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So I had the "official" hospital orientation this week. New Employee Orientation on Monday (7:30am-3:30pm), then New Nurse Orientation Tuesday and Wednesday (8:00am-4:00am, ostensibly, but since I'd already attended some of the classes, I got to leave early both days). ( irritable ramblings about orientation follow )
On Monday, I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner, but he was late, so I was hanging out in the Borders in Hyde Park waiting for him. They had William Gibson's new book 20% off, and I still had money from my first ER nurse paycheck in the bank... I bought it (and a true crime book of 150 years of crime photography that was on clearance for $4.99).
Oh, I love it already. I just love the way Gibson writes; I always have. Reading Neuromancer was like reading Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" -- I felt like I needed a glossary, but it was something I was driven to understand and visualize. Since that novel, of course, his writing has become much more conventional, but I still love it. I still love his style. It's digressive, sometimes, peppered with details which may be important or banal, you don't know which -- just like life.
I remember in the documentary "No Maps For These Territories" he explained that when fans of Neuromancer ask him why nothing he wrote after that was written in that same style, he tells them that he can't write the way he wrote Neuromancer because he isn't the same person that he was when he wrote Neuromancer.
In my secret heart of hearts where I long to be "a real writer" but haven't got the confidence to actually try (yet), I understand that. I think I've lived that, at least a little bit. I've tried to go back and finish some unfinished slashfic series, and it's hard. (I guess it's like that cliche, where they say you have your whole life to write your first novel, but you only get a year or two to write your second.) Because I'm not the person I was when I started them or when I was deep in the middle of writing them. So many "life changing events" happened to me in the interim (my injuries and medical leave from work, my father's accident, deterioration, death, my lay-off, my career change/going back to school, my mother and step-father's diagnoses and battles with cancer, which are ongoing), I simply can't BE the person who started those series.
In the most recent news related to my mom & stepdad's cancers, my mom's seems to be in check. But the latest scan of my step-dad shows the metastatic lesions on his liver have grown in size (although the size was only reported in 2 dimensions, rather than three, so how deep they are, I don't know), and they have grown in his mandible (lower jaw bone), ribs, and have appeared in spots where they weren't before, such as the interior surfaces of his pelvic bones. (You'd think they would have appeared in the latter spots first, but such is the way lymph flows in the body, that they didn't). ( depressing continuance of the parental units' cancer sagas )
After all that, well, it just makes me want to walk to the grocery store in the Indian Summer sunshine to pick up the cat food I know my cats need. Because there's only so many days like that left in my life, you know? It's why I get so irritated with my significant trouble when all he wants to do is go "out" to movies or dinner. To me, that's not going "out" -- that's just going "in" to a different enclosed space, away from the world, the sun, the breezes, what nature there is among us in our increasingly urbanized area.
I'd rather be sitting on a park bench in a park looking up at what few stars are visible among the light pollution here, or riding our bikes. But he never seems to want to do that stuff. ( ramblings about dissatisfaction with my SO )
On Monday, I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner, but he was late, so I was hanging out in the Borders in Hyde Park waiting for him. They had William Gibson's new book 20% off, and I still had money from my first ER nurse paycheck in the bank... I bought it (and a true crime book of 150 years of crime photography that was on clearance for $4.99).
Oh, I love it already. I just love the way Gibson writes; I always have. Reading Neuromancer was like reading Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange" -- I felt like I needed a glossary, but it was something I was driven to understand and visualize. Since that novel, of course, his writing has become much more conventional, but I still love it. I still love his style. It's digressive, sometimes, peppered with details which may be important or banal, you don't know which -- just like life.
I remember in the documentary "No Maps For These Territories" he explained that when fans of Neuromancer ask him why nothing he wrote after that was written in that same style, he tells them that he can't write the way he wrote Neuromancer because he isn't the same person that he was when he wrote Neuromancer.
In my secret heart of hearts where I long to be "a real writer" but haven't got the confidence to actually try (yet), I understand that. I think I've lived that, at least a little bit. I've tried to go back and finish some unfinished slashfic series, and it's hard. (I guess it's like that cliche, where they say you have your whole life to write your first novel, but you only get a year or two to write your second.) Because I'm not the person I was when I started them or when I was deep in the middle of writing them. So many "life changing events" happened to me in the interim (my injuries and medical leave from work, my father's accident, deterioration, death, my lay-off, my career change/going back to school, my mother and step-father's diagnoses and battles with cancer, which are ongoing), I simply can't BE the person who started those series.
In the most recent news related to my mom & stepdad's cancers, my mom's seems to be in check. But the latest scan of my step-dad shows the metastatic lesions on his liver have grown in size (although the size was only reported in 2 dimensions, rather than three, so how deep they are, I don't know), and they have grown in his mandible (lower jaw bone), ribs, and have appeared in spots where they weren't before, such as the interior surfaces of his pelvic bones. (You'd think they would have appeared in the latter spots first, but such is the way lymph flows in the body, that they didn't). ( depressing continuance of the parental units' cancer sagas )
After all that, well, it just makes me want to walk to the grocery store in the Indian Summer sunshine to pick up the cat food I know my cats need. Because there's only so many days like that left in my life, you know? It's why I get so irritated with my significant trouble when all he wants to do is go "out" to movies or dinner. To me, that's not going "out" -- that's just going "in" to a different enclosed space, away from the world, the sun, the breezes, what nature there is among us in our increasingly urbanized area.
I'd rather be sitting on a park bench in a park looking up at what few stars are visible among the light pollution here, or riding our bikes. But he never seems to want to do that stuff. ( ramblings about dissatisfaction with my SO )