Category: blogging

Bloganuary Day 14

This one is easy for me. My biggest challenge to date is gaining the skills to be able to move to Australia. I have travelled here many years ago on a working holiday visa and always wanted to come back and live as a resident. This is no easy thing to do. Australia has very strict immigration rules. If you want to live here in Australia, you have to be of value to them, which is fair enough really.

You can live here if you have a skill that is in demand. I had a good look at their skilled visa occupation list and picked something that I thought I could maybe learn to do and enjoy as a new career path.

Some of you will know the career path that I chose was a nursing one. Everywhere in the world is in need of nurses so I thought this would be a great career move and I had always thought of nursing in the back of my mind as I really enjoy working with people and feel like I have a caring and patient nature. Also my mum was a nurse too so I think that definitely helped with making the decision to study nursing.

Before I could study nursing I had to gain some experience in the caring profession in order to discover these two crucial points:

1 – Would I enjoy nursing?

2 – Would I be capable?

Fortunately, I applied and received my first caring role in a residential home looking after older people. To my delight, I thoroughly enjoyed the work. It was something completely different from what I had ever done before and even though it was really hard work, both physically and mentally, I found that loved it. I loved making people smile, brightening their day and I had the opportunity to work with some amazing other care workers. The experience I gained here was immeasurable.

The next question I would have to ask is, would I be eligible to apply for the course? Although nurses are highly sought after, many people also want to be nurses, making it very competitive to enrol in a nursing degree. I was gaining experience as a care assistant but I also needed the relevant qualifications. Thankfully, I had already carried out a degree beforehand and had the adequate A level results so I was able to meet the eligibility criteria.

I applied to university whilst working as a care assistant and to my horror I didn’t receive an offer of acceptance first time round. I was saddened but I had initially applied for mental health nursing and I knew already that it was highly competitive. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise.

I spent another year in the residential home and reapplied to university a year later, this time for general nursing. I became a supervisor in the residential home and continued to really enjoy the work. This gave me the confidence to apply for a nursing assistant job in a hospital, as part of the NHS. Two years after having joined the residential home, I was now working as a nursing assistant in theatres. This was an amazing job opportunity and extremely different from working in a care home.

A few months later, I received a letter to say I had been successful to study general nursing!!! This was SUCH an amazing feeling to finally be another step closer to my Australian dream.

I enrolled in university the following year and continued to work both as a care assistant in the home and as a nursing assistant in the hospital. I was able to work across four different hospitals in numerous wards throughout my journey as a nursing assistant. I will never forget the things I learned here and the amount of amazing nursing assistants and nurses that I met along the way. It showed me the many different varieties of nursing and also allowed me to discover where I enjoyed working and where I maybe wanted to avoid in the future. I would say all nurses have certain tasks that they love performing and others not so much. The joy of nursing is that there is so much choice with regards to different nursing fields. If you don’t like one aspect of nursing, you can choose another that is more suited to you and you can also work in different settings, for example, hospital, community, GP surgery, telehealth etc.

So I studied nursing for three years. A full time degree whilst working part time. Hard, hard work, long hours and very little money but I loved it again. I had the best experiences, both in placements and in the classroom. Every six weeks we would change from being on placement to being back at uni and so on, whilst every placement you were on was in a different setting.

After completing my nursing degree, I became a registered nurse and luckily was able to obtain my first job pretty quickly. There was a huge demand for nurses then in Northern Ireland so all students were able to obtain their first choice of nursing profession. I worked in my first post for two years whist trying to plan my move to Australia. It all paid off in the end. I completed all my paper work and became an Australian resident before emigrating. This was another whole process and that is for another blog down the line. I do have a previous blog post on the nursing application to be a nurse in Australia here but be aware this may have changed since then.

There you have it. My journey to become a nurse and make the move to becoming an Australia resident. The whole process took about seven years. This was my biggest challenge to date and it was a lengthy process to say the least. I am glad I faced it and overcame the process. I could have let my dream pass and stayed living at home. However, I felt that I owed myself to take on the challenge and see what living on the other side of the world would be like for a lengthy period.

Thanks for reading guys. It’s slightly longer than my previous Bloganuary posts.

Wayne ✌🏽

11

Bloganuary Day 13

I feel very lucky that I have the opportunity to live my ideal day many times a week or month living here in Australia, mainly due to the weather and lifestyle. Even if I am working, I will take the opportunity to carry out activities that I enjoy before or after work.

I will break down an ideal day for me if I am on my day off, that is, not working.

• Wake up after a good sleep about 6am. Make myself a coffee and walk/run to the gym for a strength workout at 7am. An hour later I will come home to shower.

• I then love to have a good breakfast. Sometimes I will head out with my partner or I will meet friends for a catch-up over breakfast.

• After this, I love to go for a walk. Either along the coast, taking in the beaches of the eastern suburbs or around Centennial Park or even more so, a new place to walk. I love finding new spots to explore and taking many, many photographs. Maybe even go for a swim.

• Try to stop for lunch somewhere quaint or perhaps take a packed lunch. I am happy with either ☺️.

