You may recall that I set some pretty ambitious (for me) goals at the beginning of the year. So how is it going one month in?
The Good:
"meditating every day" I have done this! I was pretty well established with my weekday morning practice, so my main challenge here was finding a way to meditate on the weekends. Initially, I thought that I would meditate first thing in the morning like I do on weekdays, but this literally never happened. Turns out, I really enjoy sleeping in and getting a lazy slow start to weekend days, and there is no part of me that wants to start the day on a meditation cushion. So I have been doing it before I go to bed on weekends, and it has gone perfectly so far.
"I mostly just want to keep working and
hoarding money for the future" I had nine days of very busy call this month, so I have done a lot of hoarding of money. It's lovely for the net worth, but I would honestly like to do a little less earning and a little more resting.
"I want to keep building on
the friendships I have." I've also been doing this! Even though it's been a busy month, I've made time to go with friends to see our local queer choir, to visit my godson and his family, to go for dinner with my brother, and to go out for dinner and a play with my mom and her partner. (I think there has been more? It's a bit of a blur.) For an introvert who has been busy with work, it has been about the maximum amount I can expect of myself.
The Not As Good:
"I would like to work on keeping up with everything." This has been very mixed. One of my proposed ways of achieving this was "just doing the shit now", and I have definitely incorporated this approach into my life, to good effect. I am constantly trying to spend a few extra minutes to do all the nagging little tasks as they come up, and as a result I'm getting a lot more done without it feeling overwhelming or like a giant burden. And I'm worrying less about missing things. Perfect example - I got an application for reimbursement of a work expense, which isn't due until April. My initial instinct was to put it in my to do pile (I had three months to do it, after all), but instead I took the five minutes required to fill it out, put it in the return envelope, and put it in the mailbox. And now it's done, and I don't have to worry about missing the deadline for getting money back.
The biggest challenge has simply been that work has been really busy. In addition to nine busy (and really emotionally exhausting) days of call, I had a week of teaching, and I've taken on a new volunteer position with a national organization (You know. Because that helps with burnout.) I've worked at least part of one weekend day every week since the beginning of the year, and still things are slowly starting to build up. It's frustrating.
And as for my "go to work earlier and stay later" approach?
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
When I was writing my original post, I had the (utterly ridiculous, I don't know where it came from) idea in my head that I sometimes go to work late or leave early because I'm lazy. This past month has reminded me that it's actually because I'm tired. I have a limited number of productive work hours in me every day, and once they are finished, there is no value in me sitting in front of a computer trying to work. I need a mental break. So those days when I leave early are usually because I'm mentally shutting down and ready for the day to be over. And the days when I arrive late are usually because I've been suffering from insomnia and have allowed myself an extra hour to catch up on some sleep.
This has been an important reminder to not be too hard on myself and to extend myself a bit of grace. I am human, and I can only do so much. It's also a really important reminder to set boundaries and to not apologize for doing so. At the moment, I'm having to set some boundaries on fun things in my personal life, but I'm hoping as the year goes on and my call schedule settles down a bit that the boundaries will be more towards work. I've also firmly decided that I'm going to give up a volunteer commitment at the end of the year (I reeeeealy should've given it up at the beginning of the year, but I got talked into agreeing to another year), which will free up one precious evening every month.
The Total Nope:
"I'm aiming for a regular practice of four yoga
classes per week" At best so far I've made it to three classes in one week. Things have just been busy, and in some cases (call) I've had to skip yoga, and in other cases (social life) I've chosen to skip yoga. Part of me is sad, because I really do love it and am seeing a lot of progress, but I'm also making peace with it. I have a really full life, in mostly good ways, so it's okay that I'm not being absolutely perfect at everything.
