I have some big level confusion about what I am doing with my life. Though I complain about medicine, I am here. I completed medical school. I am in the final year of residency training. I really haven’t much enjoyed almost any medical experience so far. I don’t like the medical model. I came because I started off inclined towards the authority as truth. I believed that science and western medical thinking was simply objective.

I come home from work and I fall asleep. I listened to a lecture tonight from a psychiatrist on trauma. I read a blog from an “intuitive doctor”. I dabbled around on my musical instruments. I did a meditation and I am trying to wind down for bed. As I was sitting, I was thinking about asking for help from one of my colleagues who appears to be navigating residency well.

I am unhappy. I have been unhappy through medical residency. I am afraid I will be unhappy after residency. It may be because residency was not the right fit for me. Some people are meant to be doctors. I don’t exactly know what I am “meant to be.” I think it can be anything. I believe in art. Art is important to me. I believe it matters in the world and that it is is a valid occupation. I mean, a valid career. I think of work as how one spends one’s energy. Time. And I think how putting my energy into medicine isn’t working for me. That’s a message I am picking up. This is the wrong place for me. I have been learning to persist, because that feels like an option to me. I am able to persist. But I do not thrive in the medical field. I am shut down. This is a confusion for me, and I think there are many wrong places to go with this. There are medical peers, or non-medical peers. Many people in my life, but most of them are the wrong people to go to. That is why I write. Because I just need this space to be honest. To explore. To dig. And I want to do this same work with songwriting, but it is not accessible right now. I have said that plainly before, but other times, I still beat myself up about it.

I am an artist in recovery. I am a human in recovery. I have spent a long time in a field that has been traumatic to me. What’s important to me is waking up to what I feel. Meditation is an important practice. Proper diet is an important practice. I want that not to be too rigid. By proper diet, I mean learning to cook a plant-based diet. I mean enjoying cutting the foods. Bringing presence to the process of cooking. Exercise is an important tool. I want to talk with people about their exercise regiments. I want to be a health counselor. I forget what I have said before, that the medical training was the long route to what I really wanted. It may have been the wrong route. But here I am. I don’t think what I will be doing is exactly practicing medicine. It will be a lifestyle clinic. I am not good at the analytic side of medicine. I am not good with the physical exam. It’s not technological, assembly line medicine I don’t like, it’s the paradigm of understanding problems as reductionist, material science. I am not a “scientism-ist.” I am an intellectual and a critic of “scientism,” the world view that is practiced as a religion of understanding our experience through scientific means. I am a spiritualist. Meaning I believe spiritual practices have value. I believe in god as a metaphor that is helpful for understanding the true nature of things.

So before I completely get off here, I would like to practice a healing modality that involves listening to my client. I would like to be sincere in my intention to help them with my recommendations. I am interested in mostly working on lifestyle as the mechanism to address “medical problems.” I believe this is a scientific process. I plan to use scientific evidence to help people.

On the other hand, is the residency’s coordinated care clinic. Which is where we meet very many real people, who have very many real problems and limited trust or faith in the system. The patients are dealing with drug abuse and trauma history and badness. And they need a doctor, and they sometimes show up. My clinic is trying to help. That is good work. But it is not my work. I think I can show up to the homeless camp and connect with people. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe that is idealism from when I was younger.

I also want to recommend integrative modalities to help with day-to-day issues. Like Tieraona Low Dog’s book. I feel like I’m just behind on life. Because I’m 31 and still in this holding phase. Still frozen. Still traumatized. I have felt that it is too hard to make a relationship work.

But what is it I want? That I haven’t figured out. It could be that I want to find a partner to raise a family with. I am searching for the ideal partner to parent with. That is definitely something I believed in at one point. And now, I feel interested, curious about exploring the beyond that. I feel bored with monogamy. Bored with marriage. I don’t want to fit that pattern. I want to be a more radical being. I want to at least explore that. What it means. I think it means being more open to significant relationships. But instead, at this time, I find myself more isolated than ever. Back home, there is this community sense that I could feel a part of. Now that I am away, I don’t exactly. I remember I had to kind of edge my way in. And because I was there, that was good enough for me. But I am dealing with isolation. I have acquaintances, but no WOEs. I’m borrowing that term from Emergent Strategy (Working On Excellence. Life accountability partners.) I want people in my life that I am working on life with. People I can talk to about stuff that’s going on with my ex. People I can talk with about wanting to be a musician. People I can talk with about meditation. What do I need in a WOE? Is meditation the key? Art? Empathy? Who is it I am looking up to? Who are my role models?

Some random bit of inspiration from the other day was remembering that I was sort of destined to break out of the system. Dr Williams, as one example, knows that I’m going to do something… different. And I think part of it is recognizing that I’m not 100% rejecting the system. What I am claiming is “I do not fit in the system.” It is not the right way for me to be spending my time. I have tried it; it doesn’t fit, so I am getting rid of it. That doesn’t have to be true for everyone else. I feel like the medical system is a bad parent to me. It leaves me feeling uncared for, underdeveloped.

And so I am piecing together my way out.

I think starting from a place of taking a job, any job, is not going to work. It may be part of my path forward. But I think the more I carve out for myself, the better.

So my dream is, I spend time with people and they pay me for it. We talk about the kinds of problems I can help them with. I want to leave the medical model behind. I want to not practice medicine. I want to have the perspective to help people avoid the medical system. Is what I am doing medicine or not? Maybe it is okay that this question isn’t answered yet. I plan to get a medical license. I plan to be certified by the Board of Family Physicians. But I do not plan to be hired by a recruiter looking for a family physician. It’s not a contradiction, but it is confusing. That why I need pages and pages of writing. Dig, dig, dig. I believe this is in the right direction. I really don’t know how accessible this is to the reader. I think… not very. I am not aiming this at the reader. It’s closer to “art as therapy” than “art as entertainment.” I’m not selling; I’m sharing. I am also confused about art and it’s relationship to those 2 directions. Worth exploring with artists…