Life Update

So I haven't written since October. That's over 5 months ago. Man, how life changes!

When I last left off, I had was super over work, had just applied for my NY nursing license and was about to hit up the Big Apple with Katie. Where do I even begin?

New York with Katie was amazing, per usual! We stayed at an AirBNB in the East Village which was a lot of fun to get a different experience, but also knew I wouldn't want to move there. Too many NYU students and just had a very college vibe to it. But otherwise it was a lot of fun! Most memorable moments: we went to the 911 memorial museum. I have been to the memorial a few times, but have never actually gone to the museum. It was intense. Very heavy and surreal! We talked about where we were when we first found out (Sophomore Spanish class) and then looked around at all these teenagers walking through the exhibits that weren't even alive when it happened. That was crazy to think about...
MMM#2: We went on a literary pub crawl in Brooklyn. It was awesome! It definitely made me fall in love with Brooklyn, although transportation to and from the city isn't as easy as I had hoped. But we saw where Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible and had drinks at the bar Frank McCourt used to go to when he was teaching high school English (you know, before he wrote Angela's Ashes). It was all really neat.
MMM#3: Hamilton! Do I need to say anything else?! It was even more incredible than I was expecting! While we were waiting to get in, this guy walked by with earbuds in singing along to the soundtrack. Then he turned and walked into the stage door. Once he was in, the security guard just casually said "he plays Hercules Mulligan" Umm what?! Not singing along to the soundtrack, working on his lines! The show was incredible! I sang along the entire time. The kid beside me did not seem to be too impressed. Oops!
Oh, we also went and walked around NYU hospital. Just doing some investigative work. Wanted to see what a potential future workplace may look like... Overall, it was a great trip and I continued to fall in love with the city!

Soon after I got back home, I got my NY nursing license! One step closer! I then began to look at the NP application. It didn't seem too bad since it was really just transferring things to a different state. There was also talk at work about going back to the 7 on, 7 off schedule. It's what the docs do and what we did when I first started but we have been on a Monday through Friday schedule for a few years now. It's not my favorite and I think was contributing to my work burnout. The days are stressful and 2 days are just not enough time to recover. We ended up making the switch in February and it's been great. The weeks on are hard. I'm pretty spent by day 5, but 7 days off totally makes it worth it. I'll do a entire post on the switch and the new schedule.

But I didn't end up sending in my NY NP application because... about 2 weeks after I got back from the trip I started dating someone. We talked about everything pretty early on. He wasn't going to do long distance, but also didn't want me to resent him if I gave up New York for him. We talked about it a lot. I thought through what I wanted to do and ultimately decided that I loved New York and I wanted an adventure, but I also felt like part of the draw was that there was nothing tying me down to Memphis and if I was going to go then it had to be then. If I had a reason to stay, I felt like I needed to see it through.

So that's where things sit now. We are planning a trip to visit New York soon, but moving is currently on pause. We'll see what happens!