If not for intrepid fantasies of success, I may not have done this. My ego had a stake in the outcome, no matter my pleas for a focus on process, growing, and learning.
Ten months ago, I pulled the pin on medicine, figuring that would be enough in itself. That providence would appear, just by leaving. That the hard part—completing medical school and residency—was already over. That I’d crossed a finish line.
In an offer of grace, I was right in a way. I was finally honest with myself, admitting the truth, which unlatched the gate to freedom. But I was off on the arrival time; the day I left was just the beginning.
When I enrolled in medical school, I made a pact… with myself; if I ever decide I’m done, I can quit and return back to who I was before I started. Unconscious and protective, I crafted a trap door back to the life I left behind. Salvation was always one parachute pull away. I built a shadow life where I could do something I didn’t want, while preserving a return back to the person I was at twenty-five years old. An inconsequential existence constructed by ambivalence.
The impossibility of my barely conscious (for years unconscious) coping strategy became evident after only seven years. I kid as to not cry. Thanks to working with a therapist, this purgatory became knowable and at last escapable. I grieved. I couldn’t time travel back. There was only this, and a lot of lessons to apply from seven years in purgatory. All of this informed my exit from medicine in October of 2022.
But on an emotional level, despite my understanding that time travel didn’t exist and salvation wasn’t a parachute pull away, I’d finally done it. I was through the trap door.
“Ryan, it’s just so courageous what you’ve done. I’d never be able to do that.”
People are kind, and I’ve appreciated those descriptions. Probably too much at times. But really, my choice to leave medicine was of necessity. Like an alcoholic rolling into AA because nothing else worked, I could not practice medicine any longer and survive. So I pulled the parachute.
And for those first few months, my daily experience was glorious. Time hung slack in the wind of a euphoric alter-reality, buoyed by daily relief at no longer doing what I couldn’t. It was happiness in absence. The happiness was natural but conditional (on account of not practicing medicine).
Like all conditional experiences, it passed. And in the wake, I was left with this situation: here I am after eight years of training in a field, now trying to make a living without using my last eight years of training. Huh.
I started writing, launched this website, and birthed a social media presence. All aimed at helping others in the same lot as myself, who seek to own a life they love. And all very much fueled by my experience as a physician (all has not been lost in those eight years of training). I connected with dozens of folks. Shared stories. Revitalized old friendships. And got better at those things I was doing.
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I figured those activities would translate into what being a physician offered: money, social standing, and security. Turns out, those were important motivators for why I stayed in medicine as long as I did.
As long as I walked through those clinic doors every day, things were settled. The paycheck deposited. People respected my physician-status. And on the whole, my life was secure. Even if I loafed a little, and didn’t give it my all every day, those physician offerings remained unchanged. Medicine was a wide and well-maintained yellow-brick road.
Now, out here in the real world, I’ve been at it for ten months without a payday on the calendar. Subscriber growth has not met projections. I have many things to do, need to get better at nearly all of them, and there’s no end in sight to that process. As a good friend told me, “Ryan, no job equals more work.”
In short, there’s nowhere to hide. No passes. No predictability. And I must earn every second of stability and security. Each day.
And that has been the greatest gift of leaving medicine.
So yeah, this whole thing has been infinitely harder than what I’d expected. And exactly what I needed. Just responsibility and accountability.
That is the cost for owning my time again. That is the cost for what I used to wake up, each morning, begging to be back in my life again: aliveness.
(Photo Caption: Taken in Svaneti, Georgia (the country) by my wife, as we perched atop a Svan tower. There, in place as private and protected from outside influence as I’ve ever seen, the peace in the people was palpable. They knew their role. They worked with purpose. They worked their asses off. And in showed in their aliveness. Something I aim to incorporate in my life.)
