. So this year, I’ll be on a quest to sew clothing that fits me properly, in styles and patterns and colours that aren’t just ‘close enough’ (‘close enough’ almost invariably ends up in the ‘rarely worn’ pile) but are instead fabrics and prints I genuinely love and want to wear. I’m expecting that culling will happen more effectively when I have clothes I truly enjoy. I won’t hold on to clothing that isn’t quite right in case I want to wear it again, because I’ll have pieces that are actually, exactly right.

Also, sewing is meditative and creative and makes me feel successful and competent. I take great pleasure in straight seams, neat buttonholes, and smooth inset sleeves. There are times when I have to rely on hand basting to make joins work and slowing down and working by hand is good for me.

Orchestra

Last year I aimed to play viola in two concerts. I played in three – two with the Queensland Medical Orchestra and one with Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra. In 2026, I am aiming to play in three concerts again. This time, my goal is to play viola in two and sing with the QMO choir in one.

Visit the library

Getting a library card in 2025 was an excellent decision, and I want to keep that going this year. After converting almost entirely to ebooks over the past decade, I’m appreciating reading paper books again for some of my reading. I also like the process of finding new books at the library, just browsing randomly and seeing what’s there. If it looks interesting I can borrow it, if I don’t like it, no biggie. It’s quite different to browsing an online bookstore. Having return dates on books is also good for prompting me to pick up that book and finish it, as well as providing a reason to pop back into the library periodically.

I will keep reading on my Kindle too. I want to buy books from authors I enjoy and I also like the convenience of being able to pull out my phone and continue reading if I haven’t brought a book with me.

Observe seasonal festivals

This one is building on my 2025 goal of observing the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter festivals. I like that I’m feeling more in touch with the cycle of the seasons and where we’re up to in the natural year. This year I would like to make a habit of checking in on my progress and wellbeing every six to seven weeks, using the festivals as check in points, and resetting or redirecting my goals as needed. I think this can also tie in to my next goal, which is:

Do a pull up

Pretty much every year I aim to reset my fitness and wellbeing goals and I do so with more or less success each time, and that’s okay. I’m in a different place this year, with my studies complete for now. My goal is to work on my functional fitness at the gym regularly with the aim of supporting me to work safely as a registered nurse. My one concrete goal for 2026, and I have a whole year to get there, is to do an unassisted pull up.

About ten years ago, I was able to do two or three pull ups, so I know it’s something I can achieve. Back then I did underhand pull ups, so my lovely strong biceps did a good part of the work at lifting my body off the ground and getting my chin over the bar. This year, I’m aiming to do an overhand pull up, making my lats and other back muscles do the work to get good and strong and capable. Just one. If I do more that’s great, and as I remember things once you can do the first pull up, the second and third tend to come a bit more quickly. But a single pull up will be a massive achievement.

Achieving a pull up is a multifaceted goal. Body recomposition is part of the process, and I will be continuing to use GLP-1 medication to help support my progress. As boring as I find it, I imagine there will eventually also be some running involved too. Getting my core, shoulders, back and grip strong enough to do a pull up will mean big compound lifts (the kind I like) on the regular. So there will be plenty of squats, deadlifts, and bench presses this year.

I’m still keen to find a ballet class again or return to 2ballerinas, again to support my strength and conditioning. It’s probably lower on my list for the moment, but when I do my seasonal check-ins every six weeks or so, I can decide whether it’s time to prioritise ballet classes.

Nursing

Having achieved my 2025 goal to graduate from my nursing degree, 2026 is all about getting an RN job and putting it all into practice. I’m currently waitlisted for a graduate program at my preferred hospital, which should mean I’ll be allocated a position some time this year. But I am not comfortable just waiting around for that to happen. I have signed up with a nursing agency and am currently working as an agency Assistant in Nursing, with a view to transitioning to RN shifts once I complete their requisite AIN hours. So one way or another, I aim to be working regularly as an RN in the first half of 2026.

Wear lipstick

I used to wear bright red or pink lippy for all my nursing shifts. I think it helps improve communication (I cannot back this up with research, but I think it’s true), and I know that some of my older patients particularly think it’s cheerful. I think that’s worth 15-20 seconds to swipe on some colour before I start my shift, so my goal is to do that for every shift possible.

Moisturise

This is just a habit I need to develop. I am now of an age, and my skin is drying out. As a nurse, I know how important emollients are to keep skin in good nick, so I need to practice what I preach. Also I have spent a lot of money on these tattoos, so I want to keep them looking schmick.

So that’s my plan for 2026. My next check in will be around Lunasagh on 1 February.

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2025

It’s been a long time between updates, but here we are just about at the end of 2025, so it’s time for a check in.

My goals for 2025:

1. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter festivals.

The main reason I wanted to observe the festivals this year was to develop more of a sense of the natural rhythm of the seasons. Overall I think I’ve had some success. While I haven’t necessarily done a lot to mark the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter festivals, I think I have become more alert to the changes in the natural world around me. That feels important to me, a kind of intentional anchor to time passing rather than days and weeks and months slipping by without notice.

Yule this year was a bit upside down ( almost literally) because we were about to jet off to the northern hemisphere, so it was hard to focus on anything much aside from last minute travel preparations.

