Years ago, after surviving ER burn-out and longing for more music time, I came to a place of relative peace.
I still loved medicine, especially the connections with patients, families, and the crews I worked with. Had years of passion for family practice and emergency medicine, then “integrative” alternative health as a complement to conventional Western medicine.
The in-between of the earlier height of my ER career and the journey into more holistic medicine was the valley of the shadow of burn out - and way in the rear-view mirror when music started its pull.
So when I started writing songs, studying jazz piano, and working with a vocal coach I felt drawn into a new world of creativity and aliveness…and medicine was…good?
Like riding a bike, I could do my job in an automatic flow, and had no real resistance to continuing my job as an ER doc. It was still fun and fulfilling work.
On the contrary I found considerable voices arguing against leaving medicine. Even cutting back hours seemed to be judged as abandonment of my noble profession by colleagues and family.
When I finally acknowledged that it was solely a choice of how I wanted to show up in the world, I went through the “reasons” I became a doctor in the first place, excavating that 7th grader who chose the fork in the road so early and picking her brain.
I learned that she wanted so badly to be validated and truly loved by her parents that becoming a doctor was a no-brainer, especially back then when as a musician she was hardly a prodigy.
All the curiosity satisfied by scientific rabbit holes, the need to feel connection with other people and useful in a helper role, and the perceived stability of knowing the future path could be planned out and fairly predictable…yep, made sense.
Flash forward to see at 40-something how the life path had played out, what I accomplished, how the role served me and others, and who I had become after years of medical practice.
Most of the reasons I chose the path seemed less important to the older me. I felt I no longer had to “prove myself”, understood what others thought of me was not the fullness of my identity, had come to terms with a “tricky family” and self-love, and out of my first marriage was reestablishing a financial base, never having been in it for the money anyway.
I started writing an article for colleagues, never finished it, but the title described what I think many were feeling during those times, “I’m Not Burnt Out, Just Want to Get Out”. What to do when a previously fulfilling career no longer sparks passion for life?
Truly the greatest hurdle to shifting actual work hours from medicine to music was the sense I had of serving others in a role I seemed created for. What if God wanted me in medicine, and I was denying the “right path” for some folly? And at my age!
A book by Tama Kieves, This Time I Dance: Creating the Work You Love, held the question, “if you are this good at a job you no longer feel passion for, imagine how great you could be doing something you love?” (Or something like that…it’s been years since I read the ground-shifting story of her transition from Harvard-trained lawyer to writer and visionary life coach).
And that question nagged me when I had high points with the music…what would it become -what would I become - if I really did it? Did music?
So I pondered in my back and forth energy flow, a yo-yo between ER shifts and singer-songwriter pianist for years.
In the times I went away from medicine, reveling in the freedom of my life in music - feeling more me than ever.
But in the return each time questioning “will this be the last time I’m practicing medicine?” Guilty because many of the returns were for financial reasons, since I was nowhere near a sustainable music career.
I recall telling myself, “I will never work in medicine only for the money” as if that was a badge of integrity - as long as I was giving of myself to the world through medicine it was serving a purpose for the greater good, right?
I battled with the thoughts of not serving in that way - “how could I give up practice when I had the ability to make a difference?” versus “how could I be so arrogant to think I’m that important in the grand scheme of things?”.
Yes, I think too much.
It felt like a rubber band streeetttcching until somewhere in COVID-times it broke.
So devastated by the response of most in my profession, following politics-driven leadership that was failing to provide safety in the pandemic. I felt like advocating for patients in what the medical system had become would be impossible. I clearly did not fit any longer, and would not participate in an agenda that was more destructive than healing.
And I was completely committed to supporting three kids through the loss and fear during milestone years - the older two graduating high school in 2020 and 2021.
When I finally started breaking the bonds and moving down the road taking forks with no option to reverse course, it was only a few months ago.
A shift to “volunteer “ status for my license, letting my hospital privileges expire….
Finally able to get the studio back online and start business planning, scheduling performances and music production.
So, curiously, when the outside messaging this summer started pushing me to return to medicine - honestly they were forces demanding career “legitimacy” and better economic stability in chaotic times - the idea had a new feel.
I had tried the “both worlds” approach in the past, and was successful to a point, but something in me felt like I wasn’t fully available for the music if I stayed in medicine, especially when my non-music time was for home life.
This time, part of me that had maybe been waiting in the wings, woke up a little and said “just think about it a little”. Imagine what it would look like if you worked a few shifts, on your timeline. Could you be a part of helping people with their health, and supporting the desperately needed changes in a broken system?
Or would you be “selling out”? Practicing by rules that went against core values to satisfy someone else’s demands of “normal life”?
With the perceived benefits more for patients and my family than me, asking what is service? And what part of me would be served by “service to others”?
Would it be worth it for me to delay my music projects, yet again, in deference to what would clearly better support my family?
After struggling for so long to honor the selfish desire to make music, realizing my impact in the world as a musician would potentially have far greater healing reach than continuing to work as a physician, I had arrived at a place of comfort with my identity as “artist”.
Could I be an artist and spend time working as a doctor again?
If I was primarily motivated by the money and identity as ER doc, was I selling out?
What if it was a moving out?
Out of either identity, out of comfort zones in both areas of my life, out of the expectations I had for what the choice for or against medicine would bring?
When I let myself acknowledge that I really had no idea what a choice to go back into medicine would bring, even though I knew the work involved in preparing for re-entry, it became easier to take a step at a time, and just “see”.
This is a Tuesday post, so I gotta wrap it up, and there is no end to this storyline - I’m still in it, having reached out and finding doors opening in both medicine and music.
Oddly, the music has been moving outward more into the world as I’ve moved back in to medicine…changing my preconceptions little by little.
Looking more like a “moving out into” than a “move in to” medicine, imagining a different way of bringing more of myself to the role, expanding instead of confining the person I think I am. Hoping to experience a new dynamic with teammates I worked with before, and folks I will meet in first time settings in the pipeline right now.
Recognizing the satisfaction I feel in my soul by connecting with humans and celebrating their empowerment and healing - that’s the “kicks” I get out of being a doctor.
Either way, the moving out has a new feel - yes, leaving the old, but more diving into the growing space of the more whole life I am living now.