A Day’s Reflection.

I’m still dazed. I feel a bit like I took a painless blow to the head from a prizefighter. I’m dizzy and sideways and befuddled. I have been offered my dream job at one of the world’s finest hospitals. I will be transitioning from a poor-to-mediocre tertiary facility to a glittering, futuristic outpost on the blade’s edge of medicine and health care. I will be nicely compensated. I will have publishing privileges. I negotiated a $2,000/yr professional development budget so that I can attend a conference to keep up with my field, or publish in an open access journal. I think one or two papers a year is a reasonable expectation. That is not how I’ll be evaluated.

I’m nervous about moving. I’m nervous about a new job. I’m scared I won’t be good enough or smart enough and savvy enough. I’m going to a place where people care about their work, and what they do. I’m coming from a place where, except for the PIs and biostatisticians, no one gives a rat’s ass about the quality of their work it seems. That attitude is infections, virulent. I haven’t been at my best the past six months there. Not knowing that there was no administrative support for my position.

I am going to be doing what I studied to do. One of those jobs that Nature arrogantly considers “alternative”. I will be developing my own ideas and methods to improve patient experience and optimize delivery of health care. I will be solving difficult problems. I will be making a difference in the health care system. With the backing of a renowned institution. I’m nervous and afraid and full of wonderment about how to proceed. And I’m going to figure it all out.

Because I am a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And this is what we do. We have big, real world lives that make a difference. Free from our addictions and able to face the world. I can’t begin to tell you, you who don’t know the horrifying claustrophobia of the bottle, how amazing that is.