So that's the one-month check in. As for February? I have three more weeks off call (yay!), during which I'm fully intending to get caught up on everything work related (plausible if I do some work on weekends), after which I have one week on, one off, and one on. Ugh. I'm intending to keep up with the daily meditations, as I do think they help keep me present and calm, even though my brain feels squirrely while I'm doing them. I'm going to try to do three yoga classes a week, as I think it's more realistic than four right now. And, perhaps mostly importantly, I'm going to keep learning from the process and being kind to myself. I'm actually doing pretty well at things that are hard, and I deserve to be proud of myself for that.
Showing posts with label Overwhelmed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Overwhelmed. Show all posts
Friday, January 31, 2020
Sunday, January 22, 2017
What is Done, and What is Left to Do
It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who reads my blog that I am feeling pretty burnt out at the moment, as the few posts that I've had the mental energy to write over the past few months have been all about work stress and feeling exhausted and being too much of a grouch to even want to buy Christmas gifts. I think I've done a decent job of hiding my dissatisfaction at work, but my poor partner, M, has had to put up with some pretty spectacular wallowing when I haven't been working. It is frustrating, and frightening, to have put 16 years into training only to find myself feeling this level of unhappiness with my work.
So I've been thinking a lot (i.e. pretty much all the time) about what to do about it. I've been reading blogs and journaling and talking M's ears off in an attempt to figure out some way of becoming happier. (I haven't been exercising or meditating, of course, because those things might actually work.) I even bought a book about physician burnout, despite absolutely hating the last physician burnout book I read. And, much to my surprise, the book has been kind of helpful.
One of the ideas in the book is that, as physicians, we are always focused on what remains to be done: how many letters we need to dictate, how many patients we need to see, how many bloody multi-page forms we need to fill out. By constantly thinking about what still needs to be done, however, we inevitably feel like we aren't accomplishing anything, and we get discouraged by the seemingly neverending to-do list. Instead, we'd be much better off putting our focus on what we've already done, so that we are positively celebrating our accomplishments instead of always negatively dreading the work to come.
It's a pretty simple idea, and it requires pretty minimal energy and absolutely zero time, so I decided to try it out this week. No longer was I going to count the patient files on my desk that needed to be dictated (about 20 at current count); instead, I was going to count the ones in my outbox that were already done. Instead of focusing on the number of patients remaining to be seen, I was going to focus on the ones that had already been dealt with. Pay attention to the positive, not the negative.
It sounds cheesy to even write this...but it kind of helped. It made me realize that my list of things that I have already accomplished is pretty enormous, and it dwarfs the few hours of paperwork that I left undone at work on Friday. It felt surprisingly good to be a bit of a cheerleader for myself, instead of the evil taskmaster who is always yelling at myself to work harder! and faster! and better!
It worked so well that I decided to apply this mindset to an area of my life that causes my unnecessary anxiety: my finances. I'm in pretty good financial shape for being 17 months into practice, yet I waste a lot of energy thinking about how far away I am from being able to retire. This week, instead of constantly thinking about the minimum of 10 years of work that I will have to do to save up a decent retirement fund, I took a few minutes to list the major financial accomplishments I've made over the past 17 months:
I know that there are still a lot of things that I need to do to feel happier with my work, but I think that changing my mindset has been an important first step. Despite being on call again this week**, I've been in a much better mood than I have been since my really stressful department meeting. I now have six weeks of no call, which includes a one-week trip to Cuba, so hopefully there are even better things ahead.
*My job isn't actually all that miserable. I'm just feeling so exhausted by it that I am having a hard time seeing the good things. Which I'm working on.
**I sat down this week and figured out just how much call I've been doing lately, and I realized that I've been on call 1/3 of the time for the past 3.5 months. That's the amount of call that I should be doing in a 6-month period, and it's equal to the maximum amount of call that a resident is allowed to do. Suddenly I don't feel so guilty for feeling tired! As a result of this realization, I've reviewed my call schedule for the upcoming year and identified a few similar problem periods that can hopefully be improved by a bit of swapping with my colleagues.
