Things are constantly changing

As we come to the end of another year, I felt it was time to write a blog, at first, I thought I haven’t even done anything, nothing has changed. Then I looked back since the last blog and thought quite a few things have changed! Where do I even start? Well our business is slowly but surely growing Sarah has been amazing! Stepping into the business role she has secured us another grant to grow our business, so we now have our first new employees. We have employed an administrator and we have recently took on a nurse who will work on a research program in Hull for us. We also have our own little office in an office block! We have helped a few more areas around the country set up respiratory networks, with our support it makes it easier for them and we also invest in developing the nurses too. In March someone kindly nominated us for the general practice nurse awards and we were humbled to have been finalists!

My contract has been extended until next June, but my remit has grown to 12 practices. As the NHS is changing with the development of the new local care partnerships in Leeds, I have also found myself in the position of the locality lead nurse for Leeds 8&9. This was not in the plan, but at the moment there is no one else to do it so I agreed to do it. Sarah is also one of the locality lead nurses in her locality too. I think it is quite an exciting opportunity, that we have a blank canvass to try and make some changes. I have enjoyed getting out more into the community and working with the different organisations. Although it has been a bit a of a balancing act as I only work four days a week and could be at meetings all day every day!

I don’t feel like I have had many challenges or stress thrown my way this year except for when I’m travelling. I have had some wonderful karma ripening that has enabled me to travel a lot this year and I feel very thankful for the experiences. However, things have always been made difficult, planes have been cancelled, then I nearly missed a plane, trains have been cancelled, I’ve had flat tyres and taxis haven’t turned up! I managed to get myself to the monastery last month for a needed retreat to recharge ready for the year ahead but not without problems! I arrived at the airport and they wouldn’t let me fly because I had four months on my passport instead of six! I had to pay a lot of money to change it to the Sunday and hope that I could get a new passport. After another adventure straight to Liverpool they kindly made me one in two hours for a nice little charge. The only adventure that went smooth this year was when I took the children to Thailand and I was so thankful nothing went wrong while I had them with me. I don’t think Id have handled it quite the same and may have got a little stressed to say the least! But I used the other experiences to put my teachings into practice by practicing patience and not getting angry or upset etc like I would have done in the past.

I said this year I was focusing on my spiritual development and I think I’m just getting weirder and weirder as time goes by! I completed the first level reiki course and booked on to do the second level in the new year. I’ve been doing the Buddhist course and I also signed myself up for an eight-week spiritual development course. I’ve been working on becoming a Buddhist chaplain in the prisons but hasn’t been too easy so in the new year I will be starting in the hospitals. Hopefully the prison work should follow. As if I didn’t already have enough on, I have managed to get myself involved with a group of people and we are trying to organise a compassion festival in Leeds for 2020.  I think this is quite exciting as we have been organising events to get people to come on board with us.  We are thinking of setting up a social enterprise to do this work, so we shall see how that turns out next year. I told myself I wasn’t going to do any more work-related courses for a while but of course I signed myself up for one, so I also completed the talent management course from the NHS leadership academy this year too.

So when I look back we’ve done quite a bit in a short space of time but it has gone so fast! On Friday this week we will be in London as we have been shortlisted for the general practice awards! We are delighted to have been shortlisted and looking forward to having a night to celebrate our hard work. I have no plans for the new year I’m just going to see how it turns out. The last few years have taught us a lot. We have grown and I think I have almost grown out of imposter syndrome! I said to Sarah that I feel like we’ve gone through a transition period and this is the start of a new life for us! I’m under no illusion and know that we have difficult times ahead with more and more nurses leaving our localities and all the other challenge, but I am really looking forward to 2019!