At Imbolc, I was in Roma and partway through my final 8-week nursing placement which limited my opportunities, but I gathered some reeds with the intention of weaving them into a small decoration I could hang in my student accommodation. (I did not manage to weave them). Mostly I made a point of spending some time outdoors, taking in the springtime changes in the native flora around me. Looking at the brightening sky, smelling the trees and grasses and watching birds on the water. So that was something.

While I didn’t do anything concrete to mark the equinox/Ostara, I did find myself paying attention to the growing light and earlier dawns. I have a sense now not just of when the light changes, but the lag between light and seasonal temperature changes – which, not at all coincidentally, is more or less the interval between the solstices/equinoxes and the cross-quarter festivals.

I prepared for Beltane by gathering some rosemary from my front garden and drying it over a couple of weeks. On Beltane, I lit the bundle and cleansed my house with rosemary smoke. By end of October I had finished all my uni work and was in a state of stasis waiting for results, so I thought it was time to rededicate my energies to what comes next. It also gave me an opportunity to think about what these kinds of rituals mean to me. Wafting the rosemary smoke through my house gave me a focus to think about what I needed to do to move forward, and watching the smoke dance reminded me that even in still spaces, there is movement.

The next festival on the calendar is Litha, just before Christmas. As it turns out we are gathering with friends that day for a Christmas celebration, which seems like an excellent way to also celebrate the height of summer and give thanks for abundance, especially the abundance that is friends, family, and love.

I think I would like to build on these practices next year. I don’t think the practical aspects need to be particularly significant, but I think it’s good for me psychologically.

Related: I miss having a faith community and I miss the comfort of ritual, but it’s hard to find somewhere I feel like I can participate fully and like I belong. So this year I’ve explored a little bit to see if there’s a way I can meet that need.

I did a Jesuit mini-retreat in June, ‘two hours of quiet’, which I enjoyed. I like Jesuits, and it is a practice and group of people I would have felt completely at home with maybe 20 years ago. It felt calm and familiar this year and I’m glad I went, but even so I felt a bit of an outsider with the group I did the mini-retreat with. Not because they were anything other than welcoming, just because I’m no longer practising and I don’t have a parish. I suppose there are other ways I feel like I don’t fit too. But the mini-retreat was good and I might do more next year.

I participated in the Stations of the Cross at my local Catholic Church on Good Friday. Admittedly Good Friday is maybe not the best time to ease in after many years away, but I felt like observing it some way. The service was familiar but the parish was not for me at all. I’m not sorry I went, but I knew right away it wasn’t a good fit.

I did attend a service at my local Anglican church this year, and it felt like somewhere that I could belong, maybe. The parish is named St Catherine’s, which seemed apt. They are welcoming and accepting, and the Reverend is a woman which I feel pretty good about. I wrestled with the notion of conversion initially until I realised they don’t think I need to, I’m already a full member if I want to be, without changing anything. I might attend again next year and see how it feels.

2. Pee more/eat more beans

Mixed success. Overall I’ve been very good about peeing every time I have a tea break at work, except for the past couple of months. It is probably no coincidence that I have also experienced a couple of UTIs recently too. So I am rededicating myself to the mantra ‘pee more’, and putting it on my list of resolutions for 2026.

The eat more beans one has been a bit more nuanced. I have been eating more legumes this year, so overall that gets a tick.

In September, I began taking a GLP-1 medication. It has been a very interesting process. I have been losing weight steadily which is why I have been using the medication. Not drastic, but steady. I have noticed other changes though:

  • I have an ‘off’ switch now – for food, and for alcohol. I get full more quickly, I don’t really eat unless I’m hungry, and a couple of drinks and I generally don’t want any more. In fact, the idea of more feels very gross.
  • My tastes have changed. I no longer enjoy fatty foods the way I always have. I don’t dislike them, but I don’t crave them and if I have more than a small amount I feel quite off. I am no longer obsessed with chicken nuggets. Rich foods also don’t hit the spot they way they did previously, I just think ‘well that tastes nice, but it is a bit greasy.’ I have always felt like a meal isn’t adequate without fats and proteins, but some vegetables and rice now often feels like more than enough (I do still need to make sure I’m eating protein though). And I could basically live on fruit now if you let me.
  • Lately, I don’t like coffee so much either. I am wrestling with this because a) who can live without caffeine? and b) coffee is part of my personality. Who, actually, am I?

I always knew, intellectually, that human appetite is very hormone-driven, it’s not simply a matter of choice or self-discipline. But it’s absolutely fascinating to discover what that’s like for myself.

3. Chamber orchestra/ballet

My tally so far: one Indooroopilly Chamber Orchestra concert, and two Queensland Medical Orchestra concerts. So that hits and exceeds my target of two concerts this year!

I also ended up playing with a highschool string ensemble while I was out in Roma on student placement, and I did a little concert with them too. That was so much fun, and it felt so good to be able to give a little something back to the town that nurtured my musical talent as a kid.

I haven’t managed ballet at all this year, and gym has also fallen by the wayside. I will put these back on the list for 2026. One thing I would like to do is check out Queensland Ballet’s adult classes. I loved classes with 2Ballerinas but part of the issue is that geographically those classes are just so far from home. Queensland Ballet isn’t close either, but it’s closer. We will see.

4. Booze: 75 days for drinking

So this goal fell off the rails, which is okay. There were many beers in the US in June/July which I’m not sorry about, and I never really picked things up again. That said, my drinking habits have changed a lot over the past three months while on GLP-1 medication. It’s a lot easier to choose to limit your alcohol intake if you don’t actually particularly care about drinking alcohol. So for the moment I’m okay with where this goal ended up, and I think I’m just going to see how things go.

