I have no idea why I am writing this post. I had no plan to write it. But I figure that because I’ve started writing, there has to be a reason.

In truth I would like to say the past week I had been consumed about applying for some more jobs, writing the monthly poetry and photo Patreon posts and a blog post about some rule changes for the NBA, as well as workshopping my short story for the month. Instead, I was just waiting for information on a job at Intel, going full nocturnal and playing nothing but Hogwarts Legacy.

My routine became awake at 10 in the evening, breakfast at 11, writing from midnight to two in the morning and then nine hours of nothing but Hogwarts Legacy until I passed out somewhere between midday to two in the afternoon.

And as much I like that game, it cursed me to run circles in a vicious cycle of dopamine production. It was just so easy to be charmed by the ambiance of running, flying and hexing my way through a Victorian-era Wizarding World. Luckily, I took lots of photos (*wink wink*), but I just couldn’t break that spell. And I figured that there had to be a reason why.

Only a contest between Portland Trail Blazers and Miami Heat broke the enchantment. And despite only sleeping for three hours, I managed to shake myself awake, jump in the car and watch the Blazers struggle against the well-coached Heat. When I came back home, I immediately went to bed and was suddenly back in a normal routine; awake by seven, a vet appoint for the cat by eight, breakfast by nine, weekly flow arts practice from 10-1 in the afternoon, and return to the vet by two.

Actually, calling this a routine feels premature—I could just fuck it up again this week. Moreover, weekends are supposed to be a more liberating period of time. A plan seems more pertinent to what happened on Sunday. More succinctly: the ideal. I did everything I wanted to do, more or less, and yet it still wasn’t all to plan.

On my way to pick up Charlie from his teeth cleaning, I passed by the striking nurses outside of Providence St. Vincent. I’m not one to honk for any reason—I can’t stand the anxiety inducing sound of a car horn—but I put my fist up in solidarity as I passed by the first set of protesters.

In the second group, however, I saw a friend from college, Dende, standing in solidarity. This confused the hell out of me, as I didn’t think he worked for Providence. And for a half-second I didn’t stop. For better or worse, the routine—the plan—had me in its grip. Charlie was probably all out of sorts, waking up from the anesthesia and wondering why the hell I had ruined his Sunday.

But I figured there had to be a reason why I saw Dende.

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So I pulled over at the nearest lot and parked and walked to the picket line. I’m not going to intimate that I joined the picket line; but I was there and I loved every minute of it. Catching up with Dende and his partner—let’s call her Abigail—I was correct; Dende worked for a different hospital system and was supporting his partner. Talking to both, I learned about what nurses call acuity, or nurse-to-patient ratio.

The ratio can range anywhere from one-to-three to one-to-six, with the expectation that a nurse attend to their patients at least once per hour. But it’s pretty clear that the act of care requires being present that even a one-to-three workload cannot allow. Logically speaking, each patient deserves ten minutes per hour minimum. But each hour is unique, both Dende and Abigail told me; patients need to be settled in and out of procedures, charts need to be updated, questions and requests have to be answered.

And try as Providence, or any other corporation, might to paint workers as not caring about the work, it’s abundantly clear that most wouldn’t choose the nursing profession unless they cared somewhat. They certainly wouldn’t go on strike. They would just leave. But these striking nurses haven’t, and there has to be a reason for that.

When I returned to car, the clock read that I spent about forty-five minutes in conversation with Dende and Abigail. I started it up and pulled up to the road as Dende and Abigail walked by. The inspiration just came to me.

I rolled down the windows, folded my arms, placed an okay hand-sign upside down over both eyes in the form of goggles and called out “Hey, Dende!”

All he could do was smirk and placed his elbow on the ground. The years may pass, the routine may change, but the goggles game was still on.

When I came home, I let Charlie out of his kennel and placed some food in his bowl before making food for myself. Before long, I was laying in the papasan, drifting off in a twilight between dreams and waking memory. Writing blog posts and short stories could wait for the moment.

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