Today’s the first day in seven months that I’ve sat down and put thought to paper – or, in this case – thought to blog post. The past several months have been a deluge of new information to process, thoughts, and emotions.
If you’ve been around, you might remember me sharing that I started a new job a couple years ago. I’ve been in this role for just over two years now, and am only starting to feel what I guess you could call comfortable.
I spent the first year and a half working exclusively in one of three…specialties…I guess you could call it. Within that specialty, I’ve never had to be 100% alone for any of my shifts. Someone was always there if I was really in a bind and needed help. I didn’t always need it, but it was a nice security blanket nonetheless.
Last summer came the inevitable. It was time for me to train in the remaining two specialties, which would also make me eligible to work weekends and major holidays completely alone – no colleagues, no supervisors. It took me almost two years to start to feel comfortable in my original department, and I got about two weeks of training in the new ones. There was a ton of information in a short period of time, and to say I wasn’t prepared going into my first solo shift was an understatement.
I spent the last half of 2025 in a state of anxiety, stress, and mental exhaustion. I took pages and pages and pages of notes during training, and spent hours after work pouring over my notes to ingrain as much as I could before the first shift. My mind went through hundreds of scenarios of things that could go wrong and what I would do because no one else would be around.
And so the day came and went. Aaaaand…it wasn’t smooth. I’m not going to lie. It was rough. I was like a deer in the headlights, a fish out of water (…what other idioms can I think of…). Despite all the hours I put into reviewing my notes to prepare for that weekend, it was just a different monster when I was actually there doing it. Luckily for me, one of our supervisors was incredible, and knowing that it as my first solo weekend, showed up to lend a hand without me asking. And so I survived!
Cutting Back on Social Media
But with my mind focused on work for months, some things had to give – like blogging and social media. I just didn’t have the mental capacity to plan and edit content for Instagram, or to overcome writer’s block for the blog. It’s hard though to pull back so much from something you’ve put energy into building and maintaining. But, these were meant to be my hobbies, not a second job. And I knew if I stressed myself out about having to post something all the time, it just wouldn’t be fun anymore. So I stopped.
I looked at my Instagram just now and I posted a total of five posts from July 2025 until the end of the year. I used to post weekly! Here on the blog, my last post was in June 2025.
I look back at my posts on both platforms , and I’m so happy with the posts I’ve created, and the memories associated with each. And I want it to stay that way. So even though a part of my brain keeps nagging me to post, another part of my brain tells me to take my time, to think about what I would really like to put out there, and to enjoy the process at my own pace.
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