Back in 2020 I created this account as a remplacement for my old one - so that I can easily use the same username everywhere.
But… I never came around to upload all the stuff here on FA.
Until… my lovely second brain cell kicked my butt and helped me managing my FA account.
Which ended up in bringing me close to 250 watchers by the time of this writing - aaaalmost time for another raffle!
Alongside, I started learn French. Having someone special in a different country where the spoken language is neither German (my native language) nor English, more…. Language skills are required. Even though it’s a chore sometimes (inconsistently and many, many WHYYYs), it’s actually kinda fun learning. But due to other circumstances I didn’t progress as fast as I wanted to.
I even got to visit him two times, and I enjoy the time around him - as limited as it is. Not quite easy if there is an oversized pond that calls itself the « Atlantic Ocean » in between us, but it’s manageable.
Billeur_entropy really lightened up this year for me and I’m eternally grateful for it!

But with the good things also comes a fair share of bad things - for me it was mainly work.
For those who don’t know, I work as a CNA in a nursing home in Germany. I also mostly did night shifts there with a few exceptions - but more on that later.
Ever since I started there, there was a lack of personnel - which back at that time wasn’t really a big deal. But over the time, it got worse and worse, and everything changed at the end of last year when our old head nurse resigned and someone who has no clue how to properly treat their employees got that position.
If we needed days off, it was a gamble if we got them or not, we got our schedules for the following months only a few days before the current month ended, so we could barely plan ahead.
With my shifts I got really lucky since I was one of the few who did nights, but every now and then our new head nurse tried to sneak in a morning shift (disclaimer: speak to me before I am awake and you will face your greatest enemy). Then in august we got a new head nurse, and things started to change for the better.
Until she also resigned for various reasons that are way too complicated to explain.
So the head nurse from before got the position back and…
Flipped everything on its head.
Schedules were written in a way that were just infuriating. People got shifts they didn’t like, had to work every weekend, got late shift to morning shift (effective break from work of 10 hours).

And Night Shift slowly got overloaded with work, while not providing more people.
We got a few leasing nurses for the night, who then only had one night of training (while everyone said, at least 4 are needed, since that RN is alone with at best 2 CNAs or at worst 1 nursing assistant).
It got dangerous and… the general mood wasn’t the best.
And then the cherry on top: no one is allowed to make nights only, and we also have to do morning and late shifts.
At this point, my contract was ending at the 30th of November and it set my decision to not renew it.
I was on the verge of having a burnout in the middle of the month and simply called in sick to get some rest before starting my new work. Even going so far delaying the start by 2 weeks to get a bit more rest before starting to work again.

I know for certain that things at the new place will be much, much better. One of my former colleagues also works there and he’s praising it for the most part.

In a nutshell, an eventful year!
Makes me wonder: what will 2023 bring? One big thing for sure!

And no matter how hard it will be, I know I have people I can rely on, that will help me to continue walking forward.
And that, I’m thankful for.