So I've been thinking a lot (i.e. pretty much all the time) about what to do about it. I've been reading blogs and journaling and talking M's ears off in an attempt to figure out some way of becoming happier. (I haven't been exercising or meditating, of course, because those things might actually work.) I even bought a book about physician burnout, despite absolutely hating the last physician burnout book I read. And, much to my surprise, the book has been kind of helpful.
One of the ideas in the book is that, as physicians, we are always focused on what remains to be done: how many letters we need to dictate, how many patients we need to see, how many bloody multi-page forms we need to fill out. By constantly thinking about what still needs to be done, however, we inevitably feel like we aren't accomplishing anything, and we get discouraged by the seemingly neverending to-do list. Instead, we'd be much better off putting our focus on what we've already done, so that we are positively celebrating our accomplishments instead of always negatively dreading the work to come.
It's a pretty simple idea, and it requires pretty minimal energy and absolutely zero time, so I decided to try it out this week. No longer was I going to count the patient files on my desk that needed to be dictated (about 20 at current count); instead, I was going to count the ones in my outbox that were already done. Instead of focusing on the number of patients remaining to be seen, I was going to focus on the ones that had already been dealt with. Pay attention to the positive, not the negative.
It sounds cheesy to even write this...but it kind of helped. It made me realize that my list of things that I have already accomplished is pretty enormous, and it dwarfs the few hours of paperwork that I left undone at work on Friday. It felt surprisingly good to be a bit of a cheerleader for myself, instead of the evil taskmaster who is always yelling at myself to work harder! and faster! and better!
It worked so well that I decided to apply this mindset to an area of my life that causes my unnecessary anxiety: my finances. I'm in pretty good financial shape for being 17 months into practice, yet I waste a lot of energy thinking about how far away I am from being able to retire. This week, instead of constantly thinking about the minimum of 10 years of work that I will have to do to save up a decent retirement fund, I took a few minutes to list the major financial accomplishments I've made over the past 17 months:
- Saved up enough money in my investments that I could pay off my line of credit if I wanted to;
- Saved up enough money that, between M and me, we can make a 20% downpayment on a nice house in our chosen neighbourhood; and
- Saved up enough money in my investments that I could live at my current level of spending for approximately one year (or for a very long time if I stopped eating out so frequently).
I know that there are still a lot of things that I need to do to feel happier with my work, but I think that changing my mindset has been an important first step. Despite being on call again this week**, I've been in a much better mood than I have been since my really stressful department meeting. I now have six weeks of no call, which includes a one-week trip to Cuba, so hopefully there are even better things ahead.
*My job isn't actually all that miserable. I'm just feeling so exhausted by it that I am having a hard time seeing the good things. Which I'm working on.
**I sat down this week and figured out just how much call I've been doing lately, and I realized that I've been on call 1/3 of the time for the past 3.5 months. That's the amount of call that I should be doing in a 6-month period, and it's equal to the maximum amount of call that a resident is allowed to do. Suddenly I don't feel so guilty for feeling tired! As a result of this realization, I've reviewed my call schedule for the upcoming year and identified a few similar problem periods that can hopefully be improved by a bit of swapping with my colleagues.
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Surviving Call
When I wrote my most recent blog post, I was feeling a little bit smug about how well my life was going. I was exercising, I was feeling calm, and my relationship was in pretty much the best state it has ever been. I was happy. I was about to start an 11-day stretch of 24-hour-a-day call, but I felt ready for it.
I've got this, I thought.
Except I didn't. It took less than one day of teaching residents, and rounding on inpatients, and answering outside calls (all while still running my normal outpatient clinics) for me to return to my usually high stress level. I went to a movie with M and a friend the evening of my first day of call, and I spent the entire time stressing about work and feeling annoyed that the two of them were calm and actually enjoying themselves. (How dare they?) After weeks of respite, my mind was back to ramped-up panic mode.
And that's where it remained for most of my 11 days on call. I worried and obsessed over the decisions I was making. I felt stressed by the increasing pile of undictated charts piling up on my desk. I lay awake at night rehashing everything I had done and questioning whether I was, in fact, good enough. As it often is, it was awful.