It does make planning for Christmas a bit different. Usually we get in heaps of bubbly ahead of time. This year I don’t think we’ll need quite as much, and I’m thinking about also getting in some special low- or no-alcohol options as well.

5. Reduce choices

I got a bit distracted from this goal. Over the next few weeks I will do a bit of a stocktake of where my energies are going and how I can streamline my mental load a bit more.

6. Graduate!

I DID IT. WITH DISTINCTION.

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Half a world away is home

There’s really nothing like that first cup of home made coffee, hey.

It’s early morning on Thursday. I’ve had about ten hours sleep and I’m feeling pretty good about tackling the massive ‘to do’ list ahead of me over the next 10 days. Today’s list includes picking up some groceries and making sure I have all the sheet music I need for this weekend’s concert (including, randomly enough, going through a score and recreating the missing 16 or so bars from the viola part of Zadok the Priest). We’ll see how I feel about it all in about 8 hours from now, but so far I feel like I’ve left most of my jet lag on the plane 🤞🏻

This was a different kind of trip for us. Not so much sight-seeing, though I did manage to hit several Edgar Allan Poe sites and the Motown Museum (finally 🎶). We spent 90% of the trip with friends and adopted family. So much conversation meant my accent started to slide around pretty quickly: I think it might have been day 3 when Dan started noticing my vowels reshaping, compared to day 10 of our previous US trip. Even Dan’s rusted on Adelaideian accent was not immune this time round. The changes were not enough for an American to hear my accent as anything other than Australian, but enough that Australians would notice and, more importantly, enough to make my accent easier for locals to understand.

There’s a lot of the US I haven’t experienced – I just did a quick count and I’ve physically been in 12 or 13 states, some very briefly. But here are some things I have learned.

On the whole, Americans are often much more polite than Australians, and I mean aside from the fact that they generally swear a lot less. Everywhere I have been, Americans are kind to us and each other and willing to help. I am forever adopting the phrase, ‘I appreciate you’. Many Americans I met also had a knack for speaking diplomatically in ways that avoided provoking arguments or offence. I feel like many Australians are quite blunt by comparison. (Neither approach is right or wrong, but I think I learned some new and helpful ways to communicate kindly from my American friends).

There is definitely some problematic stuff going on politically in the US, but many Americans aren’t happy with that either. I feel like there’s more of a sense generally that you need to be careful what you say unless you’re sure of the company you’re in than there is at home. On July 4, a woman we shared an elevator with in Dupont greeted us with, ‘Happy Independence Day – if we are allowed to still say that?’ (I put on my broadest Australian accent when I responded). But just like here, government sits a ways from people going about their everyday. The country we visited over the past two weeks is largely the same country we visited in 2022. Sure, we visited mostly either blue states or blue parts of red states both times. But whatever’s going on politically, there’s a lot to like about people. I say that even as someone who regularly says, ‘ugh, people‘.

If you have the chance to visit the US, I truly recommend considering visiting some places outside tourist spots and even major urban centres. If we weren’t there to visit friends, we wouldn’t have gone to local parks in Grosse Point Woods or Raleigh and seen how they are designed to foster connectedness in local communities. You can get a real sense of a community’s priorities by how they provide public spaces, don’t you think?

We wouldn’t have experienced the differences in barbecue between the neighbouring states of North Carolina and Virginia, either. For the record, both were amazing, I am remaining Switzerland on this one but I will say I do like sloshing my barbecue with vinegar, NC-style and will probably do this a bit in future.

We wouldn’t have driven long, narrow winding roads surrounded by lush green, punctuated by white farmhouses, under clear blue skies that reminded me of Brisbane in winter.

We wouldn’t have found a brewery based out of a desanctified church in Baltimore or shared delicious Italian and martinis in a 90-year-old family-owned restaurant in Exeter, PA, or even stopped in at a tiny microbrewery in Purcellville VA and laughed at the many resounding ‘fuck yeahs!’ that echoed around the taproom.

In terms of bucket list things, aside from my Poe and Motown adventures, we saw Ghostbusters HQ and soberingly, the 9/11 memorial. I feel like I have a lot to say about that memorial but I can’t find words. We hadn’t planned to visit but when we realised we were walking near it, we went over to see. The falling water pulled at me in a way that reminded me of the weight of Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial bearing down. It was a profound experience.

Foodwise, we ate alligator and fried green tomatoes, Philly cheesesteak, and I finally tried biscuits and gravy (not bad, actually). I have to say either US coffee has improved out of sight in the past three years, or we were just better at picking good venues. The best coffee we had was at a chocolate factory in Raleigh though – easily on par with Australian coffee, for the record. We were on our way to a Mediterranean restaurant in NYC when we walked past a sandwich board outside a little basement bar listing caviar tater tots. Obviously we changed plans instantly and I can report that they were absolutely delicious, as were the peach and ginger shandies we drank alongside. I also experienced the joy that is Japanese curry poutine at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and I am definitely going to attempt to recreate that in future – absolute genius stuff.

Most of all, I want to say thank you to our generous and beloved hosts. We love you all and are so blessed to have been able to share some time with you.

#lato25usa, over and out.

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Placement 3.1, Emergency Department

“You have been amazing tonight.”

