1 year left.

It’s a really disorienting feeling being this close to The End.  I feel like I have vertigo.  I get a new resident and talking to them realise how far I’ve come.  In my head I feel like a resident half the time, so, so much to learn – but then I get a new one and I realise how much I have to teach (in a good way).  And every now and then I realise the conveyor built this is. This week I hit a point of realisation.  I’ve been tying myself up in knots about getting a boss job and suddenly woke up to the neverendingness of this.  The constant game of trying to impress.  We did it to get into med school, training programs, job interview after job interview, every year.  And it doesn’t seem to end when you become a boss (in the public system anyway), it is the constant performance with almost no time to rehearse.  Negative time if you have kids.  I don’t want that anymore.  I’m so tired of dancing to someone elses tune.  Of the endless rotation of what defines ‘good at your job’ which is hospital dependent anyway.  And at the same time I fear leaving the public system because that’s where your relevance as a doctor lives while you’re in it.  There’s almost no information as to what lies in the great beyond.  All I want really, is to take care of my patients, and do a really good job of it.