• Come home for a lovely home cooked meal and have a couple of glasses of wine or if I’m free in the evening, head out to meet friends for a few sociable drinks after having eaten.

• Finally, I would round the night off with a big cup of tea at home and have a reasonably early night, say 10 or 11pm. I am all about a good nights sleep.

This is my ideal day. Plain and simple.

Wayne ✌🏽

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Bloganuary Day 12

This is an interesting post as I have recently been questioning whether emojis are accepted in the blogging world.

I love to use emojis. I feel like one little image can convey a word or feeling so well. I use these a lot in my daily life, in text messages, social media and now blogging. I think because they’re everywhere now, they have almost become integrated into our written language.

They’re useful, especially when you don’t speak or write the same language as others. They are universal and break down language barriers.

I don’t even realise I’m using emojis half of the time. Maybe it’s a bad habit to use emojis in blogging. I feel like they are looked down and frowned on in the blogging world. I did have another blogger once comment on one of my posts about my use of emojis and to be honest, I felt silly for using them and slightly belittled.

I think emojis are here to stay and are a sign of moving with the times. I personally like them and I will continue to use them. I will try to refrain from using too many in my blog posts as perhaps it does take away from the art of writing. However, I do believe in the saying “you do you and I will do me”, so if you want to use emojis, go for it, it is your blog after all.

These are my most used emojis at the moment. They do change frequently, however, there are a few that always stay at the top. I think you can tell a lot from someone’s most used emojis 😊

I love the hug 🤗 emoji. It’s very positive and shows that you care about someone, especially as we cannot really hug people at the moment due to covid. I also love the face palm 🤦🏼‍♂️ emoji and the shrug 🤷🏼‍♂️ one, which I obviously haven’t used for a while 😉. The grapes, leaves and sunflower are there simply there because I have just been to a few vineyards recently.

What are your thoughts on emojis? I am generally very interested to hear your opinions, especially when blogging.

Thanks for reading and take care,

Wayne ✌🏽

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Bloganuary Day 11

For me, this means grabbing life by the horns and living it to the fullest. It means taking chances, leaving your comfort zone and not being afraid to try new things.

I try to do this as much as I can with travelling, meeting new people, sampling different cuisines and changing my roles of employment. I think these things are so important for character building and broadening our horizons.

I think I still can do more for living boldly and it remains a work in progress, for example, trying not to let other people’s opinions bother me and coming to grips that not everyone thinks the same. I am a person that generally follows rules and try my best to do the right thing. So in this regard I don’t live too boldly but I’m ok with that. I’m not a massive risk taker, I like to play it safe in life. That being said, I do love to be spontaneous at times with a last minute trip away or conversing with random strangers.

So I would probably say that I live life semi – boldly if that makes sense. Every now and again it’s good to live boldly but I still have my limitations. I’m a middle of the road kind of guy ☺️

What about everyone else?

Wayne ✌🏽

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Bloganuary Day 10

I love today’s topic. It’s good to reflect and remember to be grateful for things happening in our lives. Too often we become caught up in our busy daily lives and forget to be thankful for the positive things around us that we often take for granted.

1 – As corny as it sounds, I am firstly grateful to waken up, alive and healthy. Not everyone has this luxury.

2 – Being away this weekend in Mudgee with my amazing partner as we celebrate 15 years together.

3 – I’m grateful that I had a great sleep last night, 8.5 hours to be exact. If I have 7 hours sleep at night, I am doing really well. So to wake up and check my Fitbit that read 8.5 hours sleep, I was delighted.

4 – Grateful to have no rain this morning. It is supposed to be stormy all week, so to waken with no rain and blue skies on the horizon, that makes me really happy.

5 – Thankful for a lovely breakfast this morning and having a walk around Mudgee. It’s a really quaint little town with lots of character. I will be creating a blog of this town very soon.

Mudgee, NSW

I cannot wait to hear what everyone else is grateful for today 🙏🏼.

Take care and stay safe,

Wayne ☺️

13

Bloganuary Day 9

Working hard or hardly working?? 🤔

Many of my friends and followers on social media think that I don’t work 😆. I guess this could be for two reasons.

1 – I post frequently on social media, especially Instagram and I do go out a lot. I love walking and try to do this every day, so even if I’m posting pictures of my walk or by the beaches, it’s normally as I’m out and about before or after work. We work 8 hour shifts here as nurses in Australia. Therefore, we can actually do things before or after work. Unlike back home in Northern Ireland where I would have worked 11 or 12 hour shifts. On my days off, I love to go out and see places. I enjoy eating out, be it breakfast, lunch or dinner (never all three in one day 😉). So I think this could give a false impression that I don’t work when I actually do work full time.

2 – I don’t have children. This absolutely gives me freedom to do my own thing, go out when and where I please and I have no ties to be home at a certain time. Also I have no pets as yet. This is something I am really interested in, maybe a couple of dogs in the near future. So having no commitments enables me to carry out my life how I please ☺️. If people on social media compare my social life to theirs, they really shouldn’t. If they have decided to have a family of their own. That’s amazing and it’s their prerogative. They will have many amazing things in their life through experiences with their children (something I do not).