Last shift of placement tonight. Tonight, I will go through my final ANSAT (Australian nursing standards assessment tool) with my facilitator. I’m expecting it to be pretty straightforward – my interim ANSAT at the halfway point was solid, and I’ve only improved since then.

This placement has been incredible. I’ve found the thing I want to do – emergency nursing. Emergency nursing is fast and seems chaotic, but it’s highly logical and pattern recognition is important. During this placement I spotted a patient with early signs of sepsis because I saw the patterns forming in their vital signs, before they even met the criteria for sepsis. There’s a lot of if/then decision making, for example if my patient has come in because they’ve had a fall, I need to do vital signs and a Glasgow Coma Assessment like I would with everyone, but I also need to do neuro obs and pupil assessments to check neurological function. If they complain of chest pain I’ll order bloods including troponin levels, I’ll do a full respiratory assessment, do an ECG and put them on telemetry to monitor heart function. And so on. These are things I would have had to think about four weeks ago, now it’s almost automatic. And importantly, I understand why I would do those things.

Emergency nursing seems to be thinking all the time about what could happen next, and looking for information and interventions before we get there. It’s also super collaborative between nurses, doctors, and other allied health staff. Unlike wards where doctors swoop in, do their rounds, and leave, doctors and nurses work side by side and talk to each other to assess and plan. One doctor in paeds not only introduced himself to me (me? a nursing student?) when he would plan care for patients he would ask the nurses, ‘is that plan okay with you? Do you think that’s an appropriate plan?’ He would even check in with me and say ‘what about you Cat? What do you think, is that plan all right with you?’ As well as working so closely with doctors, nurses also have more autonomy in ED – we can order certain tests that are otherwise normally only ordered by doctors, such as blood tests and cultures, and can dispense stat doses of certain medications for specific presentations including a limited selection of analgesics, sedatives, and antipsychotics.

Last night I worked in an area I hadn’t worked in before. Its name is an acronym and I don’t remember exactly what the acronym stands for, but it’s an area to help manage the flow of patients from the ambulance ramp into acute. We take handover from paramedics and manage them until we can get them into acute, so we’re working in a small area with less fancy equipment than most of the rest of the ED (apart from the waiting room). Nurses have a high level of autonomy in this area, and everything moves fast. I discovered that being able to touch-type quickly is actually a prime requisite for ED nurses in this space, and ended up taking handover from several ambos just by virtue of being able to get all the info down quicker than anyone else. As I did that, I found myself becoming quite interactive with the paramedics, asking further clarifying questions that I likely wouldn’t have thought of a month ago. Then I’d hand the information over to my RN or the other RN concisely.

I feel like I’m going to hit the ground running on my next placement, and by the end of it I’m going to be ready to start working as a graduate nurse. I feel like I’m thinking like a nurse, my skills have developed out of sight this placement. I was already doing well with soft skills and theory but my hard skills are so far ahead of where they were four weeks ago. Although my regular student nurse job is going to feel pretty ordinary by comparison, I already know that I am going to approach it so differently after the experiences of this past four weeks.

Over my four weeks of placement I worked primarily with two nurse preceptors. Both were awesome teachers in very different ways. One of them was friendly and effusive and went out of her way to check what I knew and explain things I didn’t. We worked together collaboratively as team nurses – the flow was easy and we’d chat about all sorts in between tasks. My other preceptor though is very reserved in demeanour. He’s softly spoken and matter of fact. He offers very little in the way of non-verbal cues: he’s not closed off, he’s just understated. When he laughs, it’s a quiet chuckle and a slight upturn of the mouth. When he’s stressed, he just seems a little more focused on what he’s doing but his tone of voice doesn’t change. Kind of amazing really, but for someone like me, who is frequently anxious and often unsure I’m interpreting social cues accurately, this is incredibly difficult to work with. He would quiz me on aspects of patient care or pathophysiology and I mostly knew the answers, but I never felt like I quite measured up. When I could have done something better, he’d say, ‘okay, next time if that happens come to me first.’ I said to Dan at the time, it felt like he was saying to me, ‘I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed’.

I know, from experience, that when I don’t understand social cues I assume the worst. I always do. Conditioning is a hell of a thing. And all through this placement I’ve said to myself (and Dan), I know this is me talking, I am sure he doesn’t think poorly of me the way I feel like he does. I’ve been working hard mentally to stay in a place where I acknowledge I feel bad about our interactions, while still recognising that just because I feel dreadful  doesn’t mean things are dire. It’s okay to just let the anxiety be and just keep doing what I’m doing because I’m sure he’d tell me straight out if I wasn’t performing.

Anyway last night toward the end of the shift, our last shift together, out of nowhere he said to me, “You have been amazing tonight. I mean, you’re always amazing. But tonight was exceptional.”

Friends, I think I said ‘thank you’ but honestly I’m not sure because I just about coughed and fell over. He just turned back to the computer and continued going through patient charts ready to handover to the next shift.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s shift. The pressure is off, because my assessment is done. I’m just going to get in there and be the best nurse I can be tonight. Maybe I’ll even be amazing. I guess we’ll see.

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March/April update

So. My grand plans for March veered quite some way off track.

A lot of this was down to the impact of Tropical Cyclone Alfred. Not the direct effects of the cyclone, which turned out to be a bit of a fizzer in my neighbourhood. But the preparations – staying at home, prepping for disaster, existing under the weight of impending doom – stirred up some forgotten feelings from the early days of the COVID pandemic. Plus, that week or so all my routines went out the window, and while I have known for a long time that my routines keep me together, I really found out just how much I rely on predictability and normalcy to deal with whatever else life throws at me: that is, quite a lot.