And of course, my life outside of work suffered. My relationship that had, until that point, been ticking along nicely, suddenly struggled. I was short-tempered. Everything she did seemed wrong and irritating. I had moments of panic that I was making the wrong decision about staying with M, even though a few short days earlier everything had been going really well. Also awful.
In the past, my approach when I've felt this way on call has simply been to count the days until it's over and to feel thankful that I'm only on call for 10 weeks a year. Now, having been through some counseling, I realize that there are things that I can do to make the tough parts of my life better, and I'm no longer happy with the grin-and-bear-it approach to call. I want my life on call to still feel okay.
So I've been thinking a lot about the things that I can do to make call less awful. This is what I've come up with so far:
Undercommit: I am about as introverted as introverts get, and as a result, I need a lot of time to rest and recover from activities. Evenings on my couch with a book and my cats are as essential to me as vitamins. This is particularly true when I'm on call and I'm dealing with a lot more people, decisions, and uncertainty than I do in my ordinary life. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of making just as many plans when I'm on call as when I'm not, even though I know that my work life will use up most of my capacity to function in the world.
The other downside to making plans when I'm on call is that I hate disappointing anyone. Somehow the pager always goes off when I'm getting ready to go out with M, and I hate making her wait for me or (worse) do things without me. It makes me feel like a terrible partner, even though she is incredibly patient and supportive and never says anything that even implies that she's disappointed that I got paged and our plans had to change.
I'm not saying that I won't ever make plans when I'm on call, but I do need to be very cognizant of my limitations. I need to plan much less than I often do, and I need to leave enough couch time to recover from my days.
Keep moving: It always comes back to this. Exercise is good. I need to do it. Regularly. End of story.
Talk to M: I have a really good partner who is loving and supportive and a good listener. I always feel better after talking with her, and I need to get better at being open with her about how tough my work life can be.
Let things go: The low point of this week was on Tuesday night, when I really needed to just relax and recharge, but I had a slow cooker of pork that was waiting to be turned into pozole. I normally love cooking, but I resented every minute I spent chopping and frying and pulling pork instead of reading a book. And the resentment was completely unnecessary, as there are clearly foods that are much easier to make than homemade soup!
I need to let go of the idea of myself as someone who always cooks elaborate whole foods from scratch. I can eat a fried egg with toast or a frozen fish fillet and the world will not end. Pozole can wait for a week when I'm not on call. As can many other things. Call weeks should be about doing what is necessary, not what is perfect.
Recognize my irrationality: I am an anxious person, and I am only now starting to realize just how detrimental a role anxiety plays in my life. When I'm in the extremes of my anxiety, it can lead me to think really irrational things. Like that my relationship may not be a good one. Or I'm not cut out to be a doctor. Or I'm going to end up on the street if I don't hoard every penny I earn. Thankfully, I'm learning to distinguish between true facts and crazy anxious talk, and I'm learning not to listen to the latter.
Keep going to counseling: I am somewhat amazed at the difference that six counseling sessions made in my life. It probably saved my relationship with M. It certainly made work better. It was worth vastly more than the $480 it cost, particularly because the cost was covered by our provincial medical association.
Unfortunately, the medical association only pays for six sessions, so I stopped going after the sixth. Which is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID OF ME, because I can still afford to go. I spend $80 in restaurants without batting an eye, so I can spend $80 on a counseling session.
UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID. (I'm looking at you when I say that, Solitary.)
For now, call is done, and I am recovering on my couch with my computer/books and Callie. It is taking all of my self restraint to not add 85 other activities into my day (dishes! groceries! laundry! coffee with friends!), but I know that I depleted all of my reserves over the past 11 days, and I need to replenish them.
Hopefully my next time on call will be better.
I've got this, I thought.
