Buffering At Work

I am currently working a job that I don’t feel is particularly suited to my brain. I work long hours, 7a-7:30p, leave my house at 0620 and return home at 2000. I’m supposed to get a 30 minute lunch break where I just reheat food and shovel it down, some days it doesn’t really happen. the work (nurse on postpartum/well newborn unit) is task-y. I am running around being interrupted. My brain loves connecting with my patients and supporting them, but has a hard time keeping track of who was a c-section and who was a vaginal, who has other kids at home and who is figuring this all out for the first time, who needs labs at 1700, pain meds, like whatever, everything. And I go to do one thing, and am interrupted 3 times with other tasks that backlog into my to do list. I always forget something, like ordering dinner for my patient who can’t speak English, or a Motrin, or to chart something. I was never a great waitress and I feel like the parts of my job that are like that bum me out. When my patients confide in me, when we laugh together, when I can normalize and validate their experience and our eyes both get shimmery and teary I feel like I’m doing important work and in my sweet spot. but all the other crap just makes me feel chaotic and messy. The days that feel best to me are days where I’m so busy I barely have time to eat or pee or whatever but have enough nervous system activation (adrenaline) to keep me engaged and interested all day/I can justify the minutia that I forget because I’m dealing with serious medial problems, OR the days where work is really slow and nothing happens and I get to completely zone out on my phone. buffering like that makes me feel a little rotten but it also feels like rightfully stealing some time back for myself. It’s just more interesting than my charting or whatever corporate hospital training I’m supposed to do on my downtime. I’ve tried using downtime in different ways, once I brought in my crochet project for a night shift and once I listened to a TFC webinar call. But even when I have tons to do and should be stealing a few minutes to chart or hydrate I’m just like, ugh I’m just going to have a scroll. When I ask myself what I’m buffering from, the answer is often boredom and physical discomfort (i.e. feeling bloated/gas pain and like my food is not digesting right.) I would say the latter more often than the former. These questions around buffering at work usually bring me to questions about who I am, my strengths, and career paths that would better suit my brain/how I hate wearing scrubs and want a ‘cooler’ job but I have a sense there’s a lot right here in the present I could be digging into.

 

 

Answer:

A job is a job. It’s a circumstance. You are always welcome to change that circumstance if you’d like, but you might miss out on a lot of growth that could happen if you clean up your mind before you make that decsion. Giving yourself the opportunity to love your job before you leave it will allow you to not bring the same story to the next job.

You said T: I am currently working a job that I don’t feel is particularly suited to my brain.

Your brain isn’t the problem and the job isn’t either. I would offer that you switch your thought around and ask yourself how you can succeed in this job with the brain you have. What would make it easier and more fun at work? What strategies can you use to overcome the obstacles you’ve mentioned? Give your brain the task of looking for ways to create the experience you want at work. Be kind to yourself as you do this. See what comes up as you make this shift.