For the last month or so, I’ve been in a depressive phase. This happens now and then, it’s one of the features of having bipolar malware installed on my operating system. Usually though the funk lifts after two or three weeks. This one has been at least five so far, since TC Alfred, though if you were to ask my partner, he’d say I was even a bit wobbly for maybe a couple of weeks before that. Alfred just tore the tape off the box and shook everything out I guess. I’m still picking bits up.

So things are hard right now, and by that I mean doing anything is hard right now. I’m not feeling negative about myself, which is a nice thing, but I just feel overwhelmingly flat and I’m struggling to care about most things. I’m keeping up with work, which is positive, both because I would quite like to keep my job but also work brings structure, and structure is helpful. I’m mostly keeping up with uni – I have a couple of assessments due late next week and while I wouldn’t say I’m on top of them exactly, they’re in progress and getting them done and submitted is achievable. I’ve been having difficulty with things like washing my hair – I’m usually a twice a week kind of shampooer and I went for two full weeks without washing my hair recently. That might not sound like much but it’s a pretty significant symptom in my world.

My great plans around eating healthfully and abstaining temporarily from booze are out the window for now, but I have been successful the past couple of weeks with getting to the gym and lifting weights. Weight training is powerfully good for my mental health, so I figured I’ll just forget about food and focus on that for a while. I’m talking to myself about going to the gym as being medicine, and it’s important not to skip doses. That helps.

I think the depression is lifting, finally. I haven’t had a downswing last this long in many years. I’ve thought about why this time might have been so persistent, and honestly it may be that there’s no reason at all. Depression doesn’t need a reason. But there are plenty of factors that might be at play. Perimenopause is one, because it messes with everything. My job is another – I mentioned before that my job provides structure and it does, but it’s not the kind of structure I used to get from a 9-to-5 desk job. It also compromises my sleep patterns when I do late or night shifts, which I generally deal with pretty well but it is still probably a contributing factor. Being in my final year of nursing studies means I’m in a transitional period, and that alone is a bit destabilising. I’m in a place where I’m having to make a few big decisions which is a little bit stressful. And so on.

I thought I’d write about it all because I think it helps to share, sometimes. I’ve found my friends usually want to know when I’m not feeling okay, because it gives them an opportunity to be supportive – and I’ve also found it’s good for me to accept support now and then too. Also, I don’t see a lot of people talking much about experiences of managing bipolar disorder as a long-termer. I’ve been diagnosed for a bit over twenty years now I think, and taken lithium for most of that time. I’m an old hand. Being depressed is just something that happens now and then and usually I just breathe deep and try to be a little kinder to myself for a while, and it passes. It always passes, and knowing that is a gift. Exercise usually helps me too. Finding motivation to exercise when you’re depressed is hard and for some people it’s insurmountable, but again I have the benefit of experience to help nudge me along – I know it works because I’ve lived it, many times. 

Anyway. Checking in on my goals for 2025:

1. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter festivals.

Mabon kind of came and went without much fanfare, but I did think about it a bit and as a result I’ve been more tuned in to the change in seasons, I think. Next is Samhain and I have some thoughts about how I will acknowledge that, using it as a prompt to remember people I’ve lost and reflect on what they have given me in life and beyond. I’ll probably also meditate a bit on grief and how it holds open space for people we’ve loved.

2. Pee more/eat more beans

Doing well at peeing more – I’ve been very strict about going for a pee every time I have a break at work. Beans, not so successful, though I have recently been eating cold tofu quite a bit which probably sort of counts. Plus it’s delicious.

3. Chamber orchestra/ballet

I played in my first chamber orchestra concert! I’m going to take a break in term 2 – there’s just too much going on with uni. I’m also considering leaving chamber orchestra for a bit and instead playing with the Queensland Medical Orchestra. It’s a bigger orchestra so more interesting instruments, their repertoire is probably more my style, and helpfully, they have fewer rehearsals in the lead up to each concert which means committing will be a bit easier for me.

I haven’t managed ballet yet this year but I feel like if I keep at the gym thing, that kinda counts too.

4. Booze: 75 days for drinking

Slightly ahead of where I’d like to be, but still more or less on track. I’m up to 24 days so far. I’ve also decided that even if I do end up going past 75 days this year, I’m still going to keep track, because it will give me a start point for next year. Progress is progress.

5. Reduce choices

This is a gradual process but I’m getting there. I am finding every time I manage to simplify something, I appreciate it and I enjoy the ‘new normal’ that results. 

6. Graduate!

My next steps (apart from getting assignments done) are to complete this semester’s 4-week placement, and then get my application done and in for graduate programs next year. I will need to make some decisions in the coming weeks about my preferences. My preferences for hospital and health districts are easy, it’s my specialty areas that are making me think. Once I’ve done my placement I’ll have a good idea about whether I want to go for an emergency department role or stick with general medical. I might be over-thinking the process (moi??) but I’ll work it out one way or another.

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You’re speaking my language, baby

Yesterday there was a patient in the room I was working in whose first language is Spanish. The patient speaks English perfectly well but occasionally lapses into Spanish. Usually I just say ‘en Ingles, por favor!’ and smile and the patient smiles and switches back.

