For the past few days, I have had plenty of thoughts cris-crossing my mind. They are still all jumbled up, but I will try to make some sense out of them.

As I have mentioned before, there were redundancy negotiations at my workplace. This in itself left me properly annoyed, and I even questioned my value as a nurse. This part is completely silly, I know, but whatever happens, it happens for a reason.

Whilst this whole thing was going on, I applied for an internal transfer to another team, and on Friday, I got a call. The supervisor told me that I got the position, should I want it, but the salary would remain the same – even though I asked for about 150 euro increase. 150 euros. I didn’t ask for 1.500 euros. Well, needless to say, I didn’t take the job.

The raise would have been mostly symbolic in nature, but it would have shown me, like I wrote before, that the employer actually cares about experienced nurses, and the knowledge and skills they bring with them to the equation.

It is the same experience that makes me feel afraid for my dear friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer for the second time. Deep down, I know she is in the best care, and her surgeons are top-notch. This gives me reassurance that she will be well.

What this led me to think was the life itself. In my recent post, I wrote about the importance of slowing down and enjoying the quiet and peaceful moments. And not just those moments, but we need to be present. Future is going to happen, and the past has already happened. So we need to make the present the best we can.

Last year, I made a promise to myself that I would restart my book project, and to make sure I really stuck with the plan, I even made it public. I honestly think that it is important for us to fulfil our dreams and aspire to become even better than we already are. That also is a way to ensure that we have fewer and fewer regrets when we are old. Maybe for me writing stories, like the one set in Pompeii, is a way to make sure I can leave a mark in the world as I will never have children to carry on my name.

I don’t know if this is my midlife crisis, or is this just the stress and burnout clearing itself away, but I feel that we really need to change the perspective on how we deal with life. We need to concentrate on the present, and we need to start to care about the people around us. But in order to be able to care about others, we need to take care of ourselves first.