What We Notice When We Look Up

A blog for the 40 days ahead — and maybe longer.

I deleted the apps twenty minutes ago.

And my first instinct was to go check my own post.

Not because I forgot what I wrote. I had just written it. I knew exactly what it said. But somewhere between hitting share and picking up my phone my nervous system had already been trained to go back to the feed. To see it reflected back at me. To let the algorithm hold what I should have been able to hold myself.

I caught myself mid-reach and just sat with that for a moment.

That's how dependent we've become.

Not on connection. On the simulation of it.

And our hearts and souls are longing for the real thing.

I'm taking Lent this year to find out what that actually looks like.

Forty days of posting less and doing more. Comparing less and reflecting more. Discussing less and accomplishing more.

Not because social media is evil. I love creating. I love sharing. I love the nurses I've met in that space who needed to hear that someone else was barely holding it together too.

But the pull of it was eating the very time I needed to create something worth sharing.

I was scrolling through other people's content instead of living my own.

And I had just enough self-awareness left to notice.

So the apps are gone. For forty days, my energy goes to real dates with real people. To this blog. To create valuable content for my YouTube channel that goes deeper than 10 seconds. To my upcoming workshop and the first three women I'll walk alongside in 1:1 coaching this April.

To create from depth instead of performing for an algorithm.

And this week I want to talk about what happens when we look up.

Because I think most of us have forgotten what's already there.

The Shuttle Tribe

It's 5:38 am and still dark.

February dark. The kind that lives on both ends of a twelve-hour shift and swallows the sun entirely for weeks at a time.

The shuttle pulls up, and Jamming George is already on.

I could have my headphones in. Most people do. Screens up, scrolling, making the edges of the commute disappear before the day asks everything of you.

Instead, I wrap both hands around my coffee and let it hit.

"Let's listen to a little ABBA."

That's what he said. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like 5:38 am in February is exactly the right moment for Dancing Queen, and he was going to provide that whether anyone asked or not.

And he was right.

I didn't fix a single thing on my list during that shuttle ride. The windows were being installed at home while I worked. The fourth call shift in two weeks was waiting for me on the other end of the day. 

But something in me settled.

Because I looked up.

Then there's Sweet George.

Sweet George used to drive me on the 11 to 11:30 shift. He'd beep if he saw me rushing up the hill, already dysregulated before I'd touched a single patient.

Get in. I've got you.

Not making it a thing. Just a ride up a hill at the exact moment I needed one.

I don't work those shifts anymore. But I have a video, taken on a morning I chose to walk because I had time and my nervous system needed to move, of me talking about presence and intention and grabbing every opportunity to arrive instead of just showing up.

And right in the middle of it, Sweet George beeps. I shared this video so you could smile too. 

Because he remembered when that wasn't always the case.

I waved and said I'm good, George, thank you.

And I meant it in more ways than one.

He's at the same table every day at lunch now. He waves through the window. He beeps if he sees me walking.

Quietly keeping track. Making sure I'm still okay.

And then there's Swerving Scott.

Scott knows what car everyone drives. Scott has a Big Gulp at 11:30pm like time is completely optional. Scott will throw that van into park, turn all the way around, and require your full presence to dish on the gossip of the day before you've even had a chance to decide you're too tired for it.

Whether it's chatting, bracing yourself for a wild 3-minute shuttle ride, or sharing cat memes, Scott demands your attention

I did not create this support system. I did not design it, optimize it, or put it in a wellness plan.

I just looked up one day and realized it had always been there.

Jamming George and Sweet George and Swerving Scott were co-regulating me long before I had a word for it. Anchoring me in the darkness on both ends of shifts that asked everything and gave back very little.

Not with breathwork. Not with a wellness program. With ABBA at 5:38 am, a beep from a passing shuttle, and a Big Gulp that has no business being that large at any hour.

My anchors.

I only found them because I looked up.

The Patients Beyond the Checklist

There's a moment in pre-op, if you let yourself have it, between opening Epic and pulling the curtain back.

Maybe thirty seconds.

Enough to remember that the person on the other side of that curtain is not just a procedure, a med rec, and a 7:30 on time start.

She's a woman who hasn't eaten since yesterday and is weak from her bowel prep and is about to wake up with a body that will never look the same, and she doesn't know yet how she'll feel about that.

She's wondering if her partner will still find her attractive. Whether she can manage the care alone. Whether she can even look at it herself.

And the man in bay two didn't know his medications when he came in this morning because his wife always handled that, and she passed eight months ago, and he hasn't quite figured out how to live without her yet.

None of that is on the checklist.

All of it is in the room if you look up from the screen long enough to see it.

I have found that one real question, not a checklist question, a human question, changes the entire texture of a shift.

What will this new hip allow you to do that's been so hard lately?

The answer to that question is never about the hip.

The last woman I pre-opped for a hip replacement was looking forward to walking the dog her son left behind after his unexpected death last year. Her hip was standing between her and Champ. And Champ was her last living connection to a son she will grieve forever. You don't get that answer if your eyes are on the screen.

You only get it when you look up.

The Pause

There is a moment between patients when neither one needs you yet.

Maybe ninety seconds.

The system does not account for this moment. The board does not honor it. The on-time metric does not care about it.

But your nervous system does.

This is where you set down what you just held so you can pick up what comes next without spilling one into the other.

A woman uncertain if her body will still be lovable. A man learning to live without the person who knew him best. A mother who just needs her hip back so she can walk Champ again.

Without the pause they blur. You blur.

And a blurred nurse is not a regulated nurse. An unregulated nurse cannot offer what her patients actually need.

The pause is not lost time. The pause is the work.

What Forty Days Might Teach Us

I don't know what I'll find in the next forty days without the scroll.

I know I'll reach for my phone out of habit and find it quieter than expected. I know I'll have moments of genuine peace and moments of genuine anxiety because both showed up within minutes of deleting the apps. I know I'll write things that scare me a little because depth requires courage that distraction conveniently prevents.

But I also know this.

The shuttle tribe was always there. The patients were always more than their procedure codes. The pauses were always available.

Forty days of looking up.

I'll tell you what I find.

If this landed somewhere real for you, subscribe to the weekly newsletter Coming up for Air, so we can keep going deeper together. And share this with the nurse who you know needs to look up today.