Anyway my RN was working with that patient and trying to communicate simple instructions to help them move to another room.

The patient asked the nurse several times, ‘Como se nombre?’ My RN kept trying to gently explain what they needed from the patient (‘this way, this way, here is your walker’) and the patient kept repeating their question.

I called out across the room: ‘Do you want to know the nurse’s name? The nurse’s name is…’

The patient was delighted. ‘Ah!’ they said and smiled. My RN said, ‘oh, do you understand Spanish, that’s great!’

I said ‘No, not really. I just grew up watching Sesame Street.’

Now the patient knew their nurse’s name – at least for the moment – and they were able to focus and follow instructions about walking.

I’m learning more and more that having even just a few words in another language can help break big communication barriers. I had a Bosnian patient once with almost no English but they loved that I said ‘da’ and ‘ne’. The rest we muddled through with language cards. I have had a Samoan patient who was endlessly grateful that I pronounced their name correctly (tip: in my experience, for most Pasifika languages, if you just pronounce all of the consonants and all of the vowels you’ll be pretty close, Maōri has a few tricky sounds like ‘wh’). That patient said, ‘you are the only person who says my name the right way’ which went such a long way to helping us work together positively.

I haven’t yet been able to follow up on my Auslan studies this year the way I planned to. Committing to weekly classes around student nursing schedules is remarkably difficult. But I am going to persevere. I’ve joined an Auslan social conversation (and op-shopping!) group and I’m looking forward to heading out for coffee with them next weekend 🙌🏻

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February update

Given I’m having feelings about many social media platforms, I thought I might try reviving my blogging habits. So here we are: an update for February.

I started working at a major tertiary hospital here as a student nurse about four weeks ago. I expected it to be challenging and it is, but sometimes in ways I don’t expect. I expected that I would be working with patients who have much more complex health conditions than I’d worked with previously, and I was absolutely correct. Be careful what you wish for, as they say. I have my first night shift tonight so that will be interesting too. Night shifts are part of the deal with nursing, so it’s a good way to get started putting into practice good sleep and eating habits while doing shift work.

Checking back in on my 2025 plans and priorities for a bit:

1. Solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter festivals.
I mostly did thinking about Lunasa on 1 Feb, but it was a good opportunity to take stock of how I’m investing my time and energies this year, and what I want to ‘harvest’ from it. Starting work as a student nurse was fitting and I did quite a bit of planning.

Mabon is next: the middle harvest festival at the equinox. I’m thinking about organising a get-together with some like-minded folks that evening to celebrate. Study will be moving into the hectic phase of semester by that point, so it will be important for me to prioritise balance in work, study, and social lives in the lead up to Samhain.

2. Pee more/eat more beans
I am doing well at prioritising listening to my body and not putting off pee breaks, gradually building new habits. I’ve been prioritising eating more vegetables which has been good. In March, I’m going to spend a month being quite strict about what I eat and I’m choosing to have an entire booze-free month. Kind of a reset.

3. Chamber orchestra/ballet
I haven’t yet been to a ballet class this year, mainly for financial reasons. I’m earning far less as a part-time student nurse than I did as a full-time public servant, so I don’t have the discretionary funds to do whatever I want all the time. Also, part of the reason I don’t have funds for ballet classes is because I rashly decided to get another multi-session tattoo which is in progress. I’ll post pictures when it’s finished, but it’s mostly done and it’s healing well. So once my tattoo is complete, I can reconsider ballet classes. I’ve kept up my gym membership though, so getting in there more often is just about prioritising. Just gotta do it.

Orchestra, I’ve been going to most rehearsals and I have made sure I have our March concert date free in my diary, so I’m on track for 2 performances this year.

4. Booze: 75 days for drinking
I’ve chosen to drink alcohol on 11 days so far this year, so I’m on track to keep it at or under 75. I am keeping a list!

5. Reduce choices
Still working on this. Part of my strategy has been to write out processes for shift work, basically lists of what I need to do before my shift (what kind of meal/snack to pack, take meds before PM shifts, grab my transit pass before AM shifts, etc). Less thinking on the daily and more box-ticking. I have also set up an area in our study with my work uniforms, so that when I start early or finish late I have what I need in a room where I’m not disturbing anyone’s sleep.

I’m also doing a year-long project to cull my wardrobe. I’ve tied a scarf to the hanging rail – everything starts hung to the left of the scarf, anything I wear this year gets hung to the right. At the end of 2025 I’ll take stock of what’s still on the left, and likely donate it all.

6. Graduate!
My next student placement will start in April – four weeks at a busy emergency department. Over the past week and a bit I’ve passed the two assessments required before I can attend placement. I had to re-sit one of those assessments, which is a first for me. I understood the reasons our group didn’t meet the required standard and was able to take that feedback on board and run with it for my second attempt a few days later. In a way it was probably good that I had to re-sit, as my performance was much better overall. I went much more in-depth with my learning and I’m more confident with my result than I might otherwise have been.

Study is otherwise going well so far. I have about 5 weeks of classes starting this week, then it’s self-paced learning for the semester. On paper it all looks very manageable, but I suspect that particularly once I get into placement it’s going to get a bit hectic for a while. I just have two semesters to get through and it’s done though. We have a group assignment this semester which I always loathe, but I’ve found a group of mature aged students to work with and I think they’re going to be good colleagues.

So that’s where we’re at towards the end of February. The first couple of months have been good so far and I’ve been working steadily through my plans for the year.