Except I didn't. It took less than one day of teaching residents, and rounding on inpatients, and answering outside calls (all while still running my normal outpatient clinics) for me to return to my usually high stress level. I went to a movie with M and a friend the evening of my first day of call, and I spent the entire time stressing about work and feeling annoyed that the two of them were calm and actually enjoying themselves. (How dare they?) After weeks of respite, my mind was back to ramped-up panic mode.
And that's where it remained for most of my 11 days on call. I worried and obsessed over the decisions I was making. I felt stressed by the increasing pile of undictated charts piling up on my desk. I lay awake at night rehashing everything I had done and questioning whether I was, in fact, good enough. As it often is, it was awful.
And of course, my life outside of work suffered. My relationship that had, until that point, been ticking along nicely, suddenly struggled. I was short-tempered. Everything she did seemed wrong and irritating. I had moments of panic that I was making the wrong decision about staying with M, even though a few short days earlier everything had been going really well. Also awful.
In the past, my approach when I've felt this way on call has simply been to count the days until it's over and to feel thankful that I'm only on call for 10 weeks a year. Now, having been through some counseling, I realize that there are things that I can do to make the tough parts of my life better, and I'm no longer happy with the grin-and-bear-it approach to call. I want my life on call to still feel okay.
So I've been thinking a lot about the things that I can do to make call less awful. This is what I've come up with so far:
Undercommit: I am about as introverted as introverts get, and as a result, I need a lot of time to rest and recover from activities. Evenings on my couch with a book and my cats are as essential to me as vitamins. This is particularly true when I'm on call and I'm dealing with a lot more people, decisions, and uncertainty than I do in my ordinary life. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of making just as many plans when I'm on call as when I'm not, even though I know that my work life will use up most of my capacity to function in the world.
The other downside to making plans when I'm on call is that I hate disappointing anyone. Somehow the pager always goes off when I'm getting ready to go out with M, and I hate making her wait for me or (worse) do things without me. It makes me feel like a terrible partner, even though she is incredibly patient and supportive and never says anything that even implies that she's disappointed that I got paged and our plans had to change.
I'm not saying that I won't ever make plans when I'm on call, but I do need to be very cognizant of my limitations. I need to plan much less than I often do, and I need to leave enough couch time to recover from my days.
Keep moving: It always comes back to this. Exercise is good. I need to do it. Regularly. End of story.
Talk to M: I have a really good partner who is loving and supportive and a good listener. I always feel better after talking with her, and I need to get better at being open with her about how tough my work life can be.
Let things go: The low point of this week was on Tuesday night, when I really needed to just relax and recharge, but I had a slow cooker of pork that was waiting to be turned into pozole. I normally love cooking, but I resented every minute I spent chopping and frying and pulling pork instead of reading a book. And the resentment was completely unnecessary, as there are clearly foods that are much easier to make than homemade soup!
I need to let go of the idea of myself as someone who always cooks elaborate whole foods from scratch. I can eat a fried egg with toast or a frozen fish fillet and the world will not end. Pozole can wait for a week when I'm not on call. As can many other things. Call weeks should be about doing what is necessary, not what is perfect.
Recognize my irrationality: I am an anxious person, and I am only now starting to realize just how detrimental a role anxiety plays in my life. When I'm in the extremes of my anxiety, it can lead me to think really irrational things. Like that my relationship may not be a good one. Or I'm not cut out to be a doctor. Or I'm going to end up on the street if I don't hoard every penny I earn. Thankfully, I'm learning to distinguish between true facts and crazy anxious talk, and I'm learning not to listen to the latter.
Keep going to counseling: I am somewhat amazed at the difference that six counseling sessions made in my life. It probably saved my relationship with M. It certainly made work better. It was worth vastly more than the $480 it cost, particularly because the cost was covered by our provincial medical association.
Unfortunately, the medical association only pays for six sessions, so I stopped going after the sixth. Which is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID OF ME, because I can still afford to go. I spend $80 in restaurants without batting an eye, so I can spend $80 on a counseling session.
UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID. (I'm looking at you when I say that, Solitary.)
