And so the journey fires off! I've always waited for crazy restless gut feelings to propel me to write something that would remain on a blog post and put my soul at ease. But I'm finding that there's a lot of life I want to share that isn't related to my only blog labels of the past - death, love and nursing. Ugh. Yes, Rus, agreed. Love is so abysmal;) I've been pretty melodramatic, to say the least.

But. My life is pretty scattered. The past 2 years have amounted to me wanting to be a farmer. A master gardener. A craftster. An overseas dweller. An entrepreneur. A designer. A bass player. A rock singer. A quit-your-day-jobber. A blogger. A writer. A photographer. A runner. Etc.

And, yet, I still work the 9-5. As a nurse. (Raise your hand if you're already heard that I don't want to be a nurse).

There's just a few confessions I have to clear up before I attempt any consistency in blogging.









I kind of really enjoy top 40 music. (ouch).

I can honestly say I really enjoy living in Fargo.

Let's go for the inspiring...learning...creating...and loving (the abyss!).this was a great day.

i've come to accept that my fate may very well lay in the hands of a certain city called West Fargo for the next 2 years and 8 months. little did we know when building a house last year that in order to receive the fantastic $8,000 new home owner tax credit we'd have to stick with the place for 3 years or repay our so generous government.

the majority of people we know seem to think we're ungracious or flat out stupid for even allowing the slightest desire to move after going through the work of building a house. i mean, doensn't the world and everyone know that you need to live in a place for the magical 3-5 years before moving to earn some equity...or just make it worth it? i think it's crazy bullshnap to (at this age, mind you, at the very least) settle for a place where something doesn't drive your heart wild to action and purpose. where you're not challenged to LIVE. where you can be as complacent as you want because everything is familiar and normal and easy peasy pah-cheesy. where you can't go sit at the top of a hill...or mountain...or volcano!! and watch life move about around you in the sunset and the city lights sparkle at night.

and it's definitely me, not him. i'm the restless, bipolar, unrelenting one of the group who can't commit to people or places and need the next adventure or high from experiencing something....new and beautiful! but is it all that bad?? up until i had to mature and get a career and be responsibly married (believe me, not a negative whatsoever, but the expectation of being responsible just because i'm married seems to me to be) i was more crazy for not dreaming and wanting to be so full of life and perspective and new-ness! now...i hear the little sputtle of polite laughter from each person i share just the top layer of icing of my restless-caked, dreaming mind. how many times have i heard the "oh ashley"... i keep hearing my normal side say "you're just soooo melodramatic." and how, in the past 3 years, has it come from dreaming and believing to "you're just soooo melodramatic."?

so much ado about everything. if this is really the place for me. for us. to really stay here another 2 years and 8 months, then we need to really really live here. experience all that the Fargo area has to offer. to find what drives our hearts wild to action and purpose within this place. to pull ourselves out of the thick muddy mud of complacency, and sit on top of the parking ramp to watch the sunset and city lights and experience all the life lessons we can quench out of it. it's scary to me because it's so boring. it's so mundane. it's so not overseas! it's so commital. it's so loooong. not for you, though, right? i know, 'it's really short in the scheme of life'...but it's 2 years 8 months! that's forever to me (melodramatic, i know, i know). work in an ICU and the vulnerability of each day is exhausting to understand.

so we'll see what happens. but i think i'd like to share it in a blog. i think. i might not be able to commit...! if not just for my sake, then maybe for someone else's eventually. it's been over a year and a half since i thought i had something to say. i think i'm frozen or stuck in a dream, like i am honestly completely going mindlessly crazy, not knowing if it's okay, hoping it's false. but it's alright.

this weekend i learned that a patient of recent died. no couple has affected me ever yet as much as this one. she stayed in his room after his first massive heart attack, not willing to leave the bedside, saying they've always been together and she's not leaving now. he did okay and they joked around all the time and we got to know them more than i wish we did and he transferred out. then his body tried to die again and he came back. she grabbed my arm and hung on as we settled him into our bed. she would hold his head and whisper in his ear as the ventilator did his breathing. and he did okay and transferred out. then he tried to die again and he came back. she was exhausted. she told me above the hum and hip hop of machines "i've always prayed i'd go before him, i just can't live without him." and he did okay and he discharged from the hospital.

and this weekend i learned that he did die, just a month after his first hospitalization with us. in the hospital. death and all his friends won the tug-of-war.

if nothing else, this whirlwind of a weekend after getting back to the country, this helped me decide that i am done in the intensive care unit. i accepted a new job today where i'll get to stick stuff up people's butts all day :) and i couldn't be more excited.

if i ever come back to the ICU to do this hellish work that no one should deal with every time they go to work, i have a lot of maturing to do. i feel totally defeated, but i knew the whole time, even before i started, that i didn't want to work there.

it's humbling and so wonderful at the same time. i think it'll feel freeing once it hits! death is always there. i accept that, i know there's so much more. i think a lot of people think they can deal with death just fine, but they've never seen it or experienced it or helped others experience it. living on this side of life it feels so final. especially when you don't really know what's going to happen to that soul from that lifeless body that you're taping up in a plastic garbage-bag-like tomb. maybe that's what was so hard for me. maybe i'm just a total puss.

i was reading tim ferriss' blog as he quoted Dr. King:

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.