New age, new experiences

You are looking at a soon-to-be hospital volunteer.

For the past many years, I've been asked what I would do if the newspaper industry came crashing down. I think people expect me to say something like write a book or become a publicist, but that's not what I say.

I say I want to be a nurse.
Some people, the ones who know me pretty well, think I'm joking. And maybe the answer does have to do a bit with the glamour of ER, my once-favorite TV show, combined with a postcard I once got when I was five-years-old.

See, before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a nurse, but the most I ever "pursued" it was by having a pretty sweet doctor's kit. Around this time, my grandmother went on a trip and sent me a postcard of a girl wearing a nurse's uniform. I loved it so much and it clearly it set off something that I still remember it so clearly.

But am I really going to invest time and money into something that I liked when I was five? Or because I thought Nurse Abby on ER was pretty great? I mean, maybe?

What if I hate blood, though? Or if I get grossed out? Or just realize I do not like people?
That's why I enrolled in a volunteer program at a local hospital. If I like it, I can be around that atmosphere and fill that professional void I think is missing. If I hate it, well, that was that, I guess.

But if I love it, and I kind of hope I don't love it, because then I'll be in trouble. And in a lot of debt.