Just Keep Baking

Since I quit my hospital job at Grey Sloan, things have calmed down… a little too much.

The first day, all I felt was relief, still with some underlying anxiety. By the second day, I was binge-watching all seasons of the Great British Baking Show ad nauseaum while afternoon napping. By the third day, I was going for unnecessary drives to and from the next city because I missed my morning jam sessions with Amazon Music’s Pop station. By the fourth day, I was napping AND going for unnecessary drives. By the fifth day… was doing all of the above and feeling like a fat slug again.

I have an interview with a nearby medical practice on Thursday, but I feel zero motivation to prepare or do anything else for that matter at the moment. And that’s what seems to happen when I’m not working — I go brain dead and do nothing.

That’s not good.

I could clean my pig sty apartment. But I don’t.

I could complete my EKG certification. But I don’t.

I could walk to a nearby coffee house so I can get some exercise in. But I don’t.

I could walk the dog. But I don’t.

All I do is watch The Great British Baking Show and dream of the perfect pavlova and Paul Hollywood’s ice blue eyes.

I eat. I nap. I watch TV. Then I eat and nap again. It’s a horrible, vicious cycle that while to the outside observer seems like an ideal situation, in reality, is extremely bad for my health and well-being.

I haven’t weighed myself. I don’t want to because I know the news can’t be good. Without being active (like, at all) while still eating cannot be conducive to weight loss.

When I’m awake, I think about the hospital and all the mistakes I made, minor though they may have been. I realize the whole thing was an unsalvageable situation, but I can’t help going over ever single moment in my mind — either to review if there was something I could have done differently to change the outcome, or to beat myself up for being so damn stupid.

I think about my elderly patient in multi-organ failure and wonder if anything I could have done could have changed her outcome. I wasn’t panicked about her at all. Was the fact that I was so cavalier about it at the core of why I was a complete failure at that job?

And will I be a complete failure at the next job?

What about how I struggled to remember things? Something I’ve been struggling with both on and off the job. Is my memory going? Is this the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease? Will I be a mindless gork in a nursing home in ten years with my friends saying how they knew me when I was still “me”?

Will all this cripple me at ANY job I go to at this point? And if so, is it worth pursuing? How do I sell myself to this medical practice when I feel I could be a failure even as an office nurse?

These questions, that have no answers, flood my brain when I’m awake. With no job to distract me, who can blame those thoughts from coming to the forefront? So I sleep. And when I sleep, I dream about all the mistakes I made and many that I didn’t make (that represent all the things I didn’t know I was doing wrong). Forgetting a medication. Losing a syringe. Forgetting to log in. Not charting something correctly.

When I wake up, I drown my brain in mindless television. Why not let it escape into the world of baking — something I don’t do nor have any interest in doing — but which oddly fascinates me. I fall asleep again watching people try to create the perfect Genoise Sponge or baking the ideal French Baguette. The creativity. The precision. The passion for combining spices and flavors.

Mixing just the right ratio of buttermilk to baking powder seems so much less stressful than making sure I mix exactly the correct amount of saline into the Protonix vial and draw it back up with exactly the right sized syringe all while Tonya stands over me and barks out a random list of miscellaneous tasks that I am supposed to remember exactly and complete precisely before the end of my shift.

(Then again, if those bakers had Paul Hollywood or Mary Berry angrily barking directions for the next challenge at them while trying to knead the perfect baps for this one, I doubt they’d make it past the first couple of days. Just sayin’.)

I didn’t get into medicine — or rather, nursing — so that I could feel like a failure all the time. I wanted to help people; we all do. If it’s about feeling like a bumbling idiot, I ask: how does any nurse survive their first year if this is such a universal experience?

If the voices in my head are to be trusted, it’s because I’m a born moron who has simply gotten lucky enough to succeed this far.

If rational common sense is to be trusted, it’s because I was unlucky enough to take as my first job, a job that required more skill than my current abilities would allow, and that I must keep going and keep trying.

Because if the Great British Baking Show has taught us anything, it’s that no one walks out of that tent and off the challenge. They may fail miserably, their souffles may fall, but they get up and do it again the next day until they are sent home. Paul Hollywood may comment on how dry the sponge is, or how separated the creme pat became, or how their cake tower collapsed in the heat, they might even get ranked tenth out of ten and cry on camera, but they come back the next day and keep on baking.

Of course, lives aren’t on the line when you bake, but still. I am that baker right now. I’m the one whose cake was too hot and all the icing melted off. It worked at home. Why not here? I want to tell everyone that I actually can do this. Really I can! I’m not an idiot, I swear!!

I would be the one crying into my apron. I would feel like a loser and tell the cameraman, “It’s over, I know I’m going home!” But somehow, I’d get spared to live for the next challenge. I must be resolute and try again.

Maybe I’ll nail the next one. Maybe I’ll win Star Baker.

Just keep baking.