Its been whole eight months since I wrote a blog. I have planned to do this for many days. Many times I have started writing and realized shortly afterwards that I have nothing much to say. Despite this, I have attempted to cut corners. I tried my hand at Vlogging with the thought that it would be easier. I am tempeted to say World Class Nurse Youtube is work in progress but this would be a little black lie. I also started doing weekly anecdotes which are meant to be mini versions of this blog composed of my experiences in the hospital corridors, laced with humour. Both ideas were really exciting for a moment.
Here we are now.
Before we get to finding back our mojo. And yes, we are in this together. I want to talk about loosing my mojo in the first place. Even before loosing my dad, I was already struggling with this whole mojo thing. When I started World Class Nurse blog, I had so many things to write about. After six months of weekly blogs, I found myself struggling to find stories to talk about or write about.
At the same time I started wondering how long I would do this without tangible reward. The likes and comments were not cutting it anymore. What once really excited me started to feel like work. I couldn’t imagine spending twelve hours at work for three days in a row and then instead of drinking wine and flipping through Netflix on my day off, I would have to sit down and write, edit and post a whole blog.
Apart from this, what was once flattering complements and questions on social media became exhausting. Talking about the same thing over and over, answering the same questions over and over became tiring.
In my bid to start getting some reward from my passion as they say, I started looking for a product to sell. Something that could give me money. I was willing to invest and invest some more. All these seemed like a good idea then and now.
However, there has been a lot of frustration and mood swings between then and now.
By the time my dad illness and death happened, most of the nails in the coffin were in place. I automatically took a break during the mourning and funeral period.
After the funeral and completing my hotel quarantine (COVID has really done some of us a good one), I came back with a bang!
I had to prove a point to me and you, that I am not a quitter. That life can push me down but I can rise back up. And that I can make a kickass lemonade from life’s lemons. I jumped straight back into action.
Around the same time the African Nurse Conference was happening. I dived into this and actively partcipated. I was making videos and doing the anecdotes. If this was not enough, I organized a live event on Racism (a subject most of us fear talking about) which was a great success, thanks to my amazing guest, The Wandering Nurse, S. D. Onyango.
I was holding way too strong to this whole mojo.
The crash happened in November. Just around my birthday.
I had a four-days long off in which I never got out of bed. I kept telling myself I am not depressed. I still believe I wasn’t even though I had most of the conventional symptoms. I guess this is a whole story on it’s own.
Wine became a very close friend of mine. So did the big man himself, Colonel Sanders. Burger King followed really closely. For someone who was knee deep in debt, I was clearly keeping bad company.
After the four long days in which I cried, did not shower, did not leave my room and contemplated ending it all, I knew I had reached my rock bottom.
I started therapy against everything I have known all my life.
It is at this point that I truly let go of the mojo I was so struggling to hold on to.
In my first therapy session I cried for the 45 minutes non stop. I realised I had tried to be strong for so long. I finally took the break. Something I should have done ages ago.
Even as I took the break, I was super scared of disappointing you and me. I was convinced that you would forget about me.
Therapy gave me the chance to truly understand something that everyone always says but probably don’t understand: IT IS OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY.
After two months of total black out, I came back.
I researched on how to get back on social media after a break. I made my come back post nervously but it was actually really well received (I have a way with word you know 😉 )
Still after the post, I found myself struggling. That spark I had when creating World Class Nurse had really faded.
Have I found our mojo? NO.
I’m I on a journey to truly understand what this mojo thing is all about anyways? YES.