Who is this person?
It’s a rhetorical question, yes?
Some of you may have caught up with my thoughts recently on a huge career change into nursing/paramedicine. If you missed it, don’t worry, I’ll probably bore you senseless with the contents of my medical brain a little more before the year is out. For people who know me really well, the career about-face doesn’t come as that much of a surprise (because truly, the epiphany should have come several years ago), but others are flummoxed.
“I can’t see you as a nurse,” or
“You know paramedics see dead people, right?”
or simply,
“Huh?”
Interestingly the same people who can’t see me as a nurse can see me as a paramedic, but the two are inextricably linked (why else would you be able to do a double degree in them both, hmmmmm?) so it shouldn’t be too much of a stretch, should it? Should it?
Anyway, what flummoxes me personally is not my career change, but my inexplicable disappearance into our garden.
Let me start by saying I do have a recessive gardening gene, unlike craft, for which I have no gene whatsoever on my DNA. None. But I’ve gone a little too bonkers on compost and earthworms. Not in a radical “let’s permaculture the f*ck out of this garden”, more like a “let’s make it as sustainable (i.e. low maintenance) as we can so I don’t have to think about it once I lose interest.” Part of the motivation was walking outside and thinking, “Oh my freaking god, this backyard is an uninspiring DISGRACE.” Embarrassment and shame tend to get me moving on these things.
I’ve always had a hankering to hang shit off old wooden ladders. It must be something about the height of these things, or the fact I live in the inner-north and am thus predisposed to hipster wankery, I don’t know, but I’ve always wanted one so I went and bought one from an old lady. It’s sweet. I f*cking love it. And then I went all commando at Ceres. Oh wait, no, not that kind of commando, although it is an earthy kind of place so they probably wouldn’t have minded too much.
How good is Ceres Nursery, though (not sponsored, yo)? I can’t rate it highly enough. Granted, they have permacultured the hell out of the place (what is permaculture anyway, I just don’t understand it. It’s like physics for my brain (I don’t understand physics), only involving soil and “zones”) but I drained them dry. I went fully native.
Seriously, I bought all Australian natives. They’re low maintenance, right? And they’re beautiful. Stunning. Why I once bothered with ferns I don’t know. I was always going to kill those ferns. Ferns are impossible.
So I’m getting dirty. Not in an Eminem kind of way, although that would be acceptable, but dirty in a goddamn-how-good-is-this-black-rotting-food-coming-out-the-bottom-of-the-wormies-bin shit? Yeah, it’s good. I’m getting in touch with my inner Taurus, which doesn’t get much airing these days. I’ve even set up a garden HDU (High Dependency Unit) for plants I’ve already killed. Plants I’m convinced I can nurse back to health. What kind of person thinks that? What part of “this plant is dead, dude” am I not understanding?
So yeah, I don’t recognise myself. I’ve also started doing algebra problems for fun. I’ve never understood algebra so figured it was about time I learnt.
It’s never too late, right?
And I may not recognise myself, but this strange new person is pretty cool.