I do work hard in my career but I have a good work/life balance. It may simply appear that I do not work as I often post about the fun things I’m doing. I wouldn’t necessarily be posing about my times in work. To be honest I am more than happy if people assume I don’t work much or work at all. It’s rather amusing. When people say, “Do you ever eat at home?”, it makes me chuckle. I eat at home 5 or 6 days a week. There are worse things to complain about in life than people thinking I don’t work.

Cheers for reading,

Wayne ✌🏽

16

Bloganuary Day 8

To be honest I have never really thought about my writing or style of writing. I don’t write fiction. I simply write about my experiences, more so, my travel experiences. If I was to think about my writing and what I like about it, it would maybe be the following two points:

• I don’t take my writing too seriously, it’s not a chore for me and I like it that way. That’s not to say that blogging can’t be serious. I write how I speak generally. Therefore, I feel I have a light hearted style of writing. Hopefully people can relate to my writing and see that it comes from a good place.

• I find writing in my blog to be very personal and a good tool for self expression. There’s just something about writing that allows you to put all your thoughts on paper (so to speak) and you instantly feel good about it. Maybe it’s also the fact that I don’t have a huge following and I don’t know many bloggers in person here so it makes it easier to be open and frank. To be honest, this challenge is really the first time I have had the courage or motivation to be more open on my blog. My previous posts have been about travel and so I have not needed to show my more vulnerable side.

There you have it. Short and sweet. I like my writing as it’s light hearted, personal and a great way to express myself.

Any one else have the same thoughts? Please let me know.

Many thanks guys,

Wayne ✍🏼

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Bloganuary Day 7 – 1 week ✔️

First of all, can I just say, congratulations to everyone who has it made it through the first week of the blogging daily challenge 🙌🏼. Is anyone else really enjoying it? This blogging daily thing is really good actually. Luckily I have some distance to travel to and from work and fortunately I travel by train. This gives me plenty of time to get my thinking cap on, switch off from the world and write a simple blog.

What makes me laugh? Anything really. I laugh a lot. I love when you laugh for no reason. It could be something silly someone said or you said, or an action or a memory. When you laugh so hard that you cannot stop. Even if you want to stop. For me it often happens at the most inappropriate times. When I really shouldn’t be laughing. It’s never ending, tears are tripping me and my stomach hurts, sides splitting 😆. Even then I cannot stop.

My friends normally end up joining in, even if they don’t necessarily want to. Laughter is so infectious. I used to get into trouble at school for laughing so much, especially in the library when we were supposed to be super silent. I can’t count the amount of times that I was told to leave the library or class room for laughing so much and distracting others. Even through my university days and studying nursing, I would have many outbursts of laughter. I have one friend that just makes me laugh so much and vice versa. When we are together, it’s just a laugh fest. Not very good when you’re trying to learn or be productive.

I also think I laugh when I’m nervous or stressed about something. It’s almost like a coping mechanism. Have you ever heard the saying, “if you didn’t laugh, you would cry”.

However, I believe laughter is good for you. Good for your health, good for the soul. We need laughter. Especially when times are tough. Laughter is a good outlet to let negative things go and enables you to reset. It’s the best medicine. Unless of course you have just had abdominal surgery. Then I would suggest not to laugh too hard 🙈🤣.

What about you? What makes you laugh?

Wayne 😁

4

Bloganuary Day 6

Good morning folks. This one was tricky. I’m thinking who inspires me? I couldn’t think straight away. The more I thought about being inspired, the more I was confusing myself with what it meant.

So I did the old fashioned thing and looked up the word in the dictionary. According to Cambridge University Press (2022) to inspire someone is “to fill someone with confidence and desire to do something”.

I would say my family, especially my Dad would definitely fill this criteria. He is always filling me with confidence and telling me to do whatever makes me happy in life. I am really grateful for this mentality. Not to take life so seriously. Life is short and we need to make the most of it. I have always been instilled with the importance of having a good work/life balance. My Dad inspires me to be a good person, have morals, work hard but to enjoy life at the same time. Making my Dad proud is definitely something that inspires me through life and he is always letting me know that he is proud ☺️, that’s a great feeling. I’m lucky to have such an open minded, generous and caring Dad 🙏🏼.

Thanks for reading,

Wayne ✌🏽

15

My very 1st blog!

Hello there. What’s the craic? I have been debating for a long time whether to start blogging or not, mainly down to the time that may be required. However, I feel it is something that could be fun, therapeautic and provide a platform to interact with others from all walks of life. I’m very new to this so please bare with me.

So a little about me. I’m a man in my near mid thirties and I come from Northern Ireland. I had been living in Belfast for the last decade but my ambition was to 1 day return to the land down under. Having already spent a year in Australia on a working holiday visa, I soon acquired the desire to return in the future. 7 years later a lot has changed in my life and I have reached my goal of becoming a permanent resident. It has been a lengthy process with many highs and lows, however, it has been an incredible journey that is still continuing to this day.

Please follow me on my Australian adventure and I will aim to keep you updated and entertained.

Thanks a lot,

Wayne ✌🏽

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