Back to Work

As of tonight I am rural doctoring once again. I've been off work for six weeks, taking a mini-retirement to catch up on rest and uncommitted time. Of course I had a million plans for my time off, including:

• Cleaning my house top to bottom
• Reorganizing several rooms in my house, so my scrubs won't be nose-to-nose with my art books anymore
• Sleeping
• Reading a list of eight books
• Writing for this blog and other projects
• Sleeping
• Catching up with CME at the Society for Hospitalist Medicine Care of the Hospitalized Patient conference
• Sleeping
• & Sleeping

What did I actually get accomplished?

• Vacuumed my house, not once, but THREE WHOLE TIMES!
• Shampooed above carpet twice.
• Reorganized one room, sort of, although there is more work to do.
• Sleet, a bunch.
• Read eight or nine books, only one of which was on the original "to-read" list.
• Napped almost daily.
• Attended the entire Society for Hospitalist Medicine Care of the Hospitalized Patient. Learned a lot.
• Kept up with writing for this blog, although didn't fluff it up as much as I'd hoped, but oh well.
• Unexpectedly joined NaNoWriMo, which is still in process.
• Did a bunch of cooking to stock my freezer with healthful meals to eat during the long winter ahead.
• Dozed in front of the TV.
• & Slept in a lot.

OK, so I didn't get as much done around the house as I'd planned but I am not disappointed in this at all. I knew I was planning too much and one reason for taking the mini-retirement in the first place was to set the bar lower and permit myself more unstructured time, so--SUCCESS!

I'm feeling quite well-rested and I actually feel ready to go back to work, which I haven't felt in a long time. I feel curious about what's going on at the clinic and the hospital, and I'm also feeling a healthy unease that if I don't get back on the job soon I'll forget everything I ever learned. So I'm ready.

I think.

Comments

[lennyjoels]

Your use of your free time indicates that you don't have much of a life outside of medicine. Now that I have been practicing medicine for over 25 years, I have the serious regret that my life has been too focused around medicine. When I wasn't seeing patients, I was going paperwork; when I wasn't doing paperwork, I was working on practice administration or hospital committees; when I wasn't administrating, I was at a conference.

Looking back on the 25 years, I regret that I don't have an non-medical avocation that I am passionate about, that I don't have a circle of close friends that I spend time with, that I don't remember my daughter growing up (I was either on-call, post-op, or pre-call and never had the every for family activities).

You sound like you were a great PCP and are a great hospitalist. Please balance your life so that in 20 years you will look not back with regrets.

[dragonfly]

Well rested and curious is good.

[Jane]

What books did you read? Which ones did you like?

[rlbates]

I think you managed to get a lot done.