This one’s more of a journal entry—not a knowing but a figuring—because the truth is this: I don’t know what’s next.
This uncertain admission requires I stare into the teeth of perception and release my cares about others’ opinions. I feel pressure to have a well-thought out plan. Believe me, it’s scary; I’m 33 years old and don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. Most people, when they hear I left medicine, don’t respond with interest or curiosity, but first with the question, “So… what are you going to do now?” I’ve forsaken the categorization algorithm. It’s uncomfortable.
Yet, for me, there’s been a benefit of saying “I don’t know” for once—it’s freed me to go find out.
Pandora’s box is wide open (considered a negative in most analogies) but for me there’s been at the bottom of that box what a good friend told me resides there: hope. Fear was first out of the box: how to pay the bills, how to support my marriage, how to be a good husband, how can I leave a job that helps people, etc. But at the bottom, a hope that I could be happy again emerged. The certainty of physicianhood never allowed that. Turns out uncertainty is necessary to keep the magical spring of hope flowing.
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The not knowing has highlighted what I do know.
When my wife and I moved to Santa Barbara, we had a collection of hand-me-down dressers and nightstands. We wondered if they were salvageable. So, I got to sanding, threw on a coat of emerald paint, outfitted them with some new, posh-ass knobs, and there we had a matching set for our bedroom. My wife needed storage for her yoga equipment, so I built a “yoga box”. I needed a new desk and built one. After quitting my job, I started refurbishing more desks I’d find for free on Facebook Marketplace, and even restored (and sold) a children’s picnic table I found on the street. Last week I completed my first commissioned pieces. Slowly, refurbishing things has become a part of what I enjoy doing every day. Is it a part of what’s next? Again, I don’t know. Right now, it know it feels good and helps pay those bills.
Will it replace my physician salary? No, I’d have to sell a desk an hour to get even close. What it does do is buy me time to pull the bowstring back and aim at a target that pays me for doing something I enjoy. I care about that aim. Why? I get one life. Work is a huge chunk of my one life, and how I feel while working impacts who I am everywhere else. I want to be present for my wife (and future children… FYI a ways down the road for either of our parents reading this). And, I want to model for my kids that it’s possible to love and be passionate about what you do.
That is what’s next huh? More of this. More wading into uncertainty. More hope.
I knew where the medicine path was leading; I lived that half-manifested existence of periodic joy and the persistent threat of depression. On this path, I know not where I’ll wind up or what I’ll do, but I have faith in the present, if I can stay comfortable, here, in uncertainty.
Uncertainty,(in the 12 step rooms we say,”More will be revealed”. I remember what my first sponsor told me when I asked him what I should do about a situation with an uncertain outcome. He said,”Don’t do anything one day at a time, and it will soon become clear what you need to do. And don’t do a bit more than that which is absolutely necessary”. There have been times when it has proven prudent to wait for all the doors to open instead of pushing my way through the first option available. Without uncertainty, we just plod blindly onward.
Love this! It makes sense from distance… but while in it you want to force! “Don’t do anything one day at a time” is a good mantra I’m keeping handy.