In a spread from one of my recent visual journals, I wrote: "GOTTA FIND TIME FOR THE CREATIVE LIFE...No more excuses! Of course I'm busy, but I don't have to sign up for every unfilled shift and I don't have to spend all my downtime surfing the damn internet and shopping aimlessly. I can be working in this mixed-media journal or writing, which has always been in my heart to do."
(Media: watercolors, acrylics, collage elements, rubber stamps by Traci Bunkers and others , paint pens.)
During my recent silence I spent a lot of time thinking about the original vision I had for being a rural family doctor. In this vision, I provided full-time primary care, including inpatient coverage for all my patients, whether they were kids, old people, or laboring women. I was going to be a salt-of-the-earth, old-fashioned family doc who was present for birth, death, and the messy interval between the two. For a brief period--about a year--I lived a close approximation of this vision, and although it was a rewarding and happy time, various factors ultimately led me to transition to full-time hospitalist work.
It may have been a while, but I think I'm back in the swing of things. Thank you to all the kind people who reached out to me via email and comments. To put everyone's mind at rest, let me say first that everything is going well with Noo's health and reassure you all that my recent silence was not the result of yet another disaster in my personal or professional life. The usual daily mini-crises continue apace--a tree knocked down into my driveway, an infestation of ants in the pantry, five piles of delinquent charts waiting for me at Macys--but these minor annoyances are a welcome distraction compared to the complete upheaval I experienced last July, when Noo was so desperately ill and I bowed out from a job which I both loved and hated at Gimbels--all in the same week.
