I’ve just realised the answer to my current state at the end of a fourth triple Jack Daniels. Or maybe more? Pasrpt (Ha, Ha…) caring. Passed caring. Whoah! Passed? Past caring. I can type. Yippee! The fifth will render me past focussing. The sixth and I’ll be snoring. So get on with it. But why JD? It just feels nice. Right! My Blog…..focus!

My VW bus is, like JD, my perfect lifestyle. It really, really matters. I seem to have forgotten how much I loved the bus. But, I’ve put it on a back burner. Pushed to the back of my mind due to the fact that if I thought more about it….I’d go nuts. I’ve been without it now for four years. Now? I’m on yet another holiday. Yet again, from Friday I’m making stuff up as I go along. No holiday purpose. Just what I’ll do I’ll just do.

My brother and one of my best mates are arriving with their wives on said Friday. When I knew they were arriving about a month ago, I had visions of all 6 of us popping to a local or near/far off destination to have an experience of the VeeDub chill factor. This chill factor was a vision of bus with inherents. The comfort of Billie Budd and all she provides in psychological comfort. Basically, my bus, a stash of needful stuff and the kettle on. Still not a realisation. But hey! That’s life.

Then I thought of stress. My workload is dynamic. Being a nurse I have a shed load of emotional turmoil in my day. Every day is linked in some respect to other’s worriesome thoughts. Also, medically and clinically I have to keep people safe. In keeping them safe, they keep me safe. The pressures are relentless. In the past I have never felt so pressured as I do so now.

Then? I suddenly realised. Why did I cope then? When I drove into work every day in a ‘put-put VeeDub engine sound’ of lovely bus and not like now of ‘listening to car revs engine sound’. Now, just jumping in, starting the engine and simply driving to work. John Muir wrote about philosophy of driving a Dub. The thought processes required in ‘Keeping it Alive’. And Robert Pirsig wrote about Motorcycle Maintenance and it’s affinity with eventual answers to ultimate calm. Their vision, both of them in different approach, was Zen like and enlightening in the qualities they proffered and discussed. They are not book/author/philosopher best sellers without reason. They have also changed people’s lives completely. Mine included.

For a lot of people work is work. For them preparation in going to work is vital. A cigarette on the way. A bus or train journey of visual escape in the surrounding views. A time of reading a favourite novel or listening to a catalogue of music on the MP3. Or the knowledge that in 5 days you’re on holiday.

But actually thinking now…..when did I actually have holidays I enjoyed. My holidays have been a conundrum of planned visits to seek catch ups and resulting chaos involved. Not a number of days of relaxation selfishness. They have been a rush of inclusions.

In other words. Feeling guilty you need to sort out the “Haven’t seen you for ages and must rectify this” situations. I don’t do selfish seeking. I try to seek calm in what ever presents itself. But I realise after years of not having a proper full break, my health may well be at risk. Maybe psychologically or biologically. A week in Tenerife and a 10 day holiday in Palma over the last 10 years is my only time of actual total relax.

But. Back to the subject of the VeeDub.  The bus helped me to survive. And in an everyday sense. Luckily I live near the coast. Billie Budd gave me the chance, on days off, to just pop down to the sea edge and truly seek life’s needed switch off ability. You’ll argue, ‘Get a life and just go for a walk. You’re lucky to live where you do!’ OK. I bow to your reality check. But, the bus gave and will give purpose to me. Others? A different focus.

Many of us can’t see the woods from the trees. Focus is a needful and blessed thing. Sameness, tradition and the uniform approach matter. How many of us sit and watch the ‘soaps’ to escape? Or do other distractions in watching a documentary, football, Netflix or seek a chat on the phone. A phonecall full of nonsense chat that just blows away the tangled angst. My answer? It was the bus. Before I owned it? Music. A guitar and the ability to write my own or sing others’ songs. But now I’m all sung out.

So. The VeeDub. When I drove it to both work and for pleasure it was the same. Trundle to work for long day shifts and trundle home. Hectic at work so needed the bus to provide the thoughtful approach, chill factor driving to the hospital. It was calm preparation there. And separation back. Wind down and drive along in procrastination involving leisurely and the ponderous thought, with an eventual wind up to relaxation over the 10 mile journey after the day’s chaos.

I’m in a car at the moment. No comparison. Maybe it was the VW engine singing to me. Like one of those new age cd’s that provide brainwave patterns. It’s like I’m on holiday in the VeeDub and I’m one of those tourists that point at everything in front of me. Wonder and delight. So slow is whoa and stay in status quo. Miss the bus. It’ll be nice to see her back. And 50 to 55 mph is perfick. Now is different though.

What is happening now is that I feel fraught in going to sleep, usually at midnight or later, knowing I’m in work next day, waking  up at 05.45 (or, in reality. often at 04.00) realising with a gulp and a downward spiral gut wise that today, yes…..I am actually on shift……fought with a ‘please NO!’ and a ‘maybe not’ with a vocal outburst of ‘shit….yeh…..I am in work today’ realised with my memory through the sleepy fog.

The way the heart leaps when you realise that you have a day off is actually fairly worrying. No gentle knowing of life’s calendar. It’s chaos of shift work and hoped fors. Forever getting into a pattern of work that is the same old, same old, but with the gut wrenching adrenaline driven ‘Hope I make it through the day without making a mistake’. I love being a nurse. The NHS, as everyone can see, has Doctors and Nurses and other essential professional NHS inherent roles, living a life of challenges. Is it pathetic to seek answers in yearned for lifestyle to balance the difficult tasks? Not really. Life is very hard sometimes. And you need those times of escape.

Maybe the musician that performs a night of singing to others on an open microphone event. The swimmer that visits the sport center and receives water’s regeneration properties with swimming a number of lengths. The pub up the road, a pint and the opportunity to talk to locals full of chitter chatter. The bath tub filled with bubbles and surrounded by candlelight. Me? A bus. Simply….a bus. And a fifth Jack Daniels.