My current thoughts….

I’ve been absent a lot lately. And I hope you all understand (also, I am mostly on the computer for homework and more typing makes me TIRED so I’ve neglected the blog and my close online contacts). My life has been filled with craziness thanks to my internship.

And it’s had me rethinking a lot about what I want to do with my career. I think I finally figured out what it is that makes me most want to work with kids, for instance….

Not to be all depressing, but working with adults as been….well, depressing. Not that working with kids isn’t going to tough or that I won’t have depressing moments. But the aging process in general….it blows my mind. I have had the chance to not only work with hands in this rotation, but have also done a great deal of observation with adults in acute and inpatient care in the hospital.

Not my forte, that’s for sure. I worked long enough in an assisted living facility to know that I don’t care for evaluating how well someone can clean up after themselves (bath, toilet, etc). I can’t bare with work with people in that setting. Outpatient…that’s where I want to go if I have to work with adults. I have no idea why I’m afraid so much of aging. Afraid of my family aging.

My husband aging. I have seen people barely 15 years older than I and….well, they didn’t exactly live healthy lifestyles to begin with, so that’s really probably what happened to THEM. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make sure that Dan and I live healthy from now on. Continuing our exercising. Trying to eat as little processed foods as possible.

SO….working with geriatrics? Totally out of the question. I am praying to GOD that I do not land in a nursing home for my final rotation (WHY DO I STILL HAVE THAT NOT SET UP!?!?!? That’s another story in itself about the frustrations that I have about my fieldwork advisor…ANYWAY). I can’t bear looking in the face of someone who is suffering after, say, a stroke and imagining what they were life when they were younger, what they looked like, what they enjoyed doing. Also, I can’t figure out how to turn that of in my head.

Kids…I feel like they will give me a hope of some sort. A hope that I can look at them and see that they have been able to overcome their challenges and live an awesome life. They will grow up to be incredible adults without letting a silly thing like disability stand in their way. I may still have to teach them and their parents how to do basic everyday care? But it’s different to do than with an adult. It really is.

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My biggest struggle right now, though? Missing Dan. A lot. I MEAN…A LOT. I have been staying with my father and his wife for 6 weeks now, only seeing Dan on the weekends. Except for this weekend, because I have had to work. Even though I’ve got family here….I still stay stuck in the basement, reading, typing, doing homework….I don’t get a lot of social contact. Besides work. And my supervisor is not very social anyway. I think that she has some sort of code to not really interact a ton with me, or any student for that matter. That makes me feel like I have a strained relationship with her. I have a couple of friends in the area that I could possibly hang out with, but scheduling conflicts have been a pain in the butt. Everyone has a busy life, too.

I went home for one day this week…2 nights total. and I couldn’t sleep in my own bed next to my husband and dogs. This has happened the last few weekends in fact. I have been so used to being alone that it has been hard to NOT be. Which seems ridiculous.

I only have 6 weeks left and I can’t wait for them to be over and done with. I really can not. I know that I’m learning some awesome things, but I just can’t bare being away from my husband and my life.

I have a huge phone interview on Wednesday for a job in Colorado. Which of course I wouldn’t be starting until after my internships are complete. And they know about that. I’m not even 100% sure I want this job because I’m not sure I care for the location. But it’s a start. And I can’t wait for Dan and I to just start our life. I just hope we can start it as soon as we want to.

Sorry that this is full of babbling and a lot of different topics. But these are just a few pieces of the things that are constantly weighing on my mind.