Day in the life of a Filipina Nurse Practitioner

A Simple Kitchen Experiment

Good afternoon, everyone. Today turned into a little kitchen experiment. I decided to try making dough from scratch for the first time, something I had never really done before. I started by looking up a simple recipe online for a French-style baguette dough, which surprisingly only required a few ingredients—flour, water, yeast, and salt. For some reason, I had always thought bread required eggs, so learning that it didn’t already felt like a small discovery. I measured out about two and a quarter cups of lukewarm water to activate the yeast, added one packet of yeast, and slowly started mixing in flour. The recipe called for six cups of all-purpose flour, and as I added each cup, the mixture slowly transformed from a watery mixture into something thick and dough-like. It was messy, experimental, and honestly a little chaotic, but also fun. I added a little salt later—probably not at the right time—and even thought about sprinkling in some herbs just to see what would happen. This whole process was less about perfection and more about curiosity. I kept laughing to myself, thinking that if this worked, maybe I could start a bread business.

Learning Through Mistakes

As the dough started coming together, it actually looked and felt like real dough. I realized I probably should have mixed the yeast, salt, and warm water together first before adding the flour, but that’s part of the learning process. Cooking experiments always teach you something. In the end, I decided to let the dough rest and rise overnight in the fridge. The plan was to see what it would become the next day—maybe bread, maybe pizza dough. Either way, it felt satisfying to try something new with my hands, even if I was making mistakes along the way.

Processing Anxiety and Uncertainty

At the same time, I’ve been wanting to share honestly about how I’ve been feeling lately. To be transparent, I’ve been feeling quite anxious. My mind has been filled with questions that I don’t have answers to, and that uncertainty can feel really overwhelming. I keep thinking about the future and what direction my life is going. Part of me imagines a quieter life, maybe even living in the Philippines someday, somewhere peaceful and slower. But at the same time, I don’t fully know if that’s truly the life I want. It’s confusing, and I find myself overthinking a lot of things.

Looking back, I realize that much of my anxiety and depression started after losing a partner in 2019. That experience made me question my worth in ways I never had before. I thought I had shown someone my true self and believed that would be enough. When things ended, it left me with this lingering question of whether I was somehow difficult to love. Over time, friendships also changed. Some people drifted away, and while I try to tell myself that life simply moves people in different directions, part of me still wonders if I did something wrong. Those thoughts can spiral easily when you’re already feeling vulnerable.

The Difficulty of Being Seen

Recently, a friend asked me an interesting question. He said that out of all the versions of me he has seen, he feels that I only truly show my authentic self to a small number of people. That question stayed with me longer than I expected. It made me realize how much I protect parts of myself, especially at work. Sometimes I feel anxious because I don’t think I can fully be who I am in those spaces. And of course, after hearing that question, I did what I usually do—I started overthinking it.

The truth is that when my anxiety gets intense, I tend to isolate myself. I was supposed to meet up with a friend who is visiting San Francisco for a conference, someone I haven’t seen in years, but I ended up canceling because I didn’t have the emotional energy to show up. It’s ironic because I often tell my own patients that when they feel overwhelmed, they should surround themselves with people who care about them. Yet when I’m the one struggling, I find it difficult to follow that same advice. I worry about being a burden, about disappointing people, or about them seeing me when I’m not at my best.

Choosing Myself and Seeking Help

Despite all of this, I know I’m trying. I’ve scheduled therapy again this Friday because I want to work through these thoughts instead of letting them control me. This journey of choosing myself has been complicated. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m making decisions based on my own values and my own voice rather than other people’s expectations. But that process can feel lonely too, especially when it seems like some relationships change along the way.

The Dough the Next Morning

The next morning, I checked on the dough after more than twenty hours in the fridge. Surprisingly, it looked great. I kneaded it again and divided it into smaller portions. Since I didn’t have a rolling pin, I improvised with whatever I had in the kitchen. The dough was meant for baguettes, but I decided it would work just fine for pizza. After shaping it as best as I could—somewhere between a circle and a square—I added marinara sauce, mushrooms, cheese, artichokes, and slices of salami. It wasn’t perfect, but it was homemade, and that made it special.

The Gift Inside Every Mistake

When the pizza came out of the oven, I realized something simple but meaningful: there really is a gift in every mistake. Even when the process isn’t perfect, you still end up creating something. Whether it’s bread, pizza, or just a lesson learned along the way, the act of trying is what matters. And maybe life works the same way—we experiment, we make mistakes, we learn, and somehow, something good still comes out of it.