Cooking has always made me anxious. It’s not that I produce horrible food when I do make a meal, I just don’t seem to have the knack of getting all the parts of the meal to be finished at the same time. One thing my career change created was a little more time for projects, and I decided that would be my opportunity to work on reducing my anxiety and improving my cooking skills.
Read MoreThis week marked the beginning of a big change: I shared with my partners, team and patients that I will close my practice at the end of November. Our youngest child is a senior, and the nest will be empty soon. My work in value-based care will generously allow me the flexibility to travel while working. The COVID pandemic has been difficult for healthcare workers everywhere; it certainly contributed to my decision to take a break from clinical medicine. For all these reasons, the timing is right to make a career change to administrative medicine.
Read MoreLife is full. For everyone. We schedule each minute of our days, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, and are even encouraged to ensure our hours of sleep are adequate…everything is budgeted carefully. There is very little time to “just be” in most of our lives.
Read MoreI am a work in progress and frequently enjoy trying new things to better my life. My latest self-help read encouraged me to improve in small, incremental ways. The book is subtitled “tiny changes, remarkable results: an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones”. Content is easy to understand, intuitively makes sense, and holds the usual challenge of self-help books: you have to actually do the work in order to see the benefits.
Read MoreI’ve “had my snorkel up” the last couple of months. My senior partner introduced me to the phrase after I started practice in Rooks County, so perhaps it is unique to our group. If you take a minute to reflect on the words, you’ll know what they mean: I was underwater and one big wave away from losing my lifeline to the surface.
Read MoreI like to say “yes” to new opportunities. It is fun to try out different types of work, learn new information, stretch my brain and grow my abilities. Sometimes “yes” leads down an exciting new path and sometimes it results in a dead end; either way, I always learn something about myself and frequently about the subject.
As I took on more projects (and got older!), there were various points in my life where I could no longer stretch the hours in the day to cover the volume of work to be done. Initially, I did the same thing we all do: I tried to work harder + faster + better + longer to get everything done. Eventually, I realized my life needed a reset and sorted out a way to prioritize the current things on my plate and make room for the next new thing I really wanted to do.
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