Hello Everyone. I hope you are all having great summers. I am writing this entry today because I lack the energy to write well about a funny call I did recently.
I have been working quite a lot -- 84 hours in seven days this past week --and am finding it hard to keep up the quality of this blog and my daily blog at Paramedic: A Year on the Streets. I am not yet ready to give up. I am hoping this is just a lull and I will catch a second wind. It has been almost two years since I have been blogging here, and 20 months at the daily blog. During that time I have noticed some of the bloggers that I have been following have disappeared off the internet. I don't know if they got burned out, or had complaints or if they left the field.
I like blogging in that it captures my day and events I might forget about or not remember as clearly. But to do that well I need to be able to see freshly every day. A problem that I think comes with working so much is I tend to just want to get through to the next call to the end of the day, and to the next day and to pay day when I spend probably too much time looking at my check.
When I started as a medic I told myself I would never let myself get to the point where I needed to work overtime to get by. Well, so much for the that. It's what a house and a divorce and a will to see the world before you croak will do to you.
I have been spending a lot of my time lately on my Capnography blog at Capnography for Paramedics. What started out as just a place to put the information I had found on my own has become a near obsession. My physiology background is shamefully weak so I have been struggling to get a handle on everything and then put it into simple language. I agreed to teach a class on Capnography this coming September when I knew very little about Capnography, but knew if I agreed to teach the class I would have to become an expert. I have enjoyed learning. Everyday I hope to get a new capnography strip or story or read about a new study. I am working hard on my powerpoint presentation.
I have also been working more on one of my novels that I excerpted recently. I will probably post more chapters soon. Unfortunately it has taken a back seat to the capnography which is under deadline.
Recently the ambulance service where I work as the contract medic opened its EMS Commander position. I thought about applying. The pay isn't what I make in overtime, but it was decent for a salaried job. And it was a way off the street in the daily grind sense. It was a job I could do when I am older or if I get hurt. I have lots of ideas about how to make the EMS system better, and it would have been fun to have a playground to try them out on.
But I didn't apply. Mainly because I love being a paramedic, and in the new job I don't know how much I would have been able to work -- maybe only in a supplemental way. And I would have had to have quit the company I work for now due to conflict of interest provisions. Also, not being able to work overtime I would see a decline in income. And you can't overrate the ability to have the time be your own when you are not responding to calls. I mean right now I'm at work, I'm on the clock and I'm sitting here working on my blog. How good is that!
Maybe some time down the line I'll be ready for a step off the street, but now I want to stay here.
Thanks for reading my blog and I hope I will try to get to that funny story soon.