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2025: goals and priorities

Me setting goals for 2025

1. The shape of my year: I’ve decided to observe the major pagan festivals – solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter festivals. I feel like I want to be more in touch with the passing of time in the natural world and pay more attention to the seasons. It also means that every 6-7 weeks I’ll have a point at which to pause and take stock and that feels like a useful interval for regular check-ins.

Next festival in the southern hemisphere is Lúnasa, the first of three harvest festivals. It will be a good time to think about what I am ‘harvesting’ this year – to take stock of where my energies are going, what I’m committed to this year and what I’m investing in. This lines up with the commencement of study for 2025 and my starting a new job as a student nurse, so plenty to reflect on and journal about.

2. Pee more and eat more beans on toast: these are two simple ways I want to prioritise my health this year. The first is to be mindful of my body and help develop my interoception. When I am on nursing shifts it’s easy to push my body’s needs aside to focus on patient care. This year I will build mindful habits (like taking regular pee breaks) to prioritise my body’s needs even when work is busy.

Beans on toast makes me happy, it’s a simple, delicious breakfast. It’s high fibre and low fat. It’s also a breakfast I will eat at home rather than at work, as I need to sit down at a table and take my time – so it’s a way of being mindful about eating. The idea is to extend this mindfulness to eating in general, but I’m going to start with beans on toast.

3. Perform in two chamber orchestra concerts this year and go to ballet classes regularly: music brings me joy, and it always has. I bought a viola last year after a 25-year hiatus, and joined a local chamber orchestra. The orchestra performs four concerts each year – this year I want to do at least two of them. Work and clinical placement makes attendance difficult sometimes so I’m not aiming for four, but I think two is a good goal.

Ballet is physical exercise which is a good goal in itself, but moving to music also fills me with joy. It feels good to try to make even simple exercises beautiful and flowing as I perform them, and although I am not innately graceful, ballet is a way to embrace being quite bad at something while slowly building skill and enjoying the process.

4. Drinking more mindfully: you can definitely have too much of a good thing. As I get older, I still enjoy drinking alcohol for a range of reasons, but it does tend to get in the way of other things that are important sometimes. This year, I am choosing to limit the number of days I drink alcohol to 75, preferably at social events that include food.

5. Reduce choices: I’m plagued by decision fatigue. One way I am reducing choices is to cull my wardrobe more savagely. I’ve discovered I love jumpsuits – one item of clothing and I’m dressed! (Dresses don’t quite hit the mark in the same way for me because my glorious thunder-and-lightning thighs mean if I wear a dress, I also need to choose a second garment to wear underneath so it really is as many decisions as wearing a top and pants.) Anyway with this in mind, over the course of the year I plan to strip my wardrobe down to as few pieces as I can manage. And not just my wardrobe: anywhere I can reduce choices, especially by reducing ‘stuff’, I’m going to make those changes. (Except guitars.)

Over the past year I’ve found myself imposing little routines in several places and it makes my life so much easier. For example I pack almost exactly the same thing to eat at work every day. They’re pre-packed food items but they’re not unhealthy: instant porridge, ready-to-eat lentil curries and rice. I don’t think, I just stash them in a bag and go. My scrubs live on a separate rack in the study, so everything I need to get dressed early in the morning is right there. And I wear the same pair of boots pretty much everywhere, work and play. It gives me room to think about things that matter.

6. Graduate! This is the big one, this year I’m finally going to graduate and be registered with AHPRA as a registered nurse. Part of this goal is to secure a graduate placement. I’m in a very strong position, if I perform well as a student nurse this year, to obtain a grad position in a big tertiary hospital. I have three more units that will contribute to my final GPA this year, so I’m aiming for at least a 6 in each of those units. They’re third-year subjects so it’s going to be a challenge but I am up for it. If I can keep my GPA high I’ll also be awarded my degree ‘with honours’ which has been a consistent goal over the past four years.

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Spaghetti bolognese

This Christmas, I’d like to give you my bolognese sauce recipe.

My recipe shares some similarities with a proper Italian ragù, but it’s not what you’d call an authentic recipe. It’s just a really good meat sauce recipe for pasta. Kids like it, and adults do too. I make it for dinner at home, and I make it for dinners with friends.

This recipe makes a big batch of sauce – could easily serve 8, maybe more. I usually make a batch this big and freeze some for easy dinners later. If you prefer to make enough just for dinner (and maybe some leftovers), halve everything.

Pretty much everything is negotiable, in terms of quantities. Sometimes I go to make this and discover I don’t have carrots or celery, so I just leave them out. Or I have more capsicum in the crisper than anyone honestly needs, so I throw in more than usual.

With the optional anchovies and bacon/speck, most often I use one or the other. You can use both and sometimes I do, but either ingredient does the salty-umami thing they’ve been seconded to do.

  • This recipe is dairy free, if you don’t use the optional cream.
  • It’s gluten free if you use gluten free pasta.
  • It is not very vegetarian and you can’t really make it so: meat substitutes won’t work so well with this kind of longer simmer time.

