“Act your age,” they say. Act my age? How do I do that? I’ve never been this age before.
Sulae (“Sue-Lay”) is my name. I am a fifty-something, 25-year registered nurse who has always questioned his career path, mediocre stock photographer, unpublished writer, working at being a better father, haven’t-always-been-but-trying to be a good husband, beer snob, cast iron chef, struggling Christ-follower, and have yet to get a tattoo. Idaho is my home, for now (I have a beautiful gypsy wife who keeps my life very interesting). I’m still trying to figure things out. God, people, the square root of negative one, and whether my pants are too small or if I am just too big.
I am your not-so-famous introvert that everyone thinks is an extrovert. I fake liking people so well and yet struggle to tolerate them. And, I appreciate being tolerated; I too have been known and identified in the group known as “people.” Looking back, I’ve acted like “people” too.
I write essays and stories about the ways and what life has taught me to behave and in the settings I found those lessons in. “Behave” sounds so submissive; I know. Read on…
There’s one thing for sure, I am not here to make you think like I think and do what I like to do. You and I will never be on a par 100% of the time. Heck! We’ll likely disagree on more than we agree on. But, there are a few things I am sure we can find common ground: ice is cold, fire is hot, and cold cast iron looks just like hot cast iron. But even then, someone is going to disagree…is ice cold or is it the absence of heat that caused the water molecules to stop moving? Either way, I bet we can agree that we don’t put ice in our beer.
As my nursing career paths have placed me, I have found myself in very close proximity to not only their human body, but also their human psyche. Dying people share too much and so do children. It’s amazing what you can learn when someone either has knocked down all their emotional walls and from those still building theirs. My hospice patients would look back on regrets, and my school nurse kiddos would look forward with hope and dreams. My middle folks still had their walls and usually didn’t share much…nonetheless, it was common to hear from the few that would share, “This isn’t turning out like I thought it would.”
I am at the point well beyond the young-un’s hopes and dreams and starting to move beyond questioning why things didn’t turn out the way I wanted or expected them to (though I have a few more mistakes to make before I am fully satisfied that things will not turn out like I think they will). Yes, I do have my fair share of regrets and yet, I am not sure that I wouldn’t go back and change anything. No, not because I am right where I want to be in my life; it’s because I don’t know where I’d be if I changed anything. They tell me that by the end, I’ll be shouting, “shoulda, coulda, woulda.” But I think “no,” chances are, “I shouldn’t have, couldn’t have, and wouldn’t have.”
These are the stories and essays of what I shouldn’t have done and maybe a few things that I should have done. This is what life has taught me.
I am not going to tell nursing stories, cycling stories, or cooking stories. I am by far an expert in anything ending in “ing.” I am going to tell human stories. I am going to tell stories about my interactions with other people I have interacted with and what they have directly or indirectly taught me. I am not going to tell you what I think you should do or what I think you should learn from my experiences; these are my lessons. Think of these stories and essays like a trail that I have blazed though the forest; you’re more than welcome to follow…or you can make your own path.
I am going to share the lessons I have learned and are still learning in a setting may that be as a nurse, father, husband, Christian, or as a kid growing up in Louisiana.
That’s my 411. It may be a bit unconventional; but aren’t we all…unconventional?
– Sulae