For now, call is done, and I am recovering on my couch with my computer/books and Callie. It is taking all of my self restraint to not add 85 other activities into my day (dishes! groceries! laundry! coffee with friends!), but I know that I depleted all of my reserves over the past 11 days, and I need to replenish them.
Hopefully my next time on call will be better.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Friday Night
For the past few weeks, I have been taking on an extra half day clinic per week to address the seemingly never-ending list of people who need to be seen. While I actually kind of enjoy the extra clinical work, I don't enjoy having more paperwork to do and less time in which to do it. By the beginning of yesterday, my desk was piled high with charts to dictate and phone messages to return and labs to review. I have no clinics on Thursdays, so I spent the entire day in my office slowly crossing things off my to-do list.
It still wasn't enough.
After clinic today, I ate lunch while dictating charts, and then I left the hospital to go to the other clinic where I work once a week. And did more paperwork there.
I'm still not done.
I'm really hoping that, with experience, I will get faster at dealing with paperwork, because it is currently taking up almost all of my non-clinical time. Time that I should be spending developing a research program (*ha*) or preparing presentations or teaching. Fun things. Non paperwork things. It also exhausts me in a way that no other aspect of my work does, because I need to focus carefully on what I'm doing despite how tedious and dull it is.
Thankfully, it's Friday, and for the next two days I can forget about the 45 dictations* that are sitting in my inbox waiting to be signed off on. Tomorrow the girlfriend and I are heading to an independent cinema in our pjs to watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat sugary cereal. Then on Sunday, I'm doing social activity #2** for the week and taking my nieces to a play about Harriet Tubman. After I go for a run in keeping with my goal to work out three times a week. And there will be sleep. Lots and lots of glorious sleep.
I need this weekend.
*Literally. Shit.
**Social activity #1 was dinner with my mom and my brother for part of a week-long promotion in which restaurants serve three-course meals at a discount. The conversation was good, but the food was really underwhelming (including inadequately cleaned shrimp *shudder*).
It still wasn't enough.
After clinic today, I ate lunch while dictating charts, and then I left the hospital to go to the other clinic where I work once a week. And did more paperwork there.
I'm still not done.
I'm really hoping that, with experience, I will get faster at dealing with paperwork, because it is currently taking up almost all of my non-clinical time. Time that I should be spending developing a research program (*ha*) or preparing presentations or teaching. Fun things. Non paperwork things. It also exhausts me in a way that no other aspect of my work does, because I need to focus carefully on what I'm doing despite how tedious and dull it is.
Thankfully, it's Friday, and for the next two days I can forget about the 45 dictations* that are sitting in my inbox waiting to be signed off on. Tomorrow the girlfriend and I are heading to an independent cinema in our pjs to watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat sugary cereal. Then on Sunday, I'm doing social activity #2** for the week and taking my nieces to a play about Harriet Tubman. After I go for a run in keeping with my goal to work out three times a week. And there will be sleep. Lots and lots of glorious sleep.
I need this weekend.
*Literally. Shit.
**Social activity #1 was dinner with my mom and my brother for part of a week-long promotion in which restaurants serve three-course meals at a discount. The conversation was good, but the food was really underwhelming (including inadequately cleaned shrimp *shudder*).
Friday, August 7, 2015
The Weekly Hiss and Purr - August 7 Edition
Oh this week. This week has been one full of angst, coming from a variety of sources. Even though I'm still on vacation (yay), I feel like I could list a dozen or so hisses without much effort. Bah.
Angst is soooo overrated. Take a nap, Mom.
The (Biggest) Hiss - Anxiety:
One of the best things about this vacation has been how relaxed I've been. Until recently, I was waking up feeling refreshed and looking forward to all the great things the day had in store. I even looked relaxed - my skin was tanned (as much as my Northern European ancestry permits), my hair was longer and curlier than it had been in years (the word "mullet" comes to mind), and my clothing choices were comfortable, if not bordering on vagabond.
