Ideal vs. Real

Sometimes during shifts I imagine what my ideal day involving work would be like. At this point I stare dreamily into space (or start doing the sleepy head bob) and start going through ideal scenarios. After many hours spent trying to avoid work, I’ve come up with the following as my ideal day.

Wake up thoroughly refreshed and run for 45 minutes. Take a shower, get dressed, have my hair arrange itself perfectly and merrily walk to the train station. When I get to work, I’d give the Starbucks guy a winning smile while ordering my latte and perhaps flirt a little (he’s cute!). When I get to the ER, I receive a perfect report that only includes what the patient came in with, the plan for the patient and what I have to do. I complete my assessments and interventions flawlessly while amiably chatting with fellow coworkers. I receive patients who are pleasant and don’t ask for narcs every 10 minutes. The docs write sane orders in legible handwriting and understand if there are delays from the lab. At the end of the day, I merrily go back to the train station after meeting up with friends for a treat before going home. When I get home, I’d shower, eat a delicious yet nutritious dinner and then crawl into bed and sleep a peaceful and restorative sleep.

Unfortunately my real day goes something like this:
I wake up 30 minutes late and first words out of my mouth are ‘OH CRAP I’M GONNA BE LATE AGAIN!’ I blindly find my way to the bathroom and stub my toe unleashing another deluge of profanities and then get dressed. I run like a madwoman to the train station and barely make it on only to face the glares of the commuters who made it on time. I catch a glimpse of myself and look something like this but am too drowsy to care. I glower at the coffee guy when he gives me a large instead of an x-large and wish a pox on his house. I stumble my way inside to be assaulted with a needlessly boring and drawn out report and then realize that there’s a boat-load of stuff that needs to be done. When the doc decides to be bitchy about a lab delay I utilize my proxy vernacular of passive aggression and steal his pens before passing out during my break. After wishing I chose chocolate-taster as a career I give a scathing smile to the narc addict while telling him/her that they can’t have another dose while the charge nurse brings me a patient with a chart that might as well say colostomy bag explosion. At the end of my shift I pass out on the train (probably drooling) and count-down to when my next set of days of begin. I get home, shower and furiously stuff my face before crashing and repeating the whole thing again the next day!

Clearly my ideal and real days are lacking some congruency but for the most part, my real days don’t have quite such an acerbic flavour as the one I’ve described above! What’s your version of an ideal day? What’s your real day like? Share please!