Nerves squared

Boy am I a spitfire, huh?  Can I get a round of applause for that?  Thanks.  Now onto new business and back to nerves.  I had a point that circles back to the heart of some discussions we've had in class, or at some point in our studious lives anyway. 

Nerves.  Effing nerves.  The way I see it, you have two choices when facing these necessary evils: you can either run from them, let your blood settle and wonder about the "what ifs", or you can plunge through a nerve-packed situation and come out on the other side a winner.  And by winner I mean, you have survived an experience and now you have greater knowledge about what lies on the other side of the fence.  Fences can either be jumped or you can be cattle, standing on the inside of them, passively wondering what the grass over there tastes like.  Is it sweeter?  Only one way to find out.  

So many times I have been told that I am brave, crazy, or ballsy even.  And I like it!  But that's just real life.  What about writing and sharing our experiences with the public?  It seems to me that the true bravery that I see when I look at classmates or patients in the ER happens when they decide to be crazy like me and jump the fence.  Now I'm not implying that it's correct in every situation: for instance, if you have the inclination to drive your car onto the interstate ramp and go straight when the road turns, don't do that.  The exhilaration of flying lasts a millisecond before these consecutive thoughts cross your mind: Oh shit and Splat!  

See what I mean?  Don't jump that particular fence, my friend.  Instead, try this.

Jump over or push through the fences in writing, and within communities.  Try not to just stick with your own community, either.  That was one of the hardest lessons I ever had to learn because my community is comfortable.  But it's also missing a lot of things that I need, and so I had to hold my breath and Red Rover into another community - and another, then another.  And I'm no worse for the wear.   Communities are interesting things.  They are fluid and free-moving, like gelatin, but they are also incredibly contained with a lot of finite boundaries.  With little or no warning, though, you can be standing inside a new one or outside an old one.  Or, if you're really open to what happens in different places at different times, you can be inside and outside many at the same time.  

I feel that duality in everyday life, and once I opened my eyes long enough to look at it, I really liked it.  We can be inside our daily lives (naturally in "our own" communities), jostling and elbowing mindlessly, but once we step into another one, it gives us perspective on the original one.  Like right now for instance, I am working on the Rehab unit at Parkview Hospital even though my "home" is the ER.  I work up here a couple evenings a week because it gives me distance and perspective, and keeps me from getting burnt out on the jostle and stress of ER.  This also helps me to appreciate and understand my job better when I am back at "home".  It's just like we talked about in class about introspective writing and writing with perspective, a removal of oneself from the middle of the chaos, taking apart and reshaping our experiences.  In a sense, we are pushing fences simply by being in another community, whether we actively participate or not.  Warning: participation is encouraged for utmost success in expanding one's horizons.