Change
If somebody had asked me where I’d have seen my self in five years time five years ago I never would have said here. Hi my name is Alison and I think I have the best job in the world.
From an early age I had been captivated by creativity in a very varied form, I danced, I played music, I painted, I wrote… The list goes on. I loved it. I didn’t want to stop doing it. So, naturally I chose Art School when I had finished high school. I was “gifted” with being creative, a concept that I now fully believe to be a complete load of bollocks but that’s for another blog post. I loved it there and I learned more about myself and what makes me tick than I had ever anticipated. It was because I went to Art School that I became a nurse.
Sadly there was no dramatic story to lead me into my profession, no light bulb moment as such but it was through my creative practice that I was able to have the confidence to make the change. I wanted to help people- simple as that really. I’ve had countless conversations with people regarding my “big change” and “completely different path” but in reality I can’t see it that way. For me, it was almost a seem-less link between the two. I was never going to stop being creative just because I was studying nursing and sometimes I do think I have to re-iterate that to people. What may come across as a big change to the outsider’s perspective doesn’t have to be so. I never planned this but I am so grateful that I did it and I’m very thankful to have be raised in a family who always pushed me to do whatever made me happy rather than what would make me the most money.
Nursing is a job unlike any other in my opinion and I feel extremely privileged to do the work I do. Constantly interacting with people and striving to help others is a hard job- seriously hard at times. I’ve never cried more than I have when I was training to be a nurse but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Yes it was a change from what I had set out to do but hey, doesn’t everybody say change is good? It is. I’m telling you that it really is.
I was (thankfully) never made to feel as though I had failed in one profession and was successful in another and that is something I know isn’t the case for everybody making a change in their career. I owe my success in this stage of my life to my previous successes, which begs the question of how we define success in the first instance. Again, possibly a bigger subject for another piece of writing but the condensed version is that we do what makes us happy. To me that is the ultimate success and if you can be happy in your job, no matter what it is or what you get paid or how much your feet kill you at the end of the day- you’ve made it.
Here’s to the next one!
Alison McGregor
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