I'm back in that place.
The place I was in about 6 weeks ago. The one I hate. The one where I feel like I'm out in the middle of a lake in a small boat by myself, I'm exhausted from rowing and I can't quite see the shore. I'm lonely, and I'm frustrated because there's no one to take the oars- even for a minute.
That place. It sucks. It's my least favorite place in the world. I want out of this boat. I want to be on solid ground.
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Yesterday I found out that the RWJ program that I had envisioned as my way off of the hamster wheel I'm on isn't an option. It's not an option because I'm not eligible, per se- I meet the years in practice criteria, the outstanding teacher criteria, and the research interest criteria. It's not an option because the medical school can only submit one candidate per year. That person has evidently already been selected through some mysterious selection process that came and went without my knowing.
Yes, there was profanity for the brief moment that I was angry.
The anger passed pretty quickly and I spent a few hours diligently pondering other funding streams for my research. To be honest, there aren't any great options right now. In fact, I don't know that there are any options other than the small foundation grants that I'm already taking advantage of (and that I've been told are inadequate to trim my clinical responsibilities). I spent some time talking to a truly esteemed colleague who has done well climbing the academic ranks here. And I walked away from that conversation terrified that I'm really not able to do what they are asking me to do in terms of getting support for my research work. That problem doesn't exist because I'm substandard in some way- it exists because the expectations I'm subject to are, quite simply, unreasonable.
If I didn't really love my research, if I really didn't feel like it mattered, I could simply let it drop and I could resign myself to the clinical grind.
Except....it's that clinical grind that wore me down to a point where I got sick in May. It's that clinical grind that keeps me from being able to go to church almost any Sunday and that has excluded me from being able to participate in choir. It's that clinical grind that makes it incredibly difficult to spend time with my friends. It's that clinical grind that keeps me off of the ski hill and out of the mountains.
In that one paragraph, I just listed all of the personal reasons I came back to Salt Lake. I'm embarrassed at how few of them are in tact and functional right now. And I'm angry because I've had areas that I've held aside and managed to protect for my entire adult life that have been essentially taken away from me. I haven't compromised them deliberately- they've just been swept away by the demands placed upon me (demands that exceed what I expected, and that far exceed what I think is normal, sane, and healthy).
Don't get me wrong- I love my clinical work. It's the driver behind my research, and it's the basis for my enthusiasm for education. I just don't love how hard I am working clinically. I know it's excessive. Burn surgeons from other institutions tell me that it's excessive. I'm working in a system that fails to recognize that excess, however, and I'm working within that system with people whose priorities are fundamentally different from my own. That's my nice way of saying that I expect to have a life away from medicine and they simply seem not to care that they don't.
I don't know where this all leads. I'm giving myself a year to have the ultimate answer to it all, and I'm giving myself 6 months to decide if things here can be fixed in a manner that is not just acceptable to me but that I find healthy. Right now I don't have great faith that the situation here is fixable, but I want to be wrong. I know that leaving wouldn't be failure or quitting, but it damn sure feels like it.
Grappling with this is, for lack of a better word, lonely. There's no one else to make the decisions. There's no one else to even provide substantive input into the decision. It's me, and it's me acknowledging what I need. More importantly, it's me demanding that those needs be met. That's something I really do not excel at, but it's time. I deserve better than what I've been getting, and I deserve to be happier than I've been lately.
There you have it- the long version of what I gave you a paragraph on last night. Just me and my boat and this big, big lake.
Happiness/Gratitude list, 23 July edition- which feels more important than usual today:
- Kindness and compassion in my life. It's here, and I know it's here. And I appreciate it.
- Being able to name the things that are breaking my heart right now. It doesn't make the breaking any easier to go through, but it might make it a little easier to fix.
- Some amazingly kind words from The Boy tonight. It doesn't change my fundamental need to abandon the disaster that is our relationship, but I give him credit for saying the right thing today.
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Now playing: Lyle Lovett - If I Had A Boat
via FoxyTunes