Instead of School Me Saturday today I want to discuss the year that has just passed. More specifically, the year that has just passed with Dispatches from the Evening Shift as a focus.
In the past year, there have been 266 blog posts written by your truly.
TWO HUNDRED SIXTY-SIX. I think that is amazing.
In the past year, I wanted to redouble my efforts for the blog. And I think I have hit that goal.
There have been many things that have happened in the last year.
51 Cookie Thursdays is a Thing.
56 weeks in my new role as the call nurse.
Consistent themes for 3, sometimes 4 of the weekly blog posts.
Hell, let’s just break down the highlights, using the handy dandy schematic I made myself.
January
New year, new gig. The weekly themes of Post-it Sunday, Cookie Thursday is a Thing (CTIAT), and Monday Musings were all active. Covid was on my mind as we were in yet another surge. This is the month that the United States marked 850,000 dead on 1/15/22. And I was deep into applying for PhD programs.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Boozy cookies.
February
Covid continued to surge. Notably, there were 890,816 covid dead on 2/1/22. That is nearly 41,000 in two weeks. And Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th. This was definitely a bleak month.
The CTIAT theme of the month was cheese.
March
This month I went to my first in-person conference, masked, in New Orleans. And in the car on the way home, my husband and I discussed the RaDonda Vaught case. And this was almost immediately after the J’Accuse blog post where the nurse is often the scapegoat of the medical profession.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Comfort. Didn’t we need it this month?
April
I wrote about Just Cause and what it means in a corporation and what it should mean for nursing. And my favorite post of the month was a breakdown of what the pandemic had stolen from me. Among others. Notably I chose a PhD program this month.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Coconut cookies.
May
Inflation reared its ugly little head. Not only in the hospital itself with continued supply chain issues but the pressure of the cost of the travel nurse.
Oh, the US marked the 1,000,000 covid death.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Inflation baking. I am the sole baker of CTIAT. It is my baby, and my baking supplies that are used. This was an effort to show my coworkers that yumminess can be had on a budget.
June
I started a many parted series about What it Means to be Called In. Here I broke down the steps, from the phone call to the ride home that the patient undergoes for a call surgery.
And there were physical assaults on healthcare providers in a variety of states. People died.
And then the Supreme Court overturned Roe with the Dobbs decision. Yes, I am still incensed at this.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Inflation Baking, which continued. The price of butter specifically was immense.
This was a crummy month.
July
Laughter has always made me feel better and I started a short-lived theme day of Friday Funsies. And I realized I am just not that funny. The Nursing Mantra was a post that I am particularly proud of.
The CTIAT theme of the month was If You Want a Woman to be in the Eighteenth Century so Badly… This month I made exclusively 18th-century recipes.
August
This was a month of many school posts. The PhD program started. We finally got to London.
The CTIAT theme of the month was No Heat.
September
A new theme day was added. This was School Me Saturday where I wrote about school-type matters. I also began limiting myself to writing about my personal school story one time a month.
There were rumblings and the beginning of discussions on a Twindemic, flu and covid.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Baker’s Choice. I had recipes I wanted to try that didn’t fit any theme.
October
The themes from the year continued: covid, and attacks on healthcare. There was a shooting at a maternity ward in Texas where 2 nurses died.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Spooky Cookies.
November
Oh, and now there is a third disease that is weighing down the hospitals. Flu, covid, and RSV.
But seriously, the hospitals have barely had a break in nearly 3 years.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Fall cookies.
December
What to say about this month? I asked if you were happy, I invited a surgeon and an anesthesiologist to whip em out and compare lengths while they were fighting over room choice. Oh, and the holidays, everyone’s favorite. With a full hospital and an over-full OR schedule.
The CTIAT theme of the month was Holiday cookies.
But it wasn’t all bad. We got through.
I survived my first year as a call-only nurse. AND my first year as a PhD student.
My hope for the new year is that there is a marked decline in the number of covid deaths. Currently, the US stands at 1,092,670.
My hope for the new year is a decrease in inflation or a decrease of the impacts of inflation on the costs of goods.
My hope for myself is to continue to be a PhD student. And a writer for this blog.
Let’s raise a glass to next year, and sage smudge this year to get rid of bad juju.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 