In the closing posts of my A-to-Z Challenge, I’m exploring the yearning that made me want to do this challenge, and I’m zooming out, widening my perspective to see what I’ve written about in the month of April. The yearning is for completion of the transition from the physician life to the writing life.
In this in-between time, I’ve made several writing commitments while not yet letting go of the physician commitments. For those dealing with boredom in this time of social distancing, my words may not resonate. Those who have taken on additional stressors, teaching, working, and learning online, for instance, will relate to my dilemma.
Up until I began working from home, my two lives were kept in separate compartments. The wall between my worlds is breaking down. Yesterday, I made phone calls to my patients from home. I used my lunch hour to submit a poetry chapbook to a contest.
This is something I never would have done, never could have done if I were working in the clinic. It’s hard to shift from one mindset to the other. Both require getting into a channel of deep focus and concentration, but they are channels forged in different parts of my brain.
Here’s how I know my decision to retire from medicine in December is the right one. When I’m in physician mode, yearning for the writing mode sometimes creeps in. When I’m in a writer’s brain, there’s no longing to be anywhere else.