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 medium to large onion, finely chopped
2-3 stalks Italian parsley, finely chopped
2-4 cloves of garlic, peeled and squashed a bit
1 large or 2 medium carrots, diced
3-4 celery sticks (without leaves, though you could finely chop some and use them too), diced
1 large capsicum/sweet pepper, diced
3-4 anchovy fillets (optional)
2 rashers of chopped bacon or a big handful of finely chopped speck (optional)
1kg beef or pork mince, or a mixture of both (mixture is ideal)*
1/2 to 1 cup dry vermouth or dry white wine
3-4 tablespoons of tomato paste**
1 400g can crushed Italian tomatoes
2-4 dried bay leaves
1-2 tsp dried organo
grated nutmeg to taste – I run a whole nutmeg over a grater maybe 12-15 times.
Salt and pepper
More chopped parsley (optional)
1-2 tbsp cream (optional)
Freshly cooked pasta
Parmesan for serving

Method

  1. The chopping, oh the chopping. Chop everything before you start. Put some music on and relax into it – you’re going to be chopping for a while, but it’s worth it.*
  2. Glug some olive oil into a big pan over medium high heat, either a deep frying pan or a larger pot. Add onion and stir gently until translucent. Add parsley and move around the pan until it’s fragrant.
  3. Pour in your chopped vegies: carrot, celery, and capsicum. Sauté until soft. If you’re using anchovy fillets, add them now too. Stir here and there until the anchovies break down and almost disappear.
  4. You can either leave the vegies in the pan at this point, or pour them out into a bowl to set aside for the moment. It all depends on how big your pan is and whether it’s maintaining heat well enough to cook the meat.
  5. Add bacon/speck to the pan if using and cook until the fat is translucent – if you’ve taken the vegies out, you might need a smidge more oil. Then add the beef and/or pork. Brown the meat slightly and add the bruised cloves of garlic. Keep cooking, turning the meat occasionally until it’s well browned.
  6. Vermouth time! Dry white wine is also fine, but I think dry vermouth gives a little lift to savoury dishes. You want to let this cook down until the liquid is nearly gone. Then add tomato paste and stir through until the meat is coated evenly.
  7. If you removed the vegies and set them aside, add them back in now and stir through.
  8. Add liquid to the pan:
    • Pour in the tinned chopped tomatoes and juice.
    • If you’re planning to serve this in the next hour, add enough water (or stock if you prefer) so that it’s quite loose and watery, but still looks a bit like a pasta sauce.
    • If you have the luxury of slow cooking this over a few hours, add as much liquid as you like. It will all cook off and you’ll still likely need to top it up once or twice.
  9. Toss in oregano, bay leaves, and grate in nutmeg.
  10. Once it starts to bubble, turn down to a simmer and let sit, stirring occasionally, for as long as it takes for the sauce to reduce and thicken. If I’m slow cooking with lots of liquid, I might stir every half hour at first. If it’s a quicker cook, or if I’m nearing serving time, I’ll check it more often.
  11. Optional step: once the sauce is pretty well done, stir in a tablespoon or two of cream. A proper ragu normally includes milk in an earlier step – I do that sometimes and it’s very nice, but usually if I want to make my sauce richer and creamier I stir through a little cream at the end instead.
  12. Another optional step: stir through a big handful of chopped Italian parsley. I nearly always do this – it freshens the sauce up.
  13. Search through the sauce with a spoon and fish out the garlic cloves. (Or don’t, and just pick them out when you find them as you serve.) Season generously with salt and pepper.
  14. Mix some sauce through freshly cooked pasta. Serve into bowls and top with a big spoonful or two of sauce, topped with grated parmesan if that’s how you like it.

BONUS TIP: As soon as you’ve drained your cooked pasta, lob in a piece of butter and drizzle with balsamic vinegar. Mix through to coat. Then mix through the sauce as in step 14.

* You can use finely chopped beef and pork if you want to be fancy. It is very good if you do it this way, though it’s a lot of chopping! If you use chopped beef and/or pork, it’s best if you let the sauce simmer for a few hours so the meat breaks down. It’s not as good for a 30-40 minute simmer.

** About 3 Australian (20ml) tablespoons, maybe 4 (15ml) tablespoons everywhere else)

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Getting back into familiar territory

I was in my mid 30s when I started lifting weights. I’m in my mid 40s now.

In the interim I’ve developed psoriatic arthritis, I’ve torn a meniscus, and some of the discs in my lumbar spine have compressed. So I’m not working with the same body I worked with then. It is a very good body still, but it is a body that needs a little more care and consideration to function well.

It’s been 5 or 6 years since I was last in the gym regularly, so the past 3 and a bit weeks have been a careful journey of discovery. I’ve started again almost at the beginning, with a 5×5 strength program. Big, compound lifts, starting with just the 20kg bar and progressing incrementally at each workout.

Except for deadlifts: I didn’t start with 20kg as the program prescribes. The deadlift is my favourite lift and I used to be very good at it. Not competition level (I have never aspired to compete), but still very good. At my fittest, I could pick up 120kg from the floor, and that was just over one and a half times my body weight at that time which is sort of a cool thing.

So I ‘cheated’ – I started my deadlift sets at 60kg. Once upon a time that was my warm up lift to get into the groove, but three weeks ago it felt a lot like work.

Today I deadlifted 80kg, and it felt good.I don’t have many clearly defined fitness goals at this point in my life. I am working with the body I have, and it is a very good body, but it might not be able to do all the things it could do in my thirties. I think in most lifts, my progress will be a little slower and I will need to be more careful to manage risk.

But I’m pretty sure my deadlift will progress solidly, and while I don’t have a strict timeline, I want to be able to deadlift 100kg for reps again. That will make me happy.

I’m 80% of the way there.