And then, a week ago, I decided to get my hair cut so that I would look slightly put together for the wedding I attended last Saturday. And it was as if everything changed. Going back to my "work hairstyle" seemed to signal that it was time to go back to work, or at the very least to start stressing out about it. Since then, I've been experiencing increasing bouts of panic as I come to terms with the fact that I will be the one in charge starting August 17.
It doesn't help that there are still major issues up in the air...like my license. Everything is happening at a snail's pace because it's summer, and despite doing things in what I thought was lots of time, I am still waiting on a number of important documents that are required for me to work. And I have only five business days left until my first day of work. Aaaaaah.
(Please be patient while I go and vomit.)
The Purr - Reading:
The biggest thing I need right now to keep myself sane is distraction from thinking about work (and from hitting refresh on my email program to see if anything is happening with my license). Enter reading! As I previously blogged about, I just finished reading Gretchen Rubin's book "Better Than Before". I also have her book "Happier at Home" sitting in my to-read pile, but for a change of pace, I've decided to start with Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle". This book tells about her family's journey of moving across the country and trying to eat locally for a year. I'm only one chapter in, but I'm loving her writing style and her exploration of all the issues (environmental, economic, health) related to what we choose to eat.
There are so many more things that I want to read! I have a giant stack of books from the library on my coffee table, plus a list on Goodreads and another list in my iPhone. I need more hours in the day!
What are you reading this week?
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Saturday Night Reflections
Sometimes I'm an idiot.
I know from almost 38 years of living as myself that I don't enjoy being overly busy. I can handle a lot of busy - I've survived four years of medical school and five years of residency - but my preference is always for a slower, more manageable pace. Which is why it was idiotic of me to 1) arrive home after being away for five weeks at 8 PM the night before I had to go back to work; 2) agree to do call the weekend after I returned; and 3) agree to adjudicate an exam all Saturday while also on call. Add to this the fact that I have three presentations to give over three weeks, and life has been too busy lately. And I've been a miserable grouch of a person as I've struggled to do too many things in too little time.
All of these things could've been avoided. I could've (and should've) taken a stat day off after returning from holidays to unpack the car and wash the massive amounts of laundry. I could've switched my weekend of call. I could've said that, no, it isn't worth giving up a weekend day to earn a little bit of money when I'll be a full-blown attending in a few months. But I'm an idiot.
I need to remember this when I start working as an attending this summer. I need to remember that I need sleep, and time to clean my apartment, and quality time with my girlfriend. And all of these things are more important than earning a bit more money, no matter how big my line of credit may still be*.
Remind me of this when I'm tempted to say yes to an extra weekend of attending call.
*I've got a post brewing about the massive line of credit from hell. Stay tuned.
I know from almost 38 years of living as myself that I don't enjoy being overly busy. I can handle a lot of busy - I've survived four years of medical school and five years of residency - but my preference is always for a slower, more manageable pace. Which is why it was idiotic of me to 1) arrive home after being away for five weeks at 8 PM the night before I had to go back to work; 2) agree to do call the weekend after I returned; and 3) agree to adjudicate an exam all Saturday while also on call. Add to this the fact that I have three presentations to give over three weeks, and life has been too busy lately. And I've been a miserable grouch of a person as I've struggled to do too many things in too little time.
All of these things could've been avoided. I could've (and should've) taken a stat day off after returning from holidays to unpack the car and wash the massive amounts of laundry. I could've switched my weekend of call. I could've said that, no, it isn't worth giving up a weekend day to earn a little bit of money when I'll be a full-blown attending in a few months. But I'm an idiot.
I need to remember this when I start working as an attending this summer. I need to remember that I need sleep, and time to clean my apartment, and quality time with my girlfriend. And all of these things are more important than earning a bit more money, no matter how big my line of credit may still be*.
Remind me of this when I'm tempted to say yes to an extra weekend of attending call.
*I've got a post brewing about the massive line of credit from hell. Stay tuned.
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