I have had a life changing year. I stepped out on faith and made bad decisions when I could not keep sight of the end goal. In other words my faith waned. As the new year approaches I am still a little ashamed to declare a fabulous new year after the burning dumpster fire that was 2018.

I spent all of November posting to social media reasons to be grateful though and I’m feeling more forgiving at the moment.

I decided to start my own home based travel business in July 2017 and genuinely became discouraged from lack of initial support from friends and family. A trip to Cuba to visit my absentee husband renewed my quest and reminded me why I was doing it all. I created a vision board and began signing up new travel agents that I’ve trained and nurtured. I claimed a trip to Dubai and stepped down from my full time Charge Nurse position leaving myself without health benefits to dedicate myself more to my business and establishing a freight brokerage.

But about two months in my townhome was flooded, the whole place gutted and my car was hit by a bus. Within one week of one another. I can’t lie. It shook my courage. The clinic I had put in for on a whim called me back for a second interview and annihilated me after having clearly being warned that I was a lazy nurse. The theme of the interview was discussing how a Charge Nurse, not the Clinic Manager position I was interviewing for, should always be on the floor of a clinic. No matter the list of tasks I flaunted juggling, which were many, I was wrong to not be on the floor more. This is where the start of my year going down the rabbit hole began.

Because in my 10 years of nursing, while nearly 400 pounds, while critically sick, while my mother was gravely ill and dying, while pregnant and alone, while leaving my daughter first with her inept father and then with various low lifes can anyone twist their crusty mouth to call me lazy. I’m not the fastest nurse because I easily become obsessed with details. I never changed this bad habit because it’s saved too many lives along the way. I am a teacher by nature and anyone that expresses a desire to learn I will teach. This has bitten me because I often refuse to give up on some “students” and often overwhelm myself.

My pride allowed me to back off of my business, stop enrollment in freight brokering classes, and aggressively pursue a clinic management position. Twice more. And twice more I allowed this company to assault and insult my work ethic then pass on me. All the while aggravating back injuries sustained during my auto accident and using me for horrible hours and conditions. At one point my then two year old sat in the clinic for an 8 hour shift.

But, as my other two posts proclaimed, when I finally read the writing on the wall, I read it aloud. I let pride take me down a path I didn’t want to walk down and derailed my dream train.

So I have a new job, new plans for my business. I just had my first lumbar epidural on my back today and feel like a million bucks. So what 2018 was more lessons than blessings? My blessings still abound. I’m also mapping out my 2019 vision board and planning trips abroad to new countries for 2019.

So let’s all drag ourselves to the finish, remember why we entered the race, and do it all over again bigger, better, and wiser. Definitely wiser.

~LaTisha Carbonell